The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000
marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated
groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to
demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers
called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's
American Expeditionary Forces, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was
led by Walter W. Waters, a former army sergeant.
Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great
Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded
them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each
service certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face
value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus compound interest. The
principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their
certificates. Retired Marine Corps Major General
Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time, visited
their camp to back the effort and encourage them. On July 28, U.S.
Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all
government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired
and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then
ordered the army to clear the veterans' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General
Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The
Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their
shelters and belongings burned. A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at
the start of the Roosevelt administration was defused in May with
an offer of jobs for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Hunt,
Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work
for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home. In 1936,
Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto and paid the veterans
their bonus nine years early. Background
In 1781, most of the Continental Army was demobilized. Two years later,
hundreds of Pennsylvania war veterans marched on Philadelphia, then the
nation's capital, surrounded the State House where the U.S. Congress was in
session, and demanded back pay. Congress fled to Princeton, New Jersey, and
several weeks later, the U.S. Army expelled the war veterans from
Philadelphia. In response to that experience, the federal district is now
directly governed by the U.S. Congress, now known as Washington, D.C., was
excluded from the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act which forbade the
use of the U.S. military for domestic police activity.
The practice of war-time military bonuses began in 1776, as payment for
the difference between what a soldier earned and what he could have earned had
he not enlisted. Breaking with tradition, the veterans of the
Spanish–American War did not receive a bonus and, after World War I, their not
receiving a military service bonus became a political matter when WWI
veterans received only a $60 bonus. The American Legion, created in 1919, led a
political movement for an additional bonus.
On May 15, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill granting bonuses
to veterans of World War I, saying: "patriotism... bought and paid for is
not patriotism." Congress overrode his veto a few days later, enacting the
World War Adjusted Compensation Act. Each veteran was to receive a dollar for
each day of domestic service, up to a maximum of $500, and $1.25 for each day
of overseas service, up to a maximum of $625. Amounts of $50 or less were
immediately paid. All other amounts were issued as Certificates of Service
maturing in 20 years. 3,662,374 military service certificates
were issued, with a face value of $3.638,000,000. Congress established a
trust fund to receive 20 annual payments of $112 million that, with interest,
would finance the 1945 disbursement of the $3.638 billion due the veterans.
Meanwhile, veterans could borrow up to 22.5% of the certificate's face value
from the fund; but in 1931, because of the Great Depression, Congress increased
the maximum value of such loans to 50% of the certificate's face value.
Although there was congressional support for the immediate redemption of the
military service certificates, President Hoover and Republican congressmen
opposed such action; they reasoned that the government would have to increase
taxes to cover the costs of the payout, and thus any potential recovery would be
slowed. The Veterans of Foreign Wars continued
to press the federal government to allow the early redemption of military service
certificates. The first march of the unemployed was
"Coxey's Army" in 1894, when armies of men from various regions streamed to
Washington as a "living petition" to demand that the federal government
create jobs by investing in public infrastructure projects. In January
1932, a march of 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians, dubbed "Cox's Army", had
marched on Washington, D.C, the largest demonstration to date in the nation's
capital, setting a precedent for future marches by the unemployed.
March On June 15, 1932, the House of
Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill which would have moved
forward the date for World War I veterans to receive their cash bonus.
Most of the Bonus Army camped in a Hooverville on the Anacostia Flats, a
swampy, muddy area across the Anacostia River from the federal core of
Washington, just south of the 11th Street Bridges. The camps, built from
materials scavenged from a nearby rubbish dump, were tightly controlled by
the veterans who laid out streets, built sanitation facilities, and held daily
parades. To live in the camps, veterans were required to register and prove they
had been honorably discharged. The Bonus Army massed at the United
States Capitol on June 17 as the U.S. Senate defeated the Bonus Bill by a vote
of 62-18. Police shooting
The marchers remained at their campsite waiting for President Hoover to act. On
July 28, 1932, Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the police to remove
the Bonus Army veterans from their camp. When the veterans moved back into it,
police drew their revolvers and shot at the veterans, two of whom, William
Hushka and Eric Carlson, died later. William Hushka was an immigrant to the
United States from Lithuania. When the U.S. entered World War I in 1917, he
sold his butcher shop in St. Louis, Missouri and joined the United States
Army. After the war he lived in Chicago. Hushka is buried in Arlington National
Cemetery. Eric Carlson was a U.S. veteran from
Oakland, California. He fought in the trenches of France in World War I. He
was interred in Arlington National Cemetery.
When told of the shootings, President Hoover ordered the army to evict the
Bonus Army from Washington. U.S. Army intervention
At 4:45 p.m., commanded by Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the 12th Infantry Regiment,
Fort Howard, Maryland, and the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, supported by six
battle tanks commanded by Maj. George S. Patton, formed in Pennsylvania Avenue
while thousands of civil service employees left work to line the street
and watch. The Bonus Marchers, believing the troops were marching in their honor,
cheered the troops until Patton ordered the cavalry to charge them—an action
which prompted the spectators to yell, "Shame! Shame!"
After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas entered
the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled
across the Anacostia River to their largest camp, and President Hoover
ordered the assault stopped. MacArthur chose to ignore the president and
ordered a new attack, claiming that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow
the U.S. government. That is the false story put forward by assistant chief of
staff, George Van Horn Moseley. It was he who made sure MacArthur never
received Hoover's order to stop to the Secretary of War, Patrick J Hurley & the
assistant secretary of war for air who did not. Moseley was a known anti-Semite
and neo-fascist yet his word has won out as his memoirs which made the claim came
out just after MacArthur's death. The general never knew of the claim that he
had been told. He did wrongly believe in there being an overthrow risk. MHQ 8-2
Winter 1996 "MacArthur & The Marchers" brings it all together. Fifty-five
veterans were injured and 135 arrested. A veteran's wife miscarried. When
12-week-old Bernard Myers died in the hospital after being caught in the tear
gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, while a
hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good."
During the military operation, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, later the 34th
president of the United States, served as one of MacArthur's junior aides.
Believing it wrong for the Army's highest-ranking officer to lead an
action against fellow American war veterans, he strongly advised MacArthur
against taking any public role: "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch not to go down
there," he said later. "I told him it was no place for the Chief of Staff."
Despite his misgivings, Eisenhower later wrote the Army's official incident
report which endorsed MacArthur's conduct.
Aftermath Joe Angelo, a decorated hero from the
war who saved Patton's life, approached him the day after to sway him. Patton,
however, dismissed him quickly. This episode was said to represent the
proverbial essence of the Bonus Army, each man the face of each side; Angelo
the dejected loyal soldier, Patton the unmoved government instrument
unconcerned with past duties. Though the Bonus Army incident did not
derail the careers of the military officers involved, it proved politically
disastrous for Hoover. He lost the 1932 election in a landslide to Franklin D.
Roosevelt. MGM released the movie Gabriel Over the
White House in March 1933, the month Roosevelt was sworn in as president.
Produced by William Randolph Hearst's Cosmopolitan Pictures, it depicted a
fictitious President Hammond who, in the film's opening scenes, refuses to deploy
the military against a march of the unemployed and instead creates an "Army
of Construction" to work on public works projects until the economy recovers.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt judged the movie's treatment of veterans superior
to Hoover's. During the presidential campaign of
1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt had opposed the veterans' bonus demands. But when
they organized a second demonstration in May 1933, he provided the marchers with
a campsite in Virginia and provided them three meals a day. Administration
officials, led by presidential confidant Louis Howe, tried to negotiate an end to
the protest. Roosevelt arranged for his wife Eleanor to visit the site
unaccompanied. She lunched with the veterans and listened to them perform
songs. She reminisced about her memories of seeing troops off to World War I and
welcoming them home. The most she could offer was a promise of positions in the
newly created Civilian Conservation Corps. One veteran commented: "Hoover
sent the army, Roosevelt sent his wife". In a press conference following her
visit, the First Lady described her reception as courteous and praised the
marchers, highlighting how comfortable she felt despite critics of the marchers
who described them as communists and criminals.
Roosevelt later issued an executive order allowing the enrollment of 25,000
veterans in the CCC, exempting them from the normal requirement that applicants
be unmarried and under the age of 25. Congress, with Democrats holding
majorities in both houses, passed the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act in
1936, authorizing the immediate payment of the $2 billion in WWI bonuses, and
then overrode Roosevelt's veto of the measure. The House vote was 324 to 61,
and the Senate vote was 76 to 19. See also
Coxey's Army James Renshaw Cox
List of protest marches on Washington, D.C.
On-to-Ottawa Trek by Canadian Veterans, 1935
Notes Sources
Burner, David.. Herbert Hoover: A Public Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN
0-394-46134-7. Daniels, Roger.. The Bonus March: An
Episode of the Great Depression. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
Dickson, Paul, and Thomas B. Allen.. The Bonus Army: An American Epic. New York:
Walker and Company. ISBN 0-8027-1440-4. Dickson, Paul, and Thomas B. Allen.
"Marching On History," in Smithsonian, February 2003
James, D. Clayton.. The Years of MacArthur, Volume I, 1880-1941. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin. Lisio, Donald J.. The President and
Protest: Hoover, Conspiracy, and the Bonus Riot. Columbia, MO: University of
Missouri Press. Smith, Richard Norton.. An Uncommon Man:
The Triumph of Herbert Hoover. New York: Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-46034-X.
Liebovich, Louis W.. Bylines in Despair: Herbert Hoover, the Great Depression,
and the U.S. News Media ISBN 0-275-94843-9
Bennett, Michael J.. When Dreams Come True: The GI Bill and the Making of
Modern America ISBN 1-57488-218-X Perret, Geoffrey. "MacArthur and the
Marchers" in MHQ Vol 8 No 2 American Historical Publication, Inc
Further reading Morrow, Felix.. The Bonus March.
International Pamphlets No. 31. New York: International Publishers.
Ortiz, Stephen R. 2006. "Rethinking the Bonus March: Federal Bonus Policy, the
Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the Origins of a Protest Movement". Journal
of Policy History. 18, no. 3: 275-303. Rawl, Michael J.. Anacostia Flats.
Baltimore: Publish America. ISBN 978-1-413-79778-7.
Smith, Gene.. The Shattered Dream. New York: William Morrow and Company.
External links Sheilah Kast. "Soldier Against Soldier:
The Story of the Bonus Army". NPR: Weekend Edition Sunday.
The Bonus Army Vets Owe Debt to WWI's "Bonus Army from
military.com FBI file on the Bonus Army
The Sad Tale of the Bonus Marchers Memory: The Bonus Army March, Library of
Congress Paul Dickson & Thomas B. Allen on The
Bonus Army: An American Epic, a lecture recorded at the Pritzker Military Museum
& Library