STEPHEN R. ORTIZ Rethinking the Bonus March: Federal Bonus Policy, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Origins of a Protest Movement Their remedy, obviously, is to pool their political strength . . . and bring irresistible pressure to bear upon the politicians. Various altruistic leaders, eager for the ensuing jobs, already whoop them up to that end. I suspect that they will be heard from hereafter, and in a most unpleasant manner. We are just beginning to pay for the war. —H. L. Mencken on the veterans’ Bonus, December, 19311 In 1927, the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW), the national organization founded in 1899 by veterans of the Spanish-American and PhilippineAmerican Wars, appeared destined for historical obscurity. The organization that would later stand with the American Legion as a pillar of the powerful twentieth-century veterans’ lobby struggled to maintain a membership of sixty thousand veterans. Despite desperate attempts to recruit from the ranks of the nearly 2.5 million eligible World War veterans, the VFW lagged behind in membership both the newly minted American I would like to thank Jeff Adler, Bob Zieger, Jennifer Keene, and Mark Hove for their helpful criticism and words of encouragement during the writing of this essay. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers who provided insightful criticism that enhanced this essay considerably. Although they are unaware of it, the participants in the 2004 Policy History Conference also played an important role in the conceptualization of this essay. Thanks to those in attendance, and to the Journal of Policy History staff, for holding such a stimulating conference. Last, special thanks to the staff and Association of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and to Richard Kolb at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. THE JOURNAL OF POLICY HISTORY, Vol. 18, No. 3, 2006. Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 276 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH Legion and even the Spanish War Veterans. The upstart Legion alone, from its 1919 inception throughout the 1920s, averaged more than seven hundred thousand members. Indeed, in 1929, Royal C. Johnson, the chairman of the House Committee on World War Veterans Legislation and a member of both the Legion and the VFW, described the latter as “not sufficiently large to make it a vital factor in public sentiment.” And yet, by 1932, in the middle of an economic crisis that dealt severe blows to the membership totals of almost every type of voluntary association, the VFW’s membership soared to nearly two hundred thousand veterans. Between 1929 and 1932, the VFW experienced this surprising growth because the organization demanded full and immediate cash payment of the deferred Soldiers’ Bonus, while the American Legion opposed it. Thus, by challenging federal veterans’ policy, the VFW rose out of relative obscurity to become a prominent vehicle for veteran political activism. As important, by doing so the VFW unwittingly set in motion the protest movement known as the Bonus March.2 In the summer of 1932, approximately twenty thousand World War I veterans descended on Washington, D.C., to lobby Congress for immediate payment on their adjusted service certificates, certificates usually referred to as the Bonus. After weeks of mounting tension, and the congressional defeat of the Bonus, the U.S. Army forcibly evicted the Bonus Marchers and their families from makeshift encampments on the Anacostia River. The Bonus March, and its pitiable denouement, figure prominently in the Depression-era historical narrative. For, in addition to capturing the social dislocation wrought by the Great Depression, the violent conclusion to the Bonus March has come to symbolize the Herbert Hoover administration’s perceived disregard for the suffering of average Americans during the Depression’s bleakest days. Indeed, despite persuasive evidence exculpating Hoover for the rout of the Bonus Marchers, the episode remains historical shorthand for the failure of the Hoover presidency.3 Recent studies have begun to reconsider the Bonus March more broadly. Jennifer D. Keene examines the March to advance her argument that conscription during the Great War produced a cohort of ex-soldiers with an expansive understanding of the social contract. Lucy G. Barber explores the Bonus March as part of a long tradition, beginning with Coxey’s Army in 1894, of protest marches on Washington, D.C., that helped redefine the capital’s public space into an accepted arena for citizens’ political expression. The latest work on the Bonus March by Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen greatly expands our understanding of the Bonus Army’s racially integrated nature. While these recent studies have STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 277 broadened the scope of inquiry, they do not alter the previous generation of scholarship’s depiction of the Bonus March as a spontaneous social protest movement by unemployed veterans, sparked by the Depression yet unsupported by the major veteran organizations.4 This perspective results in large measure from an over-reliance on the American Legion national organization as the voice of organized veteran political activism—an overreliance based on both its stature as the largest veteran organization and its extensive archival material. Thus, while it is true that the American Legion national leadership opposed early payment of the Bonus and condemned the Bonus Marchers, the emphasis on the American Legion has obscured the political milieu from which the Bonus March emerged.5 This article seeks to recontextualize the Bonus March by examining the organized efforts carried out by the VFW for full and immediate payment of the Bonus. In doing so, the article argues that the supposedly unprompted Bonus Army that moved on Washington in the summer of 1932 actually responded to organized political activism orchestrated by the VFW, an activism that predated the onset of the Great Depression.6 Moreover, by viewing the origins of the March and the growth of the VFW in tandem, the symbiotic relationships between federal policy and voluntary associations and the state and civil society can be fruitfully examined,7 for the federal policy that outlined the Bonus’s deferred features inadvertently led to a heady political mobilization by veterans. When the largest of the veteran organizations, the American Legion, failed to challenge federal policy, veterans first flowed into the VFW, and then onto the streets of the Capital. Federal policies aimed at benefiting veterans instead transformed them into activist citizens.8 And the attendant rise of the VFW to political prominence would have far-reaching results. As the two major veteran organizations became fierce rivals for veterans’ allegiance after 1932, their associational competition would be as responsible as the historical memory of the march itself in leading to the passage of one of the most sweeping pieces of social legislation in U.S. history: the GI Bill of 1944.9 Before 1929, the VFW joined the American Legion in battling three successive administrations over the issue of adjusted compensation, typically called simply “the Bonus.” Immediately following World War I, ex-soldiers began to call for an adjustment of their wartime pay. Soldiers complained that wages of thirty dollars a month, minus mandatory war-risk insurance payments, left them with paltry compensation compared to the inflated wartime wages being paid to those not in uniform. The fortunes made in the war industries exacerbated the feelings of inequity. From the 278 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH start, the VFW echoed soldiers’ calls for a Bonus, but the Wilson administration opposed any such payment and found initial support from the newly organized American Legion. While many veterans within the Legion voiced the desire for additional compensation, the Legion suppressed the issue until 1920. Finally, in 1920, Bonus advocates within the Legion forced the organization to back some form of adjusted compensation legislation. Between 1920 and 1924, then, the VFW and Legion fought side by side for some form of Bonus legislation.10 In the election year of 1924, Congress passed the Adjusted Compensation Act. The specifics of the legislation proved significant because while veterans would receive a Bonus for their soldiering experience, it would not be as an immediate cash payment. Rather, the Bonus would be awarded as a deferred interest-bearing certificate payable in 1945 or, at death, to the veteran’s beneficiaries. In 1945, veterans would receive compensation of a dollar for every day in service, overseas veterans $1.25 per day, plus the accumulated 4 percent interest. Moreover, as part of the bill, after two years veterans would be allowed to take out a 22.5 percent loan from the Veterans Bureau on their certificates’ face value. Including interest, this total value could reach as high as sixteen hundred dollars. The American Legion leaders supported the insurance policy provisions. The VFW argued against the deferment, but lacking the size and lobbying stature of the Legion, relented, preferring the measure over no Bonus at all. Congress, eager to please this large and vocal constituency, overrode a Calvin Coolidge veto, making the Bonus law and handing veterans a longsought victory. To the VFW, however, the victory proved insufficient as the organization continued to voice displeasure over what veterans called the “tombstone” Bonus.11 Between 1926 and 1928, the policies of deferred payment and partial loans against that payment provided the grist for the VFW’s challenge to federal veterans’ policy. The VFW leadership began to renege on the adjusted service certificates compromise. The leadership offered proposals that chipped away at the Bonus insurance policy by pushing for immediate payment to those rated permanently and totally disabled. In multiple national encampment resolutions, the VFW argued that the “permanent total” invariably suffered a shortened life span and, therefore, should “enjoy the benefits derived from the value of his adjusted compensation during the remaining months of his life.” Yet, the organization’s calls for any adjustments to the Bonus provisions went unheeded by both the Legion and veteran advocates in Congress.12 Before 1929, the VFW and the Legion had worked in tandem on most veterans’ issues. Both fought diligently for expanded medical benefits and STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 279 the construction of veteran hospitals and clinics. Each sought to strengthen the existing system of pensions and benefits for ex-servicemen, their widows, and families. Both organizations attempted to make the Veterans Bureau and the War Risk Insurance Board more efficient and more responsive to veterans’ needs. On nonveterans’ issues, the Legion and the VFW called for a strong national defense and military preparedness, supporting increased defense spending and the maintenance of civilian military training camps. Moreover, both stridently promoted the emotionally charged goal of “Americanism” and fervently opposed Bolshevism in any guise. Notwithstanding these nearly identical political agendas, the two national organizations differed in crucial ways.13 The VFW not only lacked the Legion’s size and attendant lobbying strength, but also its prominent, politically connected leadership. In 1928, the Legion maintained a membership of nearly eight hundred thousand, while the VFW struggled to keep seventy thousand dues-paying members. Just as important, a group of wealthy and conservative elites known as “the kingmakers” dominated the Legion’s national leadership. Never far from the reins of national political power, “kingmakers” such as Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Ogden Mills, and Bennett Champ Clark also exerted a tremendous amount of control over the Legion’s policies. While rank-and-file veterans complained about this Legion oligarchy, the VFW leadership tended to be less elite in social origins, less entrenched, and ultimately more responsive to the membership than its Legion counterparts. The VFW leadership’s lack of economic and political stature also translated into a surprising lack of funds for the organization. Thus, before 1929, the conservative, power-brokering Legion towered over the VFW not just in membership but also in power and prestige, however measured.14 In 1929, however, the VFW embarked on a new course of action that would eventually transform the fortunes of the organization. As allowed by the Adjusted Compensation Act, veterans began to draw loans on their adjusted service certificates as soon as they were eligible to do so. Between 1927 and 1929, 1.65 million veterans borrowed $133.4 million against their certificates at the Veterans’ Bureau and nearly $30 million more at banks. Bolstered by the level of veterans’ loan activity, the VFW national leadership began to argue more forcefully that the federal government must uphold its obligations to veterans permanently disadvantaged by their war service. In a Foreign Service editorial deriding the “Grave Yard Bonus,” the national leadership declared, “The large percentage of loans made on the compensation certificates, since the first of 1927, proves how seriously was—and still is—the need of the average world war veteran.”15 280 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH At the 1929 national encampment in St. Paul, Minnesota, the VFW delegates went on record endorsing the proposal by the populist Iowa senator Smith W. Brookhart to pay the Bonus immediately. The encampment resolution ordered the VFW leadership to “take appropriate action to further the passage and administration of the measure.” Thus, prior to the stock market crash and the social dislocation of the Great Depression, the VFW made the government’s payment of the Bonus a signature issue, based on the rationale that wartime service severely disrupted the economic lives of veterans. The federal policy of a deferred Bonus coupled with the loan provision left the door wide open for future veteran political activism.16 The Depression did not trigger veterans’ call for immediate cash payment of the Bonus, but it did impart a new intensity to their demands. While veterans’ arguments for immediate payment hinged on the notion that wartime service unfairly disadvantaged them, they—like many Americans—began to bear the additional burdens brought on by the Depression. As early as November 1929, the VFW national leadership witnessed the impact of the stock market crash on veterans’ economic livelihoods. VFW National Commander Hezekiah N. Duff wired President Hoover asking that he employ the bully pulpit and urge business leaders to provide veterans with additional assistance through preferential hiring programs. On veteran unemployment, the VFW commander reported to the president, “The local units of the VFW throughout the country are being besieged daily with appeals for help from veterans unable to secure employment.” Duff painted a grim picture, “Thousands are shuffling along the streets of our cities, thinly-clad and hunger-driven, in futile search for employment and a chance to exist in the country for which they fought and were willing to die on the field of battle.” As evidence of the problem, over a nine-day period in January 1930, 170,000 needy World War I veterans applied for first-time loans on their Bonus certificates. Indeed, the scant existing evidence suggests that the Depression disproportionately affected veterans. Veterans’ Administration studies in 1930 and 1931 found that veterans experienced a nearly 50 percent higher unemployment rate than nonveterans of the same age cohort. Another Depression-era VA report concluded that veterans experienced longer stretches of unemployment and more dire financial need compared to nonveterans.17 As the Depression deepened in 1930, veteran demands for some form of relief intensified. VFW Commander Duff again wrote Hoover asking for federal assistance. Duff explained that the citizenry recognized the federal government’s obligation to veterans, noting: “All these citizens STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 281 know is that these veterans were hale and hearty before they went into service during the World War, and that they are physical and mental wrecks as well as industrial losses today.” Congress, eager to please this important constituency, sought to alleviate some veterans’ problems. The 1930 congressional session, however, focused on components of veteran legislation other than the Bonus. In the summer, Congress explored, and then passed, substantial legislation on veteran issues. Bills including the Veteran Relief Act granting 150,000 disability pensions to veterans previously unable to prove their ailments were service connected, several expanded pension adjustments, and the consolidation of the veteranrelated federal agencies into the Veterans’ Administration took up a considerable portion of the congressional docket. Many commentators suggested that the renewed interest in veteran affairs, although a typical election-year concern, could be seen as an attempt to curtail demands for the Bonus. Indeed, the expansion of disability pensions meant many desperate veterans would now receive some federal financial support. The Bonus remained tabled in Congress for the remainder of the year.18 At the 1930 national encampment in Baltimore, the VFW maintained the organization’s mandate to fight for immediate payment. Surprisingly, the VFW’s relationship with Herbert Hoover proved amicable despite the organization’s demands for the Bonus. Indeed, Hoover made the trip to Baltimore to review the VFW’s national encampment parade. He declined, however, an opportunity to speak to the VFW delegates. Hoover found no pressing political reasons to discourage the VFW from supporting the Bonus. The larger, more powerful Legion, however, proved a different matter.19 When the American Legion met in Boston just weeks after the VFW encampment, the Legion leadership enlisted Hoover to squelch the plans of its most unruly member, the congressional sponsor of immediate Bonus payment, Wright Patman (D-Tex.). Patman publicly announced his intentions of raising the question of the Bonus before the assembled Legion delegates. This so worried administration officials and sympathetic members of the Legion that Hoover, joined by Calvin Coolidge on the dais, gave the first presidential speech to the organization. In the speech, prepared with the aid of Legion lobbyist, John Thomas Taylor, Hoover appealed to the Legionnaires’ patriotism and, pointing to the summer of veteran legislation, explained that the federal government had been very generous to veterans already. Hoover’s address enabled Legion leaders to successfully turn back the Bonus tide at the convention. The Legion national leadership’s victory over Patman—a Legionnaire but ineligible for VFW membership—changed the congressman’s tactics and further improved the fortunes of the VFW.20 282 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH In December 1930, Patman made overtures to the VFW national leadership to join forces on the Bonus. By this point, the VFW had been supporting the issue for well over a year. Patman’s solicitation of the VFW resulted from his frustration with the intransigence of the Legion leadership. In December, as he wooed the VFW leadership, Patman berated the conservative element in the Legion for opposing the Bonus.21 Throughout December, Patman also spoke with Washington, D.C., area VFW posts, often debating with Rep. Hamilton Fish Jr. (R-N.Y.) over the respective merits of the Bonus bills they would submit at the beginning of the new congressional session. Patman’s efforts bore fruit as District VFW posts began reporting their endorsement of the Patman plan in the weekly veterans’ section of the Washington Post. The Federal Post described its members’ support for Patman’s bill, even though they reported that not one of their members was in need of relief.22 In January 1931, at the start of the congressional session, some fortyseven Bonus-related proposals circulated through Congress. Of the fortyseven bill proposals, twenty-eight came from Democrats, eighteen from Republicans, and one from a Farm-Labor congressman. As this broad tripartisan pressure mounted, Congress and the capital witnessed an explosive month of VFW activities. The VFW’s aggressive public lobbying tactics, official testimony before both houses of Congress, and Bonus marches to the Capitol by VFW members kept the organization in the spotlight.23 On January 21, the VFW ramped up the public pressure for the Bonus. A thousand VFW-led veterans rallied to the Capitol in a procession delivering petitions supporting immediate payment. The 124 members of Congress who publicly supported the Bonus accepted the petitions on the Capitol steps, drawing cheers from the veteran assembly.24 Three days after the Bonus rally, two hundred veterans congregated in Philadelphia’s Independence Square proclaiming their intentions to march to Washington in support of immediate Bonus payment. After speeches by their leaders, VFW members John Alfieri and Terrance B. Cochran of the Cochran VFW post in Philadelphia, and music from the VFW Darby post band, the marchers began a walk to Washington carrying flags and a handmade sign reading “Philadelphia to Washington.” Only twenty-six of the marchers made it to Washington, but the hungry and exhausted men managed to buttonhole the Pennsylvania congressional delegation and call on Bonus leader Patman. Some of the marchers hoped to appear before the Ways and Means Committee meetings planned for that week. When asked if the march had been a failure, the veterans prophetically explained to the contrary, “The hike might serve as STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 283 a motive to other veterans’ groups to actively back the [adjusted] pay bills with similar demonstrations.”25 Yet, ultimately, Legion actions determined the course of legislative action on the Bonus. On January 25, bowing to internal pressure from fifteen State Legion departments and the mounting public pressure for the Bonus, the American Legion National Executive Committee (NEC) met to review the Legion’s position. The Legion NEC made an unexpected reversal and endorsed the principle of immediate payment, noting in the resolution that the Bonus “would benefit immeasurably not only the veterans but the citizenry of the entire country.” The Legion did not endorse any specific measure, but the Legion’s decision imparted a new weight to the scheduled hearings in the Ways and Means Committee for the next week.26 The new Legion position turned the tide in Congress for some liberalization of the Bonus, be it full cash payment or some partial measure. The VFW continued to voice its support for full and immediate payment. In testimony before both the Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee, VFW Commander Paul Wolman argued that the Bonus would have three positive results. It would help relieve veterans’ suffering, prove a “marvelous stimulant to existing economic conditions,” and relieve the federal government of an existing debt. Wolman explained, “The Government would simply transfer an obligation, already assumed, from the shoulders of the veterans—who can not carry the burden—into the strongboxes of bondholders.”27 When a proposal to increase the amount veterans could borrow against their certificates, from 22.5 to 50 percent, received backing from the Legion’s chief lobbyist, John Thomas Taylor, however, Congress jumped at the opportunity to satisfy veteran demands without fundamentally altering the established Bonus policy. This compromise legislation, like the original Adjusted Compensation Act, encountered intense opposition from the administration and business groups. Secretary of the Treasury Mellon assumed the point for the administration, characterizing any Bonus loan or payments as fiscally ruinous. The Republican National Committee released a statement claiming that if the Bonus passed, “we can expect a business depression and a period of acute human suffering the like of which this country has never known.”28 On February 12, 1931, Congress took action, passing the 50 percent loan bill, despite assurances from the administration that it would be vetoed. Hoover’s promised veto message challenged the arguments for the Bonus loan and warned of the financial hardships on the government. He derided the notion that the loans would stimulate business, calling 284 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH the money veterans might spend from their loans “wasteful expenditure” and “no assistance in the return of real prosperity.” Hoover rejected the moral arguments for the Bonus, noting that “the patriotism of our people is not a material thing.” Moreover, he warned that paying the Bonus threatened the moral fiber of the country by eroding the virtues of “selfreliance and self-support.” Despite these arguments, Congress quickly overrode the veto. Time referred to the decisive vote to override as Hoover’s “most serious congressional reversal.” Veterans gladly took advantage of the newly available loans. On the first day, 18,000 veterans applied for loans in the New York City Veterans Bureau offices alone. By January 1932, 2.5 million veterans had borrowed the full 50 percent. Michigan senator Arthur Vandenberg later explained to Hoover that the loan liberalization was the only way to curtail the drive for full payment. Vandenberg wrote, “I shall always believe that if [Congress] had not embraced the loan plan . . . there would have been no escape from the full payment of these compensation certificates at that time.”29 Yet, the federal government’s continued reluctance to completely satisfy the admitted obligation only led to further veteran political activism. As it had in 1924, the VFW relented, accepting the compromise measure for practical reasons even though the organization continued to call for full payment. The VFW leadership still bemoaned “the injustice of the tombstone bonus,” but it “accepted the compromise measure . . . because we realized this was the best we could hope for under existing conditions.” Ironically, the 50 percent loan bill, and the political turmoil surrounding it, proffered the VFW leadership new ammunition in their fight for full payment. The Hoover administration and business group’s overwrought concerns about the catastrophic financial impact of even the 50 percent provision gave the VFW leaders a sharp retort. One month later, the editors of Foreign Service heaped scorn on those arguments in an editorial entitled “No Chaos Yet.” The editors dryly noted, “Despite gloomy predictions of a terrible calamity, impending bankruptcy, industrial chaos, and a tumultuous financial crisis, nothing has actually been exploded but the myths.”30 The VFW’s militant position on the Bonus brought the organization unaccustomed success. In terms of membership growth, and the expansion of the organization into new communities, the Bonus struggle paid real dividends for the VFW. From 1929 to 1931, the VFW grew from just fewer than 70,000 to 138,620 dues-paying members, nearly doubling the membership. As impressively, the VFW expanded its organizational structure into new communities with the formation of 700 new posts, a 43 percent increase. Post growth began to increase dramatically in the late STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 285 fall of 1930, coinciding with the Legion’s stated opposition to the Bonus. In October and November 1930, the VFW chartered fifty new posts each month—setting records for the organization. The growth in 1931 proved most remarkable with 350 new posts being established and seventy more regaining their charter after becoming defunct for nonpayment of dues. By the end of 1931, the VFW’s institutional strength surpassed that of any other time in the organization’s previous history. To the upper echelons of the organization leadership, its position on the Bonus proved the difference-maker. The VFW Legislative Committee chairman noted in his annual report that “it is felt that our legislative stand on the bonus . . . provided the working tools for our recruiting drive. It certainly confirms the statement that the Veterans of Foreign Wars truly represent the veterans.”31 The 1931 national encampment, organized by a VFW member from Independence, Missouri, Harry S. Truman, reflected the organization’s new standing. Republican VFW officials wrote to the administration fearing the VFW encampment would turn into a “Democratic Rally” in the friendly confines of the Kansas City Pendergast regime. A VA official with ties to both the administration and the VFW deemed some appearance by a high-ranking administration figure “darn near essential” to stemming a Democratic veterans’ “promenade.” VA Director Frank T. Hines did attend and address the delegates, but his arguments against the Bonus proved futile.32 Hines’s remarks to the delegates underscored the changing fortunes of the VFW. He congratulated the VFW delegates on their recruiting success but cautioned them in thinly veiled terms about demanding the Bonus. Hines remarked, “You have increased your membership greatly and with that increase comes a greater responsibility, because we must remember that before we were veterans we were citizens of this great country of ours and we are still citizens.” He advised the VFW delegates and leaders to tell the next Congress, “because we realize the situation existing in our country and because we are patriotic citizens of this country . . . that we are going to be exceedingly cautious in our demands, because we are not going to be put in the position of asking for something and then be blamed later on because we caused a greater depression or a greater problem in our Nation.” Commander Wolman immediately and sharply rebuked Hines in front of the delegates, “We do not think we have ever made any demands as an organization which were unfair, and we certainly pledge that we shall not make any demands that our members believe to be unfair, sir.” The encampment promptly, and unanimously, passed a resolution reaffirming the VFW’s commitment to immediate cash payment of the Bonus.33 286 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH Weeks later, the American Legion convention met in Detroit. The NEC decision in January to reverse the official position against the Bonus complicated the matter for those trying to suppress the Patman forces in the Legion. Legion leaders feared the delegates might swing over to a cash payment position, reflecting the NEC decision. To undermine calls for the Bonus, the Legion enlisted a reluctant Hoover to speak to the convention yet again. Despite warnings from Royal Johnson that a riot might ensue during the convention over the Bonus, Hoover accepted the invitation and addressed the Legionnaires for the second consecutive year. Hoover appealed to the Legion’s “character and idealism” and history of service, asking for “determined opposition by you to additional demands upon the nation until we have won this war against world depression.” In response, the Legion delegates passed a resolution voicing almost identical language to Hoover’s request and beat back a Bonus vote, 902–507. The Legion resolution called upon “the able-bodied men of America, rich and poor, veteran, civilian, and statesmen, to refrain from placing unnecessary financial burdens upon National, State, or municipal governments.” Legion leaders attributed the defeat of the Bonus to Hoover’s address. One wrote Larry Richey, the president’s secretary, “I firmly believe the Chief’s coming to Detroit changed the vote from two to one for to two to one against payment of the bonus.”34 In late 1931, as the leadership realized the Legion would not join in the fight during the next congressional session, the VFW started operating more independently, staking an even more vigorous claim to the issue. Moreover, the VFW’s Bonus position took on a more edgy ideological cast as the issue began to be conflated with both inflationary economic thinking and the calls for increased “purchasing power” to defeat the Depression. In the process, the VFW made a prophet out of Baltimore’s resident cynic, H. L. Mencken, who predicted that the fight for the Bonus would turn ugly. In a December editorial, Mencken admitted that “the damage the heroes suffered by being thrust into the war is much under-estimated, and that the amount of compensation they have got since they came home is equally over-estimated.” He called the Hoover Legion speech, and the Legion national leadership’s response, a “spit in the eye” to veterans. Moreover, Mencken predicted that veterans would “pool their political strength” under “various altruistic leaders” who “already whoop them up to that end.” Between December 1931 and May 1932, the VFW would “whoop them up” even more, establishing the immediate context from which the Bonus March would emerge.35 STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 287 In late 1931, in response to the Legion leadership’s success in squelching a favorable bonus resolution, the VFW national organization undertook a massive publicity campaign to demonstrate veterans’ support for the bonus. Cognizant still of the Legion’s larger membership and stature, the VFW attempted to demonstrate that the Legion leadership misrepresented the rank-and-file veteran on the bonus issue. The VFW national organization published veteran “bonus ballots” in 162 metropolitan newspapers, newspapers with a combined circulation of 23 million copies. The VFW received 254,324 ballots from veterans in favor of the bonus and only 596 against.36 Foreign Service candidly framed the disconnect between the Legion leadership and veterans’ views, “The heart of the American Legion is sound to the core—with the rank and file of its membership wholly in sympathy with the problems of the great mass of veterans who are suffering from economic distress, due to widespread unemployment, and bureaucratic control of agencies that affect their welfare.” For proof of the wrong-headedness of the Legion’s official stance, the editorial staff pointed to the “thousands of individual Legion posts and members . . . working hand in hand with the VFW in the present crisis of the fight for immediate cash payment of the adjusted service certificates.” Thus, even while reaping the benefits of their position and moving aggressively out in front of the issue, VFW leaders needed to confront the perception that the Legion spoke for the average veteran in order to obtain legislative results in the upcoming congressional session.37 While the VFW leadership solicited rank-and-file veterans’ feelings on the Bonus, they did little to squelch veterans’ rumblings about a march to Washington to promote the issue. Even in late 1931, small groups of veterans moved on the city, precipitating a specific warning from the leadership in the pages of Foreign Service. The leadership did not oppose the lobbying technique, rather VFW leaders hoped to discourage insolvent veterans from flocking to the District. The warning stated, “All VFW members are urged to refrain from going to Washington to lend their personal influence to the campaign in behalf of cash payment unless they are financially able to take care of themselves during the interim.” The VFW leadership discouraged less solvent members from making the trip because the District of Columbia posts already strained to provide relief for local unemployed veterans and for additional down-and-out veterans who journeyed to Washington in order to wrestle with the Veterans Administration bureaucracy. The Washington, D.C., posts told the national leadership they could provide no more assistance to homeless and hungry veterans. That inability determined VFW national policy toward veterans coming to Washington, not disapproval of the lobbying 288 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH technique. Instead, the VFW steadfastly supported the veterans’ right to petition their government and continued to lead veterans in petitioning efforts themselves.38 In 1931–32, the VFW’s mobilization for the Bonus intensified at both the national and local level. Wright Patman and the dynamic future National Commander James Van Zandt began a series of speaking engagements across the country. The Bonus barnstorming tour touched off veteran rallies in cities from Providence, Rhode Island, to St. Paul, Minnesota. Foreign Service reported veteran audiences ranging up to twenty-five hundred persons at some of these rallies. The VFW national organization also coordinated a grassroots push by holding four sectional conferences in Washington, D.C., Chicago, Boston, and Kansas City to train departmental and state leaders in publicity and lobbying tactics. The VFW leadership published petition blanks in Foreign Service, furthering the ongoing petition drive. VFW posts around the country reported to the national organization that they had amassed thousands of signatures for the Bonus. Members from Camp Bowie Post, No. 78, in Fort Worth, Texas, secured fifty-five thousand signatures in just eighteen days. The national organization published reports highlighting local posts’ publicity and recruiting activities for others to emulate, activities including renting out small storefronts in depressed commercial districts where VFW members combined heavy recruitment of veterans with the aggressive signature drive. Moreover, VFW and Women’s Auxiliary national officers called upon members of the local posts and the auxiliaries to write their legislators demanding action on the Bonus. In short, the entire organization mobilized in the election-year push for the Bonus.39 The VFW national organization also expanded its lobbying efforts into new media platforms. In January, the VFW planned a radio program for the NBC network that would combine lobbying for the Bonus, organizational recruiting, and patriotic entertainment. The “Hello America” broadcast featured an address by Wright Patman and a novel recruiting method in which the Commander would conduct the induction ceremony’s oath of obligation for new members over the radio. Heard in more than fifty radio markets, Patman’s speech refuted Bonus opponents’ claims and cemented his public affiliation with the VFW. The VFW found the evening an enormous success as just over twenty-one thousand new members joined the organization during the swearing-in ceremony. Twenty-one thousand new members equaled an overnight 15 percent increase in the existing membership. The VFW leadership found the radio an extraordinary publicity tool, one it would use at both the network level and in local broadcasts for years to come.40 STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 289 From March to May 1932, the VFW lobbied Congress aggressively for the Bonus. The VFW legislative committee offices served as the headquarters for Bonus congressional supporters. The VFW legislative chairman, L. S. Ray, mailed letters to every congressman and senator asking for their support. Those who wrote back declaring their intentions to vote for the bill were put on a public list. Ray kept tabs on the list, periodically releasing it to the newspapers to maintain the pressure. On April 2, prior to the scheduled Committee on Ways and Means Bonus hearings, Ray reported 166 “pledged” legislators supporting the issue, even though the VFW explained “in no instance had the organization threatened any member who refused to support the legislation.” The VFW hoped that the committee would rule favorably on the Patman bill, but, in case, the VFW also tracked the signatures on a discharge petition that would bring the bill to a House vote regardless of the recommendations in the committee report.41 In a key precursor to the Bonus March, three days before the House Ways and Means Committee proceedings on the Patman Bonus Bill, the VFW organized a large march and rally to the Capitol in support of the Bonus. On April 8, 1932, Paul C. Wolman led the Bonus procession with VFW posts from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia taking part. Defiant members of eight Legion posts joined the rally. Between fifteen hundred and two thousand veterans marched in a “picturesque” parade up to the Capitol steps led by the VFW band from Clarksburg, West Virginia, and two hundred flag-bearers. Members of the House and Senate, including Wright Patman and Elmer Thomas, the respective leaders of Bonus legislation, met with the leaders of the procession and drew loud cheers from the assembled veterans. The VFW leaders presented the members of Congress with twenty packing cases of petitions bearing more than two million signatures—281,000 from ex-servicemen—supporting immediate cash payment. Newsreel cameras and photographers thronged around the ceremony on the Capitol steps. Veterans yelled, “Give us cash!” The New York Times noted, “Occasionally there was a shout of ‘to the White House,’ but the mass meeting was an orderly one.” Five hundred policemen stood by in case.42 When the Committee on Ways and Means finally met on April 11, VFW national leaders placed the weight of the organization’s support behind the Bonus at the hearings. VFW Commander Darold D. DeCoe explained to the committee, “The Bonus will be the biggest and best payday this country has had in months.” Paul C. Wolman, past-VFW commander and now the chairman of the VFW’s Cash Payment Campaign Committee, testified that veterans needed the Bonus since they suffered 290 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH disproportionately compared to the rest of the working population. Legislative chairman Ray submitted to the committee a state-by-state tabulation of the VFW’s newspaper ballot results and excerpts from letters written by desperate veterans to the VFW legislative office. The VFW and Patman also called on celebrities to bolster their arguments for the Bonus. The VFW solicited help from Sgt. Alvin York, the popular and highly decorated World War I hero, asking him to testify in person before the committee. However, York, who joined the organization in April as a VFW post reached into the Tennessee hillside, wired a telegram supporting the Bonus instead of appearing in person. The recently retired Marine general Smedley D. Butler also wired the House Committee at the behest of his VFW comrades. Father Charles E. Coughlin, the radio priest, offered his opinions on the social and economic merits of the Bonus. Despite the intense VFW activism for the Bonus, on May 6, 1932, the Ways and Means Committee shelved the Patman Bonus bill with an adverse vote. Both Patman and the VFW vowed to discharge the bill through a petition and continued to press for the measure, even though the congressional calendar afforded little time to complete the necessary parliamentary maneuvers before the end of the session.43 While the VFW failed in its Bonus push, the organization collected concrete benefits from its mobilization begun in December. The organization’s gains in stature and membership relative to the Legion became tangible assets. John A. Weeks, a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, wrote the White House about the differences in VFW and Legion fortunes. He wrote Walter Newton, “A good many of the boys have lost their heads [about the Bonus] because the Legion membership has dropped 25%, while it is claimed that the VFW have doubled their membership.”44 Weeks miscalculated slightly; the Legion lost 162,000 members between 1931 and 1932, a 15.4 percent decline. Weeks did come closer, however, in describing the VFW’s success with the Bonus issue. In April, May, and June 1932, for example, the VFW mustered 71, 100, and 74 new posts, respectively, shattering all organization records. In May alone, nearly three posts a day chartered into the VFW. The leadership clearly recognized that this growth resulted from the organization’s more aggressive promotion of veterans’ demands compared to the Legion. A May Foreign Service editorial touted the VFW’s new strength, “Veterans throughout the country are awakening to the fact that they owe their support to a veteran organization that truly represents the rank and file of exservicemen.” By using a range of aggressive lobbying techniques including rallies and marches to challenge federal Bonus policy, the VFW grew precipitously and set the tone for veterans seeking the Bonus.45 STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 291 In this spirited context of organized veteran political activism, three hundred veterans in Portland, Oregon, set out for the Capitol, beginning what came to be known as the Bonus March. Leaving on May 10, the veterans rode the rails across the country, encountering widely publicized difficulties with railroad companies and various local authorities. By the time the Oregon contingent made it to Washington on May 29, waves of veterans around the country had joined the trek. While there is no direct evidence that the VFW’s Bonus campaign inspired this onslaught of veterans, the organization’s refusal to relent on the Bonus and its feverish promotion of the discharge petition as a lastditch effort both kept the issue in the media and, more important, gave the marchers a concrete goal. Indeed, after the arriving veterans set up camps around the city, they walked to the Capitol daily to convince congressmen to sign the Bonus discharge petition. Dubbed the Bonus Expeditionary Force (BEF) by the sympathetic District Superintendent of Police, Pelham D. Glassford, the veteran crowd grew at an astonishing rate. By June, more than twenty thousand veterans, including many with families in tow, had crowded into the Capitol. A group of communist veterans affiliated with the Worker’s Ex-Servicemen League also occupied the Capitol, but their attempts to recruit the other Marchers met with little success. BEF leaders denounced their revolutionary zeal and expelled them from the camps, occasionally with accompanying fists.46 As the BEF settled in Washington, congressional Bonus supporters finally gathered enough discharge petition signatures to vault the Patman bill over the Ways and Means Committee and put it before a floor vote. On June 15, the House quickly passed the Patman Bonus measure despite the fact (or possibly because) the bill stood little chance in the Senate and faced a promised veto from Hoover. On June 17, however, with thousands of veterans awaiting news on the Capitol steps, the Senate decisively defeated the Patman Bonus Bill. Deflated by the loss, more than five thousand veterans took the government’s offer for transportation back home. The remaining veterans stayed in the various camps and other abandoned buildings around the city, promising to stay until they got the Bonus, even if that meant waiting until 1945. The Communist Party contingent stayed too, becoming a larger and louder percentage of the veterans in the city, but still making little inroads with the larger BEF. For over a month, the situation simmered as supplies became critically short and sanitation a major concern. Government officials grew increasingly anxious. One source described the situation as “a pile of dynamite on Washington’s doorstep.”47 292 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH While the VFW provided an outlet for veterans’ Bonus agitation all spring and set the tone for the subsequent Bonus March, the VFW members also made their mark on the Bonus March itself. Eleven days before the celebrated Bonus Army from Oregon even arrived in Washington, in fact while they were still in the East St. Louis train yards, twenty-five veterans from VFW Post No. 1289 in Chattanooga, Tennessee, already had arrived in the Capital demanding the Bonus. The Chattanooga VFW members parked their truck with “We Want Our Bonus” painted on the side near the White House. One historian of the Bonus March postulates that the Portland group perhaps borrowed the idea that they would not leave the city until they got their money from a statement by the VFW members published in an A.P. report. A New York Times column described a contingent of 125 veterans leaving Hoboken, New Jersey, to join the BEF and bring relief supplies, half of whom belonged to the VFW’s Fred C. Hall Post in Jersey City. A group of 450 integrated veterans from the VFW’s post in Harlem, the Dorrence Brooks Post, No. 528, reported their plans to join the festivities in Washington. By June, local VFW leaders close to the situation claimed, much to the dismay of the national leadership, that “60 percent of the veterans in the capital are members of the VFW waving the colors of their respective posts.”48 Additional evidence suggests that overseas veterans—the membership pool of the VFW—comprised a disproportionately large percentage of the veterans coming to the capital. Using data from District Police officers, who registered veterans as they came to town, the New York Times reported that 83 percent of the veterans moving into Washington claimed to be overseas veterans. After the Bonus Bill’s defeat, when the federal government provided transportation to more than five thousand veterans, the Veterans’ Administration records indicated that 66.5 percent of those accepting the offer served overseas during the war. Overall, only half of World War I veterans served overseas. Whether overseas veterans suffered disproportionately from the Depression or rallied more energetically to the VFW’s agitation is conjecture, but overseas veterans in Washington for the March far exceeded their proportion of the World War veteran population.49 Whatever the percentage of VFW members in the BEF may have been, local posts in Washington and around the country generously provided the Bonus Army with material and moral support. The VFW District of Columbia Council, representing fourteen local posts, donated five hundred dollars to help feed the Marchers. The VFW Front Line Post of Washington offered the use of a theater that the post had its disposal. The Front Line Post told a BEF assembly that the theater would be STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 293 “turned over to the BEF for the purposes of collecting funds for the BEF treasury.” The BEF would only need to supply “the talent.” On June 7, when some seven thousand Bonus Marchers paraded up Pennsylvania Avenue, a local VFW band led the procession. Posts from around the nation provided material assistance. One of many examples, VFW members in Asbury Park and Bradley Beach, New Jersey, solicited food and materials for the BEF from local merchants. The Jersey posts accumulated enough to fill two trucks headed toward Washington, supplemented with twelve veterans eager to join the March. Whether as members of the BEF or as sympathetic supporters, VFW members aligned themselves in solidarity with the Bonus Army.50 Adding to the linkages between the Bonus March and the VFW, key figures from the saga maintained extensive VFW ties. Chief of Police Glassford’s personal rapport with the veterans and patient handling of the crisis made him immensely popular with the BEF, so popular that Glassford served as the treasurer of the BEF’s funds. Glassford not only belonged to a local VFW post, but he had been a chief recruiter for the VFW in 1931 just prior to taking the police position. Joseph Heffernan, the former mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, and prominent VFW state leader, moved to Washington to begin the publication of The BEF News, a weekly newspaper published for the Bonus Army veterans. Heffernan’s publication, with its scathing editorials, became the officially sanctioned publication of the BEF, ending its publication run in August at seventy-five thousand copies. Rice Means, publisher of the only national veteran publication unaffiliated with the veteran organizations, the National Tribune, supported the Bonus March from the start in print and with coin. Means, a former senator from Colorado, worked extensively with a number of veteran organizations. He was known, however, as the VFW’s first National Commander and continued to serve on the VFW’s legislative committee. Smedley Butler, the popular Marine Corp general who came to Camp Marks to cheer on the men and actually bivouacked overnight in one of the dwellings, belonged to the VFW and would go on in 1933 through 1936 to be the VFW’s main recruiting speaker. This is not to say that all of these prominent VFW figures gave the Bonus March VFW sanctioning. But all of these high-profile men publicly supporting the Bonus Army linked the VFW to the episode in visible and important ways.51 Clearly, the VFW leadership did not anticipate that their lobbying efforts for the Bonus would spark such a massive demonstration. Yet, given the level of VFW involvement, it is easy to see how the organization that supported the Bonus since 1929 would be associated with the episode. Statements from the VFW leadership reflected their concerns 294 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH that the march was being viewed as a VFW-sanctioned event. As early as May 24 (five days before the Portland contingent arrived in Washington), the VFW national organization felt compelled to deny any official connection with the demonstrations and discouraged members from coming to the city. In early June, as the BEF grew to close to twenty thousand members, the national leadership sent communiqués to every post prohibiting members, with threat of expulsion, from taking part in the March. The VFW adjutant general in Kansas City, R. B. Handy Jr., denounced the Communist agitation in the March as an effort “to capitalize upon the unrest and discontent of unemployed veterans.” Handy argued that this could only prove counterproductive to the organization’s Bonus strategy, “embarrassing existing efforts on the part of our legislative committee and those individual members of Congress who are advocating immediate cash payment.” Handy also noted, however, that the goals of most of the Marchers coincided with the VFW’s call for immediate payment. Handy explained, “Without doubt, the groups of former service men marching on Washington are inspired by patriotic motives and have no other purpose than assisting in the campaign for cash payment of the Bonus.” Handy and the VFW leadership feared those men would set the Bonus drive back, not advance it.52 While the VFW national leaders failed to back the Bonus March for pragmatic reasons, VFW officials in close proximity to the veteran encampments blasted the leadership for failing to lead a march they had unintentionally instigated. In the heat of the Bonus March, the Maryland Department of the VFW met to elect state officers and national encampment delegates. The Maryland delegates became embroiled in a passionate debate over the Bonus March and the failures of the national leadership. The state encampment passed a resolution denouncing the national leadership and requesting an explanation for the national headquarters’ actions. Claiming that the VFW had initiated the march, as evidenced by the “60 percent” VFW participation, the Maryland VFW decried that “when the big throng moved on Washington nothing was done by way of leadership.” Why, they asked, were “no officials sent to lead the 20,000 or more veterans in their fight to urge passage of the Bonus Bill in Congress?” These state leaders suggested that instead of leading the march, the VFW abdicated responsibility for the BEF, giving the Communists the opportunity to commandeer what the VFW had started. Had the VFW appointed leaders to the Bonus Army, the Maryland delegates proclaimed, “the great body of veterans in this country would not be branded radicals.” The following day, after VFW Chief of Staff Joseph Ranken addressed the delegates, cooler and more politic STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 295 heads prevailed and the delegates withdrew the resolution. The resolution, however, exposed both the belief that the VFW caused the march, and the more troubling proposition that the VFW played into the hands of the Communists by not leading the BEF.53 Others echoed the Maryland VFW delegates in making this accusation. An intelligence memorandum circulated to the FBI and the White House explained that the VFW bore responsibility, even though the march was becoming a Communist rally. The memorandum described the situation in terms almost identical to the Maryland accusations. It began, “The present march on Washington is the direct result of Communist agitation, pure and simple.” The memo continued, however, “The Communists have taken advantage of Veterans of Foreign Wars internal politics and the urging of the Bonus by the leaders and are trying to turn this agitation to their, the Communists’ advantage.” Accusations blaming the VFW and the VFW national leadership for causing the Bonus March resounded through other private and public channels that summer.54 Prominent figures in veteran circles attributed the descent of the marchers on the city to the VFW’s Bonus agitation. In a private letter, Royal C. Johnson cautioned President Hoover that the Bonus Army might reach one hundred thousand. He explained that perhaps any veteran “who thought [he] had a bonus due would join with them, particularly when they have been excited to such a move by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, members of Congress, newspapers, and even the clergy.” Johnson thought the VFW had recognized its mistake, however, claiming, “I feel certain that by this time the Commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars would also urge them to leave.” On June 11, Johnson made similar statements on the House floor, solemnly declaring, “one great organization . . . the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is partially responsible for this migration.” He acknowledged that the VFW leadership now sought “to move them out, but they helped get them in.” Johnson explicitly linked the VFW’s promotion of the discharge petition with the descent of the marchers and proclaimed that “the men who started that [petition] have their share of responsibility.” As chairman of the House Veterans’ Committee and a former Judge Advocate of the VFW national organization, few were in as good of position as Johnson to cast blame for the Bonus March.55 On July 28, 1932, the U.S. government moved to expel the Bonus marchers from the city. When the police tried to disperse the BEF, riots broke out, leaving two veterans dead and several police wounded. Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur then exceeded his orders and deployed 296 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH Army troops, including tanks and cavalry, to drive the veterans out of their encampments. In the process, the Army leveled the veteran camps, setting torches to the dwellings. When he heard of the Bonus rout, Democratic presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly declared to Felix Frankfurter, “Well, Felix, this will elect me.”56 Barely one month after the rout, the VFW gathered at the annual encampment in Sacramento, basking in the organization’s membership success and ready to take the fight to Hoover and Bonus opponents. The organization had a right to boast. Indeed, in 1932, the VFW grew at an amazing clip. Fifty thousand new members joined, raising the membership total to 187,479 overseas veterans. This put the organization at three times the 1927 size and reflected a 35 percent increase in one year. Moreover, post growth broke records just set in 1931. The VFW gained 442 new posts in 1932, by all accounts the most dire year of the Depression and a horrible year for voluntary association membership. One hundred and eighty-six more posts rechartered after being dropped for nonpayment of dues. For the year, the growth averaged 52.3 posts chartered per month, an average that bested the all-time highs for any one month in the organization’s history. In other words, in 1932, the VFW’s membership and distribution throughout the country simply skyrocketed.57 Table 1. VFW Membership and Post Growth, 1929–1932. Total membership Membership gained in year Total posts Posts gained in year 1929 1930 1931 1932 76,669 6,693 1767 154 95,167 18,498 1945 178 138,620 43,453 2313 368 187,469 48,849 2757 444 The VFW encampment pointed to the November election as the means to punish the Hoover administration for the rout of the Bonus marchers. The delegates passed an extraordinary resolution decrying the “criminally brutal, and uncalled for, and morally indefensible” actions of the president. The delegates described the ballot as “the veterans’ strongest weapon of defense” against such presidential misdeeds. Then, so that the American people would be aware of the organization’s attitude, the VFW delegates commanded that posts should “be urged to mount sandbags and post a military guard from now on until November so that the Washington evacuation begun in July may be fully completed in November.” A Foreign Service drawing by the VFW’s editorial artist, STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 297 Figure 1. “Another Zero Hour—November 8,” by Herbert Lake in Foreign Service, September 1932. Reprinted by permission of the VFW. Herbert Lake, graphically depicted the militancy veterans felt toward the coming election (see Fig. 1).58 Between 1929 and 1932, the VFW played a crucial role in the Bonus struggle, a struggle that grew to a crescendo with the Bonus March. Based on the Legion national leadership’s opposition to both the Bonus and the march, scholars have contended that veteran organizations abdicated their roles as leaders of veteran political activism during the period. Yet, throughout 1931 and 1932, the VFW led the Bonus struggle, keeping the contentious issue alive for desperate veterans and reaping the institutional rewards that came with their aggressive stance. In the late spring of 1932, as veterans flocked to the capital, they also flocked to the VFW. Indeed, the VFW national organization employed intensive lobbying and marching to the capital as tactics themselves. In this, the VFW put its imprint on the Bonus March, to the extent that the organization drew blame for instigating the whole affair. The federal veterans’ policy that explicitly recognized a financial obligation to veterans but continually delayed discharging it had given life to an otherwise moribund veteran organization. After 1932, the VFW stood ready to challenge the American Legion as spokesmen for veterans’ concerns. The years that the VFW maintained a secondary status helped the organization develop more aggressive lobbying strategies involving radio 298 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH and direct citizen participation. As the VFW grew in response to its demands and the Legion’s recalcitrance, it raised the organization’s public profile even further, creating a positive feedback loop for agitation. By the end of 1932, the VFW began to assert itself as an important national political actor, having staked a claim to the Bonus issue that it would hold until its cash payment in 1936. In the period between the Bonus March and the payment of the Bonus in defiance of yet another presidential veto, the VFW continued its spectacular growth, claiming almost three hundred thousand members in 1935, while the American Legion sunk to a decade-low membership of seven hundred thousand, more than three hundred and fifty thousand fewer members than in 1931.59 Not surprisingly, in 1936, Congress granted the VFW a congressional charter in recognition of the organization’s new political clout. But for the VFW, Congress’s ill-conceived Bonus policy had been the real gift. It made veterans into activist citizens, and the VFW into a pillar of the powerful twentieth-century veterans’ lobby. In 1944, the federal government bestowed on World War II servicemen social and economic benefits of unparalleled proportions. In passing the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, known as the GI Bill, Congress created the largest welfare service in the history of the country and helped shape the postwar era. The political origins of the GI Bill lay in the concerns over the reintegration of veterans into American society. The fear of widespread veteran unemployment and the potential for attendant political unrest played a major role in the bill’s deliberations. The Bonus March, of course, symbolized the dangers of not easing veterans’ readjustment into civilian life. (After all, 16 million returning World War II veterans would make a cohort nearly four times the size of their rambunctious Great War predecessors.) GI Bill scholars correctly highlight the historical memory of the Bonus March, therefore, as an important contributing factor in the origins of the legislation. The findings in this article suggest that the Depression-era episode had an additional, albeit less well known, impact on the future of veteran legislation.60 During World War II, the VFW originally supported a new Bonus policy for returning veterans, hoping to rekindle the dynamism of its 1929–36 halcyon days. In 1943–44, it was the American Legion that pushed for expansive GI Bill benefits. The competition between these organizations—negligible before the Bonus issue arose in the late-1920s— drove an otherwise conservative organization to outdo its fierce new rival for returning veterans’ allegiance. Organizational competition for new members and for the new bureaucratic jobs that an expanding federal STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 299 veteran welfare system would create, propelled the Legion into promoting a federal policy antithetical to its avowed conservatism. If federal bonus policy had turned veterans into activist citizens, the robust associational rivalry that it indirectly created would serve American veterans well for the rest of the twentieth century.61 East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania Notes 1. H. L. Mencken, “The Case for the Heroes,” The American Mercury 24 (December 1931): 410. 2. VFW’s membership totals in Mary Katherine Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States: The History of a Veterans’ Organization, Its Function in Assisting Veterans, Influencing National Legislation, and Interpreting and Promoting Americanism, 1899–1948” (M.A. thesis, University of Kansas City, 1963), 194. Legion membership totals in National Tribune, 7 February 1935. Letter from Royal C. Johnson to Herbert Hoover, dated 1 April 1929, in “World War Veterans—Correspondence, 1929,” box 371, Subject Files Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (hereafter SFHH). 3. For the first and most thorough studies of the Bonus March, see Roger Daniels, The Bonus March: An Episode of the Great Depression (West Port, Conn., 1971) and Donald J. Lisio, The President and Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and the Bonus Riot (Columbia, 1974), reprinted as The President and Protest: Hoover, MacArthur, and the Bonus Riot (New York, 1994). For New Deal narratives, see Arthur M. Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt, vols. 1–3 (Boston, 1957–60); William E. Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940 (New York, 1963); David M. Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 1999); and Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt: Launching the New Deal (Boston, 1973). For a recent, yet typical, textbook description of the March, see James Kirby Martin et al., America and Its Peoples, 5th ed. (New York, 2004), 676–77. 4. See Jennifer D. Keene, Doughboys, the Great War, and the Remaking of America (Baltimore, 2001), Lucy G. Barber, Marching on Washington: The Forging of an American Political Tradition (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2002), and Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (New York, 2005). 5. On the American Legion, see William Pencak, For God and Country: The American Legion, 1919–1941 (Boston, 1989), and Thomas A. Rumer, The American Legion: An Official History, 1919–1989 (New York, 1990). 6. The VFW maintains a limited archive at its national headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri. The complete catalog of the organization’s monthly publication, Foreign Service, comprises the sole archival material of the national organization. While VFW national encampment proceedings were published by the Government Printing Office and are readily available, no personal papers of the organization’s leaders during the period under examination can be located. For the sparse literature on the VFW, see Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States: The History of a Veterans’ Organization, Its Function in Assisting Veterans, Influencing National Legislation, and Interpreting and Promoting Americanism, 1899–1948” (hereafter “The Veterans of Foreign Wars”), and the most recent official history of the organization, Herbert Molloy Mason Jr., VFW: Our First Century, 1899–1999 (Lenexa, Kan., 1999). For more on the importance of existing organizational structures to social protest movements, see Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York, 1984), and Charles M. Payne, I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995). 300 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH 7. For the “symbiotic relationship” between voluntary associations and the federal government, see Theda Skocpol et al., “How Americans Became Civic,” in Theda Skocpol and Morris P. Fiorina, eds., Civic Engagements in American Democracy (Washington, D.C., 1999); Skocpol et al., “Patriotic Partnerships: Why Great Wars Nourished American Civic Voluntarism,” in Katznelson and Shefter, eds., Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Political Development (Princeton, 2002), 134–80; and Meg Jacobs and Julian E. Zelizer, “The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History,” in Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak, and Julian E. Zelizer, eds., The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History (Princeton, 2003), 1–19. 8. A number of studies have been dedicated to veterans’ relationship with the state. Pioneering studies such as Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy (Cambridge, Mass., 1992), and Ann Shola Orloff, The Politics of Pensions: A Comparative Analysis of Britain, Canada, and the United States, 1880–1940 (Madison, 1993), argued that twentieth-century welfare policies were conceived with veterans’ welfare as a negative reference. Skocpol’s introduction of “policy feedback” to social policy formulation in Protecting Mothers, however, has also proved very influential. For the importance of “policy feedback,” or the manner in which federal policy helps produce political participation in veterans and their dependents, see Suzanne Mettler, “Bringing the State Back In to Civic Engagement: Policy Feedback Effects of the G.I. Bill for World War II Veterans,” American Political Science Review 96, no. 2 (June 2002): 351–65, and Civic Generation: The G.I. Bill in the Lives of World War II Veterans (New York, forthcoming, 2005); and K. Walter Hickel, “War, Region, and Social Welfare: Federal Aid to Servicemen’s Dependents in the South, 1917–1921,” Journal of American History 87, no. 4 (March 2001): 1362–91, and “Entitling Citizens: World War I, Progressivism, and the Origins of the American Welfare State, 1917–1928” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1999). For an excellent comparative study of European veterans that explores these issues, see Deborah Cohen, The War Come Home: Disabled Veterans in Britain and Germany, 1914–1939 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000). Other important works on how federal policies affect political participation include: Andrea Louise Campbell, How Policies Make Citizens: Senior Political Activism and the American Welfare State (Princeton, 2003); Paul Pierson, “When Effect Becomes Cause: Policy Feedback and Political Change,” World Politics 45 (1993): 595–628; and Joe Soss, “Lessons of Welfare: Policy Design, Political Learning, and Political Action,” American Political Science Review 93 (1999): 363–80. 9. On the GI Bill, see Davis R. B. Ross, Preparing for Ulysses: Politics and Veterans During World War II (New York, 1969); Michael J. Bennett, When Dreams Came True: The GI Bill and the Making of Modern America (Washington, D.C., 1996); Mark D. Van Ells, To Hear Only Thunder Again: America’s World War II Veterans Come Home (Lanham, Md., 2001); Keene, Doughboys; Suzanne Mettler, “Bringing the State Back In to Civic Engagement,” Civic Generation, and “The Creation of the GI Bill of Rights of 1944: Melding Social and Participatory Citizenship Ideals,” Journal of Policy History 17, no. 4 (2005); and Edwin Amenta and Theda Skocpol, “Redefining the New Deal: World War II and the Development of Social Provision in the United States,” in Margaret Weir, Ann Shola Orloff, and Theda Skocpol, eds., The Politics of Social Policy in the United States (Princeton, 1988). For the limitations of the GI Bill, see David H. Onkst, “‘First a Negro . . . Incidentally a Veteran’: Black World War Two Veterans and the G.I. Bill in the Deep South, 1944–1948,” Journal of Social History 31 (Spring 1998): 517–44; Margot Canaday, “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship under the 1944 G.I. Bill,” Journal of American History 90 (December 2003): 935–57; and Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers’ Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (New York, 2003). 10. Daniels, The Bonus March, 23–28; Pencak, For God and Country, 75–77, 197–200; Gustavus A. Weber and Laurence F. Scheckebier, The Veterans’ Administration: Its History, Activities, and Organization (Washington, D.C., 1934), 229–31; Foreign Service, June 1919: 8 and November 1920: 1; and New York Times, 16–17 October 1920. For the most thorough discussion of war risk insurance, see K. Walter Hickel, “War, Region, and Social Welfare: STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 301 Federal Aid to Servicemen’s Dependents in the South, 1917–1921,” and “Entitling Citizens: World War I, Progressivism, and the Origins of the American Welfare State, 1917–1928.” 11. Daniels, The Bonus March, 37–40; Pencak, For God and Country, 197–200; and Weber and Scheckebier, The Veterans’ Administration, 231–34. 12. Resolution No. 141, Proceedings of the 27th Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1926 (Washington, D.C., 1927), 264. 13. On the American Legion, see Pencak, For God and Country, and Rumer, The American Legion. On the VFW, see Mason, VFW: Our First Century, 1899–1999, 54–95; Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” and Stephen R. Ortiz, “‘Soldier-Citizens’: The Veterans of Foreign Wars and Veteran Political Activism from the Bonus March to the GI Bill” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2004). 14. Legion membership totals in National Tribune, 7 February 1935, and VFW’s in Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” 194. On Legion and VFW leadership, see Pencak, For God and Country, esp. 48–106; Mason, VFW: Our First Century, 1899–1999, 54–95; and Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” 1–92. 15. Weber and Scheckebier, The Veterans’ Administration, 468. Foreign Service, September 1929, 4. 16. Resolutions, Proceedings of the 30th Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1929 (Washington, D.C., 1930), 267. Daniels, The Bonus March, 42. Interestingly, no mention of Wright Patman, the future congressional Bonus leader and then freshman congressman from Texas, can be found in the VFW encampment minutes. This is despite the fact that Patman proposed a Bonus bill in the House just days after Brookhart’s proposal. For more on Patman, see Nancy Beck Young, Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream (Dallas, 2000). 17. Copy of 22 November 1929 Duff telegram in Foreign Service, December 1929, 27, and February 1930, 4. Veteran unemployment data found in Keene, Doughboys, 181. 18. Letter from Hezekiah N. Duff to Herbert Hoover, 29 January 1930, in “VFW, 1930,” box 359, SFHH. Rumer, The American Legion, 186–88, and Lisio, The President and Protest, 26–30. 19. For amicable relationship, see Frank T. Hines to Herbert Hoover, 10 September 1930, in “VFW, 1930,” box 359, SFHH. For VFW encampment information, see Proceedings of the 31st Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1930 (Washington, D.C., 1931) and New York Times and Washington Post, 1–6 September 1930. 20. Daniels, The Bonus March, 42–43; Lisio, The President and Protest, 30–32; and Pencak, For God and Country, 200–201. On Taylor’s assistance in Hoover speech, see Pencak, For God and Country, 201. 21. Young, Wright Patman, 36. Washington Post, 29 December 1930. 22. Washington Post, 21 and 28 December 1930. 23. Ibid., 3 January 1931. 24. Petitions in Daniels, The Bonus March, 43, 71; New York Times and Washington Post, 22 January 1931. 25. Alfieri and VFW marchers in Washington Post, 27–28 January 1931. 26. Rumer, The American Legion, 190–91; Literary Digest, 14 February 1931: 5; and Washington Post, 25–26 January 1931. 27. Wolman testimony in House Committee on Ways and Means, Payment of Soldiers’ Adjusted-Compensation Certificates: Hearings Before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 71st Cong., 3d sess., 1931, 129–35; Literary Digest, 14 February 1931, 5–6; and Washington Post, 28 January 1931. 28. Lisio, The President and Protest, 36–39; Daniels, The Bonus March, 43–45; and Literary Digest, 14 February 1931, 5–6; 29. Lisio, The President and Protest, 38–42; Herbert Hoover Veto Message, 26 February 1931, in “Veterans Bureau Correspondence, 1931, January–February,” box 356, 302 RETHINKING THE BONUS MARCH SFHH; “Needy Served First,” Time, 19 March 1931, 11–12; Literary Digest, 14 March 1931, 5–6; Foreign Service, January 1932, 17; and letter from Arthur H. Vandenberg to Herbert Hoover, 10 August 1931, in “Trips—1931, 21 September, Detroit, American Legion Convention,” box 37, SFHH. 30. Foreign Service, March 1931, 5, and April 1931, 4. 31. VFW membership growth in Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” 194; post growth obtained from Foreign Service, January 1929 to December 1931. Report in Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1931 (Washington, D.C., 1932), 244–46. 32. Internal Memorandum to Walter H. Newton, 8 August 1931, in “VFW, 1931–1933,” box 359, SFHH. 33. Hines’s speech and Wolman retort in Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 38–46. 34. Letter from Royal C. Johnson to J. Edgar Hoover, 28 August 1931, in “Trips— 1931, 21 September, Detroit, American Legion Convention,” box 37, SFHH. Address of President Hoover to the Thirteenth Convention of the American Legion, 21 September 1931, in “ Congratulatory Correspondence American Legion Address Detroit 21 September 1931, A-D,” box 47, President Personal File, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (hereafter PPFHH). Daniels, The Bonus March, 51. Letter from Gilbert Bettman to Walter [sic] Richey, 25 September 1931, in “Congratulatory Correspondence American Legion Address Detroit, 21 September 1931, A-D,” box 47, PPFHH. 35. H. L. Mencken, “The Case for the Heroes,” The American Mercury 24 (December 1931): 409–10. 36. Report of the Director of Publicity, Proceedings of the 34th Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (Washington, D.C., 1933), 197–99. 37. Foreign Service, January 1932, 17. 38. Ibid., 19–21 (emphasis added). 39. Daniels, The Bonus March, 55. Foreign Service, December 1931 to March 1932. 40. Foreign Service, February 1932, 10–12, 24. 41. Daniels, The Bonus March, 52, 61–64; Young, Wright Patman, 45–46; Foreign Service, May 1932, 6–8; and New York Times, 2–11 April 1932. 42. Of the Bonus March accounts that mention this episode, most downplay its importance as a key precursor. For the most recent example, see Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army, 59. For the best coverage of this march, see Washington Post and New York Times, April 9, 1932; and Foreign Service, May 1932, 6–7. 43. For DeCoe, Ray, and Wolman testimony, see House Committee on Ways and Means, Payment of Adjusted-Compensation Certificates: Hearings Before the House Committee on Ways and Means, 72d Cong., 1st sess., 1932, 81–83, 188–91, 207–10; New York Times and Washington Post, 2, 6, 8, 11, 14, and 16 April 1932; Daniels, The Bonus March, 52, 61–64; and Memorandum from Raymond Benjamin to Larry Richey, 13 April 1932, in “World War Veterans, Bonus Correspondence, 1932, January–June,” box 373, SFHH. For more on the important collaboration between Father Charles E. Coughlin and veterans on the Bonus, see Ortiz, “‘Soldier-Citizens,’” 65–192. 44. Letter from John A. Weeks to Walter H. Newton, 9 January 1932, in “World War Veterans, Bonus Correspondence, 1932, January–June,” box 373, SFHH. 45. Legion totals in Pencak, For God and Country, 83–86. See also National Tribune, 7 February 1935. VFW post total from Foreign Service, April–July 1932. Quotation in Foreign Service, May 1932, 15. 46. For the most thorough description, see Daniels, The Bonus March, 65–122; Lisio, The President and Protest, 51–165; and Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army, passim. Keene, Doughboys, 179–98, and Barber, Marching on Washington, 75–97, provide excellent short descriptions. The Washington Post coverage from late May until July 1932 is excellent. 47. Ibid. Literary Digest, 25 June 1932, 6. STEPHEN R. ORTIZ 303 48. Daniels, The Bonus March, 80; New York Times, 9 and 12 June 1932; and Washington Post, 19 June 1932. Ironically, Dickson and Allen’s work includes a photograph of the Chattanooga truck without mentioning the clearly legible “VFW” painted on its side panels. See Dickson and Allen, The Bonus Army, 59. 49. New York Times, 8 June 1932. VA records in Frank T. Hines to Herbert Hoover, 2 August 1932, in “World War Veterans-Bonus Reports, Descriptions, and Statements, 1932, August,” box 376, SFHH. 50. Washington Post, 4 June 1932; New York Times, 12 June 1932. Frontline post activities in VA Report, Hines to Theodore G. Joslin, 27 July 1932, in “World War VeteransBonus Reports, Descriptions, and Statements, 1932, 26–31 July,” box 376, SFHH. 51. On Glassford, see President and Protest, 51–55, and BEF News, 13 August 1932, 6. On Heffernan, see obituary in Youngstown Vindicator, 21 April 1977. On Rice Means, see National Tribune, April–August 1932, and Mason, VFW: Our First Century. On Butler, see Hans Schmidt, Maverick Marine: Smedley D. Butler and the Contradictions of American Military History (Lexington, Ky., 1987). 52. New York Times, 3, 7–9 June 1932. Washington Post, 25 May and 3–12 June 1932. 53. Washington Post, 19–20 June 1932. Ranken’s specific message to the Maryland encampment is unknown, but the passing of the resolution had been hotly contested on 18 June, only to be withdrawn after his address. 54. Letter from Francis Ralston Welsh to J. Edgar Hoover and Lawrence Richey, 13 June 1932, in “World War Veterans, Bonus Correspondence, 1932, January–June,” box 373, SFHH. 55. Letter from Royal C. Johnson to The President, 10 June 1932, in “World War Veterans, Bonus Correspondence, 1932, January–June,” box 373, SFHH. Johnson floor speech in Congressional Record, 72 Cong., 1st sess., 12716–17, and Washington Post, 12 June 1932. 56. Lisio, President and Protest, 139–278; FDR quote, 285. 57. VFW membership data in Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” 194; post data obtained from Foreign Service, January 1929 to December 1932. 58. Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Encampment of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, 1932 (Washington, D.C., 1933), 260. Drawing in Foreign Service, September 1932, 5. 59. VFW membership data in Goldsmith, “The Veterans of Foreign Wars,” 194; Legion data found in Pencak, For God and Country, 83–86. See also National Tribune, 7 February 1935. 60. See note 9 for a complete list of scholarship on the GI Bill. 61. The respective VFW and Legion roles are best described in Ross, Preparing for Ulysses, 34–124, and Bennett, When Dreams Came True, 82–153. For an interesting discussion of the “otherwise conservative” Legion and the GI Bill, and of the importance of veteran organizations to late twentieth-century civic life, see Theda Skocpol, “The Narrowing of Civic Life,” The American Prospect Online, 13 May 2004. B.E.F. THE WHOLE STORY OF THE BONUS ARMY W.W. Waters as told to William C. White C i n c i n n a t u s P re ss C a r y , N o r th C a r o lin a More information Please visit www.bonusmarch.info for original documents, photos and other information about the Bonus March. I ntroduction© 2007 Cincinnatus Press A ll rights reserved. No part of this book maybe reproduced in any form or by any electronic or me­ chanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. C incinnatus Press has conducted a thorough copyright review and determinal that the primary text of th is book lies in the public domain. Original copyright 1933 by W .W . Waters and William C. W hite a nd printed by the john Day Company, Inc. New York 1933. Reprinted 1969 by Arno Press and the N ew York Times. H ardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-9794114-5-8 T rade Paperback ISBN-13: 978-0-9794114-6-5 E -book ISBN-13: 978-0-9794114-7-2 P rinted in the United States of America C incinnatus Press w ww.cincinnatuspress.com Foreword Not long after I returned from Iraq in 1991, I became heavily in­ volved in veterans issues, particularly health issues related to Gulf War veterans who had been exposed to a variety of toxic sub­ stances during the war. Over the years after that, I heard many references to the “Bonus Marchers” of the Great Depression, but knew little about them. Finally, in the late 1990s, I got my hands on a used copy of this book. It had been out of print for more than thirty years at that time, I situation which I found somewhat depressing given the significant importance of the Bonus March in American history. How different would all o f our lives have been if President Hoover had not ordered the Arm y to forcefully evacuate Anacostia Flats? It is impossible to say for sure, but the distinct possibility exists that Hoover would have won re-election later that year, and Franklin D. Roosevelt may not have ever become President. The later direction of our country— indeed, the world—might have been very different. This is the story of the Bonus marchers written not by a scholar or government official, but by W. W. Waters, a World War I vet­ eran who was a key organizer of the original group that left Oregon in the spring of 1932 and traveled across the country in order to petition Congress for redress. Waters spends much of his time in the book justifying his own actions at various points, and in several places takes a defensive tone. In some key points, his description differs from that of other contemporary accounts. All W.W. Waters and William C. White the same, the core events are here—the arrival of the bonus marchers in Washington, DC; the ambivalent relationship with DC Police Chief General Glassford; the accusations that the orga­ nizers were communists; and the final episode of that tragic summer, when General MacArthur led Regular Arm y troops into the streets of Washington, DC to evict peacefully protesting vet­ erans of what was then known as the Great War. At that time, the bonus march was the largest protest gathering that had ever taken place in Washington. Its importance in our history—both as a pivot on which turned the election of four-term President Roosevelt and as a example later followed by the Civil Rights movement, antiwar movements and many later organizing efforts—cannot be understated. Because of all of these facts, I’m proud to be involved with reis­ suing a new edition of B.E.F. The True Story o f the Bonus Arm y. If you are a student, or interested in learning more about both the history and the story of the bonus marchers, you are in­ vited to visit www.bonusmarch.info, where we have posted original FBI documents and other interesting information about the Bonus Expeditionary Force and its impact on American his­ tory. Charles Sheehan-Miles Charles Sheehan-Miles served as a Abram s Tank Crewman in the 1991 G ulf War and is a form er President o f the National G ulf War Resource Center and co-founder o f Veterans fo r Common Sense. He is the author o f two novels and a forthcom ing nonfic­ tion title, “Saving the World on $30 A D ay.” He can be contacted through his website, www.sheehanmiles.com 8 TO MY WIFE, WILMA, WHO STOOD BY Walter W. Waters, Commander, B.E.F. Collaborators Note I have written this story of the Bonus Army as it was told to me by W. W. Waters and from various documentary material which he collected. Independently, I have checked to my own satisfaction Mr. W a­ ters’s statements, wherever possible, against newspaper accounts and in conversation with Washington newspaper men, with vari­ ous Washington officials, many of whom are mentioned in this book, and with numerous members of the B.E.F. William C. White. MURDER W illiam Hushka, freshly killed by police bullet during a “ferocious riot," “ Riot" so ferocious that this picture could be taken a minute after lie was shot. By permission of Eddie Gosnell, Official Photographer, B.E.F. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment o f religion, or prohibiting the fr e e exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom o f speech, or o f the press; or the right o f the people peaceably to assemble, and to p eti­ tion the governm ent fo r a redress o f grievances.” A rticle I. Constitution o f the United States Introduction MANY GROUPS of citizens have marched on Washington at one time or another for various purposes but never until June and July, 1932, when the “Bonus Expeditionary Forces” camped in the capital did such a movement include so many followers. Sixty thousand to eighty thousand American ex-service men in all were in that “army” at various times. I have decided to set down the facts concerning the B.E.F. for many reasons. The B.E.F. began as a group of men demanding the prepayment of their adjusted service certificates voted by Congress in 1924. It soon became for a vast number of men a means of protest against the economic conditions in our country in 1932, a safety valve for dissatisfaction. It was not recognized as that at this time. It will be remembered as that in American history. The spontaneity which marked its rise and the great popular appeal which brought twenty thousand men to Washington in the first two weeks were something new in American life. Coming three thousand miles overland with a few hundred of these men as their leader and soon commanding thousands of them, I can tell of the motives and desires which led men to initi­ ate the Bonus March. Their ambitions have been seriously impugned by high official sources. It has been charged that the Bonus March was inspired, sponsored and supported by Commu­ nists. It has been said that the marchers intended to foment revolution and to take steps to overthrow our Government. These slurs on honest, American ex-service men must be corrected. W.W. Waters and William C. White I tell this story for the sake of putting the facts about the B.E.F. on accurate record. My position gave me an opportunity to see an amazing cross-cut, a close-up view of American life, in contacts with high government officials, in daily meetings with the men in the ranks, and from thousands of letters received. In this record I have tried to describe that view of America to the reader. It is not a class-conscious America. It is a poverty-conscious America, de­ manding that something be done about it. The final eviction of the B.E.F. led to one of the most disgrace­ ful episodes in recent American history. The full truth about the steps that led to that eviction and about the event itself must be on record. There was murder done on “Black Thursday,” July 28th. The methods of eviction on that day revealed a stupidity and a cupidity among Washington politicians that is almost unbeliev­ able. The event itself disclosed to thousands of American citizens who had never before thought particularly about it that the men whom they elect to represent them too often forget who it was that put them in power. This story is told with no malice or bitterness toward anyone but I evade nothing that is necessary to the truthful recording of this chapter of recent history . This book is not an attack on any political party. I purposely withheld publication until after the elections to prevent anyone from supposing such motives. I have refused and I shall refuse all offers to let any special group profit by my experiences. I sold out to no one. I was broke when I began the Bonus March. I was broke and in debt when I finished with it. I do not want to include arguments for or against the immedi­ ate payment of the Bonus nor pleas for bigger and better Bonus armies. I hope that we shall never need to have another one. Rather, here is a narrative, historically accurate, of the rise, the history and the dispersal of the B.E.F.—and nothing more. My own background is typical of the sort of American who joined the B.E.F. 16 B.E.F. The W hole Story o f the Bonus A rm y I was born in Oregon, of old American stock, in 1898 and was reared in Idaho. In 1916, restless, with no further “W est” to con­ quer, I joined the National Guard and went to the Mexican border as a private. The regiment was later divided and one section of it was assigned to the 146th Field Artillery and sent overseas in the winter of 1917. We entered active service at the front in July, 1918. Armistice Day found us still on the firing line. After that we were ordered into Germany as a part of the Army of Occupation. We returned to the United States in June, 1919, and I was honorably discharged with the rank of sergeant. Shortly after my return to civil life my health failed. I spent several months in a hospital under the care of various physicians, for which, by the way, the Government was not asked to pay. Then, like millions more, I attempted to take up the threads of my life where I had dropped them some three years before. Like many others of my age, I had no occupation or profession to re­ sume. Everything had to be commenced for the first time, and it was a discouraging problem. In the next few years I made nu­ merous serious attempts to get going in some profitable business or position, as a garage mechanic, an automobile salesman, a farmhand, a bakery helper. Each new venture was begun with the same high enthusiasm. Each one ended as an equally dismal fail­ ure. My inability to take root in fertile soil may have been due to the unsettling effects of the War on me. I blamed my failure on envi­ ronment and felt myself daily getting more and more out of tune with my surroundings. In 1925 I made a decision which now, in retrospect seems fool­ ish. Eager to begin completely anew, I broke all family and personal ties and left Idaho for some chance-found place, to make a completely new start. Telling no one o f my intentions I hitch­ hiked into the State of Washington and there got a job in the harvest fields. I even used a new name, “Bill Kincaid,’’the first name to flash into my mind when asked, as if to break the more decisively with the past. Under that name I met and married the girl who is now my wife. 17 W.W. Waters and William C. White During this time I made no particular effort to avoid meeting former acquaintances although I likewise made no effort to seek them out or to notify them of m y whereabouts. I had dropped out of sight, in so far as family, home and former friends were con­ cerned. I found a job in a cannery near Portland, Oregon, worked up to be assistant superintendent and for once I seemed to have escaped from the failure that had followed me in the past. I lost that job in December, 1930, due to the depression, and went to Portland in search of employment. There I resumed my real name and later went home, for the first time in five years. But there was no work to be found at home and, a few months later, I came back to Portland. My wife and I had a thousand dollars saved and I felt that we would get along somehow until work was obtained. Our savings vanished and the hope of work with them during the winter of 1931-1932. In the meantime our personal belong­ ings, one by one, found their way to the pawn shops and by March, 1932, we were not only penniless but had nothing left ex­ cept a very scanty wardrobe. There were many days that winter when we experienced actual hunger while earnestly trying to find any job that would provide just the necessities of life. In my ceaseless beating about the city I found family after fam ­ ily in the same general condition or worse. I saw men half clad, in threadbare clothing, pacing the streets in soleless shoes. On their faces was the same look, part of hope, part of bewilderment, as they searched for a chance to earn a few dollars at honest work. I talked with hundreds of these men and found that, with few ex­ ceptions, they wanted not charity but work that would enable them to live and to regain their self-respect. You, who may never have been forced through actual hunger to accept charity or even loans that are given with faint hope o f re­ payment, do not know the double damage that poverty works. It affects the body but, worse, it wrecks self-respect. Charity does keep the body alive after a fashion, but it reduces to a minimum any satisfaction in living; it prevents actual physical suffering but at the expense of mental torture. In time, taken in regular doses, it 18 B.E.F. The Whole Story o f the Bonus A rm y can have but one ending, the complete annihilation of a man’s faith in him self and the complete rout of the desire that every de­ cent man should have, to improve him self and his position in society. I found that a large percentage of these men in Portland were, like myself, ex-service men. They had fought, so they had been told a few years before, “to save the nation”; they had fought, it now seemed, only in order to have a place in which to starve. Among these men there was profound discontent with condi­ tions. There was a ravaging desire to change them but a complete and leaden ignorance of the way to do it. Yet, among these men:hungry, desperate, downcast, there was little or no talk of the need for violent action. It was every man for himself. One can merge one’s individuality in the mass when active, even in war­ time when death taps at the shoulders of men, ...
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