By Shannon Bow O’Brien, Associate Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin College of Liberal Arts. Originally published at The Conversation.
The Bonus Army March is a forgotten footnote of American history.
It involved as many as 30,000 mostly unemployed veterans who converged on Washington, D.C. in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand an early cash payment of a bonus they were promised for their volunteer service in World War I.
The bonus was due in 1945, but the Great Depression created financial panic across the country, and the WWI veterans wanted their money sooner rather than later.
When the U.S. Senate refused to pass a bill to make the payments, many of the veterans returned home. But the great majority remained and set up camps and occupied buildings near the Capitol – much to the dismay of local police, who tried to evict the demonstrators from their makeshift campgrounds.
A riot ensued, leaving two demonstrators dead and dozens injured.
At that point, on July 28, 1932, the police asked for federal help. In a written statement, President Herbert Hoover deployed his Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to settle the matter.
“In order to put an end to this rioting and defiance of civil authority,” Hoover wrote, “I have asked the Army to assist the District authorities to restore order.”
MacArthur’s orders were to secure the buildings and contain the protesters by surrounding their campsite in Anacostia Flats located near the Capitol.
But as MacArthur would do throughout his career – most notably in Korea when his disobedience resulted in his firing – he exceeded his orders.
Late that afternoon, historians have written, nearly 500 mounted cavalry men and 500 infantry soldiers, with bayonets drawn, were accompanied were accompanied by six tanks and another 800 local police officers to Anacostia Flats. It didn’t take long before the protesters were chased out of the city and their encampments burned to the ground.
Aides to MacArthur would later say he never received the orders to simply contain the Bonus Army.
The Bonus Army March was one of the few times in American history when the U.S. military was used to shut down a massive demonstration of peaceful protesters. The debacle also came to symbolize Hoover’s perceived callousness toward the unemployed during the Great Depression and led to his defeat by Franklin Roosevelt in the 1932 presidential election.
What the military response did not do was deter the Bonus Army demonstrators for long.
The fight for bonus checks
At the end of the First World War in 1918, the U.S. government wanted to provide bonus pay to the soldiers who volunteered to fight in the American Expeditionary Force.
The volunteers were given certificates promising a bonus in 1945. Under the agreement, each veteran would receive US$1 for every day served at home, and $1.25 for every day served overseas. According to the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, a maximum of $625 plus compound interest per veteran was set.
But by the winter of 1931, many veterans, like most Americans, were desperately in need of cash.
Starting in Portland, Oregon, about 300 of them decided to travel to Washington to make their case to the government. Their journey gained national attention and prompted other veterans to travel to Washington as well. As time went on, families began to join the men.
Congressional gridlock
The Bonus Army became a problem for Hoover and congressional leaders as local authorities grew tired of an estimated 30,000 people camping out in their streets and squatting in city buildings.
But faced with a shrinking federal budget and precarious national economy, neither Hoover nor Congress wanted to authorize further depletion of the national treasury. Estimates were as high as $2.3 billion for the federal government to pay the bonuses.
Bonus marchers tried to pressure congressional leaders by having veterans in the waiting rooms of the offices of each member of the Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the federal budget. But they were losing the public relations war turning against them.
By that time, rumors spread by opponents of the marchers were flying among congressional leaders and military officials about the unsanitary conditions at the camp, as well as possible communist infiltration.
When the bill to pay the bonus was defeated in July 1932, an estimated 8,000 Bonus Army marchers were at the Capitol. With that many angry men surrounding the building, local police feared potential violence.
But instead of launching a violent attack, the marchers began singing “My Country Tis of Thee” and “America the Beautiful” as they walked back to their camp.
Use of military force
On July 28, 1932, the local and federal governments decided that time had run out for Bonus Army demonstrators.
Around 11 p.m., MacArthur called a press conference to justify his actions.
“Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for 24 hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle,” MacArthur told reporters. “Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our government would have been severely threatened.”
With MacArthur in command, shacks were set on fire, and even the tents loaned by the National Guard were destroyed. Tanks and soldiers blocked several bridges in order to prevent people from re-entering the city.
Images of children and women driven out by tear gas and flames shocked and appalled the American public when they were published by newspapers across the country.
Despite their apparent defeat, Bonus Army veterans continued to push for early payments.
Four years later, in January 1936, Congress passed the long-stalled Bonus bill that called for payments of nearly $2 billion to the mostly men who volunteered their services during World War I.
Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto and paid the veterans an average of $580 per man, which was slightly less than the $600 they would have received had they waited until 1945.
Today, the Anacostia field is a largely overgrown meadowland and only has one very small sign marking that the Bonus Army was ever there.
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I imagine that there was a keen awareness by the PTB of what protests in St. Petersburg/Petrograd had led to and they were going to head it off tout de suite.
Well done~
A 1933 Bonus Army march was planned, but FDR cut it off at the past by initially allowing WW1 vets into the fledgling CCC-which became the most popular of his acronyms.
Otherwise from then on, CCC enlistees needed to be white, single and between 18-25 years old.
The US was not the only one to be experiencing this type of problem. Across the Atlantic in the UK they had the 1932 Hunger March to contend with which was met by a force of 70,000 and also ended in violence-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Hunger_March,_1932
“Great National Hunger March against the Means Test”
Duly noted.
el pueblo unido, jama sera vincido!
bandiera rossa triomphera!
Just a few additions to this article that might be of interest. One, MacArthur’s aide at the time was Major Dwight D. Eisenhower. Major George S. Patton also led the cavalry used against the Bonus Army under MacArthur’s command. So three well known Generals from WWII, one later an elected President, assisted in disbursement of the Bonus Army. However it should be pointed out that MacArthur disobeyed and greatly exceeded his orders with the actions he took. Eisenhower in a later interview with historian Stephen Ambrose is quoted as saying, “I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there” referring to MacArthur. The second point of interest is that of General Smedley Butler, well known for his quote, “War is a racket.” Butler was approached by a group of businessman and bankers, which included Senator Prescott Bush, the father of President George H. W. Bush and grandfather to President George W. Bush, asking Butler to lead a coup against President Roosevelt using members of the Bonus Army in November of 1934. None of the coup instigators were punished. However, Prescott Bush later went on to become involved in business dealings in Germany with Hitler and the Nazis, his German assets being seized in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt under the Trading with the Enemy Act, which also carried prison penalties which Bush escaped.
That covers much of the ground, i too, would have brought up.
the “coup” of which butler warned congress of, was to bring to bear the 3 million (claimed) supporters of the liberty league, and american legion. The “strike breakers”/ muscle for industrialists.
In the ongoing war for people,rights,and liberty…. the constant foe… as always… wall st bankers.
labor vs. capital.
The “fascists”(those on the side of capital)(neoliberals) vs. the “communists”(label used to taint anyone who believes in workers rights and life,liberty and the pursuit of happiness)
Butler and Mcguire even testified , the bankers(many morgan people(footnote @ 1924 jp morgan syndicate was @ 200 corporations and accounted for 1/6 of the GDP of the US) were “sound money” people. They were worried that FDR was going to have to change the way “the US gov’t gets money”/ funding/ bonds…etc.
Monetary reform scared them then… and they still get the same free lunch today, and oppose true monetary reform… In the US.
Another interesting tidbit, although it may be apochryphal: Major Eisenhower was apparently extremely frustrated by the logistical nightmare involved in moving his forces and their supplies around in 1932 Washington DC / Maryland / Virginia as they sought to counter the bonus marchers. One result was his pushing of the National Defense and Highways Act of 1956.
He also took part in a coast to coast army convoy in 1919.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/in-1919-dwight-d-eisenhower-suffered-through-historys-worst-cross-country-road-trip
When you see homeless veterans lying in the street, remember that the cost to end homelessness, for all, not just veterans, is approximately $20 Billion.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/homelessness-christmas-decorations_n_2276536
The U.S. has spent four times that to fund the Ukraine looting opportunity.
Or we could just overrule the NIMBYs and build apartment blocks like they do in many other countries and as the US did until circa the 1980s. But for the most, the solid middle class, especially the older ones with a lot of equity, want homelessness because scarcity makes their homes worth more. Sorry, I just don’t think that if the feds suddenly disbursed $20 billion or $1 trillion for homelessness that the NIMBYs would suddenly allow a whole lot of homes to get built, except in certain edge cases in big cities.
Ban non-citizen ownership of property in the U.S. and enforce immigration laws and there’d be no need to build anything, let alone creating tax incentives for the 10% of homes that are vacant to be occupied.
And what would be the cost to build those thousands of apartment blocks? Why do homeless, who are mostly itinerant, get to choose where to lodge? If every homeless person returned to where they grew up, the load would be less concentrated on pleasant weather cities on the west coast and in the south.
Wow.
OK Jessica, let me see if I understand your proposal correctly:
I understand the desire to combat absentee landlords, but let’s look at some possible unintended consequences.
(sarc)
1) Foreign citizens living legally in the USA should have their property expropriated, because they are foreign.
2) Criminalize brown people who come into the USA (possibly illegally) to pick your fruits and vegetables or work those horrendous abattoir jobs that good white people shun. Food prices will be adjusted accordingly.
3) Bring in internal passports, because we need to control the movements of those undesirables. They shouldn’t be able to go where they want to live. We don’t want them to clutter up those beautiful fair-weather cities!
4) Hell! Why not set up a chain of camps where these undesirables and useless eaters can perform useful work until they drop dead from exhaustion. Use what’s left of them to heat the facility! (Ooops, we are already on our way to this with our privatized gulag prison system.)
(/sarc)
I would propose:
1) Taxing private equity and hedge funds out of existence.
2) Smash up the big corporate monopolies.
3) Ban Bill Gates from buying farmland (or just taxing him out of existence too).
4) End the Ukraine grifting black hole.
5) Implement a New New Deal, where working people deemed redundant by the corporate vampire squid can contribute to rebuilding a viable society.
6) Implement a proper Medicare for All system – end the health care money suck.
7) Properly fund public universities – bring back affordable education and public research.
This would be a start. I’m sure others can add many more items to this list.
Here is a movie you should watch on this matter https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6414704/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
“Congress overrode Roosevelt’s veto and paid the veterans an average of $580 per man, which was slightly less than the $600 they would have received had they waited until 1945.”
Does any one know why Roosevelt vetoed the bill?
Interesting. Roosevelt suspended the gold standard in 1933, so nothing would have prevented issuing money to these veterans. As one previous commenter says, though, his “job guarantee” programs did give them preferential treatment.
According to the interwebs, $580 in 1936 is almost $12,000 now. That would have helped a lot I’m sure.
Lest we forget crapification and financialization ever change, they were allowed to borrow 22.5% of the certificate’s face value, upped to 50% during the depression.
Really sad. Unspeakably so. Soldiers are Americas cannon fodder, nothing new in this concept, indeed the Europeans pioneered and perfected it. The thing with the US is just how much they milk it in public yet treat their service men and women like shit in the reality. I despise US imperialism more every day yet I have great sympathy and time for their Vets.