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THE BONUS ARMY AND ITS EFFECT ON AMERICAN VETERANS’ BENEFITS
By
Nicholas Z. Cassidy, B.A.
East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of
The Requirements for the Degree of
Master of Arts in History
To the Graduate College of
East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
May 8, 2015
Approval Page
This thesis by Nicholas Z. Cassidy submitted to the Graduate College in partial
fulfillment of the degree of Master of Arts in History on May 8, 2015 has been examined
by the following faculty and it meets or exceeds the standards required for graduation as
testified by our signatures below.
___________________________________ ____________________
Martin Wilson, Ph.D., Thesis Chairperson Date
___________________________________ ____________________
Lawrence Squeri, Ph.D. Date
ABSTRACT
A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts
in History to the Graduate College of East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania
Student’s Name: Nicholas Z. Cassidy
Title: The Bonus Army and its Effect on American Veterans’ Benefits
Date of Graduation: May 8, 2015
Thesis Chair: Martin Wilson, Ph.D.
Thesis Member: Lawrence Squeri, Ph.D.
Abstract
From the time of the Revolutionary War the U.S. government failed to establish a uniform
system of benefits for veterans. Over the years problems arose as veterans demanded more from
their government. Veterans’ complaints culminated in the 1932 march on Washington by WW I
veterans demanding early payment of a promised bonus. The march failed, but the government
created programs to prevent further unrest, culminating in the G.I. Bill.
ii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people that helped me while I spent time at East Stroudsburg
University and while I wrote this thesis. Dr. Martin Wilson, my graduate advisor, helped me
throughout my graduate studies. His guidance was invaluable in creating my thesis. Dr. Wilson
spent a great deal of time helping me to review my work. Dr. Lawrence Squeri also donated his
time to review the thesis, despite no longer being employed at ESU.
The faculty at ESU’s History Department and Kemp Library were also very helpful. The
history professors provided great instruction and fostered interesting discussions in their
classrooms. They were very understanding and open to questions. All of the librarians and staff
at Kemp also deserve thanks. Their help allowed me to find a great deal of information, and they
taught me how to find and use microfilm and other archival sources.
Finally, I also want to thank my family for their love and support over the years. They
were very patient, and had no complaints when I decided to switch to a history major as an
undergraduate. I could not have done any of this without my parents and my brother. We have
also had a lot of fun together. I wish the best for them and all of us in the future.
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Table of Contents
Page
Acknowledgements ……………………………………………………………………….ii
Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………....iv
Chapter 1: Veterans’ benefits to the 1930s ……………………………………………….1
Chapter 2: The Bonus Army marches on Washington ………………………………….28
Chapter 3: Veterans’ benefits in the New Deal …………………………………………54
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………76
Bibliography …………………………………………………………………………... 81
iv
INTRODUCTION
Veterans’ benefits have been a recurring issue throughout United States history.
The government uses benefits both to entice men to join the army and to compensate
them for their service. Early forms of benefits included pensions for military service or
war-related disabilities, as well as land grants. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, benefits programs also took the form of educational, vocational, and medical
assistance for veterans. However, government-provided benefits were not consistent. It
was often years before more than a handful of veterans received benefits. In response,
veterans organized groups to aid each other and to lobby the government for expanded
benefits. Veterans’ organizations successfully demanded new benefits bills which led to
vastly increased government funding.
These new bills provided relief to many veterans later in life. The government
did not make efforts to standardize benefits or to prepare for economic shifts after wars,
though. Veterans of World War I were meagerly compensated and returned to the United
States just as war industries shrank. The Great Depression was a massive challenge both
for the veterans and for the government. Veterans who were unsatisfied with the slow
results of lobbying engaged in mass protest. The largest protest group was known as the
v
Bonus Army, which demanded immediate payment of benefits from Washington. In
spite of the marchers’ numbers and the public’s sympathy, the protests did not achieve
immediate results. Instead, the Bonus March served as a symbol of how severe the Great
Depression was and the inadequacy of the government’s traditional handling of benefits.
Several scholars have written about the Bonus Army and its connection to World
War I veterans’ benefits. The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression, by
Roger Daniels, is a comprehensive investigation of the Bonus March and its effects on
benefit legislation. Daniels describes the origins of the Bonus Army, which formed
because Congress rejected early proposals for a bonus payment. He also discusses the
events of the Bonus March, and the veterans’ situation in the New Deal after the March
failed. Daniels argues that while the Bonus March and veterans’ struggles helped to
inspire the G.I. Bill for World War II veterans, the government did not use the experience
to improve its handling of mass protests. Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen also
describe the formation of the Bonus Army and the veterans’ continual efforts in The
Bonus Army: An American Epic. Details of the March and the encounters between
veterans and Washington, D.C. police are a major part of Dickson and Allen’s work.
They conclude that the success of the G.I. Bill in revitalizing the economy after World
War II can be attributed to the protests of Bonus Army veterans.1
Gary Dean Best investigates the Bonus Army veterans’ circumstances after their
first march in FDR and the Bonus Marchers. He argues that the veterans’ treatment in
the New Deal is a poorly explored subject, although there has been more scholarship on
1 Roger Daniels, The Bonus March (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Publishing Corporation, 1971); Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army
(New York: Walker & Company, 2004).
vi
the period since his work was released. Best describes the later Bonus Marches in the
Roosevelt administration. President Roosevelt dealt with the situation by allowing the
men to enroll in public work programs. There was some friction between veterans and
the government agencies in charge of the programs. There was also a disaster in which a
Florida hurricane killed a number of veteran workers because camp officials reacted too
slowly to storm warnings. Best concludes that the disaster and the government’s
responsibility have often been overlooked. H.W. Brands mentions Franklin Roosevelt’s
attitude towards the veterans in Traitor to His Class. President Roosevelt treated them
sympathetically, though he was staunchly opposed to the bonus itself. He preferred to
incorporate veterans into his larger New Deal plans. Roosevelt’s programs offered some
relief to veterans, but in addition to the problems with camp management and the
hurricane, the programs were closed after a few years. This thesis argues that the Great
Depression exposed the inefficiency of the government’s benefit legislation up to that
point. The government responded to the grievances of earlier veterans by enacting
generous benefit increases, but it did not have the money to meet the Bonus Army’s
demands. The bonus issue was tied up with concerns over increasing government
spending for several years. The G.I. Bill was a proactive measure to prevent future
veterans from facing a situation like the bonus marchers, and its cost was offset by the
economic benefits of improved education and individual stability.2
Chapter one describes the state of veterans’ benefits from the Revolutionary War
to the early parts of the Great Depression. The government during the revolution was
2 Gary Dean Best, FDR and the Bonus Marchers, 1933-1935 (Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1992); H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The
Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York:
Anchor Books, 2008).
vii
short on both money and military supplies. Even during the war, soldiers’ pay was often
delayed. Soldiers and officers were concerned about the government’s plans to fulfill
their pensions after the war. Soldiers and officers protested to the Continental Congress,
asking for more definite plans. They had serious grievances, but George Washington was
able to convince the men to have patience. Soldiers’ pensions became part of the debt
issue after the war. The pensions were originally the responsibility of the states.
Alexander Hamilton proposed that the central government should take on the states’ war
debts and obligations. Representatives from the south objected, since this plan would
spread out the tax burden when the northern states were the most heavily indebted.
Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson made a compromise to put the nation’s capital between
Maryland and Virginia, which convinced Congress to accept Hamilton’s proposals. Even
with pensions controlled by Congress, the majority of veterans would not see their
payment for many years. Complaints that soldiers made while applying for pensions
show the frustration they felt toward delayed or denied benefits.
Benefits for veterans of nineteenth century wars followed a similar pattern. War
of 1812 veterans did not draw many pensions at first. When the government used land
grants to encourage enlistment for the Mexican-American War, the older veterans felt
dissatisfied and demanded an increase in their own benefits. Both groups of veterans
managed to receive increased pensions and other benefits in the second half of the 1800s.
Veterans organized to aid each other and to petition the government, and these groups
were influential in gaining increased benefits for their members. The largest organization
in this period was the Grand Army of the Republic. A Civil War veterans’ group, it
viii
reached its greatest size and influence in the 1880s and 1890s. Benefits gained through
the GAR’s influence came significantly after the war.
This trend continued with World War I veterans. In 1924, Congress passed a bill
that gave veterans a monetary bonus in the form of service certificates. These did not
provide payment until 1945. There were occasional proposals to pay this bonus early, but
it was not a high priority for Congress. The American Legion, formed in 1919, also
concentrated on other causes instead of the bonus. Veterans suffering in the Great
Depression were frustrated that the bonus issue was making no progress in Congress.
The start of the Bonus March can be attributed to a veteran named Walter Waters.
Waters was not a member of a veterans’ organization. After the apparent failure of the
bonus bill in 1932, he convinced other veterans in Portland, Oregon that direct protest in
the capital was their best chance. On the way to Washington, D.C., many veterans joined
Waters’ group, and the Bonus Army eventually numbered in the thousands.
The Bonus Army’s march on Washington in 1932 is the focus of the second
chapter. When the marchers arrived in Washington, President Herbert Hoover was
suspicious. His administration painted the veterans as misguided at best. The Bonus
Army was accused of harboring criminals, non-veterans, and communist agitators. While
there were a small number of communist veterans, they were extremely unpopular with
the majority of the Bonus Army, including Walter Waters. The veterans also had few
serious confrontations with the police in the beginning.
Despite the scale of their protests, the early payment of the bonus was defeated in
Congress again. In spite of this, marchers were not willing to leave the capital. After
further incidents with the police, President Hoover decided to evict the veterans from
ix
Washington. General Douglas MacArthur was given the task. The army forced the
veterans to evacuate with tear gas and demolished the camps, which turned public
sentiment harshly against the Hoover Administration. Waters made several attempts to
settle the veterans somewhere after being forced out of Washington, but in the end he
disbanded the Bonus Army.
The third chapter describes the treatment of veterans under President Franklin
Roosevelt and the development of ideas that would lead to comprehensive veterans’
benefits. Roosevelt was much more accepting of demonstrations by veterans than
Hoover was. On the other hand, he still opposed payment of the bonus for economic
reasons. Instead of offering pensions or a bonus, President Roosevelt wished to develop
relief programs that put people to work. As a compromise to prevent repeated marches
on Washington, the President offered jobs in several work relief programs to veterans.
This was successful in placating the majority of the veterans.
Things became relatively better for veterans in the New Deal, but they still faced
challenges in the work programs. They did not fit the government agencies’ ideal image
of young, vibrant outdoor workers. There was friction between veterans in southern
work camps and the camp leadership. The workers received infrequent pay, and camp
facilities were subpar. Some of the logistical and morale problems were eventually fixed,
but the worst event was the Labor Day hurricane in 1935. In spite of knowledge of an
incoming storm, the camp leadership waited far too long and made too little effort to
evacuate the veterans, causing several hundred deaths. This disaster received several
investigations, but very little official response from the government. A bill to pay the
bonus finally made it through Congress in 1936; it was a small victory for the veterans.
x
Many New Deal programs were cut in the 1940s. Direct protest achieved modest
results for World War I veterans themselves. However, the Great Depression combined
with mass unrest had made a powerful example. Several states had experimented with
education and job training programs after World War I, but individual states could only
provide training for a few thousand people. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of
1944, better known as the G.I. Bill, applied similar ideas on a national scale. The bulk of
the G.I. Bill’s ideas came from a proposal to Congress by the American Legion. World
War II veterans were offered a number of benefits. In addition to medical care and
pensions, veterans could receive unemployment benefits or assistance with higher
education and job training. They could also seek loans to finance homes or businesses.
These programs were very successful and popular, and they were extended to veterans of
successive wars as well.
Before the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, American veterans’ benefits were
highly inconsistent. Veterans responded by organizing to aid each other and to petition
the government. Organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic and the American
Legion became very important for veterans seeking benefits. Their size and lobbying
experience were useful for convincing the government to expand benefits. While
veterans no doubt preferred late benefits to none, this approach could not possibly
mitigate postwar difficulties. The end of World War I, followed by the Great Depression
a decade later, showed some of the worst possible consequences of inadequate
government programs. Neither the American Legion nor the Bonus Army were able to
obtain long-term reform in the 1930s. However, the government did not want to face any
similar crisis after World War II. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act provided World
xi
War II veterans with much more prompt and effective benefits than their predecessors.
The increase in education and opportunities for many veterans also aided the peacetime
economy.
1
CHAPTER 1
Veterans’ Benefits to the 1930s
War veterans sought benefits for their service during and after each war in United
States history. Direct compensation to the veterans, in the form of pension payments and
land grants, was the earliest form of benefits. Later government programs also offered
aid such as medical services and education to veterans. The methods veterans used to
seek these benefits and how successful they were in obtaining them differed in the case of
each war, however. Federal and state politicians also varied in what they were willing
and able to offer to veterans. The young government just after the American Revolution
was broke and struggled to provide anything to soldiers. In contrast, large veterans’
groups fought for significant benefits and aid after the American Civil War and World
War I. In spite of their efforts, veterans before the twentieth century could not rely on a
consistent benefits plan from the government. The hardships of World War I veterans in
the Great Depression caused a great deal of unrest, which is most strikingly seen in the
Bonus Army incident. Veterans saw few initial benefits. They made demands of
Congress because of their perceived needs and the relative treatment of past groups of
2
veterans. The government tended to react very slowly to these petitions, though veterans
gained a great deal of benefits eventually.
Balancing veterans’ benefit spending with the availability of government
resources has always been a challenge for American officials. Each conflict created a
new group of veterans who were owed or that sought benefits. During the American
Revolution, the Continental Congress offered service and disability pensions to soldiers
and officers to discourage desertion and resignations. In 1776, Congress promised to
give disabled veterans lifetime pensions worth half their salary. On May 15, 1778, they
extended benefits to non-disabled veterans by offering officers half-salary pensions for
seven years and offering eighty dollars to enlisted men leaving the army. The
government also offered land grants to soldiers, starting at a hundred acres for a private,
and up to a thousand acres for a major general.1
Revolutionary War soldiers had to worry about the livelihood of their families
while they were away. Congress offered some protection from prosecution to soldiers in
debt, but soldiers and their families still struggled with money, especially as the war
continued. Severe inflation made it difficult for many families to afford food and other
necessities. Communities banded together to support each other, but in some cases the
situation was so severe that men urgently requested discharge so that they could go help
their wives and children. Some officers’ families also suffered, as they were usually
barred from public aid. These families’ farm workers often left to seek better jobs or to
join the army. Some soldiers’ mothers or wives coped with their hardships by following
1 William Henry Glasson, History of Military Pension Legislation in the United
States (New York: AMS Press, 1968), 15-16; Sar A. Levitan and Karen A. Cleary, Old
Wars Remain Unfinished: The Veteran Benefits System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1973), 7-11.
3
the army. They got the opportunity to stay near their sons and husbands, as well as a
more reliable food supply. If not for this arrangement, many of the men would have
deserted the army to help them. These women followers did washing and nursing work,
as well as other odd jobs. The government tried to accommodate soldiers’ needs,
especially when their continued service was at stake.2
First-hand accounts illustrate some of the difficulties soldiers had with receiving
their pay and supporting their families. Jacob Francis describes his Revolutionary War
service in an application for a veterans’ pension. He enlisted in Cambridge in October
1775 after the battle of Lexington. Francis was told that men were enlisting for a period
of one year, starting in January. His regiment was ordered to reinforce the American
troops at the Battle of Long Island in 1776. Before Francis and his comrades could
arrive, the British troops forced the American troops to retreat. His unit participated in
skirmishes and guard duty several times. Later, they came under the command of
General Washington at White Plains. Francis traveled with the army as it moved through
New Jersey, crossed the Delaware River into Easton, and ended up in Trenton. There,
Washington and his men defeated a British unit and took a number of prisoners.3
In late December in 1776, Francis and his regiment escorted some Hessian
prisoners to the Pennsylvania side of the Assanpink River, near Trenton. A short time
later, the service period of the 1776 enlistees was up, and they were discharged with
partial pay. Francis and the others received three months of pay, but remained in their
2 Dixon Wecter, When Johnny Comes Marching Home (Westport, Connecticut:
Greenwood Press, 1944), 40-42.
3 Melvin Yazawa, Documents to Accompany America’s History: Volume 1: To
1877, America’s History (New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008), 143-144.
4
regiment. They waited for orders to go to Peekskill for the rest of their pay and their
discharge papers. Francis got permission to take leave, and at home he discovered that
his mother had fallen ill. He decided to stay home rather than go to Peekskill, and so he
never received his discharge or four and a half months of pay. Even in the first years of
the war, some soldiers had to wait for full payment, although they did not receive
certificates promising payment like later soldiers did.4
Another account comes from John Struthers’ pension application in 1841, long
after the war. Struthers was born in 1759 in Maryland, and moved to Pennsylvania
shortly before the war, in 1775. In 1777, he joined a volunteer band under Captain James
Scott. The band of about twenty men travelled from Fort Pitt to Holliday’s Cove. Scott
and his men patrolled to discourage Native American attacks. Struthers also volunteered
for the campaign to take Fort Laurens in 1779. He describes how the people relied on
volunteer scouts to protect them from raids, such as the Native American attack at
Buffalo Creek in 1781. Struthers complained that the regular soldiers looked down on
volunteers, even though the regulars relied on them when travelling through the country.
Volunteers were also expected to supply themselves, and received no pay. He also noted
that many volunteers had served for longer than enlisted soldiers. In spite of his
arguments for giving volunteers the same pension opportunities that regular soldiers had,
Struthers’ application was denied. Volunteers and militiamen often did not get
equivalent benefits to regular soldiers, and the disparity in benefits made them angry.5
4 Yazawa, 144.
5 Yazawa, 144-146.
5
The United States had difficulty paying army expenses during the war, let alone
raising enough money for postwar benefits. John Hancock, as the president of the
Second Continental Congress, saw shortcomings in the army’s maintenance as early as
June 1776. He thought that the men’s poor equipment would harm the army’s morale.
Hancock wanted the states to provide soldiers with clothing and other supplies.6
The Continental Army stopped recruiting new soldiers entirely by late 1782.
Despite this cost cutting measure, Congress could not pay the soldiers’ standard wages.
The soldiers and officers were unhappy with this situation. General Alexander
McDougall, a New York officer that George Washington appointed to command the
Hudson River camps during the war, aired the soldiers’ grievances in the State House in
Philadelphia for several months. The officers’ main complaint was the inability of
Congress to establish a plan for post-war compensation for all officers. In 1778, George
Washington had proposed paying them half of their salaries for life. In spite of his
recommendations, the Continental Congress approved only seven years of pay for
officers in less-compensated positions. The regular soldiers did not even receive all of
their standard pay. McDougall claimed that the army’s discontent was reaching a
dangerous level.7
On March 11, 1783, George Washington answered the army’s grievances. He
called the officers to a meeting at Newburgh. Washington spoke out against soldiers
intimidating the government. He urged the men to show patience and to trust that
6 Lynn Montross, Rag, Tag and Bobtail; The Story of The Continental Army,
1775-1783 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 274, 328, 462-464; Lorenzo Sears, John
Hancock, The Picturesque Patriot (Boston: Gregg Press, 1972), 178, 198; Wecter, 36.
7 Montross, 274, 328, 462-464; Wecter, 36.
6
Congress would treat them fairly. After Washington addressed the meeting, the officers
made several unanimous resolutions. They pledged not to take any violent action or
cause further dissent. Congress attempted to satisfy the officers by offering full pensions
to all officers. Earlier acts gave only certain ranks of officer pensions worth half of their
salary. The compromise made on the new pension plan was that it limited the payments
to a period of five years. Congress did not have the money to fulfill either the pensions
or regular pay at the time, so the funds had to be raised by the United States later. This
would require patience from the veterans.8
The war ended soon after Washington had calmed the army. The peace treaty
with Britain was announced to the soldiers in April 1783, but there was a dilemma about
how to handle the breaking up of the army. The new United States treasury had no
money reserves with which to give the soldiers their back pay and send them home. On
the other hand, maintaining the army was only an expensive way to delay the problem.
On the twenty-sixth of May, George Washington requested that dismissed soldiers be
allowed to keep their weapons and their uniforms. The guns could at least be used for
hunting. Congress agreed to this request, and offered certificates for four months’ wages
to the soldiers, payable six months later.9
Despite not having their pay, few of the Revolutionary War veterans caused any
trouble before or during their discharge. George Washington observed that recently-
enlisted men were more trouble than long-serving ones. The most striking incident of
unrest occurred on June 21. A number of recruits at Lancaster were angry about the
8 Glasson, 19; Montross, 328, 463-464; Wecter, 30-31.
9 Montross, 464; Wecter, 36.
7
deferred pay, and marched to join other unhappy soldiers quartered at Philadelphia.
These men, numbering around 240, surrounded the State House and made demands of the
Pennsylvania officials. Some of the soldiers pointed their guns at the windows. The
members of Congress, who held meetings in the same building, felt intimidated and
retreated to Princeton. Fortunately, there was no battle over this incident. Upon hearing
that George Washington was approaching with over a thousand soldiers, a few of the
mutineers fled while the rest surrendered. Due to the last minute pardon of two officers,
none of them were executed.10
Aside from that incident, the soldiers were peaceful. Still, with all of their pay and
benefits deferred, they had difficulty even paying their debts to local tradesmen near the
camps. Washington was sympathetic, but the only other thing he could offer was for the
soldiers to stay and be fed at the army’s expense. As he expected, few of the soldiers
took the offer. They were eager to leave the army and return to their farms and villages.
Some men left even before they got their wage certificates. In early and mid June,
soldiers heading to their homes organized into marching units. They traveled from New
Windsor to their home states, still under military provision. Dispersal centers in the
various states received these units and disbanded them, at which point the men made the
rest of the journey on their own.11
Local governments struggled with war debt. John Hancock had been elected the
first Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1780. He was concerned with
paying the Commonwealth’s obligations. Some members of Massachusetts’ General
10
Montross, 465; Wecter, 33-35.
11
Montross, 462, 465; Wecter, 36-37.
8
Court believed that it would be impossible to repay their debts and manage veterans’
benefits. Since soldiers’ pay was slow in coming, some of the soldiers found it necessary
to sell their wage certificates for an eighth of their face value. In 1783, Hancock
convinced the General Court to vote for a tax of $470,000 in order to partially
compensate the soldiers. Veterans waiting for full compensation were still unhappy.12
Congress also struggled to fulfill the soldiers’ pay and benefits. The treasury was
short on funds and Congress had limited authority over the individual states. Alexander
Hamilton, one of the most influential men in Congress, made a plan to deal with war
debts and win the support of the wealthy simultaneously. In 1791, he proposed that the
certificates of indebtedness be paid with government bonds. Many of the certificates had
been bought by wealthy speculators. Hamilton also proposed that the national
government should assume the debts of the individual states. The holders of the states’
bonds would then have a vested interest in the government’s survival. Representatives of
the southern states, including Virginia, were opposed to nationalizing debts. They
pointed out that the plan would favor highly indebted northern states, like Massachusetts.
Thomas Jefferson brokered a compromise between Hamilton and the Virginia
congressmen. The national capital would be placed between Virginia and Maryland, and
in return Virginia would support the national assumption of debt. This agreement was
successful, and Congress took responsibility for the war debts, including pension
payments. The federal government took over this function indefinitely.13
12
Sears, 266, 280.
13
Alan Brinkley, The Unfinished Nation: A Concise History of the American
People, vol. 1 of The Unfinished Nation (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008), 155-157;
Levitan and Cleary, 7-8; Montross, 463.
9
The Continental Congress’ offers of benefits to Revolutionary War soldiers were
mostly geared toward encouraging enlistment and discouraging desertion. They offered
land grants, mustering-out payments, and pensions to entice soldiers. The Continental
Congress also offered benefits to those who were injured. After the war, veterans
agitated for increased benefits. In 1816, the government was paying about $120,000
annually to just over two thousand veterans. This was a small portion of the roughly
290,000 soldiers that served. In 1818, Congress enacted a pension of twenty dollars for
former Revolutionary War officers and eight dollars for former enlisted men, but only for
veterans who were poverty-stricken. Later, in 1832, Congress extended the pension to
any Revolutionary War veteran with at least two years of service. An 1836 law provided
pensions to widows of any veteran that qualified for the 1832 pension. The 1818 and
1832 acts created roughly 50,000 pensions. When the last pensioners died in 1869, the
total figures for the Revolutionary War were 60,000 pensions that paid $49,000,000. The
pensions went further than the other benefits in aiding veterans and their families.
However, they were still in the form of direct payments, unlike later programs.14
At first, War of 1812 veterans received minor benefits like the Revolutionary War
veterans had. During the war and for decades afterwards, their benefits mostly consisted
of pensions for injured or disabled veterans. In 1816, pension rates were increased from
five dollars to eight dollars monthly. Some pensions were also provided to widows and
orphans of soldiers, but only for five years. Until Congress created new benefit bills in
14
Glasson, 33, 51; Levitan and Cleary, 8.
10
the 1850s, few War of 1812 veterans received pensions. Some veteran officers formally
petitioned Congress for land grants in 1826 and 1838, but nothing came of it.15
The United States military needed to make more generous benefit offers to allay
its manpower shortage in the Mexican-American War. The military had to raise enough
troops to cover three fronts: Northern Mexico, Central Mexico, and California. Congress
passed the Ten Regiments Act of 1847 to promote enlistment. This act provided warrants
for 160 acres of land. Regular soldiers and volunteers were eligible provided that they
served for at least twelve months or until the end of the war.16
The Ten Regiments Act succeeded in encouraging enlistment. Land was not the
only benefit offered, but it was the most popular choice. The alternative was a payment
of a hundred dollars in treasury scrip. Most soldiers took the land grant, since the
equivalent amount of land would have cost two hundred dollars to buy from the
government. Only one soldier in thirty chose the scrip. In all, 88,000 land warrants were
issued, most of them by the end of 1849. As was the case with Revolutionary War pay
notes, speculators and land brokers were eager to buy warrants from the soldiers. They
helped soldiers submit applications for the land to the government. There were
restrictions in the act intended to combat speculation. Brokers avoided the restrictions by
waiting for the land warrants to be issued in the soldier’s name before the soldier
15
Glasson, 60-61; James W. Oberly, Sixty Million Acres: American Veterans and
the Public Lands before the Civil War (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1990),
14.
16
Oberly, 10-11.
11
transferred ownership to them. This allowed the veterans to redeem the value of their
grants without actually moving to find public land.17
The Ten Regiments Act also created an opportunity for War of 1812 veterans to
agitate for benefits. Earlier petitions by officers for land grants had been ignored. While
the officers were a small group, there were 280,000 veterans from the War of 1812. They
resented the disparity between their benefits and those received by Mexican-American
war veterans. The War of 1812 veterans had fought for the Appalachians and the
Mississippi Valley, which were considerable territories. They argued that this service
was as important as that of Mexican-American War veterans, and so they deserved
similar compensation. Congress created the Act of 1850 to give benefits to these
soldiers. The act provided land grants to War of 1812 veterans, based on the time that
they served. Soldiers who had served one month would receive forty acres, four months
was worth eighty acres, and nine months were worth one hundred and sixty acres.18
The government attempted to protect Act of 1850 beneficiaries from land brokers
and speculators like those who had taken advantage of the Ten Regiments Act. The main
method that Congress considered was restricting assignment, which was the veterans’
ability to sell ownership of the land. The House of Representatives and the Senate could
not agree on how to implement the restrictions. In September of 1850, Congress was
badly stalled on this issue, and since neither house would clarify its position, the
Department of the Interior decided to err on the side of caution and prohibit assignments.
Despite the government’s good intentions, this reduced the value of the new warrants,
17
Oberly, 11-12.
18
Levitan and Cleary, 8-9; Oberly, 14-17.
12
since it was unlikely that many of the aging War of 1812 veterans would move out to the
West to claim and work the land. Veterans protested this solution, leading to an act in
March 1852 which allowed for assignment of warrants. The government had finally
responded to demands for benefits, but it was a long and uncertain process.19
Benefit increases continued in the late 1800s. Congress passed an act in February
1871 providing service pensions to any War of 1812 veteran that had served at least sixty
days. Twenty-five thousand veterans and seven thousand widows of veterans applied for
pensions, which was more than Congress expected. A subsequent act in March 1878 was
even more generous. It reduced the necessary service time further and restored pensions
that were discontinued due to the Civil War. Over twenty thousand pension claims were
made after this act, mostly by widows. From 1871 to 1899, War of 1812 pensions paid
out $44,000,000. As was the case of the Revolutionary veterans, the majority of War of
1812 pension claims came decades after the war.20
Mexican-American War veterans had received generous land grants, but relatively
few of them had pensions in the years after the war. Most of the pensions were granted
to disabled veterans and widows. Mexican-American war veterans reacted to the
pensions granted to War of 1812 veterans in the 1870s by demanding pensions for
themselves. Congress created a service pension act for these veterans in January of 1887.
This act required applicants to be sixty-two years old or to have a disability. Between
1887 and 1899, 24,000 Mexican-American War pension holders received $26,000,000.21
19
Oberly, 18-20.
20
Glasson, 61-65.
21
Glasson, 67-69.
13
The American Civil War was a devastating conflict, and it involved an
unprecedented number of American soldiers. Confederate soldiers returning home after
the war usually faced a bleaker situation than their northern counterparts. Local residents
often showed disdain for them on their way home. In Macon, Georgia, an occupying
northern soldier gave rations to several dozen southern soldiers. Even though they were
Georgia natives from Robert E. Lee’s army, the local people had refused them anything
to eat. Once they arrived home, southern veterans’ farms were usually neglected or even
destroyed, and some soldiers’ families had fled south towards Texas or west towards the
Mississippi to avoid the Union Army. Northern veterans were much better received on
average, and victory parades were common. Southern veterans could not look forward to
any benefits promised by an overthrown government. They could only rely on state and
private charities, which offered artificial limbs rather than disability pensions. Former
tenant farmers also had difficulty finding jobs and land, since most planters preferred to
rent out their land to former slaves.22
One organization that helped Union veterans was the Sanitary Commission. It
was created in June 1861 by Henry W. Bellows, and it was a private national
organization with few governmental ties. The Sanitary Commission provided medical
treatment for soldiers during the war, and gave aid to their families as well. It continued
to provide relief after the war, attempting to help unemployed veterans to find jobs. In
June 1865 the commission sent out questionnaires to gather information about the
veterans’ histories. They asked about the soldiers’ service history, their previous life and
employment, and any relief organizations in their communities. The Commission
22
Reid Mitchell, Civil War Soldiers (New York: Penguin Books, 1988), 206-208;
Wecter, 117-121.
14
reported that it helped thousands of veterans find jobs in eastern cities like New York.
Most of them took jobs as clerks, mechanics, or laborers. Because of its strong economy
and a supportive community that aided veterans, the region west of the Alleghenies only
had two offices for the Commission, one in Detroit and one in Cleveland.23
Many Civil War veterans joined veterans’ groups. The Grand Army of the
Republic, or GAR, was founded in Illinois in 1866. It absorbed many of the small local
veterans’ groups that had appeared after the war. The GAR became one of the largest
and most influential Civil War veterans’ organizations. Its main founder was Benjamin
Franklin Stephenson, a Springfield, Illinois, doctor who had provided medical service in
the war. Stephenson once said that he started the GAR after seeing the poor treatment
and desperate situation of veterans and their families in Springfield. Men were destitute
from a lack of work, and widows and daughters of dead soldiers also suffered, forced to
become beggars and manual laborers. According to Stephenson, the GAR was supposed
to give veterans a way to organize, and a way to support themselves and their families.
This appealed to veterans, who did not receive much help from the government in
reintegrating into their communities. The GAR aided its members while also petitioning
the government to increase veterans’ benefits.24
The GAR grew quickly in its early days. Stephenson created the first GAR post
at Decatur, Illinois, in April 1866. Members had to have served in the United States
army, navy, or marines, or in state regiments that had seen active service. By June there
23
Wecter, 194-196.
24
Wallace Evan Davies, Patriotism on Parade: The Story of Veterans’ and
Hereditary Organizations in America 1783-1900 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 1955), 31; Mitchell, 208.
15
were twenty-four posts in Illinois, and by the end of the summer the organization had
expanded into Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa. It continued to
expand into the east in the late 1860s, but declined sharply in its original territory in the
1870s. In the 1870s, the GAR grew mainly in the eastern states. By 1877 the majority of
the group’s membership came from Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania.25
The GAR’s membership was largely made up of farmers, laborers, and small
businessmen. Wealthy people had usually hired substitutes to enlist in their stead.
Because of the veterans’ limited means, the GAR could not charge too much for
membership. The cost of initiation ranged from one to two and a half dollars, and annual
dues averaged a dollar and seventy-five cents. In contrast to its membership, the
organization’s leaders were usually ex-officers who had become successful professionals
or businessmen. The commander of the GAR visited as many departments as possible to
speak to the members and perform ceremonial duties. Commanders of the various
departments did the same within their regions. In 1883, the GAR paid $1,500 for the
commander in chief’s travel expenses, and $150 to $800 for the salaries and expenses of
various officers and department commanders. The GAR was better able to pay its leaders
than other veterans’ organizations of the time due to its size. The group’s large
membership base also gave it significant influence in the North and the Midwest.26
The GAR’s leadership often claimed that it was a neutral group, but the
organization used its political power during the 1868 presidential election. The Michigan
25
Davies, 32-33; Francis A. Lord, They Fought for the Union (Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania: Stackpole Company, 1960), 332.
26
Davies, 78, 87-91; Lord, 332.
16
GAR sent delegates to the Chicago veterans’ convention to argue for Ulysses S. Grant’s
nomination. Some northern GAR officials did campaign work for Grant or expressed
support for his election. The Louisiana GAR made an official announcement supporting
plans for Reconstruction, earning the ire of southerners. John A. Logan, commander in
chief of the GAR, even privately asked the Republican national committee for support
during the election. At the same time, he cautioned against displays that might turn away
Democratic veterans. After Grant’s victory in the election, the Republican Party had less
need to appeal to veterans for votes, and the GAR and other organizations shrank. In
1868 the Rhode Island GAR complained that promised federal appointments for veterans
had not materialized. The decline of the GAR was used by Democrats as evidence that it
was a political organization. Many GAR members denied that it was a partisan
organization. Others disliked the direction that certain leaders had taken and wished to
move GAR activities away from politics. The controversy shook many veterans’
confidence in the GAR.27
In spite of its recurring problems, the GAR raised significant funds and hosted
many charitable activities to aid veterans and their families. It sponsored lectures on the
subject of aiding veterans, and held concerts, suppers, lotteries, and other events to raise
money. The money was used to help disabled veterans and their dependents, as well as
widows and orphans of veterans. In 1872, the GAR donated $70,000 to over six hundred
members and two thousand non-members. Outreach to non-members increased the
GAR’s popularity. The country’s growing prosperity and more aggressive recruiting
27
Mary R Dearing, Veterans in Politics: The Story of the G.A.R. (Baton Rouge:
Louisiana State University Press, 1952), 175-176; 185-189.
17
caused a surge in the GAR’s membership in the 1880s and 1890s. Veterans with a secure
livelihood had more time for the GAR. From its low of 25,000 members in 1877, it grew
to a high of 400,000 in 1890. The increase in membership led to an increase in aid
money. In 1885, the GAR spent $170,000 on charity for fifteen thousand people. Some
people, whether members or not, took advantage of this generosity by traveling to
numerous posts for aid. GAR leaders sent out warnings and descriptions of known
imposters. Veterans’ groups could use their resources to help veterans, but they had to be
watchful if they wanted to prevent abuse.28
In the 1880s the GAR devoted an increasing amount of resources to petitioning
the government. In February 1882, a committee from the GAR convinced Congress to
hire 1,210 additional employees for pension work. The committee also argued for a bill
that would provide forty dollars a month to veterans with dismemberment injuries. Their
arguments were backed by numerous petitions from individual GAR posts. This benefits
bill passed in March 1883. Due to this success, the organization focused on arguing for
disability pensions in Congress, and paid little attention to other benefits like land
warrants and service pensions. The GAR’s continual political pressure eventually
resulted in an increase in the number of pensioners from 126,000 people to 993,000. The
amount the government paid for Civil War pensions increased from $28 million annually
in 1877 to $138 million in 1899. The benefits acquired by Civil War veterans dwarfed
the roughly $90 million spent on pensions for previous wars. The GAR was a driving
28
Davies, 35-36, 139-141; Lord, 332-333.
18
force behind this large increase in benefits. As in the case of the War of 1812 and the
Mexican-American War, these benefits came several decades after the Civil War.29
At the end of World War I, the government again faced problems with managing
the return of soldiers to society and the economy. Agencies like the National Research
Council and the War Labor Policies Board, or WLPB, anticipated the problems with
demobilizing four million soldiers. They favored federal planning to control the
reorganization of labor and the economy. The WLPB wanted to prevent the negative
effects of a sudden surplus of labor in non-military related fields. They also considered
using public works projects as a means of combating unemployment. The head of the
WLPB, Felix Frankfurter, proposed an order of demobilization to the Secretary of Labor,
William B. Wilson, in November 1918.30
Frankfurter proposed that the soldiers should be demobilized based on their
occupation, to help the economy recover as quickly as possible. Agricultural workers,
executives, and professionals would be dismissed first. Miners and freight and shipping
workers would leave next. People with jobs waiting for them, government employees,
and freelancers would be the last ones dismissed. Frankfurter and other officials
supporting this planned process were opposed by a number of groups. Families wanted
their relatives back as quickly as possible, Congress and the military wanted to reduce the
army’s size quickly, labor unions wanted freedom of action, and businessmen wanted
29
Davies, 159-160, 188; Glasson, 104.
30
Wecter, 305-307. The National Research Council and the WLPB were
government agencies that studied war-related labor issues and made recommendations
about labor policy. The WLPB also consulted the United States Employment Service,
which kept track of employment across the nation and identified areas with lacking or
surplus labor.
19
cheap labor. The WLPB’s plans and suggestions were put aside, receiving no
government support. Few preparations were made for demobilizing the army.31
Immediately after the war, the veterans were received as heroes. They felt pride
in their victory and in their service to the Allies and their democratic ideals. African-
American communities were especially supportive of returning veterans. They organized
parades and rallies to congratulate the veterans. African-Americans wanted to display
their pride and their service to the United States, hoping to spur social change. In
contrast to their initial reception, veterans’ fortunes and place in society changed for the
worse in the recession of 1920-1921. President Woodrow Wilson had demobilized the
soldiers and cancelled war contracts immediately, without attempting to ease the
transition to a peacetime economy. Veterans believed that workers that had stayed home
during the war and received pay increases had gotten the better deal.32
Most of the four million people in the army were demobilized immediately. By
June 1919, 2,600,000 men were mustered out. By January 1920, the army was down to
its peacetime low of 130,000 men. Circular No. 34, an official Army statement relayed
by the officers, said that any soldier could choose to stay in the service until he was
employed. This was one of the few official instructions used to combat unemployment.
Few men took the offer; they were eager to return home, like Washington’s soldiers in
1783. The army gave exiting soldiers sixty dollars and a railroad ticket as separation pay.
31
Wecter, 306-307.
32
Davis R. B. Ross, Preparing For Ulysses: Politics and Veterans During World
War II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 12-13; Stephen R. Ward, The War
Generation: Veterans of the First World War (Port Washington, New York: Kennikat
Press, 1975) 38-39; Chad L. Williams, Torchbearers of Democracy: African American
Soldiers in the World War I Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010),
213-214.
20
At the same time, thousands of war workers were dismissed without compensation. This
led to labor unrest, and unions accused businesses of hiring veterans as scabs. Veterans
had difficulty finding employment during the depression like most people, but the
government’s minimal planning for their return made the situation worse.33
Minority veterans often faced extra challenges in returning to civilian life. Most
Native American veterans lived on economically depressed reservations. President-elect
Warren G. Harding spoke to a delegation of Native American leaders in August 1920 and
promised reforms to enhance their rights. However, to run the Department of the
Interior, Harding selected Senator Albert B. Fall of New Mexico, an opponent of Native
American property rights, conservation, and reforms in the administration of Native
American affairs. Native American economic opportunities were further hampered by
droughts in the early 1920s.34
While Native American veterans mostly suffered from conditions in their home
regions, African Americans faced discriminatory treatment during demobilization. The
War Department had released most of the stateside troops before the overseas troops.
During the transition to peacetime, manpower was still necessary to dismantle some army
camps and to maintain the rest. Many African Americans were kept to do labor far
longer than their white counterparts. Two of the main camps that this occurred in were
Camp Meade and Camp Eustis, in Virginia. While working, the soldiers received below-
average medical care. Some African-American soldiers protested by avoiding work.
33
Theodore R. Mosch, The G.I. Bill: A Breakthrough in Educational and Social
Policy in the United States (Hicksville, New York: Exposition Press, 1975), 14; Wecter,
308.
34
Thomas A. Britten, American Indians in World War I: At Home and at War
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 159-163.
21
Others wrote letters to the NAACP, telling them of the conditions at these camps. The
treatment of these soldiers was one of the most shocking examples of disparity in the
treatment of veterans.35
Some African-American and Native American veterans decided to leave their
homes to seek better economic opportunities. Rural life and low pay in the South was no
longer attractive to many African-American veterans who had experienced life in
American and European cities. In Clarke County, Georgia, 70 percent of planters said
that their veteran employees soon became dissatisfied after returning, with some leaving
altogether. African-American veterans went to cities like Atlanta or Birmingham, or
moved farther to northern cities. According to the Inter-Racial Committee of the YMCA,
roughly 100,000 African-American veterans moved north in the late 1910s and 1920s.
Some Native American veterans also sought new opportunities. In the 1920s, reservation
officials in Minnesota, North Carolina, and North and South Dakota reported that many
former residents had scattered widely through the reservations or even left entirely. Even
reenlisting in the military was preferable for some African-American and Native
American veterans, due to the scarcity of jobs with better pay.36
The economy was not the only difficulty that veterans faced directly after the war.
Popular opinion on the war and its results turned negative in the 1920s. There was also a
national fear of communists and radicals undermining society, which was promoted by
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Some veterans joined the jingoistic movement in
America, criticizing radicals, alien residents, and foreign ideologies. They believed that
35
Williams, 203-204.
36
Williams, 226-227; Britten, 162-165.
22
they had fought and died to combat those elements in Europe. The Russian Bolsheviks
were especially hated. They represented a communist menace, but many veterans were
also angry that Russia had exited the war early. That allowed Germany to concentrate its
armies in the western front, leading to more American casualties. In the 1920s and
1930s, open communists were shunned at best. Even particularly left wing veterans were
treated with suspicion, both by the government and most veterans’ groups.37
Early World War I benefits programs applied mostly to disabled veterans.
Congress passed the Smith-Sears Act in June 1918, which funded rehabilitation and
education. The eligible received eighty dollars a month if they had no dependents.
Veterans with families received proportionally larger benefits, starting at one hundred
dollars if they had a wife, and more money depending on the number of children. By the
time the program ended in 1928, 329,000 veterans had applied, 179,000 of them entered
training, and 118,000 veterans were deemed employable. The program’s focus on
education and job placement influenced later benefits.38
Because there were few federal benefits for healthy veterans, some states
attempted their own aid programs. These programs were intended to combat postwar
unemployment by funding education and training for veterans. In Wisconsin, five
thousand veterans used state funding to attend higher education. This cost up to one
thousand dollars for each person. While the use of educational benefits was novel, these
37
Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (New
York: Walker & Company, 2004), 7, 134; Ward, 38-39.
38
Mosch, 15-16, 135; Wecter, 393-400. Congress also passed the World War
Veterans Act of 1924. This act created many new offices for the Veterans Bureau, which
aided the administration of benefits programs. The training program cost $645 million.
23
programs were not large enough to handle the massive unemployment problem on their
own. Congress, President Wilson, and the Secretary of Labor had all thought that
separation pay was sufficient for ordinary veterans. However, problems with
unemployment and the economy resumed with the Great Depression at the end of the
1920s. The federal government was forced to experiment with new forms of aid, and
took ideas from the Smith-Sears Act and the state programs.39
As the GAR had done for Civil War veterans, large organizations like the
American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars fought for the interests of World War
I veterans. They lobbied and argued in Congress for more veterans’ benefits. Early
federal benefits bills had problems with their implementation as well as the amount of
benefits provided. In 1917, Congress had passed legislation to provide health insurance
for veterans. Soldiers that were injured or fell sick in the course of the war would receive
benefits. Unfortunately, medical knowledge and the army’s records failed some veterans
who had legitimate claims. Mental health problems did not always manifest before the
soldier left service, nor did slow-acting diseases like tuberculosis. Veterans’ groups
pushed for expanded programs to aid as many people as possible. Patriotic sentiments
were common, but the idea of actually passing expensive benefit legislation was
unpopular in the 1920s and 30s. President Herbert Hoover was a major opponent of new
bills, and few politicians fought seriously for benefits.40
The Great Depression, beginning shortly after Hoover took office, was a huge
challenge for the government. President Hoover attempted to reform veterans’ benefits
39
Mosch, 16-17.
40
Ward, 41-43.
24
during the Depression, although he was not popular with veterans’ lobbies. He gave
responsibility for benefits to the Veterans’ Administration, under the former general
Frank T. Hines, and they worked to improve the level of service provided by government
programs. Hoover also attempted to provide guidelines for future benefit programs,
which had been haphazard in the past. He proposed that benefit bills should require at
least ninety days of service. Hoover also wanted to emphasize treatment and pensions for
service-related disabilities over other pensions. Finally, he supported free treatment for
non service-related disabilities, but only if the veteran was too poor to pay taxes. These
guidelines would limit the number of veterans’ benefit bills that reached Congress.
President Hoover was concerned that there could be public backlash against the large
number of bills being proposed. In 1930, he vetoed a Spanish-American War pension bill
in accordance with his guidelines. In spite of his other efforts to improve benefits,
veterans’ lobbies were outraged. They were not opposed to requirements regarding a
veteran’s length of service, but they felt that the requirement of poverty for certain
benefits was insulting. Congress soon overrode the veto. The difficulty of the Great
Depression spurred more aggressive lobbying from veterans’ groups.41
The American Legion was founded in Paris in 1919, and it quickly became the
largest World War I veterans’ group. In the 1920s its membership never dropped below
600,000, and by 1931 there were over a million members. Like the GAR, the Legion
was a powerful lobby. It also provided direct aid to its members and other veterans. One
of the Legion’s charitable departments was the Rehabilitation Committee. The
committee interacted with numerous government departments and welfare organizations
41
Ward, 45-46.
25
in Washington, D.C. The Rehabilitation Committee helped sick or injured veterans with
health problems, money concerns, and vocational training. From August 1924 to May
1925, the committee’s main and branch offices handled 30,000 letters, and helped
veterans claim $1,395,000 in medical benefits. The Rehabilitation Committee also used
its resources to check up on veterans’ medical progress. The American Legion continues
to use its resources and political ties to aid veterans up to the present.42
The American Legion’s willingness to help struggling veterans, including non-
members, was another reason for its success. Legion members helped veterans to file
claims, taking advantage of their government connections and knowledge of bureaucracy.
They acted as middlemen between veterans and the government. This service was
available to both members and non-members. The Legion built posts on reservations in
Arizona, North Carolina, and South Dakota to support Native American veterans. Its
lobbying efforts also included plans for how to administer veterans’ aid programs, with
an emphasis on improving disability services and child welfare programs. These efforts
to help veterans increased the American Legion’s popularity and influence.43
Even though the American Legion and other World War I veterans’ organizations
worked to expand aid programs, veterans in general were hardly prepared for the Great
Depression. Congress had issued a monetary bonus in the form of military service
certificates in 1924. The certificates could not be redeemed until 1945, or until the
veteran died. Congressman Wright Patman of Texas, himself a veteran, proposed a bill
42
Ross, 7-9; Thomas A. Rumer, The American Legion: An Official History 1919-
1989 (New York: M. Evans & Company, 1990), 174-175.
43
Britten, 166; Ross, 10-11.
26
in the House of Representatives in May 1929. Patman wanted the government to pay the
bonus early. However, Congress was busy with other legislation, including American
Legion proposals, and Patman’s initial bill did not come up for a vote in the House.
When the Great Depression began five months later, veterans became frustrated with
Congress’ slow progress on the bonus issue. They felt that the bonus was one of their
only chances to find some relief from the Depression.44
Representative Patman proposed cash payment of the bonus again in January
1931, and his bill had both popular and congressional support. However, the Senate and
President Hoover opposed it. Congress compromised in February, with a bill that would
allow veterans to borrow against the value of their certificates. Patman was not satisfied,
because the interest on the loans would consume much of the certificates’ value. In May
of 1932, Congress’ House Ways and Means Committee voted against another bonus bill
from Patman, and called for all other bonus bills to be tabled. Veterans frustrated with
the bonus situation decided to organize. Walter W. Waters, a veteran living in Portland,
Oregon, rallied a group to demand early payment of the bonus. They called themselves
the Bonus Expeditionary Force, in reference to the American Expeditionary Force that
was sent to France in World War I. The BEF saw the bonus as their only immediate
relief from poverty and hunger. Many veterans were unemployed and unable to pay their
bills or provide for their families. Nationwide unemployment rose to 25 percent in 1932.
Waters’ group marched to Washington, D.C., in protest, joined by other veterans on the
way. The BEF by itself numbered over 15,000, including one thousand wives and
44
Dickson and Allen, 1-5, 31; Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the
Great Depression (New York: Pantheon Books, 1970), 282-283.
27
children. Their demands would not be met immediately, but their demonstration and the
turmoil of the Great Depression influenced the future of American veterans’ benefits.45
Delayed veterans’ benefits have been a recurring problem in the United States.
The Continental Congress and the states attempted to provide for the soldiers, offering
money and land grants to encourage enlistment, but had difficulty fulfilling their
promises. Veterans of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War demanded
recompense as well, but Congress’ response was troubled again, this time by the
limitations of land grants. With each war after that, the challenge of reintegrating the
veterans became more severe. The GAR and other Civil War veterans’ groups lobbied
for benefits, including disability pensions and medical aid. In the aftermath of World
War I, politicians saw both the largest veterans’ groups and the greatest economic
hardship. Those that suffered, represented by the dramatic protests of the Bonus Army,
influenced the government’s demobilization strategies for the future. The government’s
tendency to handle benefits reactively proved to be a liability.
45
Dickson and Allen, 2, 35-38, 59-60, 115; Terkel, 282-283; W. W. Waters and
William C. White, B. E. F.: The Whole Story Of The Bonus Army (New York: The John
Day Company, 1933), 1, 7-17.
28
CHAPTER 2
The Bonus Army Marches on Washington
After World War I, many American veterans organized to seek benefits for their
service. The pay that they received during the war was lower than that of the industrial
workers who remained in the United States. The American Legion, one of the earliest and
most influential veteran organizations, called for government compensation to make up
for the pay disparity. There were many bills and proposals to provide benefits to
veterans, but the issue dragged on into the Great Depression. The most dramatic protest
staged by veterans was the Bonus March in 1932, in which veterans from across the
nation marched to Washington, D.C. They did not receive the early financial relief that
they demanded, and they were forcefully removed from the capital. The extraordinary
circumstances of the Great Depression caused veterans to resort to direct mass protest,
which caused the government to reconsider its old methods of handling benefits.
Some early attempts were made to expand benefits after World War I. For
example, in 1920, Congress debated a complex proposal called the Fordney Bill. This bill
gave veterans five options. They could receive an adjusted service payment of up to
$625, depending on the length of their service and whether they were stationed
29
domestically or in Europe. They could opt for an adjusted service certificate that was
worth 40 percent more than the payment and accumulated interest until it was payable,
twenty years later. The third option was to provide a daily stipend for veterans to attend
vocational training, up to 140 percent of the value of the cash payment. For the last two
options, 140 percent of adjusted service pay could be used to either purchase a home or
farm, or to participate in the “National Veterans’ Resettlement Project,” which proposed
to settle and employ veterans in rural areas. These plans would require significant new
taxes, since the Fordney Bill would cost an estimated five billion dollars. Because of the
high cost and complexity of the multiple plans, Congress did not pass the bill.1
In 1924, Congress made another attempt to address the veterans’ demands. It
passed a bill called the Adjusted Compensation Act to make up for the difference
between the pay of soldiers and those who had stayed in the United States at lucrative
jobs. Congress issued insurance policies, redeemable in 1945, that took into account the
conditions that individual veterans had served under. The average veteran was entitled to
roughly a thousand dollars after accounting for interest.2
Veterans were not satisfied with the promise of money on such a far-off date.
Many of them became agitated when unemployment rose during the Great Depression,
and they felt that they were owed the money as relief. The eventual outcome of the
situation was a mass protest in Washington, D.C., in 1932 by veterans from across the
1 Roger Daniels, The Bonus March (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood
Publishing Corporation, 1971), 20-27. The American Legion’s members used the term
bonus, but the group’s leadership insisted on referring to benefits as “adjusted service
compensation” to distinguish it from gratuities.
2 Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army (New York: Walker &
Company, 2004), 28-29; Gene Smith, The Shattered Dream: Herbert Hoover and the
Great Depression (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1970), 127.
30
United States calling for immediate payment of the bonus. The Hoover administration
worried that these veterans were a threat to the government. The protesters were painted
as a hotbed of rebels and communists. In spite of being such a large and makeshift group,
the Bonus Army almost always maintained peace and order, even during mass
demonstrations. Its members practiced military-like discipline, and in contrast to the
government’s depiction, the Bonus Army had a strong anti-communist attitude. In fact,
some would-be communist infiltrators had to go to the police for protection after being
rejected by the veterans.3
The adjusted compensation payment was actually an endowment life insurance
policy, but that was not how the legislation was seen by the public. The term “bonus” was
associated with the legislation, and even President Calvin Coolidge used it when he stated
“We owe no bonus to able-bodied veterans of the World War.”4 Adding to this
perception, the full 1945 amount was printed on the veterans’ certificates. It took some
time for the veterans to recognize that dying was the only way to receive their payment
before 1945. The money promised by the certificates became known as the Tombstone
Bonus, a sign of the veterans’ frustration with the economy and the benefits system.5
Congress was counting on the continuing prosperity of the nation to pay for the
bonus. Portions of government revenue would be saved, and interest would accumulate
on that sum until 1945, covering the cost of the veterans’ payments. The market crash of
3 Stephen E. Ambrose, Eisenhower: Soldier, General of the Army, President-Elect
1890-1952 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), 96-97; Caroline Bird, The Invisible
Scar (New York: David McKay Company, 1966), 67-68.
4 As quoted in Dickson and Allen, 30.
5 Dickson and Allen, 29-30.
31
1929 and the subsequent Great Depression complicated the plan by reducing government
revenues and interest, making them less able to meet the monetary goals of the act, as
well as increasing the rate of unemployment among veterans. The jobless veterans
wanted to draw on the money promised to them to alleviate their immediate problems.6
In February of 1931, Congress passed a bill to alleviate the concerns of the
veterans. The bill would allow veterans to borrow half of their owed amount at an interest
rate of 4.5 percent. President Herbert Hoover was concerned that the treasury would be
drained of over a billion dollars at a time when government revenue was reduced, while
veterans worried that by the time they had paid back the loans, their actual gains would
be small. Individual veterans in various American Legion posts pushed for full payment,
while Hoover convinced the leadership of the Legion not to support them.7
Several marches on Washington had already been staged to demand economic
relief. Communists backed a National Hunger March in December of 1931. The next
month, in January of 1932, a Pittsburgh priest named James R. Cox led over ten thousand
of his supporters to Washington. They went to ask the government for unemployment
relief. Father Cox’s group had support from a number of communities. Their cars passed
over the Susquehanna River without being made to pay the toll, and their out of date
license plates were ignored. Pennsylvania’s governor, Gifford Pinchot, even offered
them shelter. In Washington, most of the men slept in their vehicles, and army field
kitchens were sent to provide food. Cox and his staff met Senator James John Davis and
6 Louis W. Liebovich, Bylines in Despair (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994),
155-156.
7 Liebovich, 156; Herbert Hoover, The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover (New York:
Macmillan, 1952), 286-289.
32
Representative Clyde Kelly of Pennsylvania, and they agreed to present his petitions to
Congress. Cox also met President Hoover to outline his plans. Though Hoover listened
to his ideas, Cox’s plans did not inspire any action from the government. Most of Cox’s
supporters followed him out of Washington in their cars and trucks, while a few
stragglers were given train tickets to Pittsburgh. A few months later, Walter W. Waters
led his own expedition to Washington.8
Waters was born in 1898, in Oregon, and raised in Idaho. In 1916 he joined the
National Guard and was stationed at the Mexican border. His regiment was divided, and
Waters was sent to Europe to serve as part of an artillery unit in 1917 and 1918. After
taking part in the occupation of Germany, Waters and his unit returned to the United
States. He was honorably discharged in 1919.9
Waters had poor luck upon his return to the United States. His health suffered for
months, and he had no career. Waters attempted several jobs such as garage mechanic
and baker, but he was never successful. In 1925 he moved to the state of Washington in
an attempt to find better opportunities. In Washington he took the alias Bill Kincaid and
got married. For a short time he had success as assistant superintendant at a cannery in
Portland, Oregon. In December of 1930, with the Great Depression affecting the country,
Waters lost that job as well. He was unable to find any more jobs at home or in Portland,
8 Adrian A. Paradis, The Hungry Years (Philadelphia: Chilton Book Company,
1967), 84-86; Daniels, 67-68, 183. Daniels cites a figure of fifteen thousand for Cox’s
group, while Adrian A. Paradis cites ten thousand men.
9 W. W. Waters and William C. White, B. E. F. (New York: The John Day
Company, 1933), 4.
33
and his savings ran out by 1932. Many veterans shared the same difficulties in the
depression.10
Waters became convinced that the only way to get relief would be to lobby for the
bonus in Washington. He had seen the success of business lobbying. At first, he was
unable to convince other veterans to join him. In March of 1932 he made his first speech
to an assembly of several hundred veterans in Portland, urging them to hop on trains and
converge on Washington. The speech fell flat. In April, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, as
well as American Legion members who disagreed with the stance of the group’s
leadership, petitioned Congress. They demanded immediate payment of the bonus. This
event brought wide publicity to the bonus issue and inspired Waters to keep up his
efforts.11
Waters’ own group consisted of about three hundred men, and they called
themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or BEF. Poverty motivated them, and the
fact that the bonus bill was going nowhere. The BEF hitchhiked from Oregon to Illinois
in May of 1932. At East St. Louis, Illinois, Waters and his men boarded a freight train
with the intent of stowing away. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad officials stopped the cars
from leaving, leading to a shouting confrontation between the company officials and the
veterans. Eventually the BEF backed off and moved a few miles to Caseyville, where
they stopped another train. Police and local militia had a standoff with Waters and his
10
Waters and White, 4-6; Dickson and Allen, 56-57.
11
Dickson and Allen, 58-59.
34
men, which was only broken when some merchants arrived to provide food and trucks to
take the veterans to Washington, Indiana.12
Reporters observed the BEF members as they waited for the trucks. They
described Waters’ men as orderly and disciplined. Captains would call roll and check the
discharge papers of their men, and some of the veterans acted as “military police,”
patrolling and occasionally stopping anti-capitalist speakers. Many people seemed to
support the BEF. They cheered the veterans on as their cars and trucks traveled through
Illinois cities toward Indiana. State governors also gave aid to Waters’ men. They
provided transportation at every step of the way, if only to get the BEF out of their states.
Indiana trucks took Waters to Ohio, where he was met by Ohio trucks, and so on.13
Veterans around the country heard about the Bonus Army’s journey. The idea of
being in a disciplined “army” appealed to them. Many of them had little else to do at
home, and wanted to obtain their bonus. Thousands of veterans began to head toward
Washington on foot and by train. The majority of them eventually joined up with
Waters’ BEF.14
At the time of the Bonus March, the chief of police for Washington, D.C., was
Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford. He had made preparations to accommodate the
veterans in a vacant department store, expecting only a few hundred to arrive. Glassford
soon learned that thousands of more veterans were coming from all over the country.
They walked, hitchhiked, or stowed away on trains. The veterans were encouraged by the
12
Paradis, 84-88; Waters and White, 15-16.
13
”350 ‘Bonus marchers’ move on to Indiana,” New York Times, May 25, 1932,
late city ed., 13; Gene Smith, 134.
14
Bird, 67.
35
generous treatment received by the first marchers to arrive. Upon learning that, Glassford
tried to impose a limit on their stay, saying that they could only be in Washington for two
days. But the marchers, along with Waters, were determined to stay.15
At first, the arriving members of the BEF were given accommodations in vacant
government buildings. The army gave out straw-stuffed bed sacks and set up kitchens,
and some of the local merchants provided food. Soon the buildings were full. The Bonus
Army had to construct a camp at Anacostia Flats, across the Potomac River. Some of the
veterans received tents, but most had to make their own shelter out of materials such as
cardboard and old mattresses that they scavenged from a nearby dump. The poor
conditions at the camp made public health officials fear an outbreak of typhoid.
Congressional leaders worried that providing food and shelter would draw an
unmanageable number of unemployed people to the capital.16
The Anacostia field was a poor place to make a camp. It became muddy in the
rain, and the water in the Potomac River was oily. Before Waters’ time it was a refuge for
malaria-infested mosquitoes. Water had to be pumped into the camp through hoses,
because the river water gave the marchers boils. But the Bonus Army needed more space,
especially once a large group of marchers arrived in Washington from New Jersey. The
inhabitants had to improvise to keep out of the mud at night. They kept themselves off
the ground with car bodies, bed frames, and other nearby materials. General Glassford
eventually found some straw for the marchers to use. He had also convinced the Park
15
Paradis, 88-89; “Weary Bonus Army Reaches Capital by Truck; Police Demand
Congress Care for Hundreds,” New York Times, May 30, 1932, late city ed., 1.
16
Paradis, 89; “Bonus Army invasion new capitol worry,” New York Times, May
31, 1932, late city ed., 1.
36
Commissioners to allow the BEF to use the site, partially because the drawbridges on the
river would allow the police to block off the city.17
A large number of veterans joined up with Waters’ BEF. By the time the main
body of the veterans had arrived in Washington, they numbered between ten and twenty
thousand. Most of them ended up in the camp at Anacostia, just across the Potomac River
from the capital. The camp was known by several names, such as Camp Marks and
Hooverville. Groups of veterans continued to enter Washington, though the city was
already crowded and there were no official housing arrangements. Some of the marchers
holed up in abandoned or condemned buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue.18
In March, President Hoover opposed a bill that would provide the bonus payment
to World War I veterans. Two billion dollars would have to be taken from the Treasury to
pay the cost of the bill. Hoover thought that this would be a huge blow to the government
and the budget. It was an exorbitant amount of money to satisfy one interest group. He
persuaded the leaders of the American Legion to oppose the bill, yet many veterans and
Legion members continued to support the bonus.19
Waters and the Bonus Army intended to put pressure on Congress to reconsider
the bonus bill proposed by Congressman Wright Patman. Patman’s bill would provide
over two billion dollars in cash for the payment of veteran bonuses. This bill had been
17
Waters and White, 103-105.
18
Carlo D’Este, Eisenhower: A Soldier’s Life (New York: Henry Holt and
Company, 2002), 218-219; Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great
Depression (New York, Pantheon Books, 1979), 15.
19
“Hoover says bonus ‘undermines credit,’” New York Times, March 30, 1932,
late city ed., 1; Conrad Black, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom (New
York: Public Affairs, 2003), 240-241.
37
defeated in May. Reviving it would be difficult, requiring a special petition and the
signatures of 145 representatives. The veterans in Washington successfully appealed to
congressmen. On June 15, the bill made it through the House of Representatives. But it
still had to face the Senate.20
In the higher reaches of government, there were mixed reactions to the arrival of
so many marchers in Washington. Congress attempted to help them by supplying the
BEF with some of the army’s resources, such as clothing, medicine, tents, and mess hall
service. The War Department resented these demands and attempted to deflect them,
stating that army supplies would have to be replaced at significant cost to the
government. The War Department was also concerned that their troops and the Bonus
Army would develop good relations. If the Bonus Army caused problems later, it would
be hard to rely on the soldiers to suppress them.21
Before the Bonus March, Hoover showed generosity in dealing with World War I
veterans. He supported the construction of twenty-five free government hospitals for sick
and disabled veterans. This increased the number of hospital beds reserved for veterans
by roughly nineteen thousand. During his administration, the number of sick, disabled, or
poor veterans on the government payroll more than doubled.22
But Hoover did not support healthy veterans seeking money or benefits. In his
eyes, while the Great Depression affected the people, it was important to remember that it
20
Bird, 67; Dickson and Allen, 125-127.
21
John W. Killigrew, “The Army and the Bonus Incident,” Military Affairs 26,
no. 2 (Summer 1962): 59, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1984367 (accessed October 2,
2011).
22
Hoover, 285.
38
also put a great strain on the government. Hoover himself was constantly working and on
the verge of being overwhelmed. During the Great Depression he had a reputation for
avoiding political pleasantries. What the veterans were asking for was more than the
government could provide at the time. To pay them, there would need to be large tax
increases that would affect many other working people. When Congress attempted to
sidestep his opposition by giving benefits to individuals, President Hoover steadfastly
vetoed these bills for a number of reasons. Hoover resented Congress’ efforts to override
him, and opposed giving benefits to those veterans who had been dishonorably
discharged or injured themselves, or who had only been deployed for a short time and
had never been injured.23
The Bonus Army did have unrealistic expectations. Veterans were only a small
segment of the population, roughly 4 percent, and the entire population was suffering
from the Great Depression. Their demand for more than two billion dollars was out of
proportion, especially when veteran relief was already the largest expense in the federal
budget. No other country that had participated in World War I offered such a large
amount to its veterans. On the other hand the marchers were numerous, and the media
followed their actions. Thousands of veterans were dedicated or desperate enough to
travel across the nation to make their demands, which was a powerful gesture. Congress
was not sure how to deal with such a large demonstration in the capital.24
23
Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover.
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 137-138; Hoover, 288-289;
24
Liebovich, 160; Gene Smith, 127; “The Bonus Army,” The Commonweal, June
15, 1932, 173.
39
When the Bonus Army first arrived, Hoover showed some sympathy to the
veterans. He refused to bring out federal troops to turn the marchers away from
Washington. He gave the police chief, General Pelham Glassford, supplies to distribute to
the Bonus Army. The supplies included clothing, medicine, and food. Hoover did not
expect the marchers to cause any problems. In spite of this, he was still firmly opposed to
paying the Bonus. Hoover felt that the Veterans Administration he created was providing
aid to all of the sick or disabled veterans who were in need of it.25
General Douglas MacArthur’s opinion of the bonus marchers is difficult to
decipher. At first he was confident that they would maintain good conduct as former
military men. MacArthur was also confident in the abilities of the Washington, D.C.
police to deal with them if anything did happen. As the numbers of the Bonus Army
swelled above ten thousand and it became clear that they were dedicated to staying, the
situation became more serious. MacArthur became concerned that the masses of
unemployed veterans petitioning Congress could easily cause unrest.26
Despite their numbers, the bonus marchers did not cause unrest in Washington.
Crime rates actually fell during their stay. Even when eight thousand of them
unexpectedly paraded on Pennsylvania Avenue, on June 8, 1932, they were quite orderly.
But the marchers had trouble following any specific courses of action once they reached
Washington, D.C. The President refused to address them.27
25
David Burner, Herbert Hoover: A Public Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
1978), 309.
26
Geoffrey Perret, Eisenhower (New York: Random House, 1999), 111;
Killigrew, 59.
27
Bird, 68.
40
One factor that kept the marchers orderly was the leadership of Walter Waters.
Soon after the BEF arrived in Washington from Oregon, other veterans began to rally
behind him. On May 30, several groups of veterans asked Waters to be the leader of a
“united force.”28
Waters was uneasy with the situation, but the groups agreed to follow
the same guidelines as his original followers. On May 31, he relented and agreed to
become the commander of the Bonus Army. Waters assigned men from the various
groups to act as supply officers, bodyguards, or intelligence agents. The intelligence men
kept an eye out for communists and other agitators, and attempted to determine what the
police were planning at any given time.29
Government figures in Washington feared the possible involvement of
communists in the Bonus Army. But by most accounts, only a small number of marchers
followed any communist leaders. The historian Carlo D’Este estimates the communist
veterans at only a few hundred. The vast majority of the marchers were loyal to Walter
W. Waters and the BEF, which guarded against the efforts of agitators. Communist Party
organizers did attempt to garner support from the veterans at times and take advantage of
the Bonus Army, but they were usually unsuccessful. Some communist sympathizers
even had to go to General Glassford for protection after being rebuked by marchers.30
Waters observed the men who had joined his movement. Formerly enlisted men
made up the majority of the BEF. Most of them had resumed their occupations after
28
Waters and White, 65.
29
Waters and White, 65-67.
30
D’Este, 219-220; Perret, 112; Bird, 67-68.
41
World War I, but then had fallen on hard times in the depression. Neither Waters nor the
police could tell exactly how many people were in the Bonus Army due to the frequent
movement of the people. Waters did have a list of over 28,000 names and army service
numbers, but there were more registrations which had been lost. He noticed that the
majority came from small cities or towns.31
The fears of government and military leaders grew more intense over time. In
Europe, veterans supported Hitler and Mussolini’s fascist movements. President Hoover
and other officials worried that American veterans might become militant as well.
General MacArthur suspected that Waters was planning a coup. To do this, Waters was
supposedly buying machine guns and hiring gunmen from various cities. One army report
even stated that the Bonus Army was going to begin a national uprising; by forcing the
military to battle veterans in Washington, veterans would spark revolts in cities around
the United States, aided by communist leaders.32
In fact, most of the veterans were staunchly anti-communist. Waters even boasted
when the BEF ousted or harassed communists. John Pace, a supporter of the communists,
made his way to Washington during the Bonus Army incident. But on June 10, he and
two hundred other communists and sympathizers were forced out of the camp at
Anacostia and asked the police for protection. BEF members supposedly threw two
communists into the Potomac River. Waters also refused to supply any of the food meant
31
Waters and White, 115-117.
32
Donald J. Lisio, The President and Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and the Bonus
Riot (Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1974), 192.
42
for the marchers to Pace’s group. Glassford went to resolve the dispute, and noted that
the communists seemed more interested in the food than they did in the ideology.33
General Glassford cooperated with the BEF to an extent, but he and the police
also sought ways to divide the marchers. For their part, the marchers recognized that
Glassford was trying to help them, but at the same time he was a potential enemy.
Strangely, they even doubted Waters for negotiating with Glassford. The police often
suggested that groups in the Bonus Army should be broken up, to make accommodations
easier. Waters and Glassford negotiated the issue constantly. Waters was determined, but
eventually the veterans were spread over twenty camps around Washington.34
The Patman bill went through the House of Representatives on June 15, 1932, but
only by a slim margin. Six thousand veterans went to Capitol Hill on June 17 to watch the
bill’s progress in the Senate. The senators thought that after the vote, the Bonus Army
would soon leave Washington. At Camp Marks, over ten thousand of the marchers were
planning to go to the Capitol as well. General Glassford had ordered that the drawbridges
between the Anacostia camp and the city be raised if the Bonus Army started to
demonstrate. But even though they did not, the police force decided to raise the bridges.
They were soon lowered because all traffic was disrupted, and the thousands of marchers
crossed the Potomac. The situation between marchers and police was tense, and Waters
soon had to announce that the Senate tabled the Patman bill. He managed to calm the
veterans’ outrage, and the Bonus Army returned to camp peacefully. Still, the veterans
were incensed that the police had blocked them out of the city at such a key time. Waters
33
Bird, 68; Dickson and Allen, 124-125.
34
Waters and White, 72-74.
43
requested an apology from General Glassford, who admitted in his apology that raising
the bridge was a mistake.35
The Bonus Army’s tenacity surprised Washington. Few of the marchers left, even
though the Senate had tabled the Patman bill. More veterans were arriving to replace
them. General Glassford attempted to arrange transport for the marchers to encourage
them to leave. He approached the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad on June 21. Railroad
officials agreed to charge only one cent per mile for each passenger, but Glassford did not
have enough funds to make the deal. On July 7, Congress attempted a similar plan once
again. It set aside a hundred thousand dollars, so that the marchers could borrow against
their bonus for tickets home. But the deadline for this plan was only a week later, and few
marchers were interested. Only six hundred people applied before the cutoff date.36
Walter W. Waters began to lose control of the BEF in late June. More of the
marchers were returning to their homes, and many of the ones that remained disregarded
his orders. Waters was unable to rally a march on the Capitol, and he could not agree
with his executive committee on whether to evacuate one of the Bonus Army’s camps.
He resigned suddenly on June 25, surprising his advisers. The Bonus Army struggled to
find a new leader.37
Even during its crisis of leadership the Bonus Army continued to police its ranks
to root out communist agitators. On June 28, they kicked two men out of the Washington,
D.C., area and turned six others in to the police. The men had been distributing literature
35
Dickson and Allen, 127-130; Joan Hoff Wilson, Herbert Hoover: Forgotten
Progressive (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975), 161.
36
Paradis, 90.
37
“’Bonus Army’ chief quits after revolt,” New York Times, June 26, 1932, late
city ed., 3.
44
for the Workers’ ex-Service Men’s League. In it, they encouraged veterans to panhandle
aggressively. The League also took credit for undermining Waters.38
According to Waters, he quit as leader of the BEF because he saw it losing its
focus. He was afraid that the original goal, the bonus, would be overtaken by outside
objectives. He also claims that he was unsure how well he represented the men,
especially with the constant stream of newcomers. Despite what he said, Waters was
easily the most trusted and well-known figure in the BEF. During his absence, no one
was able to establish leadership. Waters allowed himself to be re-elected after a few days,
on the condition that he had the final say in BEF decisions.39
The Bonus Army attempted to maintain discipline during this frustrating period.
Matters were complicated since the food budget had also run out. Some of the people in
Washington, including the police and President Hoover, hoped that the lack of food
would cause more of the marchers to leave. Many of the disappointed veterans did leave
with the help of the Veterans Administration, but there were still at least five thousand
left through most of July. Some of the marchers began to squat in condemned buildings.40
By July 15, there were roughly two thousand marchers still in government
buildings. President Hoover refused to meet with any of the marchers, and barricades
were put up to block them out of certain areas. Hoover ordered government agencies to
look into the backgrounds of the marchers. Their findings led him to believe that many of
those remaining in Washington were not veterans at all, and that some were communists
38
“Bonus Army drives 8 Reds from ranks,” New York Times, June 28, 1932, late
city ed., 2.
39
Daniels, 128; Waters and White, 155-157.
40
“Bonus Army drives 8 Reds from ranks,” 2; Perret, 112.
45
or criminals. This coincided with an incident on July 20, in which two hundred marchers
approached the White House and were repelled with tear gas. Afterwards, General
Glassford told the BEF to leave Washington by August 4. On July 23, members of the
BEF picketed Hoover’s private residence. Hoover told Glassford that he would summon
the army if the police could not prevent further incidents.41
John Pace, one of the communist agitators in Washington, decided to make his
move on July 25. President Hoover had just returned to the capital that morning. Pace and
150 of his followers went to rally government workers and harass the police. When they
reached the Treasury Building, they found a large number of police waiting for them. A
street fight began, and Pace and some of his closest followers were quickly arrested, but
the battle continued until a squad of motorcycle police drove the remaining combatants
off. This event further convinced the administration that the BEF was dangerous, as well
being under communist influence.42
On July 28, the police entered Pennsylvania Avenue to oversee demolition of the
buildings taken over by bonus marchers. They surrounded one of the buildings and began
to lead some two hundred people out. There are many conflicting accounts of what
happened next. In one, there was no riot until a group of communists with an American
flag approached police lines and tried to get through. The marchers and the police
41
Richard Norton Smith, 138; Paradis, 91.
42
Dickson and Allen, 158-159.
46
engaged in a melee, and two police officers were cornered in the second story of one of
the buildings. An officer drew his gun in a panic and fired, killing two veterans.43
Waters tells a different version of the story. He states that he attempted to get two
hundred men out of the building, as per an agreement with the Washington, D.C., Board
of Commissioners. As he was convincing the marchers to leave, General Glassford’s
secretary appeared with a message that the evacuation was due at ten in the morning,
which was only ten minutes away. Waters believes that the order was given to agitate the
men and to give a pretext for calling in the army. The police arrived to escort federal
agents as they carried out the eviction, and there was no violence until the communists
attempted to break police lines. According to Waters, the violence stopped quickly, and
the subsequent shooting of two veterans was unprovoked.44
The D.C. Board of Commissioners called on the President for aid, stating that
there had been a serious riot and that General Glassford could no longer handle the Bonus
Army with his men and equipment. Hoover agreed to send the army to deal with the
situation. He had the Secretary of War, Patrick Hurley, send a message to the Chief of
Staff, General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was ordered immediately to assemble his
soldiers, proceed to the site of the riot, and, in Hurley’s words, “surround the affected
area and clear it without delay.”45
43
Harris Gaylord Warren, Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1959), 233; Paradis, 91-92.
44
Waters and White, 209-214; Gaylord, 233.
45
William Starr Myers and Walter H. Newton, The Hoover Administration: A
Documented Narrative (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 498-499; Ambrose,
97.
47
General MacArthur was also told to pay special attention to avoid harming
women or children. He was supposed to carry out the orders as humanely as possible.
Still, MacArthur saw the marchers as a real threat to the president and to the United
States government. He gathered a thousand soldiers including infantry, cavalry led by
Major George Patton, and tanks. His forces had machine guns and tear gas grenades.46
Donning parade gear and medals, General MacArthur led his forces out to
Pennsylvania Avenue. His troop formations drove the Bonus Army along with bayonets
and gas. The marchers were pushed back to the camp at Anacostia by nightfall. The army
crossed the bridge to the camp and it was soon in flames, though it is unclear which side
started the first fires. No one was killed, but there were a number of injuries. An
eyewitness reported that one soldier was wounded in the leg with a bayonet. This
contradicts Secretary of War Hurley’s statement that no one had been seriously injured
after the army was summoned.47
The War Department admitted that soldiers set several fires at Anacostia. It
claimed, though, that the fires were not planned in advance and that the army’s intended
mission was not the destruction of the camp. Instead, junior officers of the army had set
the fires in order to protect some of Washington’s permanent structures. Walter Waters
found their explanations implausible.48
46
Douglas MacArthur, Reminiscences: General of the Army (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1964), 92-95; Richard Norton Smith, 138-139.
47
Black, 241; Frederick Lewis Allen, Since Yesterday: The Nineteen-Thirties in
America (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1940), 85-86; Terkel, 16; Eugene Lyons,
Herbert Hoover: A Biography (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1964),
240-241.
48
Waters and White, 278-279.
48
While the army was approaching the camp, President Hoover had sent two
messages to General MacArthur. He was worried that sending the army against civilians
could result in a public backlash. Hoover had also been warned that the army was using
large amounts of tear gas as it closed in on the Anacostia Flats. He tried to instruct
MacArthur not to pursue the marchers across the Anacostia Bridge. MacArthur claimed
not to have received the orders, while his aide at the time, Dwight D. Eisenhower,
reported that MacArthur willfully ignored the messengers.49
Publicly, President Hoover maintained his stance that the Bonus Army had been
tainted by communists and criminals. Even contrary reports from the Pennsylvania State
Department of Welfare, or from his own Veterans Bureau, did not change his rhetoric. He
maintained his triumphant tone consistently. As quoted in Conrad Black’s Franklin
Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom, Hoover issued a statement that he had
answered the threat of “those who would destroy all government.”50
According to Richard Norton Smith, Hoover was privately furious at how
MacArthur had handled the situation. He believed that the general had purposely
disregarded his instructions, badly affecting both of their reputations. MacArthur made
public statements that were similar to Hoover’s about how his actions had been necessary
to prevent insurrection. He also praised Hoover for his decisiveness, perhaps to shift
49
Ambrose, 98; Perret, 112-114.
50
Bird, 68-69; Black, 241-242.
49
blame towards the president. In spite of this, Hoover did not make any public statements
against MacArthur’s handling of the situation.51
The Hoover administration continually managed to make itself look worse after
the incident. A grand jury called the BEF a mob in its official proceedings and indicted
three combat veterans. Movie theaters showed news footage of the Bonus Army’s rout,
and viewers were outraged by the army’s conduct. The day after the rout, Major George
Patton was reported to have sent away a veteran who saved his life in World War I. The
public was shocked by the veterans’ treatment. Claims that the eviction was necessary
for the government’s safety were met with indignation. According to The Literary
Digest, publications across the country focused on the controversy. Many opponents of
the bonus bill were still outraged by the army’s handling of the BEF. President Hoover’s
reputation and his re-election campaign both suffered.52
The main body of the BEF was too large to rely on limited charity, and it
struggled to find a more permanent refuge. One of the few places that seemed promising
was Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Johnstown’s Mayor, Eddie McCloskey, visited the Bonus
Army in Washington a week before the eviction. During his visit he spoke passionately
to the veterans about patriotism and the bonus issue. He also offered accommodations in
Johnstown if the veterans were ejected from the capital. Walter Waters remembered this
offer, and contacted McCloskey to make sure that he intended to follow through. With
the mayor’s assurance, Waters attempted to guide the wandering BEF members to
51
Richard Norton Smith, 139-140; Black, 241-242.
52
Dickson and Allen, 193-195; “What’s the Bonus Army’s Next Move?,” The
Literary Digest, August 13, 1932, 31-32.
50
Johnstown. McCloskey was willing to shelter the veterans, but Johnstown’s Chamber of
Commerce and the American Legion protested the Mayor’s plan.53
Waters and his aides had to guide, supply, and organize over eight thousand
people to get the BEF to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. The marchers followed the highways
out of Washington, moving through Maryland and Pennsylvania. At the time of the
eviction, President Hoover described the Bonus Army as containing numerous
communists and criminals. Waters defended the character of his group, saying that the
men traveled three hundred miles to Johnstown without disturbing private property. The
veterans set up camp in an abandoned Johnstown amusement park on July 29. Food was
scarce, and they had to rely on local charities for supplies. Social workers that
investigated the camp confirmed that almost all of the veterans could prove their
honorable discharge from the army.54
Although Johnstown was the BEF’s only option at the moment, Waters
considered it a temporary solution. McCloskey made fiery speeches about accepting the
veterans, but there was a lack of food and facilities. Johnstown’s Chamber of Commerce
and many of its citizens protested the presence of the BEF. The town’s own charity and
relief resources were already strained by the depression, including supporting
unemployed steel workers. The Chamber of Commerce asked the state police to keep
veterans moving through Pennsylvania to reduce the burden. 55
53
Waters and White, 239-240.
54
Dickson and Allen, 194-196; Waters and White, 241-242.
55
Dickson and Allen, 194-196; Waters and White, 242-243.
51
Although the situation was volatile, the Bonus Army could not be easily
disbanded. Those members that had homes could be persuaded to return to them, but as
many as three thousand were completely homeless. Waters’ next idea was to make a
self-sufficient camp for the BEF. On July 29, a letter from Mrs. Edgell in Catonsville,
Maryland, offered the BEF up to fifty acres of land. After the camp concept gained
publicity, sympathetic individuals provided supplies, organizational support, and other
bits of land. Waters hoped that this would allow him to settle the remaining Bonus Army
members semi-permanently.56
Governor Albert Ritchie of Maryland opposed the camp plan. He met with
Waters in August, and Ritchie and Maryland officials blocked the camp. Although
Waters had full ownership of the land, the camp would not have any running water and
so the State Health Board could easily withhold approval. The most that Maryland’s
government offered was that it would take care of Maryland native veterans. Waters
phoned other state governors, who made similar offers to take care of their own. Because
the camp idea was a failure and officials in Johnstown were running out of patience,
Waters began to question the future of the BEF.57
There was no longer a realistic way to keep the Bonus Army together. Waters
also did not want it to become a conventional veterans’ organization. He disliked the
way that the American Legion’s leadership operated. That group’s leaders sometimes
sacrificed the membership’s interests for political reasons. Waters had already seen
individuals within the Bonus Army attempt to gain influence and a personal following, as
56
Waters and White, 243-244.
57
Daniels, 185-187; Dickson and Allen, 80; Waters and White, 246-249.
52
well as outsiders trying to exploit the cause of the BEF by holding unaffiliated
fundraisers. He feared that if former Bonus Army members formed a new group, the
most likely result would be another veteran’s association concerned more with fees and
the interests of various leaders than the advancement of the veterans’ causes. He sent two
of his men to Johnstown with the order to disband the BEF. The veterans boarded trains
and were shipped out across the country, ending up in various communities.58
The dispersed veterans joined those that had broken off from the BEF earlier.
Some settled in groups of tens or hundreds, tolerated by communities and governments.
Others attempted to return to their original homes, or ended up in shanty towns and
shelters in cities like New York like many other unemployed people. Gettsyburg allowed
sixteen marchers to set up camp in a park. Three hundred marchers ended up in an
unused shelter in Detroit. Two hundred marchers created Camp Sherry, near Uniontown,
Pennsylvania. These veterans did whatever odd jobs and camp maintenance they could.
Most of these settlements were tolerated, and received some charity from local businesses
or private individuals. Former marchers made the best of the situation, but there was still
massive unemployment and little government aid. Without a change in conditions, it was
possible that a march of some sort would happen again.59
The majority of the marchers only wanted the bonus, and radical elements had
little effect on the BEF as a whole. Veterans’ compensation was promised to soldiers who
had received little for their troubles in World War I. Government officials used the term
bonus in the same way that the veterans did, creating the expectation that the veterans
58
Waters and White, 251-255.
59
Gertrude Springer, “What Became of the B.E.F.,” The Survey, December 1,
1932, 640-42, 664-66.
53
were waiting for cash. When circumstances changed and the Great Depression put
countless people out of work, veterans saw the bonus as a way to get relief. They wanted
as much as the struggling government could provide. Countless parties sought relief
from the government, so Walter W. Waters thought that veterans should lobby as well.
Many veterans flocked to his BEF because it offered group solidarity and an army-like
lifestyle, which was at least a relief from idleness.
President Hoover was deeply concerned with balancing government expenditures.
He supported relief for sick or destitute veterans, but the government was already paying
an enormous amount. Hoover believed that the United States could not afford to raise
astronomical amounts of money for the many proposed benefits programs, and if the
government tried, the burden of paying for it would be on other struggling citizens.
Hoover had reasonable concerns, but he was mistaken about the BEF’s character and how
to deal with it. The BEF was not a hotbed of Communism or a rebellious group. The
government failed to convince the public otherwise. This meant that when Hoover finally
sent in the army on July 28, 1932, few believed that the bonus marchers had deserved it.
Hoover and MacArthur lost more of their support by triumphantly maintaining that they
had defended the nation.
54
CHAPTER 3
Veterans’ Benefits in the New Deal
The Bonus Army failed to convince the United States government to pass a bill
for the payment of the veterans’ bonus in 1932. The veterans were driven from
Washington by the U.S. army. Walter Waters, the leader of the majority of the bonus
marchers, attempted to find a place somewhere in the United States to settle his men.
Waters soon ran out of options, and saw no way to maintain his group as an honest and
cohesive organization, so he disbanded the Bonus Army. This was not the end of direct
veteran activism. Over time, several veterans’ groups formed and traveled to
Washington, D.C., to petition for the bonus. Like the first Bonus Army, they supported
the Patman bonus bill, which would immediately pay the veterans’ promised bonus in
cash. This activism failed to get the bill through Congress. However, the severity of the
Great Depression and the episodes of veterans’ unrest made an impression on the
government. Managing benefits and preparing for the end of future wars became an
important concern for government officials.
Veterans attempted to appeal to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose New
Deal programs seemed promising. A few of the new administration’s programs provided
55
relief and jobs, but they were generally not created for veterans. The leaders of public
works programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps saw the aging men as a burden.
Veterans wanted some financial stability, and fought to stay in the programs as long as
possible. The American Legion was larger and more influential than the groups that
protested directly. It eventually won some benefits for World War I veterans, but its
proposals for World War II veterans were far more successful. Instead of occasional
work program jobs and one-time cash payments, the new generation of veterans received
an unprecedented amount of assistance. The G.I. Bill provided extensive benefits for
higher education, medical treatment, job placement, and property loans. World War I
veterans’ protests and the Depression inspired changes in government policy and thought
on veterans’ benefits. Those changes made the G.I. Bill possible.
Though the Bonus Army broke up and dispersed across the country, World War 1
veterans did not give up on political activity. In 1933, a number of veterans were
involved in a second march on Washington. These veterans were split into two main
factions, non-communist and communist. Both factions claimed to have a very high
membership. The membership estimates ranged from several thousand marchers up to
fifty thousand, but when the veterans arrived in Washington in May of 1933, they
numbered only about three thousand. The second bonus march did not receive as much
media attention as the original.1
One reason for the nation’s reduced interest in this march was that it was handled
much differently by the administration. In the summer of 1932, Franklin Roosevelt
observed the backlash that President Hoover received over the treatment of the veterans
1 Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression
(Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Corporation, 1971), 221.
56
in the first bonus march. He predicted that it would greatly hinder Hoover’s reelection
campaign. Roosevelt also anticipated that the veterans would return to Washington
eventually. When the new groups of veterans arrived in the spring of 1933, President
Roosevelt acted very cordially toward them, as if there was no need for concern or
suspicion. In complete contrast to the Hoover administration’s hostility, Roosevelt
openly accommodated the veterans. He ordered for them to be provided with a camp in
Virginia across the Potomac.2
The camp was located at Fort Hunt, an old army base. The veterans were
provided with food, coffee, tents, and other necessary supplies. The government also
provided medical services. The Navy Band was even sent to provide the veterans with
some entertainment. At first, President Roosevelt did not meet with them himself.
Eleanor Roosevelt had been shocked when she heard of the original BEF’s eviction by
the army, and she met with the veterans to gauge their situation. Eleanor toured the
camp, shared a meal with the veterans, and gave them statements of sympathy and
gratitude for their service. She also led them in a few army songs before departing. There
was no trouble, and from their treatment, the veterans got a good impression of the
Roosevelts and the new administration.3
The leaders of this bonus march had goals separate from the majority of the
members. Some wanted to recruit more people to the communist cause, while others
2 H.W. Brands, Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency
of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (New York: Anchor Books, 2008), 330; Jean Edward
Smith, FDR (New York: Random House, 2007), 284-285.
3 Brands, 330-331; Kenneth S. Davis, FDR, The New Deal Years 1933-1937
(New York: Random House, 1986), 78; Eleanor Roosevelt, The Autobiography of
Eleanor Roosevelt (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1961), 175-176.
57
wished to create a new veterans’ organization. There was still some tension between the
communist and non-communist veterans, but there was only one incident of unrest. On
May 13, one of the communists had to be escorted away from another group of veterans
by the police. The majority of the veterans were more concerned with food, shelter, and
requesting the government to give relief to veterans. They had two main points. First,
they wanted to petition the government again for the veterans’ bonus to be paid. Second,
the veterans were protesting the Economy Act that President Roosevelt had supported.
Among many other cuts, it reduced existing veterans’ benefits by almost half.4
President Roosevelt welcomed the veterans, but he stood by his benefit cuts and
opposed the bonus. He was willing to offer veterans a different form of relief. On May
11, Roosevelt signed an executive order to reserve twenty-five thousand spots for
veterans in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal agency. For their work they
would receive food, clothing, shelter, and a dollar per day like the other workers. The
CCC’s director, Robert Fechner, disliked this arrangement because the agency recruited
mostly young men. Roosevelt was waiving the agency’s normal age limit for the middle-
aged veterans. This was his alternative to the bonus.5
One benefit of this deal for the government was that recruiting veterans into the
CCC would cut the second bonus march short. The march could be peacefully and easily
dispersed. A few of the communist leaders opposed the deal, but they had little support.
The majority of the veterans, numbering 2,657, were ready to accept it. Four hundred
remaining veterans were given transportation to their homes. On May 19, a few days
4 Blanche Wiesen Cook, Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 2 (New York: Viking Penguin,
1999), 45; Daniels, 222-223.
5 Daniels, 222; Davis, 79.
58
after Eleanor’s camp visit, President Roosevelt continued his diplomatic approach by
seeing a small delegation from the veterans. In a friendly meeting, he explained his
reasons for opposing the bonus.6
Franklin Roosevelt began working on the economy as soon as he was elected
president. This period of the administration, known as the First Hundred Days, involved
a flurry of legislation and exercise of Roosevelt’s presidential power. Roosevelt
believed that the government should take direct action in an attempt to stabilize the
United States economy during the depression. An early example of the Roosevelt’s
approach to the economy was its response to the February 1933 banking crisis.
Numerous banks across the United States began closing to check withdrawals, greatly
hindering the banking system. The president worked to reopen the banks as quickly as
possible. The economy and government spending took priority over veterans’ issues.7
On March 5, Roosevelt declared a bank holiday and put an embargo on gold
withdrawal and exports. He also called for a special section of Congress to meet in a few
days. Roosevelt tasked William Woodin, the Secretary of the Treasury, with creating a
piece of emergency legislation. After several days, the President presented the proposal
to Congress. The Emergency Banking Act would allow for the printing of Federal
Reserve notes to increase the nation’s available currency, and it would give the President
more authority to regulate gold exports. The Secretary of the Treasury would review the
state of the banks and decide which banks were ready to reopen and which ones required
6 Daniels, 222-225.
7 William E. Leuchtenburg, ed., The New Deal: A Documentary History
(Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1968), 25-28; Dexter Perkins, The New
Age of Franklin Roosevelt, 1932-45 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 12-13.
59
assistance. The nation’s situation was so serious that Roosevelt was able to convince
Congress to accept the Emergency Banking Act almost immediately, and it was passed
on March 9. The act helped to end the bank panic. Congress then passed further
legislation, like the Glass-Steagall Act, to reduce further bank failures by reforming and
strengthening the Federal Reserve.8
Another component of Roosevelt’s initial presidential approach was the idea that
balancing the federal budget was the first step to providing relief to the rest of the nation.
He argued that it was dangerous for the government to attempt to deal with the
depression without a well-ordered budget. Roosevelt sought the authority to cut
government worker salaries and veterans’ pensions. Congressmen were often reluctant to
make cuts to benefits and services, since it would offend groups like the American
Legion and reduce their chances at election time. Roosevelt was able to convince
Congress to reduce the budget, partially by taking the responsibility himself. In the First
Hundred Days, the president had significant support from politicians of every party.
Roosevelt and Congress passed legislation affecting the government’s funds and benefits
programs, which would have a major impact on veterans.9
The Economy Act, passed in 1933, was the new administration’s first major
budget cut. It reduced government workers’ salaries and the total number of positions,
eliminating some agencies completely. It also cut veterans’ pensions and medical
benefits. The Veterans Bureau, as well as its payments to veterans, was one of the major
8 Nelson Lloyd Dawson, Louis D. Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter, and the New Deal
(Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1980), 61; Leuchtenburg, 25-28; Perkins, 12-13;
Smith, 305-313.
9 Brands, 320-322; Leuchtenburg, 25-28.
60
targets of Roosevelt’s proposed budget cuts. The total cuts amounted to roughly 400
million dollars.10
President Roosevelt’s effort to curb benefits was not limited to legislation. In
October, 1933, the American Legion held its convention in Chicago. Congressman
Wright Patman took his bill proposal to the convention, seeking support for cash payment
of the veterans’ bonus. However, Roosevelt made an appearance to argue against
Legion lobbying. In a speech to the assembled members, he argued that veterans who
were injured, disabled, or sickened by circumstances unrelated to their service had no
special claims to relief compared to any other citizen. Because of that, the federal
government should only step in if a person’s community and state were unable to provide
assistance. The convention was persuaded by Roosevelt’s arguments and his appeals to
their common war service and patriotism. The American Legion withdrew support for
Patman’s bonus bill, one of the few bills left that would increase expenses and payments
to veterans, and it stalled in Congress.11
The Roosevelt administration’s early emphasis on reducing certain federal funds
was accompanied by the establishment of large and expensive relief programs. Although
their monetary benefits were cut, veterans sometimes found assistance from these
programs. President Roosevelt was personally attached to particular New Deal projects,
such as the Civilian Conservation Corps. He was not the only one behind such programs,
however. Many relief efforts were inspired by the social ideals of the times, and had both
10
Cook, 70; Perkins, 14; Dixon Wecter, Age of the Greatest Depression, 1929-
1941 (New York: Macmillan Co., 1948), 70.
11
Daniels, 226-228.
61
popular and Congressional support. For her part, Eleanor Roosevelt supported increased
relief and education funding, and disagreed with the Economy Act’s cuts.12
The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of President Roosevelt’s ideas for a
program to combat unemployment. It was ambitious, but not unprecedented. Various
American states, as well as some foreign governments like Germany and Italy, had
already created similar work programs for young men. These programs, despite some
flaws, had demonstrated the potential for organizing constructive work and relief
programs. They could employ a number of young people to useful work, and the wages
would benefit their families as well. Eleanor Roosevelt was a supporter of the CCC, and
she said that it was one of Franklin Roosevelt’s favored projects. This Corps was
intended mainly for young people, but President Roosevelt also offered employment in
the CCC to veterans to help resolve the second bonus march.13
Roosevelt spoke to the press to explain the basics of the CCC plan and promote
its merits. The purpose of the CCC was to put young men to work on government and
state lands, such as national forests. They would do jobs that would not conflict with
other public works. The Forestry Bureau estimated that 200,000 men could be employed
for forestry work alone. Much of the government land in the eastern United States
consisted of dense, overcrowded forests. Workers would cut firebreaks and thin the
forest, providing some firewood from small trees and promoting growth of larger trees
for lumber in the future. The CCC’s labor might provide some secondary benefits to its
workers as well, providing organization and fitness. They would receive one dollar a
12
Alan Brinkley, The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War
(New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 73; Cook, 70; Perkins, 71-72.
13
Brands, 331; Roosevelt, 181.
62
day, in addition to the expenses of running the camps. Roosevelt downplayed the cost,
saying that although it seemed like an expensive project, the young men that would be
enrolled were presently unemployed and receiving government relief already.14
Next, the President proposed this plan to Congress. He submitted his bill to create
the Civilian Conservation Corps on March 21, 1933. He argued that the CCC plan
would not interfere with the labor market, because it was only concerned about working
on government land. The Department of War and Department of Labor would identify,
enroll, and organize roughly 250,000 men for the agency. The Interior and Agriculture
departments would oversee the work once the men were ready. In addition to forestry
work, the CCC would also work to prevent soil erosion and improve flood control.15
There was some resistance to this plan from both Democrats and Republicans.
Republicans were uneasy about establishing such a large group of people loyal to and
dependent on the president, due to the corruption of similar programs in European
nations. From the Democrats’ side, William Green, the president of the American
Federation of Labor, also opposed the plan. He compared the organization of large
groups of men in work camps to fascism and communism. American politicians feared a
possible militant movement. European veterans were a major part of the Italian
Blackshirts and the German Brownshirts. Green also spoke to congressional labor
14
Brands, 332; Roosevelt, 181.
15
Brands, 332-333; Edgar Eugene Robinson, The Roosevelt Leadership 1933-
1945 (New York: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1955), 110.
63
committees about the possibility of the agency undercutting standard wages. Roosevelt
responded while attempting to maintain good relations with organized labor.16
Roosevelt argued that the camps would be no more militaristic than any other
large work project. He also stated that, although a dollar a day might seem threatening to
labor standards, the government would be paying at least another dollar a day to take care
of each person. Taking total expenses into account, the government was unable to
undercut average unskilled wages, which hovered around a dollar and a half per day. His
final point was that the labor market still had a massive amount of unemployed people,
numbering twelve million. The Senate was convinced of the plan, but the House
continued to deliberate. The bill was amended such that the CCC would not discriminate
based on race, color, or creed. It passed on March 31, and the Civilian Conservation
Corps was established quickly, on April 5.17
The beginning of the Roosevelt presidency featured a mixture of cost-slashing
measures like the Economy Act and expensive New Deal agencies like the CCC. It was a
volatile period for those seeking relief, including veterans. By the middle of the 1930s,
many of the budget cuts were reversed. Even more funds were requested for relief
programs, and new government agencies were founded. The seventy-third Congress
opened its second session on January 3, 1934. In spite of his concern with the federal
budget, President Roosevelt did support further expenditures for a number of relief
programs. The Democratic majority in Congress, along with Roosevelt, passed new
appropriations bills worth billions of dollars. One such bill, the Emergency Farm Credit
16
Brands, 333.
17
Brands, 333-334; Roosevelt, 181.
64
Act, gave three billion dollars to refinance farm mortgages. There was also the National
Housing Act, which gave $200 million to the Home Credit Insurance Corporation.18
Although Roosevelt was still intent on reducing veterans’ compensation, the
general sentiment in Congress had changed since the beginning of Roosevelt’s
presidency, and in 1934 they were less willing to cut veterans’ benefits. Congress’s turn
against Roosevelt’s budgeting measures caught him off guard. A major reason for this
shift in attitude was that the House of Representatives members and a third of the Senate
were facing elections in November. The upcoming elections made them wary of the
soldier vote. The American Legion was still formidable. The Democrats were divided
on whether to support Roosevelt on the budget cuts, and without their majority support,
opposition to the cuts prevailed. Congress also created the Independent Offices
Appropriation Bill, which featured new benefits for veterans. The president vetoed the
bill, but on March 28, Congress successfully overrode him. By this time, many of the
cuts included in the Economy Act had been reversed as well.19
Many veterans still demanded the bonus, in spite of the American Legion’s
uncertainty on the issue. Three thousand soldiers attended the annual Veterans of
Foreign Wars convention in October of 1934. President Roosevelt sent a telegram to the
VFW asking for restraint. This had little effect. Representative Wright Patman, who
proposed the bill, and a number of other speakers called for the bonus to the enthusiasm
18
Ted Morgan, FDR: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 406-
407; Wecter, 70.
19
Morgan, 406-407; Wecter, 70.
65
of the assembled veterans. The government could not settle the bonus issue, even two
years after the Bonus March.20
President Roosevelt continued to oppose increases to veterans’ benefits. He went
to Congress personally to veto the Patman bill in May 1935. This was a pointed
statement since no president had personally delivered a veto message before. Roosevelt
argued to Congress that paying the bonus early would be an inflationary act. The bonus
bill would cost the government over two billion dollars. The President also repeated his
argument that non-disabled veterans should have no special claims to aid, citing the
example of munitions factory workers, who did not receive benefits either. Despite
Roosevelt’s opposition, the bonus was gaining support in Congress over time. The
House voted to overturn the veto, but the Patman bill was narrowly defeated in the
Senate.21
Roosevelt took a stand against appropriations and big businesses during his
reelection campaign. In his President’s Annual Message, on January 3, 1936, he argued
that businesses were using popular discontent and special interests in an attempt to
manipulate the New Deal. Roosevelt’s reelection platform supported an end to tax
increases. He also pledged to reduce appropriations of relief funds. At the same time,
20
“Bold Words Demand Bonus at V.F.W. Convention,” The News-Week at
Home, October 13, 1934, 11-12.
21
Brinkley, 73; Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An
American Epic (New York: Walker & Company, 2004), 229-231; Perkins, 40;
“President Breaks a Precedent to Tell Congress in Person Why He Vetoes the Patman
Bill,” The News-Week at Home, May 25, 1935, 7.
66
Roosevelt defended existing New Deal laws and agencies, and promised to continue to
develop the New Deal and its principles.22
While the President attempted to stand firm against special interests,
Congressional attitudes were moving overwhelmingly toward payment of the bonus. The
American Legion continued to lobby Congress to pass the Adjusted Payment
Compensation Act, the latest version of the bonus bill. Roosevelt vetoed this act as well,
but Congress overrode the veto on January 24, 1936. The government, influenced more
by lobbying than by direct protest, had finally provided the bonus that veterans had been
seeking for years. The Adjusted Payment Compensation Act gave them their payment in
interest-bearing bonds with a period of nine years. At this point, Roosevelt decided not
to fight Congress and only made recommendations to the veterans that they should save
their money or use it as constructively as possible.23
The veterans got their bonus, eventually, and they also benefited from some New
Deal programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCC’s leadership would have
preferred not to employ veterans. Robert Fechner, the director of the agency, believed
that it was hard-working young men that made the agency popular with the government
and the people, not veterans in their forties. Veterans also did not want to leave after
their terms were up. The CCC had a limited period of enrollment, and veterans were
reluctant to leave a stable job. This issue was discussed at a meeting of the Executive
Council and the National Emergency Council, held in the White House on June 26, 1934.
22
Basil Rauch, The History of the New Deal (New York: Capricorn Books, 1972),
225-228.
23
Rauch, 227-228; Robinson, 172; Wecter, 38.
67
Roosevelt went over the veterans’ situation with Fechner. The 11,000 recently enrolled
veterans were mostly well-behaved, and only a few camps had discipline problems.24
The main problem was the veterans’ employment demands. Roosevelt argued
that a year was more than most men employed by the CCC got. Fechner responded that
most of the veterans were married, and so they were especially concerned with
supporting their families. Government employment offices were working to find other
jobs for the veterans, but it was a slow process. The veterans’ average age made them less
desirable for labor. Considering the issue, Roosevelt decided to allow reenrollment for
veterans, but he asked Fechner to increase efforts to look for other work for them.25
The veterans also became involved with another New Deal agency as workers, the
Federal Emergency Relief Administration. FERA was created alongside the Economy
Act, and its purpose was to provide grants to state governments for relief. It was run by a
career welfare worker named Harry Hopkins. FERA’s work was especially concerned
with aiding the unemployed. The agency set up camps in many states to house transient
people and the homeless. These camps were often located in vacant parts of military
bases, and provided food, shelter, clothes, and a small wage to their inhabitants. The
people grew vegetables and trapped animals to provide food for the camp network.26
Yet another bonus march occurred in the spring of 1934, but the veterans did not
fare much differently than before. Harry Hopkins gave them accommodations similar to
24
Dickson and Allen, 220-221; Lester G. Seligman and Elmer E. Cornwell, Jr.,
eds., New Deal Mosaic: Roosevelt Confers with his National Emergency Council, 1933-
1936 (Eugene, Oregon: University of Oregon, 1965), 220-227.
25
Seligman and Cornwell, 227.
26
Dickson and Allen, 220-221.
68
what the members of the 1933 march got, and a few hundred veterans were accepted into
the CCC. Although the periodic visits from the veterans were small and sedate, the
administration feared embarrassment if they became more insistent. To prevent future
marches, Hopkins copied the idea of the transient camps. He proposed Veterans’
Rehabilitation Camps, employing veterans under FERA for a dollar a day. This plan was
to be run entirely separate from the CCC camps, which reduced the number of veterans
entering that agency. President Roosevelt approved Hopkins’ plan, and in October 1934
FERA began to send veterans south. Some went to South Carolina, while roughly three
hundred ended up being sent to Florida’s Upper Keys on October 18. FERA planned for
them to work on road construction to link the Upper Keys and Key West. As was the
case with the second set of bonus marchers, the government offered jobs to avoid any
further pressure on the bonus issue.27
The city of Key West in Florida was hit hard by the Great Depression. About 80
percent of the residents were on welfare, and the city could not afford to pay its police,
firemen, or sanitation workers. FERA sent Julius Stone, Jr., to revitalize Key West. The
local authorities quickly gave FERA control of the situation, and the agency had two
million dollars to work with. Stone planned to restore the county’s economy and
prosperity with tourism. The veterans employed by FERA arrived in camps along the
Upper Keys to work on road construction. The first few arrived in November 1934, and
by 1935 there were seven hundred men in three camps. Camp 1, known as Islamorada,
was located in Windley Key, seventy-eight miles south of Miami. Camps 5 and 3 were
27
Gary Dean Best, FDR and the Bonus Marchers, 1933-1935 (Westport,
Connecticut: Praeger Publishers, 1992), 1; Dickson and Allen, 220-222.
69
both less than a dozen miles south of Camp 1. Headquarters for the camps was located at
the former Matecumbe Hotel, at Windley Key.28
There were some problems between the veterans and the leadership at the Keys
camps. The veterans’ pay was intermittent. In an incident in early February, 1935,
bootleggers showed up just as the veterans were paid for the first time in weeks. The
sudden combination of alcohol and frustrated men sparked a few days of disorder and a
strike at Camp 3. FERA also ignored veterans’ complaints about sanitary conditions,
such as the lack of electricity and bathing facilities. FERA officials tended to treat
complaints with hostility. Several more strikes happened in February, and FERA took
some of the men’s demands as a threat. The agency’s leadership called in the National
Guard for security. The veterans’ morale did not improve until FERA officials in
Washington sent Captain William Hinchman to improve conditions. Hinchman
improved the camps’ sanitation, provided uniforms, and organized sports teams and a
newspaper for the veterans. Although basic conditions and morale improved, the
veterans in Florida would have further problems with FERA.29
By the summer of 1935, FERA was already planning to close the veterans’ work
camps and the general transient relief camps in November. This would eject about 3,500
veterans from the work camps and 75,000 people from the other camps. Most of the
able-bodied veterans were slated to go to CCC camps or other work projects. However,
this arrangement did not provide much comfort to the veterans. Their newspaper
protested the callousness of kicking everyone out in winter and closing both sets of
28
Best, 4; Dickson and Allen, 224-225.
29
Best, 7; Dickson and Allen, 227-228.
70
camps, which was sure to cause problems for relief programs. In all, there were 2,700
veteran workers in Florida, accounting for the majority of the veterans in the south.30
A different crisis struck the Florida camps well before November. Labor Day
weekend began on Friday, August 30, 1935. Many veterans went to Key West’s bars or
to Miami for the weekend with their recent pay. On Sunday, September 1, a coast guard
station at the nearby Dinner Key forecasted extreme winds with the possibility of
hurricane-force winds striking Florida. The Miami Herald printed warnings from the
weather bureau about possible tropical storms, with continuing coverage of the storm’s
path for the next few days. Coast Guard planes dropped warnings to various isolated
regions in the Keys, but it was assumed that the veterans’ camp leadership was preparing
for the storm. However, camp officials did not warn the veterans or begin to organize
any emergency measures until the middle of Labor Day on Monday. The unaware
veterans at Islamorada treated it as a day off, and many began drinking early. The
camp’s supervisors waited until it was certain that the hurricane would strike before
taking action. They ordered a train from Jacksonville at 2:00 PM, but it was repeatedly
delayed. It arrived at Islamorada at 8:00 PM, and almost immediately the hurricane
flooded the locomotive’s engine and derailed the cars. The hurricane landed with two
hundred mile per hour winds.31
In addition to the complete lack of warning for the men, the camp structures were
vulnerable to hurricane winds, being mostly tents and shacks. The hurricane missed
Miami, and at first it was not known how badly the Keys were hit by the storm. The
30
Best, 21; Dickson and Allen, 232-234.
31
Best, 23-24; Dickson and Allen, 234-236.
71
Florida East Coast Railroad’s tracks were unusable, and planes were unable to fly due to
high winds through Tuesday, slowing communication and surveys of the damage. The
governor of Florida sent a telegram about the disaster to the White House late on
Tuesday, and Roosevelt ordered the Army and Navy to give emergency assistance. The
Coast Guard was tasked with evacuating the survivors. The Florida National Guard, as
well as CCC and FERA camp workers, searched to find the dead. The storm’s victims
were drowned, washed away, or crushed. The search found over a hundred bodies by
Thursday. The federal government was the target of outrage, including a demand for
investigation from the Miami Chamber of Commerce. Harry Hopkins sent FERA
investigators, including his assistant Aubrey Williams, to Florida on Friday. Williams
was tasked with defending FERA and the government from accusations of negligence.32
On Sunday, September 8, 112 veterans were buried at Miami, and 327 people
were estimated to be missing. Williams gave FERA’s initial report to Roosevelt about
the incident, and it concluded that there was no FERA or government negligence at work.
The reasoning was that it could not have been predicted that the Jacksonville train would
be over two hours late. However, the knowledge of an approaching storm and the Coast
Guard’s warnings had saved other groups in the Keys. Twenty picnickers that evacuated
Indian Key before the storm thanked the Coast Guard Air Station for warning them.
Also, Ed Sheeran of the Florida Highway Department used the weather report to secure a
large amount of the state’s machinery more than a day before the hurricane hit. The
Roosevelt administration’s acceptance of this report led to further criticism. Congress
demanded a joint investigation by FERA and the Veterans Administration. FERA
32
Best, 92-97; Dickson and Allen, 238-243.
72
officials were reluctant to work with the VA’s head investigator, David Kennamer, and
advised against re-interviewing the original witnesses. They were concerned that the
veterans and other witnesses would give testimony condemning the agency.33
The American Legion began its own investigation of the disaster in October.
Smaller organizations and even individual veterans also gathered evidence, and sent their
findings to the Legion. One veteran witness from Camp 3 described how the camp’s
trucks sat idle during the disaster, and a local meteorologist testified that he had warned
the camps’ leaders fifteen hours beforehand. Ed Sheeran gave the most damaging
account of the incident. He stated that he had warned the camps on Sunday after securing
his equipment, but was ignored. The Legion report concluded that the destruction was
foreseeable and that the loss of life, amounting to 408 people, could have been prevented.
Kennamer’s report also laid the blame directly at the veterans’ camp commanders for not
warning the men or ordering evacuations in time. However, there is no record that the
American Legion and Kennamer reports were given to President Roosevelt.34
Congressional support for expensive New Deal programs began to wane in the
late 1930s. In 1938’s congressional elections, liberal Democrats lost a number of seats.
Although the party still had a considerable majority in both the Senate and the House,
many were conservative southern Democrats who were more likely to vote with
Republicans. The Democratic Party’s position remained roughly the same in 1940, but
by 1942, they held onto a very small majority. President Roosevelt maintained most of
his control over the war effort through tough politicking and the expansion of presidential
33
Best, 121-122; Daniels, 260; Dickson and Allen, 242-245, 248.
34
Best, 130; Dickson and Allen, 246-250.
73
war powers. In terms of domestic policy, there was increasing opposition to Roosevelt’s
New Deal programs and ideas.35
The defeat of the Works Financing Bill was the first major blow to Roosevelt’s
New Deal plans. Proposed in 1939, it would have used three billion dollars for public
works. It expanded on the president’s 1938 spending program, designed to combat the
recession. However, Republicans and Southern Democrats made significant cuts to the
bill and then blocked it completely. Continuing into the 1940s, even established
programs and policies were reversed. By 1943, Congress had eliminated numerous relief
and public assistance programs, including the Works Progress Administration and the
Civilian Conservation Corps.36
During Roosevelt’s presidency, a number of relief programs were created and
abandoned, and a few attempted to accommodate veterans in some way. The most
significant and direct veterans’ benefits bill would not apply to the World War I veterans,
however, but to the new veterans from World War II. Roosevelt, with recommendations
from his administration, began preparing for the inevitable demobilization of the army as
early as 1942. He ordered the National Resources Planning Board to outline plans for
employing and assisting returning veterans. The War Department assigned a committee
to study the issue, and the American Legion had a number of suggestions of its own.
Roosevelt’s advisors encouraged him to support benefits, for political as well as practical
reasons. He endorsed special benefits for veterans in his July 1943 fireside chat.37
35
Brinkley, 140.
36
Brinkley, 140-141.
37
Brinkley, 257-258.
74
The American Legion submitted a veterans’ bill to Congress in 1944. Roosevelt
considered it more developed than his own plans, and allowed it to be debated in
Congress without interference. Although it proposed an incredibly large social program,
Congress passed the bill with almost no changes. Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s
Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the G.I. Bill, in June. It provided generous
unemployment benefits, pensions, educational assistance, and loans for World War II
veterans. More than a million veterans attended colleges and universities through
government assistance in the postwar years. A later expansion of the bill provided health
care assistance and expanded the Veterans Administration hospitals.38
The G.I. Bill shows how much President Roosevelt’s approach to veterans’
benefits changed over the years. The generosity of the G.I. Bill contrasts with
Roosevelt’s early attempts at budget control. In his first term, Roosevelt used the CCC
and FERA to deal with veterans by giving them public works jobs. Stable jobs and
national homeless relief programs benefited the veterans, as well as many others, but
many of the leaders of the New Deal Agencies considered these men to be a nuisance to
manage. The work-relief camps were a convenient way to keep veterans quiet and far
away from Washington. The agencies’ leaders were slow to take veterans’ concerns
about the work camps seriously, even at the best of times. This had fatal results in the
1935 Florida Hurricane. A number of veterans were killed, despite the camps’ leadership
having clear warning.
The American Legion’s lobbying efforts for the bonus eventually succeeded. The
bonus bill was finally passed in 1936, providing a single payment of bonds to veterans.
38
Brinkley, 258-259; Milton Greenberg, The GI Bill: The Law That Changed
America (New York: Lickle Publishing, 1997), 16; Smith, 585.
75
The bonus marches gave the veterans public attention and sympathy, but the resources
and lobbying power of the American Legion were also necessary to put pressure on
Congress. The bonus itself was not as significant as how veterans’ actions influenced the
government. Congress feared another depression and another set of restless veterans.
President Roosevelt changed his mind about benefits as well, and supported the Legion’s
G.I. Bill proposal. This bill eased the aftermath of World War II for the government and
for veterans.
76
CONCLUSION
The government had no consistent plan to enact veterans’ benefits programs up to
the middle of the twentieth century. With each war, the government had to decide again
how much to give to veterans, and the form that the benefits would take. In the
Revolutionary War, Congress offered pensions and land grants to discourage desertion.
However, the states lacked funds to give soldiers even their standard pay, and Congress
could not decide on a definite plan for fulfilling its promises after the war. Soldiers and
officers were not happy with this situation. Unrest was serious enough that George
Washington needed to address the army and request that it have patience. Delayed
benefits became a common theme, even with the federal government in charge of those
obligations. In the immediate years after the Revolution, the government provided
pensions to only a tiny portion of the soldiers that served. The majority of Revolutionary
War pensions were granted between 1818 and 1832. This pattern of minimal initial
benefits followed by large expenditures continued until World War I.
In the 1800s, veterans became more organized and frequently demanded greater
benefits. Some of their demands were inspired by the benefits that veterans of previous
wars received. Veterans of the War of 1812 were similar to Revolutionary War veterans
77
at first, in that they received relatively few pensions for several decades. Some petitions
were made to the government for land grants, but they gained little traction until the
Mexican-American War. The government needed a large amount of manpower for that
war, and offered generous land grants in 1847 to promote enlistment. War of 1812
veterans resented this disparity, and convinced the government to grant them land as well
by 1850. The latter half of the 1800s also saw an enormous increase in pensions for both
of these groups of veterans. This shows that the federal government was willing and able
to provide large benefits, but these actions often came long after veterans had faced their
greatest postwar difficulties.
The Civil War was the largest and most damaging conflict yet. Veterans returned
to a harsh economy. They founded veterans’ associations for support, since many of
them struggled to support their families and received little help from the government.
These organizations provided aid to their members, and offered group solidarity. The
Grand Army of the Republic was the largest of these groups. At its highest point, it had
over 400,000 members and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on aid for
veterans and their families. Its lobbying efforts in the 1880s and 90s also greatly
increased the amount of aid that the government provided. Future veterans would also
organize to great effect.
World War I veterans had an especially difficult time returning to American
society. Their pay in the army was much lower than that of people who had been
employed domestically. Also, calls for a controlled return to the peacetime economy
were ignored. Demobilizing the army as soon as possible was seen as more expedient.
Millions of soldiers returned to the country as war industries suddenly declined, and they
78
had difficulty finding employment. Also, like earlier veterans, their benefits in the
postwar years were relatively small. A new veterans’ organization, the American Legion,
formed at the end of the war. It lobbied for improved benefits. When the Great
Depression suddenly came, veterans were hardly prepared. The bonus was seen as a
symbol of denied relief. There were periodic proposals in Congress to pay the veterans
early, but Congress was busy with numerous other issues, and President Hoover opposed
the bonus. Veterans wanted “their” money for relief from poverty. Hoover felt that
giving into the veterans’ demands would encourage other interest groups.
Walter Waters was frustrated that Congress and the American Legion were both
ignoring the bonus. He formed the Bonus Army with the idea that direct protest was the
best chance to convince Congress. On the way to protest in Washington, his group was
joined by thousands of other veterans seeking relief. The BEF was met with disdain and
suspicion by the Hoover administration. The government was afraid of militant veterans
attempting to seize power, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts or Hitler’s Brownshirts. Many
officials also worried about communist agitators influencing the BEF.
There were few serious confrontations between the veterans and the police at
first. The government became more concerned when, after the defeat of the bonus bill,
thousands of veterans remained in Washington. Due to increasing tension and encounters
between veterans and police, President Hoover ordered that the Bonus Army be evicted.
The army under General MacArthur dispersed the veterans with tear gas and burned the
Bonus Army’s camp. Waters attempted to find another settlement for the Bonus Army,
but eventually decided to disband the group. The use of violence shocked the public and
79
Herbert Hoover’s reputation was damaged, but no real progress was made on the bonus
or relief for veterans.
Veterans, including former Bonus Army members, did not stop appealing to the
government for aid. Like Hoover, President Franklin Roosevelt opposed the bonus. He
did not want to encourage any special interests during the Great Depression. Roosevelt
avoided Hoover’s mistakes with better political maneuvering. When the second wave of
marchers came to the capital asking for the bonus, he ordered that they be provided with
shelter and food. Roosevelt became popular with the veterans, despite his opposition to
the bonus and other monetary benefits. He ended the second bonus march by offering the
veterans positions in programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps and the Federal
Emergency Relief Administration, which did public works.
This solution kept most of the veterans out of the capital, although the New Deal
agencies were not entirely satisfied. The veterans were middle-aged and unwilling to quit
due to their families. They were shuffled between various programs, and FERA even
planned to shut down several veterans’ work camps in 1935. In September of that year,
though, a Florida hurricane combined with poor leadership from camp officials led to the
deaths of hundreds of veterans. The Roosevelt administration took little action in
response to the tragedy. A bill to pay the bonus was finally passed in 1936. What help
the New Deal could provide to veterans was short-lived, as many of Roosevelt’s
programs were cut back or eliminated in the 1940s.
The Bonus Army was not directly successful. While its presence in Washington
frightened many government officials, it took years for the bonus to be paid. However,
the mass protests and unrest of the 1930s did have an eventual effect. To forestall similar
80
problems with World War II veterans, Congress was willing to fund a large new benefits
program. The government accepted the American Legion’s proposals for a
comprehensive veterans’ benefits program. The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, better
known as the G.I. Bill, was expensive but it prevented another veterans’ movement even
before the end of World War II. The government took a proactive approach to managing
the economy and helping soldiers reenter society. In addition, the government expected a
prolonged war with Japan. The G.I. Bill would boost morale for the existing army, like
the promises made in the Revolutionary War.
The support that World War II veterans received dwarfed previous programs.
The Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, also known as the G.I. Bill, gave millions of former
soldiers significant help with education, property loans, and employment. American
veterans enjoyed a new standard of comprehensive aid, and the bill led to a widespread
increase in the level of education and a boost to the economy. The program was so
effective and popular that it was extended to the veterans of subsequent American wars.
The veterans’ plight in the Great Depression, as well as the actions of the Bonus Army,
had served as an example of how inadequate government action harmed both individuals
and the economy. George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it.” The past was clear enough in 1944 for the U.S. government
to take action. President Roosevelt and Congress created the G.I. Bill so as not to repeat
the worst of the Depression.
81
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