HUEY P. LONG’S “EVERY MAN A
KING” SPEECH
Muhammad Asim Azeem
Mr s. Stite’s 3 rd period AP
English Language and
Composition
SPEAKER
 Huey Pierce Long, Jr.
Born August 30, 1893, and died September 10, 1935
He was assassinated at the age of 42
He was the 40 th governor of Louisiana, from 1928 -1932
Later on became a Senator for the sate for Louisiana,
1932-1935
• He was a Democrat, and he respectfully viewed the
freedoms of people
• He found the Federal Reserve System and the
distribution of wealth to be corrupt and dysfunctional
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OCCASION
 Louisiana Senator Huey Long broadcast his Every Man a King
speech over the NBC radio network on February 23, 1934
 The speech is also called the share the wealth speech
 The time period of this speech was set during the great
depression
 To address the Nation of a proposal, called “share the wealth ”
AUDIENCE
 His audience was the entire nation, it was broadcasted over
the radio so that every one could hear his message
 This message was meant for all to be heard, but intended to
spark some change in the government
PURPOSE
 His purpose for his speech was to set forth new laws that
would help the people living in poverty, which was nearly 75%
of the nation
 He wanted to establish the wealth tax
 4% of the nation owned 85% to 95% of the wealth and that
75% of the nation owned nothing
 This is what inspired him to take action, the staggering
statistics of the nation at the time
TONE
 The tone throughout the speech was af firmative, reinsuring
and optimistic
 He was forth right in his ambitions, he wanted the people to
get what they deserved, he wanted every American citizen to
be wealthy, he wanted no select few to be praised higher than
another
ETHOS
 Huey Long had established automatic ethos, this was
established through him having been the governor of
Louisiana and a senator for the state
PATHOS
 He had appealed to the emotions of the people, through his
sympathetic approach of the people of our nation being in
poverty.
 He kept addressing the children of America, and their future
“Is that right of life, my friends, when the young children of this
countr y are being reared into a sphere which is more owned by
12 men than it is by 120,000,000 people?”
 He also mentions God/Lord several times through out the
speech
“..through the wisdom of the Lord..”
LOGOS
 His logic of this whole thing was justified through his use of
statistical data to reiterate on his point that the American
people are not properly able to sustain themselves, and living
in debt and poverty.
“Now, let us take America today. We have in American today,
ladies and gentlemen, $272,000,000,000 of debt. Two hundred
and seventy -two thousand millions of dollars of debt are owed
by the various people of this countr y today. Why, my friends,
that cannot be paid. It is not possible for that kind do debt to be
paid.”
DICTION
 Huey’s choice of words are appropriate in emphasizing the
urgency of this issue
“But the Scripture says, ladies and gentlemen, that no countr y
can sur vive, or for a countr y to sur vive it is necessar y that we
keep the wealth scattered among the people, that nothing
should be held permanently by any one person, and that 50
years seems to be the year of jubilee in which all proper ty
would be scattered about and returned to the sources from
which it originally came, and ever y seventh year debt should be
remitted.”
 The use of scattered shows that wealth should be for
everyone, and that it should not be hesitated on whether or
not someone deserves wealth
 Permanently is a very strong word, that shows how Huey
viewed the distribution of wealth
SYNTAX
 He places phrases and words in a way that it best shows his
perspective the clearest
“Now, what did they mean by that? Did they mean, my friends,
to say that all me were created equal and that that meant that
any one man was born to inherit $10,000,000,000 and that
another child was to be born to inherit nothing ?”
 It shows how he was very unhappy with how the whole nation
was dysfunctional
OTHER RHETORICAL STRATEGIES
 Thesis statement: His thesis statement outlined the entire
focus of his whole speech
“It is not the difficulty of the problem which we have; it is the
fact that the rich people of this countr y -- and by rich people I
mean the super-rich -- will not allow us to solve the problems, or
rather the one little problem that is afflicting this countr y,
because in order to cure all of our woes it is necessar y to scale
down the big for tunes, that we may scatter the wealth to be
shared by all of the people .”
 Allusion: He uses god to show a sense of order
“anything that has been disclosed to man through his own
individual mind or through the wisdom of the Lord which the
Lord has allowed him to have.”
 Imagery: This emphasizes how bad things are in our nation
“..when we have today in America thousands and hundreds of
thousands and millions of children on the verge of star vation in
a land that is overflowing with too much to eat and too much to
wear?”
 Metaphor: He uses this metaphor to express the distribution
of wealth
“Now, my friends, if you were off on an island where there were
100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred
lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody else
eat any of them. If you did, there would not be anything else for
the balance of the people to consume .”
WORK CITED
• https://www.google.com/search?q=huey+p+long&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei
=Jj0vUOWHOy40QHeooG4DA&ved=0CAYQ_AUoAQ&biw=1366&bih=643&safe=active&ssui
=on#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=TBQxIfNRI0usLM%253A%3BQXdxqOgmMcjoMM%3Bh
ttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.geauxto.com%252Flouisiana%252F0eb387e0.jpg%3Bh
ttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.geauxto.com%252Flouisiana%252Fid16.htm%3B312%
3B382
• https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/content/long-everymanking-speech.html
• http://www.hueylong.com/programs/share-our-wealth-speech.php
• http://www.geauxto.com/louisiana/id16.htm
• http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/hueyplongking.htm