Radical criticism: Huey Long and Father Coughlin

What the specification asks for

“radical criticism such as Huey Long's Share Our Wealth programme and Father Coughlin's Social Justice campaign” — examined through difference and significance. Incandio is aligned to specification 4HI1; it is not published by, endorsed by or affiliated with Pearson.

1 · Understand it

The critics from the left

Huey Long was Governor and then Senator for Louisiana, where he had built roads, bridges, hospitals and a free textbook programme, and had also constructed a political machine of a kind that made his opponents call him a dictator. In 1934 he launched Share Our Wealth, proposing a cap on personal fortunes, a guaranteed household income and pensions, funded by confiscatory taxation of the very rich. Its clubs claimed several million members, and he was widely expected to run against Roosevelt in 1936. He was assassinated in September 1935.

Charles Coughlin was a Catholic priest in Michigan whose weekly radio broadcasts reached an audience estimated in the tens of millions, one of the largest in the world at that time. He had supported Roosevelt in 1932 and turned against him from 1934, arguing for currency inflation, the nationalisation of banking and greater protection for labour. His National Union for Social Justice attacked the New Deal as a servant of financiers. From the later 1930s his broadcasts became explicitly antisemitic and sympathetic to European fascism, and he lost most of his mainstream support and was eventually taken off the air.

Francis Townsend, a Californian physician, proposed a monthly pension of two hundred dollars for every American over sixty, on condition that it was spent within the month. Townsend Clubs claimed a membership in the millions, drawn heavily from the elderly.

How they changed the policy

This is the strand's central claim and it is what stops key topic 5 being an appendix. The second New Deal of 1935 was in substantial part a response to these movements, designed to occupy the political space they had opened before they could occupy it themselves.

The Social Security Act answers Townsend and Long directly: it created a federal old-age pension, which is what both had demanded, at a level and on a contributory basis that the Treasury could sustain. The Revenue Act of 1935, which raised taxes sharply on the highest incomes and on large estates, was called the soak-the-rich tax by the press and addresses Share Our Wealth's central demand in a form the Constitution would permit. The Wagner Act delivered to organised labour what Coughlin and others had been demanding.

Roosevelt's own remark that he wanted to steal Long's thunder is quoted often, and the legislation is better evidence than the remark. A president who was comfortably ahead of a fragmented opposition did not need to create a federal pension system in 1935; a president facing a Senator with several million club members and a plausible third-party candidacy did.

What this shows about opposition

The usual way of teaching opposition is as resistance — obstacles a government overcomes or is defeated by. This strand offers the more interesting alternative: opposition that changes the policy without ever holding office.

Neither Long nor Coughlin nor Townsend obtained a single one of their programmes. Long was dead by September 1935, Coughlin destroyed himself, and the Townsend Plan was never legislated. Yet the Social Security Act, the Revenue Act and the Wagner Act between them constitute the most durable part of the New Deal, and all three were shaped by the need to answer them.

For an interpretation question this is a valuable move, because it allows a candidate to argue that a movement was simultaneously a failure by its own aims and a decisive influence on events — which is the same analytical structure as the Defiance Campaign, the 1848 revolutions and several other places on this specification.

2 · Learn it — the notes

The dates that earn marks

1934

Long launches Share Our Wealth; Coughlin founds the National Union for Social Justice. Why this date: It dates the emergence of an organised critique from the left, a year before the second New Deal answers it.

1935

The Social Security Act and the Revenue Act are passed. Why this date: A federal pension and a sharp rise in top-rate taxation occupy the ground the radical movements had opened.

September 1935

Huey Long is assassinated in Baton Rouge. Why this date: It removes the only figure who might plausibly have split the Democratic vote in 1936, which is why that election was so one-sided.

1936

The Union Party, drawing on Coughlin's and Townsend's support, wins under two per cent of the vote. Why this date: It measures how little the movements were worth electorally once the second New Deal had taken their programmes.

The figures, and how far to trust them

• Several million — Claimed membership of the Share Our Wealth clubs. (The figure is Long's organisation's own and was never audited; it is evidence of claimed reach rather than of membership.)
• Tens of millions — The estimated audience for Coughlin's weekly broadcasts at their peak. (Radio audience estimates in the 1930s were rough and were often supplied by interested parties.)
• Under 2 per cent — The Union Party's share of the vote in 1936, after the second New Deal had taken its ground.

The people to place

• Huey Long — Senator for Louisiana; launched Share Our Wealth in 1934 and was assassinated in 1935.
• Charles Coughlin — Radio priest whose broadcasts reached tens of millions before turning antisemitic and losing their audience.
• Francis Townsend — Physician whose old-age pension plan built a mass movement among the elderly.

How historians disagree

Attributed interpretations, never voiced — the AO4 seam.

• The 'radicals shaped the New Deal' reading: The second New Deal was written to answer Long, Townsend and Coughlin, and the movements therefore achieved through pressure what they could never have achieved through office. Contested by The reading that Roosevelt had committed to social insurance well before Share Our Wealth existed, that Frances Perkins's committee had been working on it since 1934, and that the timing reflects legislative readiness rather than political panic..

What students say — and what is actually the case

Not this: Opposition to the New Deal came only from the right.

This: The most electorally threatening opposition came from the left, from movements arguing that the New Deal did far too little, and the second New Deal was shaped by the need to answer them.

Not this: Coughlin was a fringe figure throughout.

This: His audience was among the largest in the world in the mid-1930s and he had supported Roosevelt in 1932. His marginalisation came later and was largely self-inflicted.

Two things students merge

Blurred: Opposition that obstructs and opposition that redirects.

The distinction: The Supreme Court blocked New Deal measures; Long and Townsend caused new ones to be drafted. The second is the harder kind to see and the more interesting to argue about.

Blurred: Coughlin before and after 1936.

The distinction: Until the mid-1930s he was a mainstream populist critic with an enormous Catholic audience; from the later 1930s his broadcasts were explicitly antisemitic and sympathetic to European fascism. Treating him as one thing throughout misdates his influence.

What a Grade 9 answer holds here

A Grade 9 answer sees that the radical critics won by losing. None of them held office, none of their programmes was enacted, and their party took under two per cent of the vote in 1936 — because by then a federal pension existed, top-rate taxes had been raised sharply and collective bargaining was a legal right, all of which had been legislated by the man they were attacking in order to take their supporters away from them.

3 · How it is examined

This strand is genuinely set through: Paper 2 Section A (a) (6 marks — “Describe TWO features of EITHER … OR ….”); Paper 2 Section A (b) (8 marks — “How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about …? Explain your answer.”); Paper 2 Section A (c) (16 marks — “Extract C suggests that …. How far do you agree with this interpretation? Use Extract C, Sources A and B and your own knowledge to explain your answer.”).

What earns marks: The connection between Townsend's pension campaign and the Social Security Act. It converts a list of critics into an argument about how opposition changed legislation.

The cap that bites here: The 6-mark describe question caps a single feature at 3 marks and needs no introduction or conclusion.

4 · Prove it — the questions

Answered inside Incandio, where a marker checks what a correct answer must contain and tells you which half was missing. The marking stays in the app; the questions are here.

1. Describe two features of radical opposition to the New Deal. [6 marks · Paper 2 Section A (a)]
2. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about Huey Long? [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]
3. How far does Source A support the evidence of Source B about the popularity of radical movements in the 1930s? [8 marks · Paper 2 Section A (b)]
4. Extract C suggests that radical critics forced Roosevelt to extend the New Deal. How far do you agree with this interpretation? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section A (c)]
5. Extract C suggests that opposition to the New Deal was more dangerous from the left than from the right. How far do you agree with this interpretation? [16 marks · Paper 2 Section A (c)]

Carry on through the option

• Previous lesson: The Supreme Court, business and the Liberty League
• Key topic 5 · The Opposition to the New Deal · The USA, 1918–41 · the option's timeline · Incandio History
• The other key topics of The USA: The Roaring Twenties · Increased social tensions in the 1920s · The USA in Depression, 1929–33 · Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1933–41