The Price of Education

The face was familiar in Louisiana's back country, and they had no trouble recalling the name. It was Long--Russell Long, old Huey's 31-year-old son, who was speeding through the state, heralded by sound trucks, stumping for re-election to the U.S. Senate. The same tousled black hair stuck to his forehead, the doughy chin trembled as he made his ten speeches a day and crunched cough drops in between.

Even the Kingfish's hunched-shoulder, open-palmed gestures came easy, and he was just as natural about wrapping a friendly arm around a farmer and calling him by his first name. But one thing was different: Russell was not promising to make every man a king; he was sticking to the respectful, respectable demeanor which had surprised Washington during his first two years in his father's old Senate seat.*

"The day of the demagogue is over," said he. "I have no apologies to make for being the son of Huey Long or the nephew of Earl Long. They have both helped the people of our state."

Uncle Earl, the governor, who is ailing with a weak heart and doubts that he will live out the two years of his term, lobbed back a benediction. Said he: "Russell will vote for what he thinks is right, regardless of what I say--I have already tried him--or what you say or what any pressure group says. He is an improvement on his uncle and also his father, Huey P. Long. He is better educated and respects the other man's opinions more."

Louisiana's Long haters, strong in New Orleans but weak in the parishes, weren't buying any new model of an old machine. At the last minute, they put up an acting U.S. district attorney from Shreveport, Malcolm E. Lafargue, 41, to run against Russell. Last week, in his 1950 Ford, well-equipped with loudspeakers of his own, Lafargue was zipping from one speech to another at 90 miles an hour.

He denounced Russell as a supporter of the Fair Deal in Washington, and of the Long dynasty in Baton Rouge. "Longism" had already taxed the poor voter's cigarettes, beer and gasoline to set up a welfare program shot full of politics, he cried. Weren't the Longs paying for Russell's campaign out of a multimillion-dollar highway appropriation? Russell wasn't saying, but shrewdly baited Lafargue into opposing FEPC, in hopes of undercutting the prospective pro-Lafargue Negro vote in New Orleans.

For election eve in Louisiana, it seemed all wrong. "I've never seen another campaign this quiet," said Veteran Watcher John Gentilich, who runs the Marble Hall Bar & Restaurant across from New Orleans' city hall. As Uncle Earl had said, Russell was better educated and respected the other man's opinion. Maybe that was what took the fun out of it.

* He is the first Senator in history to win a seat occupied by his father and later by his mother.

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