Thenceforth the pattern of his future was set. He continued his attacks on trusts and large corporations, certain that this would enlarge his image as defender and champion of the downtrodden “pore folks.” His assaults became so intemperate that in 1921, Governor John M. Parker filed an affidavit against him with the Baton Rouge district attorney, and thus brought about his arrest and trial on charges of criminal libel. His attorneys were his brother Julius, Judge James G. Palmer of Shreveport, and Judge Robert R. Reid of Amite. He was found guilty, but his reputation as a pitiless opponent was already so great that only a token sentence was imposed: one hour’s detention, which he served in the Judge’s chambers, and a one-dollar fine. He was so delighted by the outcome that he gave his youngest son, born that day, the names of his attorneys: Palmer Reid Long. Also, some years later, he saw to it that the judge who had imposed the token penalties was elected to the state supreme court. Continuing his onslaughts against millionaires and monopolies, he ran for governor in 1924 on a platform of taxing the owners of great fortunes to aid the underprivileged in their struggle for a reasonable share of the better life: education for their children, medical care for all who could not afford to pay, and some sort of economic security for all who toiled, be it in factory, market place, mine, or farm. He now inveighed against Wall Street as a whole, not merely against isolated corporations as before. The Mellon fortune and the House of Morgan came in for their oratorical lumps; but it is a matter of record that later, when Earl and Huey had fallen out, the former testified under oath before a Senate investigating committee that he had seen his brother accept $10,000 from an official of the Electric Bond and Share Company “in bills so new they looked like they’d just come off the press.” However, from every stump Huey proclaimed that “ninety per cent of this nation’s wealth is in the hands of ten per cent of its people.... The Bible tells us that unless we redistribute the wealth of a country amongst all of the people every so often, that country’s going to smash; but we got too many folks running things in Louisiana and in Washington that think they’re smarter than the Bible.”