“WARSHIPS AT HAVANA”
“Their Assembling is Favorably Regarded Here.”
These were headlines from the Evening Star, January 26, 1898.1 The newspaper lays out the situation as relayed by Consul General Fitzhugh Lee: the United States Armored Cruiser (referred to as a battle ship) USS Maine (ACR-1) had arrived to Havana, Cuba, for a good-will port visit, and the city received them well. Lee anticipated that German, British, and French ships would soon be joining them in the Spanish city, from which he had returned observing no signs of disorder. The intent of the international force was to show the Spanish government, currently contending with Cuban nationalists, that the Maine's visit was well intended.
Less than a month later the Evening Star would be trying to make sense of the explosion aboard the Maine that destroyed the ship. Headlines like “The Maine Blown Up” sat next to “Officers Puzzled,” and “The Cabinet Confer: Members Discuss the News With the President” that reported the buzz of activity at the White House following the arrival of telegrams.2 Included in those were regrets from the Spanish government and assurances that they were not responsible for the explosion. War drums quickly drowned out whatever good will the Maine had intended to convey. One week after the explosion, well before official investigations were complete, newspapers began publishing telegrams and letters of support for war with Spain. In Oklahoma The Wichita Daily Eagle ran an entire column on their front page of offers to serve, requests to the governor for authorization to raise companies of troops, and pledges of armed support to the President.3 By March, Lehigh University students paraded through the town with the slogan “To hell with Spain.”4 The phrase, sometimes amended with “Remember the Maine,” morphed quickly into songs and stories (many about children) that appeared around the country.5
Attending a similar rally held April 27 in the Chester Armory in Pennsylvania, future Major General of the United States Marine Corps (USMC) Smedley Darlington Butler became swept up in the enthusiasm for war and attempted to join a volunteer unit, but at the time, he was still a minor needing his father's permission, which was flatly denied.6 However, with no age requirement for receiving a commission, Butler was able to secure permission to become a Second Lieutenant in the Marine Corps, and receive three weeks of training in Washington D.C. before shipping out on July 10th in a stiff-necked blue uniform, joining the Marines (already in khaki uniforms) that previously deployed on April 17.7 Had Butler lied about his age, the Army would have deployed him with even less training than the mere three weeks he did receive from the Corps. Many that did enlist found the Army so wanting in supplies that they were not issued uniforms, or, like Butler, were given heavy woolen clothing not suitable for tropical climates; some were committed to battle having only practiced military drill using broom handles and fake rifles.8 Hundreds died from diseases caused from rotten food and unsanitary conditions, and of the 2,430 US casualties, only 385 were a direct result of combat.9
Despite the often-harsh conditions, the service members took pride in what they did.10 So strong was the patriotism of the day that people were willing to volunteer to go to war even on the belief that the US and “old Glory” had merely been insulted.11 In 1900 Butler, at the time 200 miles off of Chinese coast in support of operations to put down the Boxer Rebellion, described himself as “the happiest man alive” because he was with 106 Marines, “a very fine body of men,” including two that had stowed away on the ship in order to join the Company, which were inducted as soon as they were found.12 Although the continuing military operations in China, Cuba, and the Philippines from 1898 until the Great War, were some exceptionally difficult times for service members, the willingness to serve was far from dampened.
However, two new lobbing groups arrived on the scene, the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States of America (VFW), and the American Legion. The VFW traces its beginning to a series of turn-of-the-century local organizations from Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Colorado.17 Each of the five smaller organizations had been specialized to a specific conflict or region, and their small sized meant they lacked the political influence a national organization could achieve. By 1913, compromise and common goals forged the VFW from these smaller groups.18 Six years later (in 1919) with the Great War over, millions of US troops that had been part of the American Expeditionary Force were waiting to demobilize, which would prove to be a lengthy process, but as they waited, the troops' morale began to suffer.19 Citing fears that unrest among standing armies was what led to the Bolshevik revolutions after the Armistice, the temporary officer in charge of the General Headquarters in Chaumont, France, George White, took his concerns to Theodore Roosevelt Jr. who had also noticed the morale issues.20 Roosevelt's suggestion was to form a veterans group, which became the American Legion, from troops of the yet-to-demobilize A.E.F. to address the problem.21
Between the VFW and the Legion, the assumptions of Wilson and Congress were, indeed, challenged. Feeling that they deserved more than the dollar a day, the veterans lobbied the government for greater financial compensation, and in 1924 Congress provided additional funds for veterans of the Great War over the veto of President Calvin Coolidge.22 The so-called bonus was set at a rate of $1 per day of service, and $1.25 / day for overseas service, with immediate payout to anyone entitled to $50 or less, or in certificates that would mature in 1945.23 Long before the certificates could mature, the economic conditions of the Great Depression put a large number of people out of work, including millions of veterans.
Feeling that the bonus was a debt owed them by a government that had the resources to pay, a small group of 250 veterans in Portland decided to stage a march to Washington D.C. starting May 10, 1932, to petition Congress for an early payment.24 The group called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, a play on the American Expeditionary Force of the Great War, but the movement became known popularly as the Bonus March. One common figure reported by the newspapers was that the Bonus Army had reached 20,000 members.25 Although the numbers fluctuated as months dragged on, by police estimates on July 21 there were 24 camps spread across D.C. containing nearly 12,000 veterans and an unknown number of women and children.26
There had been a government offer to transport the marchers home, but with many not having a home to return to, the B.E.F. camps continued to operate until President Herbert Hoover ordered the military to clear them out of the Capitol.27 At 4:30 PM on July 28, with drawn sabers, fixed bayonets, ready-to-deploy tanks, and gas grenades, cavalry and infantry units moved against the veterans and the gathered crowd of spectators, driving the veterans out of their camps by force.28 Newspapers covering the story two days after the fact openly praised the regular Army's victory over the “communists,” and printed the President's written statement that the “lawlessness” the B.E.F. represented was a threat to American “self-government,” which had been a “challenge” that the government had “met swiftly, and firmly.”29
To go from being so eager to serve that people were stowing away on outbound transport ships, even if merely on the sense that the US had been insulted, to being publicly labeled communists, virtually enemies of the state, represents a major shift in relations between the government that called them for service, and the veterans that returned home. While the period between the Spanish-American war of 1898 and the Bonus March of 1932 does represent a very turbulent time in American History, the shift in how people talked about the issues must have had an effect. What was the impact of the changing nature of inner governmental discussions on veteran affairs between the end of the Great War in 1918, and the Bonus March of 1932? How did organizational changes in Veterans Service Organizations impact their goals and methods of reaching those goals? Did the inconsistency in how the government viewed organized veterans and how the veterans saw themselves lead to the confrontation?
How did governmental discussions change?
Thirty days after the signing of the Armistice, the topic of returning veterans was on the mind of a great number of individuals. Secretary of Labor William Wilson addressed the Committee on Rules about the concerns of the time.
I feel that we are going through the same kind of atmosphere we went through in the months immediately following our entrance into the war. At that time there was a fear that we would not be able to accomplish the things that were necessary for war purposes… Yet, when the great crisis came, and the German military forces had broken through the lines on the western front and there was nothing between them and Paris but 30 miles of space, it was these same soldiers … who stepped into the breach at Chateau Theirry and turned the German forces backward toward Berlin, restored the morale of the French and English forces, and secured victory for our arms. … The same fears now exist among many of our people relative to the demobilization of our military forces and our munition workers, and the remobilization of our normal industry. Yet it seems to me if we could transform an industrial-peace organization into a great military organization and we could create it in the brief period of time it took us to do it, that it is not such a difficult task to restore our normal industrial activities.30
Secretary Wilson's comments show a high respect for the soldiers, which only a short time before had been farm hands, factory workers, and members of the general public. They also show a confidence in the government's ability to get the economy back to business as usual. Having taken 4 million men out of the labor force for the Armed Services, and redeploying millions more in the manufacture of war goods in a few short years, the question that was weighing on the minds of the lawmakers was how difficult it was going to be to put the economy back in order and what the Department of Labor felt was the correct path to take.31 Wilson's plan was to free up the raw resources the government had taken for war materials, to increase the flow of capital into the private sector in part by opening more foreign trade, to organize Congressional committees to maintain proper oversight, and to connect the demobilization of the troops and materials with the industrial sector in order to smooth the transition as much as possible.32 With the War Department releasing 20,000 troops per week, with an expected increase to 40,000 to 60,000 per week, the demobilization was anticipated to be completed before the peace-time retooling of industry could be accomplished, which Wilson suggested would be an issue if no provisions were made for the soon-to-be unemployed troops.33
One of the conflicts under consideration were the number of “well-paid” munition and war goods workers that would soon be unemployed, as well as a number of woman that had taken to working as part of the war effort, as both groups would be in direct competition with returning veterans.34 The main assumption was that veterans would return to their former employment, pushing the women out of industries not directly connected with the war effort, and putting war workers in competition for the former peacetime jobs. However, by April 1919 there were indications that was not true. The Emergency Employment Committee interviewed returning veterans as they passed through New York and found that only 10-11 percent were returning to jobs that they had done before the war, about 4 percent could have returned to the same jobs but were seeking better employment, 13 percent had found better positions, but more than 30 percent were unemployed either by circumstances or choice (15 percent had yet to be discharged).35 While the nature of random interviews conducted in one city is always somewhat suspect and they might not have been representative of the general trends, the indication is that the war had caused more than a temporary rift in the economic realities of civil life, but had become a point of departure from their former lives for many of the service members.
Complicating the general issue of labor was the sizable number of Great War veterans that were wholly or partially disabled. In 1921 Judge Robert Marx, the National Commander of the Disabled American Veterans of the World War, testified to the Committee on the Judiciary that at that time the War Risk Insurance Bureau had registered over 425,000 service men and women as having been officially recognized as having been disabled or vocationally handicapped by their service in the war.36 In anticipation of such problems, Congress had attempted to pass legislation in January 1918 that would establish a Board of Vocational Rehabilitation; the bill failed because it would have required disabled veterans to attend training schools of the government's choosing, “thus permitting little to no choice to the soldier to determine for himself his future trade or calling.”37 A revised bill was signed into law in June 1918, which fulfilled the same role, but removed the “compulsory” nature of the training and provided both job placement after training and preferential hiring in government positions.38 While providing rehabilitation for disabled veterans was a worthy goal, and the revised bill managed to avoid effectively forcing nearly half a million veterans into specific post-service careers of the government's choosing, the oversight to allow such a bill to make it to the House floor betrays the paternalistic attitudes of some of the Representatives. Not seeing that disabled veterans still possessed the agency necessary to make choices about their own future gives reason to believe that there was a disconnect in how some members of Congress viewed veterans as compared to how the veterans might view themselves.
For other government officials, attempting to understand veterans resulted in a type of thinking that tried to make sense of them in an unusual way. Like George White and Theodore Roosevelt's fears of the contemporary and ongoing Bolshevik revolutions, James Morman, the Assistant Secretary of the Federal Farm Loan Board, found a revolutionary reason to fear, albeit straight from the History books: the legions of Caesar and downfall of the Roman Republic.39 According to Morman's report, Secretary of the Interior Franklin Lane provided the inspiration in a letter to President Woodrow Wilson when attempting to frame the issue of returning veterans, he cited “Rome under Caesar,” “France under Napoleon,” and the US Civil War.40 Setting three acts of major rebellion in direct connection with worries about demobilization suggests that there was an underlying fear about veterans in large numbers. It was not just that there were worries about the potential economic problems and likely post-war recession, which was the surface of the conversations, but the framing of the debate hints that there were deeper psychological fears, not fully expressed, at least not openly so. When taken with Roosevelt's fears about the Bolsheviks, it seems that the fear did not initially focus on any one type of rebellion or ideology. Lane's use of three attempts to overthrow a republic suggests that he feared the downfall of the United States. The seemingly innate fear of veterans was like shadows on the wall that had yet to take a specific shape, open to the worst interpretations the imagination could invent and all the more intimidating for it.
For Morman, the worst interpretation was not socialism, but was that the United States might come to the same end as the Roman Republic. He dedicated an entire chapter of his 367-page report to the analysis of the role Roman legions and land distribution played in rise of Julius Caesar. He asserts that a major contributing factor in the loyalty of the legions to Caesar, instead of the senate, was that the soldiers, which were supposed to be non-proletarius citizens (wealthier than lowest sixth economic bracket), had been drawn from the lowest class, having been systematically deprived of land and resources necessary to become farmers.41 He held that it was a “fact” that soldiers and sailors desired to continue engaging in “open-air” “out-of-doors work,” like “farming and stock raising,” because the military operated in such environments.42
Taking the Roman experience as a starting point to examine demobilization, he set as a goal to lay out a system whereby land might be provided to veterans, that the men might be matched to the agricultural work they were best suited to do, and that continued financial support would be provided to them until they were successfully running their own farms.43 His plan was not particularly drastic, given similar statements by Secretary Wilson, but Morman's concept of how land might be transferred to the veterans was a deviation from other plans. He rejected the standing policy of opening new lands from previously undeveloped acreage, which would deprive veterans of access to services, education and “social advantages” only available in already-developed areas.44 Instead, taking a page from the Gracchi brothers of Rome, he suggested that the abundance of abandoned and unused farmlands throughout the country, where the owners had died or sought work in the city, could be redistributed to demobilizing veterans and put back into agricultural use with little effort.45
It is questionable that veterans preferred out-door work. Many had come from farms, but as many as 89-90 percent of returning veterans did not want or where not able to secure their old occupations, but were seeking better positions than they had before the war. The Great Migration into the cities meant that the better positions the veterans were seeking were not likely in the traditional line of farming Morman suggested, even if his reasoning about land-ownership as an aspect of affluence was correct or still relevant at all. There is a wide gulf between trying to earn a living by farming and being elevated from the proletarius, especially considering that great number of farmers that had already walked away from that line of work. Nonetheless, he unflinchingly, and at great length, proposed a system of land redistribution and continual governmental largesse to the returning legions out of fear that without something to buy their loyalty, they might prove a grave threat to the current republic. While not the most generous reading of Morman's report, it is significant that a government official would make such a socialistic argument for the purposes of pacifying an Army that already demonstrated loyalty to the state. It shows that the government was not universally opposed to socialism, and that it feared the effects of the demobilization, and by extension, the very Army that it had forged in short order.
While the general tone of the debates was not against the military, the conversations the government was having within itself did start to move in a particular direction. The US Senate included in their official documents a speech by Rome Brown to the Middlesex County Bar Association on December 23, 1919, titled “Americanism Verses Socialism.”46 Brown, “a lawyer from the western plains,” spoke about Socialism, which he felt was a threat the traditional conservative outlook of the Eastern US had been unaffected by, but which was growing in strength in the West.47 He starkly defined socialism as “revolution and a violent revolution against government” and set that against his preferred alternative, Americanism, “government by law and not by mob rule.”48 Brown cited the actions of known Socialist Arthur C. Townley and the “Farmers Non-Partisan League” (NPL) as a “concrete example of Socialism in practice” in North Dakota, saying that, with the support of the “Socialist supreme court” Townley had forced a state constitutional amendment that enabled the state government to engage in industry and business, even though the measure failed to get the need majority of the vote.49 Although Townley resided outside of the state, his connection to the NPL give him control over the governor that held veto over the industrial commission, which in turn gave Townley immense power over both public and private industries and utilities.50
To be completely honest, the argument Brown made seems, at best, spurious, and perhaps a bit too conspiratorial. It is very likely that Brown's comments were akin to the modern hyperbolic rhetoric and mudslinging, but he was far from the only source. The popular press had turned on the NPL with Charles Selden's New York Times article, “Terrorism and Fraud of the Non-Partisan League”.51 Besides the clear bias of the headline, Selden claimed that the North Dakota farmers had been robbed “of their money, their newspapers, their banks, their Constitution, the control of their schools and of all voice in their government.”52 Nonetheless, the transcript of Brown's speech had been passed onto the U.S. Senate and entered into their official records. The formerly ambiguous fears were starting to take on a real shape in the form of anything related to socialism.
Just after noon on September 16, 1920, an explosion on Wall Street brought the shadows of fear into sharp focus. “Blame Reds in Wall St. Horror,” declared the Los Angeles Times on the following morning, despite the fact that the paper was still unaware of the exact nature of the device used, if it had been an accident or not, or any other solid piece of evidence to tie the “reds” to the bombing.53 Outside of a month-old general warning that the William J. Burns Detective Agency had sent out that they believed “radicals” were planning unspecified bombings, and a cryptic letter to the French High Commission that warned of some kind of “catastrophe” on Wall Street, the paper's evidence that there were “reds” involved in the bombing was less than circumstantial. In the light of a lack of discussion supporting the headline, it reads as a dictate, and not a reflection of the story itself. Even decades later historians are divided as to the events of September 16. Some theories include that the bomb was the work of anarchists, an attempt to start a red scare to stop the US from acknowledging the Soviet Union, or retaliations for the indictment of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.54 Whoever the culprit was and whatever the motivation behind the bombing, the attack on the physical space that represents free-market capitalism was immediately conflated with the socialist, communist, anarchist ideological “attacks” on the idea of capitalism, and the resulting deaths of American citizens conflated with an attack on Americanism, however it was defined.
Attorney General William Mitchell had a richly developed language to draw from, if his intention was to discredit any group, on September 19, 1932, when he presented his conclusions based on the Federal Bureau of Investigation's inquiry on the Bonus March. The B.E.F. gave him the first move when they illegally boarded trains headed toward Washington, a fact that their own accounts confirm.56 Instead of citing the confrontations between the group of 250 gathered by Walter Waters, Mitchell opened his analysis by talking about groups that departed from Detroit, which were headed up by C. B. Cowan who had “a long police record” and John T. Pace, “a well known Communist leader.”57 This opened up Mitchell's second move, which was to distance the Marchers from military service, by claiming that only a small percentage were actual veterans of the World War and that a large portion were criminals.58
From only a fraction of the total estimated veterans that had participated in the March, 4,723 that had been fingerprinted when they were given loans by the Veterans' Bureau to leave Washington, Mitchell extrapolated that one fifth of the men had previously been arrested of crimes like “assault, larceny, burglary, embezzlement, robbery, felonious homicide, forgery and counterfeiting, rape, sex offenses, and narcotic drug violations”.59 Nearly 77 percent of those that had been previously arrested had been convicted; however, only 17 percent of those fingerprinted had been previously been convicted.60 The three largest categories of convictions were “Larceny Theft”, “Drunkenness”, and “Military, Offenses, Desertion, etc.”61 In many ways, this fits the pattern one might expect from a veteran that had been negatively impacted both by the World War and by the Great Depression. FBI crime statistics for 1932 show that nationally larceny theft was the highest reported crime, but did not record statistics on drunkenness or miscellaneous military offenses.62 Of his laundry list of crimes, with the exception of larceny, which was not outside the general character of Depression-era Americans, the grievous crimes were among some of the lowest number of convictions among those that were fingerprinted. He placed extra emphasis on those crimes based on a fraction of the total Marchers. By ignoring Waters and the original members of the B.E.F. in favor of others that fit the communist / criminal narrative, even while acknowledging that those fingerprinted were not a fair representation of veterans, Mitchell was able to label the entire movement, and conclude that it was “intolerable” to allow any organization to “encamp … like soldiers billeted in an enemy country.”63
How did Veterans Service Organizations change?
In the decades following the turn of the century, military operations became marked by the logistical challenges presented by the rapid muster and deployment of troops during the Spanish-American and the Philippine-American wars. A lack of adequate training, supplies, and uniforms consistent with the environment were intensified by a lack of adequate food fit for consumption, and medical personnel often were not aware of the health dangers of the tropics, when doctors had been contracted by the military at all.64 Having little to no official after-service care, veterans turned to already-established veteran service organizations only to be rejected.65 By denying them access to organizations like the Grand Army of the Republic, they were shut out from the lobbies that had established benefits for the veterans of the Civil War, and so the newly established VFW aimed at securing benefits like those previous groups had received for their own generation, but for all current and future veterans.66 In support of future veterans, they lobbied for a stronger, better-equipped standing army, including up to 200,000 troops, with equipment for 1,000,000.67 By 1919, the VFW had established a permanent office in Washington, called the National Service Bureau, to provide all returning veterans with aid claiming benefits.68 In 1921, a branch office of the Bureau was opened in New York to reach the large number of demobilizing veterans there.69
The formation of the American Legion began similarly to the precursors to the VFW. The initial membership requirement to join the Legion included service from April 6, 1917 to November 11, 1918, and excluded anyone that did not receive an honorable discharge.70 In May 1919 a series of meetings were held in St. Louis to finish establishing the Legion, as they had planned while still in France. The potential to be as overly restrictive in membership as older organizations had been was weakened on the first day when it was decided that the Legion “… is not an organization of officers or any aspiring personalities. It is the voice of the veterans of America.”71 Consistent with the findings of the Emergency Employment Committee, the Legion adopted another resolution linking patriotic duty to ensuring returning veterans with the same or better employment than they had before the war.72 The final draft of their constitution expanded membership to include US citizens that had served the Allied armies.73 With the ideology of inclusiveness in place, eventually their membership would be opened up to anyone the served during times of conflict as determined by Congress.
On July 25, 1919, the House Committee on the Judiciary heard Lt. Col. Thomas Miller's testimony on a bill to incorporate the American Legion. While he provided little in the way for a solid legal argument why Congress ought to officially recognize the Legion, the committee, seemingly baffled by the request, repeatedly asked Miller about the nature and planned activities of the organization. Representative Warren Gard was able to separate the “social” and “sentimental” duties that were merely part of being a citizen from the specific aims of the Legion that would require incorporation by referring to his knowledge of benefits that the Grand Army of the Republic had gained for its members.74 To the direct question if the Legion intended to secure similar benefits, Miller stated that was their intention, and elaborated on the difficulties some were already having claiming benefits under the War Risk act.75 Gard did not deny that there were issues with the Bureau, but asserted that it was Congress' duty, and not that of the American Legion.76 Even before the demobilization was complete, the problems were already felt on a large scale.
Mr. Caraway. How many members did you say you are going to have, 4,500,000?
Col. Miller. No sir, I do not say we are going to have four million.
Mr. Caraway. I was just going to say that you will need them all in order to get the War Risk insurance matter straightened out.
Mr. Gard. To put them all on the job, you mean.77
Problems in the War Risk act had already made it apparent that it was going to take a massive effort to set it straight, but Gard's statement that it was a job for Congress, and not a veterans’ service organization, highlights that the government and veterans were not seeing eye to eye on these issues. Even before the Legion has transitioned fully from a temporary into permanent organization, and despite the Committee-approved charter that forbade the Legion from being a “political” organization, there was already clear intent to use the Legion to seek benefits, which Congress regarded as their own job.78 Shortly after their final organization took form, the Legion joined the VFW as major veterans lobbies, and began pushing for a variety of issues. The first to be passed in 1924, after six years of continual effort, was the bonus that Waters would attempt to claim in 1932.79
The World War Adjusted Compensation Act provided an additional amount of money for service between April 4, 1917 and July 1, 1919.80 The bill explicitly stated that the benefits to be granted were “adjusted service pay” if the amount due was less than $50, but an “adjusted service certificate” if the compensation was greater than that amount.81 The certificates were for a 20-year endowment insurance that would increase by 25 percent of the face value at the time or 4 percent per year if the veteran died before that maturation date.82 This bill essentially established two different types of benefits, one that was directly related to the wages, and one that took the same compensation and forced veterans to participate in a life insurance plan. The increase in value likely seemed a reasonable compensation to the government for holding money it acknowledged as a World War veteran benefit.
Supporting Butler's claim, Patman explained the scope of the need: 2 million veterans were known to be unemployed, many of which were able-bodied or only partially disabled, veterans that were employed often worked severely reduced hours, and of the 3,666,000 certificates that had been issued, all but approximately 600,000 had taken or wanted to take a loan against the certificate.87 In Detroit, the American Legion reported that many veterans there had been out of work for more than two years, losing their houses and possessions to foreclosure, despite having borrowed the maximum amount against their certificates.88 Waters reported similar situations in Portland, where unemployed veterans would have preferred a job, but in the absence of one, the certificates had “become a substitute or a symbol for that long dreamt of new start, ...” “Debts could be met, doctors' bills paid, a fast fraying credit renewed, and one man could look another in the eye once more.”89 
Citing the Constitutional rights of citizens to assemble, and to petition the government for redress of grievances, Waters decided to organize his own group to lobby the government directly.90 When the committee hearings adjourned in May, believing the issue to have been permanently tabled, the 250 men of B.E.F. gathered on May 10, selected officers, established marching orders and embarked for Washington.91 When they arrived at the end of the month, they were joined by other groups of veterans that heard of their march, followed their example and folded their own groups into the B.E.F under the rules as established.92 The inspiration for the rules came directly from the memory and habits of military service, and Waters was proud to claim that, excluding the “seizure of transportation”, no violations of the law occurred on the march, and the only arrest was one man taken into B.E.F. custody and handed over to the police for carrying a firearm.93 Patman met with Waters to express his concerns about the presence of the B.E.F. in D.C., but he had received such a large number of reports praising the discipline of the en-route marchers that Waters satisfied him by agreeing to not credit or involve him in the march.94 The Superintendent of Police General Pelham Glassford, arranged the first shelter and meals for the arriving veterans, and Waters offered full cooperation with him while they were in Washington.95
The official roster sheet tally, including names and service numbers for all those recognized as part of the B.E.F., came out to 28,540 from 51 states and US holding including the District of Columbia and the Philippine Islands, although Waters estimated that a total of 60,000-80,000 veterans had been a part of the greater movement at some point of the march.96 To put his name on the roster, an oath of allegiance was required of every man, stating, “Upon my word of honor, I promise and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States to the best of my ability and swear an unswerving allegiance to its flag.”97 Communists under John Pace's leadership did arrive and seek membership in the B.E.F., but refused to take the oath and were not given billeting in the main camps; Waters estimated that there never was more than three hundred people in the Communist camp at 13th and B Street, S.W.98 Inside the camp there was such an anti-Red sentiment that Glassford, advised Waters to stop the “brutality” that the B.E.F. had been using against known communists, which included administering fifteen lashes for distributing communist literature in the camp.99
Waters account is far from unbiased, as his intentions were to set the record straight, at least from his point of view as the Commander of the Bonus “Army”.100 In many ways, it is a propaganda piece meant to answer the claims made against the movement. As the FBI had placed extra emphasis on the both the Communist and criminal aspects of the Marchers, Waters' confidence in the order, discipline, and anti-Red sentiments of the veterans paints a contrasting picture. The assistance of Glassford, the “arrest” of the man with the firearm, the folding of other groups into the encampment under his “command” and rules, and the reports delivered to Patman stand against the FBI's claim that the March had a strong criminal element. However, good behavior “on the march” was likely a result of the personal reestablishment of the regimentation of military routine. On their own, as the Depression took from them every item of value, the same veterans might very well have committed the crime of that decade, larceny theft.
Conclusion
The VFW was formed out of a sense of betrayal by the government for how the soldiers and sailors of 19th and early 20th century wars had been neglected in war and abandoned in peace. The American Legion established itself in part to secure benefits for veterans even though some viewed that as “Congress' job.” Both organizations stood at odds against the majority of Congress on many topics, but especially on the early payout. When their lobbying efforts seemed to fail, Waters and the B.E.F. set out for Washington to petition the government for redress of their grievances, as was their Constitutional right, as they saw it. They did not have a revolutionary intent consistent with some communist ideology, because the greater portion of the veterans held the same view of “Reds” as the government and the population at large. They were not marching with Brown's understanding of socialism, “a violent revolution against government,” and Waters was no Caesar intent on crossing the Rubicon. To be a member of their movement required a loyalty oath similar to the oath they had taken to join the military. Some members of the government clearly recognized early on that the programs that were in place would require an “army” of millions to straighten out. When a company of tens of thousands arrived on Capitol Hill, after a stream of veterans associated with the VFW and the American Legion had testified to no real effect, Congress, including Patman, the leading advocate for the early payout, became very nervous.
It is tempting to blame the nervousness on the pressing presence and realization of the Depression-era desperation around which the B.E.F. formed. The efforts of the VFW and the American Legion ensured that the government was well aware of the situation for ex-service members, and how badly needed the certificate-bound funds were. The choice to use the Regular Army to drive out the Bonus “Army” points back to the fears of the Romesque downfall of the Republic expressed by Morman in his attempt to offer a socialist solution to demobilization, and the fear held by Theodore Roosevelt Jr. of a Bolshevik-style revolution coming from within the ranks of the A.E.F. The nervousness that Congress felt when the B.E.F. setup its 24 camps that Mitchell called and occupying army in enemy territory, was the fear of the very army that Congress had sent to war in 1917. That fear had been present from the first day the government began considering demobilization. The Bombing of Wall Street launched a Red Scare that turned a large portion of the population and many Congressmen and Senators against anything that even remotely seemed like socialism. Undoubtedly, the presence of the Bonus Army in Washington, in combination with the massive and sustained efforts of the American Legion and the VFW to lobby the government, made it so easy to paint the veterans “Red” that newspapers did not hesitate to publish the government's narrative that the Marchers were criminals and communists. It was far from how the veterans saw themselves.
In the end, attempts to carve up responsibilities for veterans’ issues between Congress and veterans service organizations operated in the private sphere generated the conditions under which legislation benefiting veterans would be passed, but only with massive political pushback. The VSOs had changed themselves into proactive lobby groups, but still played the political “game” by the rules. The Bonus “Army” did not. Remembering how to act like soldiers and sailors worked against them in the eyes of the government because it awoke the very same fears that had motivated the formation of the American Legion in France, and many plans for demobilization. The March drew all the shadows of fears into one single image, them. They were not “red”, but they wanted money from the government that was not due them, yet. They were not a violent army, but they were encamped as if they were. They were not the legions loyal to Caesar, but they were no more loyal to the current government than to their own understanding of the Constitution. They had fallen victim to the greatest Depression-era fear: they were desperate.
Select Bibliography
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Notes
1 “Warships In Havana,” Evening Star, (Washington D.C.), January 26, 1898, available from The Library of Congress Chronicling America, , 1.
2 Evening Star, (Washington D.C.), February 16, 1898, available from The Library of Congress Chronicling America, , 1.
3 “For War With Spain,” The Wichita Daily Eagle, (Wichita, KS), February 23, 1898, available from The Library of Congress Chronicling America, , 1.
4 “The War Spirit Rampant: Students of Lehigh University Drilling and Parading,” The Times (Washington D.C.), March 9, 1898, available from The Library of Congress Chronicling America, , 1.
5 For a song, see “Commodore Dewey,” The Iola Register, (Iola, KS), May 6, 1898, 4. For stories, see “More Or Less Personal,” The Red Cloud Chief, (Red Cloud, NE), May 20, 1898, 5. “He Was Up-to-Date,” The Oasis, (Arizola, AZ), June 4, 1898, 4. “Out Of The Mouths of Babes and Sucklings,” Little Falls Weekly Transcript, (July 12, 1898), 4. All are available from The Library of Congress Chronicling America, .
6 Anne Venzon, General Smedley Darlington Butler: The Letters of a Leatherneck, 1898-1931 (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1992), 6.
7 Venzon, 6-9.
8 Bill Bottoms, The VFW: An Illustrated History of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States (Rockville, MD: Woodbine House, 1991), viii.
9 Bottoms, viii-ix.
10 Bottoms, viii-ix.
11 A. K. Capron, as qtd. in “For War With Spain.”
12 Smedley Butler, as qtd. by Venzon, 13-18.
13 Bottoms, 1.
14 Paul Dickson and Thomas Allen, The Bonus Army: An American Epic (New York: Walker & Company, 2004), 4.
15 Ibid, 4.
16 Ibid, 4.
17 Bottoms, Figure 1, 15.
18 Ibid, 15-6.
19 James Marquis, A History of the American Legion (New York: William Green, 1923), accessed March 14, 2015, available from , 14.
20 Marquis, 14-15.
21 Ibid, 15.
22 Dickson, 4-5.
23 Ibid, 5.
24 Walter Waters and William White, B.E.F.; The Whole Story of the Bonus Army (New York: The John Day Company, 1933), 8-17.
25 “Bonus Army Trekking West,” Chicago Daily Tribune (Chicago), July 30, 1932, available from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago Tribune, accessed March 26, 2015, .
26 Dickson, 158.
27 Bottoms, 78.
28 Dickson, 173-5.
29 “Bonus Army Trekking West.”
30 U.S. House, Committee on Rules, Employment of Soldiers and Sailors, Hearing, December 11, 1918, (HRG-19180RUH-0004), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918), 3-4.
31 Ibid, 5-6.
32 Ibid, 14.
33 Ibid, 10-11.
34 James Morman, The Place Of Agriculture In Reconstruction; A Study Of National Programs Of Land Settlement (New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1919), 1.
35 “Soldier Employment Statistics Gathered,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA, April 16, 1919), available from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times, accessed February 28, 2015, . There is a remainder of about 21-28% that was not fully reported in the article. I omitted all (seven) categories that reported fractions of one percent.
36 U.S. House, Committee on Judiciary, Incorporation of the Disabled American Veterans of the World War, Hearing, July 7, 1921, (Serial No. 11, HRG-1921-HJH-0015), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921), 4.
37 Morman, 25.
38 Ibid, 25-6.
39 Ibid, Chapter 2, 32-44.
40 Ibid, 32.
41 Ibid, 33-43.
42 Ibid, 42.
43 Ibid, 42-44.
44 Ibid, 223.
45 Ibid, 224-229
46 U.S. Senate, Committee on Printing, Americanism Verses Socialism, Address to the Middlesex County Bar Association on December 23, 1919, March 22, 1920 (7671 S.doc.260), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1920).
47 Ibid, 3.
48 Ibid, 6
49 Ibid, 12-3.
50 Ibid, 15-6.
51 Charles Selden, “Terrorism and Fraud of the Non-Partisan League,” New York Times (New York) January 4, 1920, available from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The New York Times, .
52 Ibid, Column 1.
53 “Blame Reds in Wall St. Horror,” Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles), September 17, 1920, available from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles .
54 Beverly Gage, “The Wall Street Explosion: Capitalism, Terrorism, and the Bombing of New York,” (doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 2004), 566.
55 “Norris Socialism,” The Washington Post (Washington), April 6, 1930, available from ProQuest Historical Newspapers: The Washington Post, accessed April 4, 2015, .
56 Waters, 24-5.
57 William Mitchell to The President, September 19, 1932, in Bonus March, ed. United States Bureau of Investigation, (Washington D.C.: U.S. Bureau of Investigation, 2000), electronic document available from The FBI Records: The Vault , accessed March 4, 2015, Part 1, page 5.
58 Ibid, 5-6.
59 Ibid, 6.
60 Ibid, 6.
61 Ibid, 6.
62 United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, “First Quarterly Bulletin, 1933,” Uniform Crime Reports [United States], 1930-1959, ICPSR03666-v1 (Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, 2003), available from ICPSR.umich.edu , DSI: Uniform Crime Reports, 1930-1936, 538.
63 Mitchell, 8.
64 Bottoms, ix.
65 Ibid, 1-3.
66 Ibid, 41.
67 Ibid, 42-3.
68 Ibid, 53.
69 “Women to Aid Veterans,” The New York Times (New York), April 24, 1921, available from ProQuest Historic Newspaper: The New York Times .
70 Marquis, 29.
71 Ibid, 42.
72 Ibid, 59.
73 Ibid, 61.
74 U.S. House, Committee on Judiciary, Bill to Incorporate American Legion, Hearing, July 25, 1919, (HRG-1919-HJH-0023), (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1919), 14. This document appears to be a draft transcription of the proceedings, and does not bear the GPO standard cover page. It may be an unedited version of Report 191 of the 66th Congress 1st Session (H.R. 6808), ordered to be reported to the House and printed on July 31, 1919.
75 Ibid, 14.
76 Ibid, 15.
77 Ibid, 15.
78 Ibid, 43.
79 Dickson, 5.
80 United States Veterans' Bureau, The World War Adjusted Compensation Act With Amendments Prior to March 15, 1929 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1929), accessed April 18, 2015, available from , 1.
81 Ibid, 2.
82 Ibid, 8.
83 U.S. House, Committee on Ways and Means, Payment of Adjusted-Compensation Certificates, Hearing, April 11-15, 18-22, 25-29, May 2-3, 1932 (Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1932), accessed April 25, 2015, available from ProQuest , 4-5.
84 Ibid, 2.
85 Ibid, 29.
86 Ibid, 89.
87 Ibid, 5.
88 Ibid, 259-60.
89 Waters, 9.
90 Waters, 13.
91 Ibid, 16-7.
92 Ibid, 65.
93 Ibid, 29.
94 Ibid, 62.
95 Ibid, 62.
96 For the roster, see: Waters, 257. For the greater movement, see: Waters, 1.
97 Ibid, 92.
98 Ibid, 92-3.
99 Ibid, 94-96
100 Ibid, 1-2.
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