Rhetorical Analysis Of Huey Long's Speech

Portrayed as a Southern demagogue, Huey Long, who was also known as King Fish, was a major character on the American political stage around 1930s, an era during the Greate Depression that brought a worldwide economic crisis; many people lost their jobs. According to Frank, Robert H. and Bernanke, Ben S., 25% of American lost their jobs at that time. Huey Long was good at raising his audience’s anger towards the rich. Unlike some Southern demagogues, Huey Long did not criticize African-Americans to seek support from racists; his target was always the rich. He said, “It is the fact that the rich people of this country – and by rich people I mean super rich – will not allow us to solve the problems” (Para 4). During the Depression, when many people lost their jobs and had trouble with supporting their family, the rich easily became the target of their anger. Huey

Long successfully manipulated this anger to achieve his goals. In his speech, unlike politicians nowadays, Huey Long had special skills to attract his audience; he directly quoted Scripture and made a promise of a utopian. In addition, his zealous speech style was regarded as one of his powerful propaganda strategies.
The way Huey King gave the speech was manipulative; without foreshadowing, he directly expressed his emotion by a rhetorical question in the very first of his speech.

“Is that a right of life, when the young children of this country are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by 12 men that is by 120 million people?” (Para. 1). He kept his tone vehement from the beginning till the end and his audience emotion also flamed up from time to time. Listening to his fervent voice, the audience could naturally image his passionate motion when he gave this speech, which was criticized by Huey’s opponents as demagogy. However, this style of speech was very welcomed by his audience because most of his audience held anger and needed a loud and “righteous” voice to claim their appeal. What Huey Long’s speech to people with a lower income was like a speech from The Crusades to the Christian Knights.
Utilizing the authority of the Bible, Huey Long made his argument irrefutable. When utilizing the authority of the Bible, Huey Long utilized it very directly; he quoted the Bible directly without any his own

interpreting:
Why should we quarrel with one another to find out what the difficulty is, when we know what the Lord told us what the difficulty is…“Then”, said the Lord, in effect, “every seventh year there shall be a remission of debts; there will be no debts after 7 years” (Para.12 and Para.20).
Regarded as a populist, Huey Long knew his audience was constituted by people with a lower income. Limited by their income, people with a lower income just receive a modest education; instead, what they reached in their daily lives was through the Bible. In other words, Christianity was the main religion among the poor and the Bible was probably the only book they were familiar with. Firmly believing in God, the content from the Bible was undoubted to them. Directly quoting the content of the Bible, Huey Long left no flaw in his line of reasoning with his audience.
Besides ethos appeal, Huey Long also employed logos; he used a calculation to buttress his view. The calculation he used was very easy: the total value of debt of American was 272,000,000,000 but the entire currency of the United States was only 6,000,000,000, about 1/45 of the total value of debt. The interesting thing was that Huey Long did not show the ratio immediately, he interpreted the calculation gradually:
All the actual money you have got in all of your banks, all that you have got in the Government Treasury, is $6,000,000,000; and if you took all that money and paid it out today you would still owe $266,000,000,000; and if you took all that money and paid again you would still owe $260,000,000,000; and if you took it, my friends, 20 times and paid it you would still owe $150,000,000,000. (Para. 22)
The repetition of the minus calculation stressed how large the gap between the debt and the total currency. Huey Long drew a conclusion that it is not possible for that kind of debt to be paid and gave a further deduction that the wealth must be kept scattered. To explain why the wealth must be kept scattered, Huey Long made a metaphor “if you were off on an island where there were 100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches…and not let anybody else eat any of them” (Para. 26). The rhetoric of his speech was so plain that Huey Long could make sure that each person of his audience could understand his meaning. Moreover, Huey Long simplified the wealth of the society and distribution of the wealth to lunches and simple distribution of the foods. By simplifying the situation, Huey Long ignored the complicated process and concequence of the distribution of the wealth; he made the poor believe that they just needed to rearrange the money and everything would go well.
Besides pointing out the problems of the society, Huey Long described his blueprint of the society, his solution of social problem, to his audience. He said, “that there should be a guaranty of a family wealth of around $5,000; enough for a home, and automobile, a radio…” (Para. 39). Compared to 1930s society, which was under the shadow of the Great Depression, the society proposed by Huey Long was very attractive to the poor. The image of the society he pictured was detailedly, “Our plan is that we will allow no one man to own more than 50,000,000” (Para. 40). Although his plan seems ridiculous to people who have economic knowledge, uneducated people would not see the unreasonable structure of his proposal. In addition, the anger towards to the rich made Huey’s plan seemed more judicious. What’s more, Huey Long also promised less hours of work to his audience. He said, “we will have 5 hours a day and 5 days a week, or even less than that” (Para. 42). Overall, Huey Long proposed a utopian society that everyone can live comfortably, but no one can live luxuriously.
Although criticized by many scholars as dangerous demagogue, Huey Long did build up hospitals and roads, which benefited the public a lot. Assassinated in 1935, no one knew whether Huey Long wanted to build up a utopia or just pretend that he cared for the poor. He said “…I am not quoting Scripture to convince you of my goodness personally, because that is a thing between me and my Maker” (Para. 30). His speech was like a horn that encouraged the poor to build up a utopian society under the God’s law. When he returned to his Maker, he left his audience, people with a lower income, in a great sorrow.