The Waterbury Democrat., 1935-09-09

the hours in the field with hoe that Huey F. Long, Sr., exacted The Long household provided all the necessities of life by Louisiana hill standards, but the red clay oi Vim Parish withheld luxury Huey wanted more and he got it. In Winfield he saw a peddler aucs tioning books. The chink every few minutes of more coins than Huey Long saw in six-month fired him with a resolution. He bought some books of his own on credit, rented q buggy. trailed around the countryside with pat ter composed 50-50 of the sales talk he had heard and improve ments of his own making, and in one week cleared $40.
 New Life Offered
 Then a new life opened. Before he was 16 "Huey Long, Auctioneer were familiar words on handbilis and fence-post dodgers in Vim and adjoining parishes. The verbaI dexterity he gained in barn-yard and street corner discourses on every subject from the Bible to jersey COWS was the foundation ol his political success.
 Long was expelled from high school for a political conspiracy designed to make him and a few companions school dictators. The group formed a secret society which laid down rules for under graduate behavior without regard to faculty plans. They punished non-conformists by political action to keep them off school teams, out of clubs, or off the debating team. The scheme worked, but the facul- ty objected. Long left school and, immediately thereafter, Winfield itself. Before he departed he got majority of electors in the dis trict to petition for removal of the school principal.
 Never Was Bothered
 Means for livelihood seldom bothered Long. He sold a cotton seed cooking oil, house to house, after he left school, often demon- strating it's feasibility by cooking a meal himself in country kitchens. He staged baking contests to ad- vertise the product and so met Rose Mcconnell, now Mrs. Huey Long. She won a prize in one of his contests with layer cake, "and still could," Long said recently.
 He told himself, in Every Man a King" his auto biography, that he got fired from his next job, with a Houston packing house, because his expense account strayed from authorized paths. He went to Memphis to seek work and before he found 1t he learned the art of substituting another hole in the belt for a missing meal.
 Ut was damn tough" he said, land the job I finally got in car foundry wasn't much pleasanter." Enters Law School
 Probably his aversion to physical labor helped the youth to a deci- sion to study law. He quit the foundry job, climbed on freight train for Oklahoma and entered law school in Norman, Okla.
 He headed an Oklahoma univer- sity Champ Clark for Presider, Club" in his freshman year and came off even in campus hoaors in q battle of strategy with the much more popular organization for Woodrow Wilson.
 When he finished the freshman term he returned to Memphis, go, a job as salesman, became sales manager, and year later, when 19, married Rose Mcconnell.
 The war turned Long definitely toward law and politics. The Eu- ropean disturbance ruined the cot ton market. Even Huey Long couldn't sell goods to community without money. So he used his to move to New orleans and em bark on q study of law as special student in Tulane university. He read law 12 hours d day for seven months, passed the bar examina- ton and hung out his shingle in Winfield.
 Finances Were Slow
 Finances were the rub. The Longs first baby appeared, clients were few. Huey took to the road again with patent medicine, lamp chimneys and miscellaneous what nots. He made enough in three months to bank himself while he worked again in his law office.
 The law business improved. By the time he vast 24 Huey had some spare money and a consid- erable local prestige. He ran for the ofilceof railroad commissioner in d door-knocking campaign mod eled on his peddler's tactics, and won. He moved to Shreveport.
 Power of the railroad commis- sion over public utilities gave Huey his supreme opportunity to escape forever from Vim Parish and the distasteful things 1t symboliZed. Il, obtained and won several notable law cases. Some clients paid hin with stocks of the oil companies hourishing with the Shreveport boom. The stocks bred dollars by thousands.
 Standard Oil Dispute
 A dispute with Standard oil Co of Louisiana, in which Long was lIlVOlVeu Dy HIS OlHCe anu HIS SlOcf holdings, pushed him again toward his ultimate seat in Baton Rouge Standard refused to handle oil oi independents in its pipelines. Long beseeched two governors to punish the company, then ran for gover nor himself to win his end.
 He was whipped, but only after a race that frightened the New Or leans "old guard" and the powerful out-state machine into their great est activity in decades. A Baptist running on "dry" platform, Lonf didn't poll heavily that year-192. in Catholic and anti-prohibitior lower Louisiana. He didn't ge anything in New Orleons. Bu northern Louisiana liked him ant he got 73.00O votes, only 9,00t fewer than Henry Fuqua, New Or leans candidate.
 One of Their Kind
 He learned from that experience that position on the fence ha. it's uses. When he ran again Y 1928 southern Louisiana hailed him as a"Cajun" of it's own breed