Share Our Wealth / The Slogan of the Hour. [Broadside]

Baton Rouge: Typographical Union Label, 1936. First Edition. Broadside, 16 ¾ x 9 ¼ inches. Some wear, a few small holes at creases, slight foxing, very good minus overall. A broadside advertising the Share Our Wealth Program, which had been championed by the late Huey Long prior to his death in 1935, printed when the program was under the direction of Gerald L.K. Smith, who was widely considered a political demagogue and who ran the program into the ground following Long's death. Long had made it his trademark piece of proposed legislation in his potential run for the presidency, proposing a progressive tax on wealthy Americans up to 100% of fortunes (truncated) over 100 million dollars. Following his death, the program languished under the direction of Smith, who joined a third party coalition in support of William Lemke in 1936. Long's program is often credited in helping push Roosevelt leftward, with some historians positing that some of the New Deal programs were created in response to the political threat of Long. We find one example of this broadside, at the E. Merton Coulter Collection at the University of Georgia. (Inventory #: List1520)