Voices of Protest : Huey Long, Father Coughlin, & the Great Depression

Rating:
Summary: Voices of Protest
Review: A very good system book about some great men. Huey Long, Father
Couglin and the other heroes of the Great Depression who had the guts to stand up against the devil capitalist FDR.
It is an Iron Heel book, but it still has a lot of good info.
This book is a good buy.

Rating:
Summary: Facinating look at perilous times
Review: Alan Brinkley makes a worthy addition to the study of America in the great depression with this short book. Previously, most annalysis has focused on FDR contending with the national forces to his right, in the press, in congress, and in the courts. Brinkley's work takes an entirely differnet approach, looking instead at the "radicals" who threatened the New Deal from the Left, arguing it did not go far enough. Moreover, he presents considerable evidence that in forming the New Deal FDR did not compromise to the right, as many have argued, but was actually moved leftward by populist forces.

Brinkley also does an excellent job presenting his subjects. His treatment of Long is a case in point. He does not seek to cannonize him and brush over his authoritarian leanings, as many have, but nor does he follow the current trend of going in the opposite direction and ignoring Long's acomplishments. By strikeing a balance, Brinkley gives the reader a greater understanding of the appeal of these men and why they failed.

For any reader trying to sort through this complex moment in US history, this is a very worthwhile read.

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Summary: A New View of Depression-era Demagogues
Review: Alan Brinkley's book is a valuable addition to the history of the Great Depression. He has broadened and altered my perceptions of Huey Long and Father Coughlin dramatically. In addition to being populist demagogues, they both proposed radical economic reforms that put the New Deal to shame.

Long was not just a Louisiana or southern phenomenon. In 1936, when he was shot, he had created a national organization with the apparent intention of running for President. Brinkley has unearthed a poll commissioned by the Democratic National Committee that year that showed Long drawing as large a percentage of the vote as George Wallace or Ross Perot did in more recent elections. And the support was not limited to southern states. In Massachusetts, the DNC poll showed Long getting more than 13% of the vote.

Coughlin turned to fascism and overt anti-semetism only after his popularity began to wane when he split openly with Roosevelt. In his heyday he sounded like a socialist, proposing to replace the federal reserve with a true central bank and the nationalizing of the energy industry.

Brinkley thinks that Long, Coughlin and the California radical, Dr Townsend, pushed Roosevelt and the Congress into enacting a more comprehensive Social Security law than they would have otherwise.

Brinkley doesn't try to gloss over the dark side of Long's totalitarian rule in Louisiana or Father Coughlin's bloated ego and slide into ugly racism. But he does present a economic reformist aspect to their movements that is no longer known -- even among historians. It is more fashionable now to talk about the reform movements headed LaFollette and Norman Thomas as the sources of New Deal economic reform. While those may have been more highminded reformers, they never approached Long and Coughlin in mass appeal or in their power to frighten a President.

Rating:
Summary: crisis and renewal
Review: Brinkley offers a fascinating glimpse into the politics of the Depression era. Often, Huey Long and Father Coughlin are glossed over in US history textbooks and are given the "extremist" or "radical" label. These might not be entirely incorrect descriptions, but using them misses the depth of the national movements that rose up around these two figures and ignores the many followers they had.

It is interesting to see who was supporting Long and Coughlin. Their movements were not, as one might expect, composed of the dispossed or the bottom-of-the-barrel poor. Rather, they usually attracted people on the lower fringes of the middle class--people who had something and knew what it was like not to have it, people who feared losing their new status. Long and Coughlin expressed a sense of loss, too. They bemoaned the death of community-based business and local trade and their replacement with a growing number of chain stores and big businesses. Cold, distant, impersoal relationships now replaced the personal ties that bound communities together. They focused on economic issues--such as old-age pensions and Long's Share Our Wealth program. They placed blame on and demonized the "usual suspects." They proposed radical change and yet distanced themselves from socialists and Communists--especially Coughlin. Ultimately, they failed to create an enduring ideological movement, but one still cannot help wondering what course the 1936 election would have taken had Long not been assassinated in 1935.

The picture of Franklin Roosevelt that emerges here is that of a cunning and shrewd political operator. He deftly maneuvered the political waters and co-opted both Long and Coughlin. He adopted pieces of their programs--never the entire thing, but just enough to siphon support from his potential rivals. He maintained an ambiguous relationship with Coughlin and played on the priest's desire for power and attention--frequently ignoring him but slyly using him, for example, to garner the Catholic vote. He similarly cozied up to Long in the 1932 election, since the Louisiana politician had growing appeal, especially in regions of the south.

Overall, this is a fascinating book, based on excellent scholarship and many insightful analyses.

Rating:
Summary: crisis and renewal
Review: Brinkley offers a fascinating glimpse into the politics of the Depression era. Often, Huey Long and Father Coughlin are glossed over in US history textbooks and are given the "extremist" or "radical" label. These might not be entirely incorrect descriptions, but using them misses the depth of the national movements that rose up around these two figures and ignores the many followers they had.

It is interesting to see who was supporting Long and Coughlin. Their movements were not, as one might expect, composed of the dispossed or the bottom-of-the-barrel poor. Rather, they usually attracted people on the lower fringes of the middle class--people who had something and knew what it was like not to have it, people who feared losing their new status. Long and Coughlin expressed a sense of loss, too. They bemoaned the death of community-based business and local trade and their replacement with a growing number of chain stores and big businesses. Cold, distant, impersoal relationships now replaced the personal ties that bound communities together. They focused on economic issues--such as old-age pensions and Long's Share Our Wealth program. They placed blame on and demonized the "usual suspects." They proposed radical change and yet distanced themselves from socialists and Communists--especially Coughlin. Ultimately, they failed to create an enduring ideological movement, but one still cannot help wondering what course the 1936 election would have taken had Long not been assassinated in 1935.

The picture of Franklin Roosevelt that emerges here is that of a cunning and shrewd political operator. He deftly maneuvered the political waters and co-opted both Long and Coughlin. He adopted pieces of their programs--never the entire thing, but just enough to siphon support from his potential rivals. He maintained an ambiguous relationship with Coughlin and played on the priest's desire for power and attention--frequently ignoring him but slyly using him, for example, to garner the Catholic vote. He similarly cozied up to Long in the 1932 election, since the Louisiana politician had growing appeal, especially in regions of the south.

Overall, this is a fascinating book, based on excellent scholarship and many insightful analyses.

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Summary: Fascinating look at dissident America, circa 1930s
Review: In many ways the Great Depression marked a turning point for American society. Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal policies significantly altered the scope and function of the federal government through a host of social programs engineered to revive the ailing economy. A restructuring of the banking system, restrictions on the stock markets, an increase in the size of the bureaucracy, and the development of Social Security were just a few of the changes wrought by the administration. Despite the various panaceas proposed and enacted by Roosevelt's government, the economic slump doggedly persisted year after year until World War II provided jobs for millions of out of work Americans. Roosevelt and his advisors were not the only people trying to cure the country of its economic ills, however. During the early and mid 1930s, several dissident social movements exploded onto the American scene promising an end to the Depression. Historian Alan Brinkley examines two of the biggest of these movements in "Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father Coughlin, and the Great Depression."

The first 142 pages of "Voices of Protest" summarizes the life, rise, and various activities of Louisiana politician Huey Long and Catholic priest and radio personality Charles Coughlin. If you know a great deal about these two fascinating figures, you could probably skip these sections and not miss out on a great deal. Brinkley discusses Long's early life in Winn Parish, a Louisiana county with a long history of radical dissent dating back to the era of Populism. Arguing that this background imbued Long with a fondness for the common man, Brinkley outlines Huey's rise to power through the governorship of Louisiana and his eventual move into the United States Senate. Long was a corrupt politician who ran his state like a personal fiefdom, even after he went to Washington. Huey's political machine controlled every government job in the state, from the highest to lowest positions, and the man made ample use of this power to pack the state government with allies who would do his bidding. By the time the Senator proposed his "Share Our Wealth" palliative, he had an eager eye on the presidency. Long's plans for the country died with him when an assassin's bullet felled the Senator in the Louisiana Statehouse in 1935.

Charles Coughlin grew up in Canada and eventually joined the priesthood, moving to Royal Oak, Michigan in the 1920s. When his new church needed to raise funds to pay off a diocesan loan, he started a small radio program on WJR in Detroit. At first, the program consisted of short, harmless sermons. With the start of the Depression, Coughlin's broadcasts swiftly assumed political dimensions. His voice, described by many as one of the most arresting sounds ever heard on the airwaves, rapidly increased the size of his audience. As the donations poured in Coughlin expanded his radio network into a virtual empire. By the mid 1930s he was one of the most prominent figures in American society, a man looked up to by millions and a frequent guest at the Roosevelt White House. The priest and the president soon fell out over several issues, and Coughlin took his revenge on Roosevelt by forming the National Union for Social Justice and its attendant political branch, the Union Party, to unseat the president in the 1936 elections. The priest failed, and in a sign of decreasing popularity and bitterness he wholeheartedly embraced anti-Semitism and pro-German sympathies before the Catholic Church forced his retirement from public life in the early 1940s. Coughlin died in obscurity in 1979.

"Voices of Protest" takes off with chapter seven. Brinkley adroitly and convincingly analyzes the Long and Coughlin movements, explaining how the two men amassed such huge audiences with their populist rhetoric. The Depression, argues Brinkley, exposed the inherent flaws in a fundamental economic/social shift that had been going on in America for decades. The centralization and bureaucratization of business and government threatened traditional American ideas about the importance of localized society. When a stock market disaster in New York City caused workers in Lincoln, Nebraska or Des Moines, Iowa to lose their jobs, people worried anew about big business and power held in the hands of an anonymous few thousands of miles away. Long and Coughlin played on these fears by proposing programs that would restore power to local communities and the individual. Their programs ultimately failed because the economic move to centralization had already gone on for far too long. Additionally, the two men's ideas contained seeds of contradiction. In an effort to restore a traditional life highlighting locality and the individual, Long and Coughlin proposed big government schemes as a means of achieving their goals. The attempt to turn Share Our Wealth and the National Union for Social Justice into nationwide political organizations failed because of this focus on localization and an inability on the part of the two men to address the core issue of the problems they attacked, namely economic centralization.

The rest of "Voices of Protest" looks closely at the organization and followers of the Long and Coughlin organizations, other dissidents operating in the 1930s, and whether Long and Coughlin were American fascists. There are a few problems with the book. I think the author fails to strongly stress the positive aspects of these movements. For example, Brinkley barely mentions that these movements brought millions of Americans into the political life of the country at a time when participation was enormously important. Moreover, the dissident movements in the United States undoubtedly pushed Roosevelt to create important pieces of legislation during his second term as president. Social Security, for example, was an attempt to co-opt Francis Townsend's old age pension plan. Still, "Voices of Protest" is a winner that every person interested in 20th century American history should read.

Rating:
Summary: Great Writing and the thesis makes this book.
Review: The book only has basic information about Huey Long and Father Coughlin (first 150 some odd pages). But this beauty of this book is in it's thesis and conclusions about Huey Long and Father Coughlin's movements. He discusses the localistic tendancies of the Long and Coughlin movements on a national scale and their reasons for failure (Long's being semi-speculative considering he was killed). The book delves into interesting theory about the two mass movements and American politics as a whole. Brinkley is a fantastic writer, and this is a MUST read.

Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: This book offers a fascinating look at the political dissident movements that sprang forth in this country during the worst economic crisis in American history. Two of its most influential leaders discussed in this book are Huey Long and Father Coughlin. Both individuals are chronicled from their rise to power to their ultimate decline, which in Long's case came quickly.

Long and Coughlin could not have been more different in terms of who they were and where they came from. Both, however, were reaching a similar audience of millions who shared the same concerns. These weren't necessarily the people at the bottom of the economic scale, but rather those who had achieved some semblance of middle-class lifestyle and who desperately wanted to hold on to their success. They as a result had perhaps the most to lose during this turbulent time period.

Brinkley discusses each individual and how they got to their positions of power, such as their ability to exploit a new communicative medium, i.e. radio. Brinkley also adds the very critical element of giving the history of political dissident movements and how they come about.

One of the great what ifs of this era, at least to me, is what threat Long might have posed to Franklin Roosevelt's chances of winning reelection if Long had run for president in 1936. Long's career was cut short by an assassins bullet. Coughlin continued with his radio sermons and his attempt to create a kind of third party. But his influence was declining sharply as his message became much more radical and filled with bigotry. He never really posed the type of threat to the political order that Long might have.

To understand the appeal of their messages, one has to understand the times. Brinkley is fairly successful in dealing with this. There were many contradictions and insurmountable problems in each individual's own message. Personally, I think this country was fortunate to have a man like Franklin Roosevelt as its top executive as opposed to the possibility of a Huey Long presidency. Roosevelt may never have really been in that much trouble considering his own popularity even with many of the supporters of both Long and Coughlin.