voices of protest
Throughout the Great Depression the United States went through tremendous change. When there is a time of great change, there are always people who oppose it, whether the change is good or bad. The issue of this report is not to discuss if the changes in America throughout the depression were positive or negative, but to discuss the people who opposed it; primarily focusing on Huey Long and Charles Coughlin, or Father Coughlin, and their reasoning and methods of protest. Huey Long and Father Coughlin were extremely influential politicians who opposed the creeping new society of Big Business and high technology. They blamed certain companies and they’re owners (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Pullman, ect.) of Big Business for the financial distraught of America, and were very successful in conveying their argument. However, they were not so successful in achieving their goal in the destruction of this new technological society, for the simple reason that they were too late. The society of America and the world had already turned towards this economic change. To understand the views of Long and Coughlin you must understand the people that they are. Huey Long was a fiery young man from the start. At the age of twenty he made the prophecy that he would run for election “first to secondary stated office in Louisiana, then for governor, then for United States Senator, and finally for president” (page 8).