His fulmination was delivered before a crowded gallery, as usual. This popularity annoyed many of his senior colleagues, none more so than Vice-President Garner, whom John L. Lewis was soon to stigmatize as “that labor-baiting, poker-playing, whiskey-drinking evil old man.” More than once, as the galleries emptied with a rush the moment Long finished, Mr. Garner would call to the departing auditors, saying: “Yes, you can go now! The show’s over!”
In this instance, as on many previous occasions, there was no advance hint of the fireworks to come. The fuse was a debate over the Frazier-Lemke bill, and Senator Long contented himself at the outset with charging that the administration was conducting “government by blackmail.” In making this statement he was referring to NIRA, which had succeeded NRA, the latter having been declared unconstitutional some three months earlier. This had nothing to do with the Frazier-Lemke bill, but it gave Mr. Long an opportunity to charge that no contracts for PWA work were being financed unless the contractor agreed to abide by all the provisions of the NRA code which the Supreme Court had invalidated.
That led to the statement that “we in Louisiana have never stood for [such] blackmail from anybody,” which in turn led to a section of his arraignment the _Congressional Record_ headed:
“THE PLAN OF ROBBERY, MURDER, BLACKMAIL, OR THEFT”
“I have a record of an anti-Long conference held by the anti-Long Representatives from Louisiana in Congress,” he said in part. “The faithful Roosevelt Congressmen had gone down there to put the Long crowd out.... Here is what happened among the Congressmen representing Roosevelt the first, the last and the littlest.”
Holding aloft what he said was a transcript of the dictograph record, he listed the names of those present, naming a collector of internal revenue, an FERA manager for the state, and giving as the first direct quote of one of the conferees a statement made by one Oscar Whilden, a burly horse-and-mule dealer who had headed an anti-Long direct-action group calling itself the Square Deal Association. Whilden was quoted as saying at the very opening of the meeting that “I am out to murder, kill, bulldoze, steal or anything else to win this election!”