A former history professor, Tom Miller
is a novelist and essayist. His most recent
novel is Full
Court Press (2000). His reviews
and essays have appeared in numerous books,
journals, and newspapers, including The
Encyclopedia of Southern History, American
History Illustrated, the Chicago
Tribune, and the Des Moines Register.
He also is a former Army officer and Vietnam
veteran.
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In 1924, prodded by the American Legion and other advocates for veterans of the Great War, Congress approved a bonus of $1.25 per day for overseas service and $1.00 per day for domestic service. Citing the cost ($3.5 billion at a time when the entire federal budget was $4 billion), Congress postponed the payment until 1945.
Five years later, the stock market crashed and the nation's economy followed it. By 1932, unemployment had reached 25 percent of the work force, and millions of Americans were destitute. Veterans' advocates began to lobby the government for early, immediate payment of the bonus. In Portland, Oregon, veterans organized a Bonus Expeditionary Force (named after the American Expeditionary Force of WWI) for a march on Washington to lobby Congress on behalf of the bonus.
Soon thousands of veterans were on the road - or more precisely the railroad since they tended to hop freight cars or empty cattle cars - converging on Washington. By July 1932, tens of thousands of veterans - some with their entire family - had settled into camps around the city. The largest site - and the principal camp - was across the Anacostia River from the Capitol on Anacostia Flats. There, the vets and their families erected makeshift structures from whatever they could find. Food was usually in short supply and living conditions were distinctly unsanitary.
The vets hoped that their presence would pressure Congress to approve legislation mandating the immediate payment of the bonus. But, in August, Congress defeated the Bill and adjourned. When the police, on orders from the Attorney General, began to evict veterans from the vacant buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue, violence flared and police mortally wounded two marchers. President Hoover, who opposed the bonus, then called out the Army to remove the veterans.
The result was not pretty. The military force, accompanied by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, routed the veterans from their camps near the Capitol and then crossed the Anacostia River (apparently against the President's instructions) and cleared the camp on Anacostia Flats, which was torched. The beleaguered Bonus Marchers fled into Pennsylvania and dispersed.
The fate of the Bonus Army made Hoover, already the most unpopular man in America, even less popular. It did not, as the authors contend, contribute to his defeat in 1932 at the hands of Franklin Roosevelt. He was going to lose anyway. It only contributed to the magnitude of his loss. The episode also stained the reputation of MacArthur, who overestimated - perhaps willfully - the radical (Communist) influence within the Bonus Army and certainly overreacted in dispatching them.
The vets marched again in 1933 and 1934, but there were many fewer. FDR, the new President, was no friend of the bonus, but he was much more adept at public relations than Hoover. Despite his promise to veto any bonus bill, he made sure that the marchers had decent quarters and food and sent his wife - the indomitable Eleanor - to tour the camp and chat with the men. When a new bonus bill passed in January 1936, FDR vetoed it as promised, but Congress overrode his veto and the bill became law. The veterans would finally collect their bonus early.
In 1944, with 11,000,000 men under arms fighting fascism and with the memory of the Bonus Army still fresh, Congress, with the support of FDR, passed the GI Bill of Rights. A generous and far-reaching piece of social legislation, the GI Bill would help millions of veterans obtain higher education, loans for homes and businesses, and extended unemployment insurance. The authors claim this as the legacy of the Bonus March, and certainly they are partially right. On the other hand, the nation had been generous to its veterans in the past. FDR noted in his opposition to the early payment of the bonus that veterans made up 1% of the population and consumed 24% of the federal budget.
Dickson and Allen have written a thoroughly researched and spirited narrative of the Bonus Army. They have done yeoman work in mining the relevant archives, and their interviews with many of the surviving witnesses add new testimony to the record of the March. Their goal of using the Bonus Army as a prism for the Great Depression, however, is only a qualified success. It works well on some levels - the plight of the poor and dispossessed, for example - but less well, if at all, on other levels - economic and regulatory reform, for example.
The story of the Bonus Army, while not generally known today, has not as the authors claim been "lost to history." It has been the subject of articles and books - most recently Donald J. Lisio's The President and Protest: Hoover, Macarthur, and the Bonus Riot (1994) - and rates a column in most history texts. It would be fairer to say that the Bonus Army has received much less attention than it deserves. But, with their readable and exhaustive account, Dickson and Allen have gone a long way toward remedying that situation.
