On July 28, 1932, the United States Army forcibly dispersed the Bonus Army, an assembly of World War I veterans hoping for relief in the midst of the Great Depression.
In 1924, Congress had authorized the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, a law that granted American veterans of World War I a special cash bonus to be paid in 1945 as a sort of pension. The amount to be paid varied on service, but didn't exceed $625, roughly $8,000 in 2013 dollars.
With the coming of the Great Depression in 1929, many Americans found themselves in dire financial straits. The economic crisis hit virtually every sector of the economy at the same time, producing rampant unemployment and poverty. By 1933, the worst year of the depression, unemployment stood at 25 percent. Roughly one in four banks had gone under, and relief looked to be nowhere in sight.
President Herbert Hoover was reluctant to intervene directly in the economy, believing that too much government control would only exacerbate the crisis. Consequently, many Americans came to see the president as an unfeeling, uncaring embodiment of the depression. Those who lost their homes were forced to live in shanty towns known as “Hoovervilles,” and those forced to sleep on park benches vainly tried to insulate themselves from the cold with newspapers, now called “Hooverblankets.”
Among the hardest hit were America's Great War veterans. By early 1932, many in Congress considered legislation that would have allowed veterans to receive their bonus early, rather than having to wait 13 more years. Many of these veterans began to arrive in Washington, D.C., in mid-June to march and show their support for the bill, and to show Congress their plight firsthand. A small Hooverville camp was created on the far side of the Anacostia River, a swamp not far from the city center. All told, 20,000 World War I veterans had assembled.
After a Senate bill to grant the bonuses failed on June 17, many of the marchers went home. Many others, without any prospects to go home to, stayed.
In his biography of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “FDR,” Jean Edward Smith wrote: “Washington officials coped the best they could. Police Chief Pelham Glassford did his utmost to provide tents and bedding for the veterans, furnished medicine and assisted with food and sanitation. Maintaining order was never a problem. The men were camped illegally, but Glassford (who had been the youngest brigadier general with the AEF in France) chose to treat them simply as old soldiers who had fallen on hard times. He resisted efforts to use force to dislodge them.”
Unfortunately, many in the federal government did not share Glassford's rather benign view of the marchers. With America in the midst of its greatest crisis since the Civil War, many believed that a communist revolution, not unlike what had occurred in Russia only 15 years earlier, might happen in Washington, D.C. Refusing to meet with a delegation representing the marchers, Hoover instead ordered greater security surrounding the White House, lest it suffer the same fate as the Czar's Winter Palace.
On July 28, Hoover urged the city government to move against some of the marchers who had been squatting in abandoned buildings. When some of the marchers resisted, a brief gun battle occurred, and two of the marchers were killed. Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley, who feared the marchers were preparing for a Bolshevik revolution and who had longed for a pretext to clear out the veterans, was delighted. The government could finally take action against what he considered a dangerous rabble.
That afternoon, city commissioners formally asked for military help in dispersing the marchers. Smith wrote:
“Within the hour, troopers from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, led by their forty-seven-year-old executive officer, Major George S. Patton, clattered across Memorial Bridge into Washington, supported by tanks and machine guns. (Army Chief of Staff General Douglas) MacArthur, who normally wore mufti to the War Department, changed into Class A uniform (replete with Sam Browne belt, medals, and decorations) and took command. At his side was his aide-de-camp and military secretary, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower, also in Class A.”
Eisenhower had urged MacArthur not to personally oversee the operation. On one hand, he feared the consequences and hoped to insulate his superior from blame should things go wrong. He also had grave reservations about the mission in general — using the Army to force citizens out of the city.
By late afternoon, Patton's cavalry moved into the streets, sabers drawn, to force the marchers out of the city and back across the river. Infantrymen moved into the abandoned buildings, their bayonets fixed on the ends of their rifles, and ordered the squatters out. Tear gas was used liberally, forcing not only the veterans, but their wives and children, to choke and cry as they were escorted out of town at saber-point. The whole scene did indeed resemble Russia, though it looked more like Czarist repression in the years before the Bolshevik revolution.
In his book “Ike: An American Hero,” biographer Michael Korda wrote:
“(MacArthur) and Ike — who was by now appalled at the unfolding of exactly the consequences he had predicted — marched across the bridge at the head of the troops, whereupon the entire encampment went up in flames. Whether the fire was started by the soldiers or the veterans was never subsequently made clear, but Ike clearly spoke for a lot of people in remarking, 'The whole scene was painful. … The veterans were ragged, ill-fed and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity one had to feel for them.”
Korda also noted that: “Two babies were suffocated by tear gas and died, and a seven-year-old boy was bayoneted through the leg while trying to rescue his pet rabbit.” Many others were injured in the action, and well over 100 were arrested.
Though some newspapers across the country endorsed Hoover's actions in dispersing the Bonus Army, most characterized it as a major disaster, as unnecessary as it was unfeeling. The image of the president as unsympathetic to the needs of most Americans was reinforced, and Hoover lost his re-election bid that fall to FDR by an electoral margin of 472 to 59. In 1936, Congress passed legislation finally granting the veterans their bonus.
Cody K. Carlson holds a master's degree in history from the University of Utah and currently teaches at SLCC. He has also appeared on many local stages including Hale Center Theater and Off-Broadway Theater. Email: ckcarlson76@gmail.com