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Vets Movement: Part 3: March Begins

By Pete Zastrow

World War I was basically a struggle between Allied and Axis business interest for control of the world's economy. When it began, the big business that had pushed the US into the war in the first place set up a place to ensure that once having used GIs to fight the war for them they would not have to pay the burden of vets' compensation payments after it was all over. Thus they amended the War Risk Insurance Act of 1914, initially a federal insurance policy for US industry supplying war material, to further protect their "investment" in WWI by issuing "voluntary" War Risk Insurance to all US troops going to Europe. Although this insurance was supposed to be voluntary it was actually mandatory. GIs were not asked if they wanted to have the insurance payments, about $8 a month, deducted from their pay--it was done automatically. The neatness of the plan was overwhelming. GIs had to pay for their own future vets' benefits with their own salaries. Given the fact that the pay of a private in WWI was $1.00 a day for a domestic service or $1.25 for foreign, and that many had dependents' allotments for $5 to $25 a month deducted from their pay, the system was simple extortion.

To no one's surprise, most of the money paid by GIs for the insurance was never recovered. While over 5 million policies were issues, all but 600,000 had lapsed by 1932. WWI vets had got such a raw deal that even the government felt obliged to do something about it. Thus, in 1924, mass pressure forced Congress to admit that debt was due to vets. (Industry had of course already received adjustment payments for their war time contracts through tax refunds, etc.) It decided to award them an "adjustment" in pay for their service.

Congress issued Adjustment Service Certificates to the vets that averaged about $1,000 each in value. Catch 22 in all this, however, was that the certificates were not payable until 1945 (much like modern War Bonds, they were supposed to ?mature' for a period of years). What the government's PR men hyped as a "Bonus" for vets, the vets more correctly labeled as a "Tombstone Bonus." By 1945 few would be alive to collect it.

With the 1929 Wall St crash and the ensuing economic hardship that all Americans had to face, vets' discontent with the "Bonus" rip-off began to reach a head. Leading the high rate of unemployment and at the bottom of the heap in terms of what jobs they could get, vets rapidly became the shock troops of the depression. They needed the partial relief they could get from an immediate cash payment of the Bonus and they needed it fast. In 1932 the average vet's Bonus would have been worth about $500: in the midst of the depression, that was a small fortune. The demands for the Bonus began spreading across the country like wildfire. Vets began making increasingly regular trips to Washington to lobby for the Bonus. Such was the rising pressure for relief that President Hoover himself felt obliged to act. At the 1931 convention of the American Legion Hoover addressed the rank-and-file vets there, asking them to wait for awhile since "better times were ahead."

But vets weren't going to wait for any pie-in-the-sky promises. By 1932 there would be 17 million people unemployed--according to government figures. It was clearly not the time for waiting. Vets, along with millions of other Americans, had lost their savings and had their farms and homes stolen through mortgage foreclosures. When Congress did begin to act, it passed "economy" legislation that was designed to place the burden of depression on the backs of the American people. In terms of vets, not only did they "economy" legislation not give vets their Bonus. But it cut off 600 thousand veterans from compensation and threw thousands of disabled vets out of VA hospitals was well.

In the face of this worsening situation vets began organizing themselves to fight back. It was becoming clear to many of them that unity and mass actions were the only means to deal with their problems. While leaders of the "traditional" veterans groups like the VFW and American Legion began giving lip service to the demand for the Bonus they actually opposed seeing a real movement develop to fight for it. Dissatisfaction with these traditional vets groups led to the formation of rank-and-file vets groups as their only real hope. Once such rank-and-file vets group was the Workers Ex-Servicemen's League; founded in 1930, the W.E.S.L. later changed its name to the American League of Ex-Servicemen. In April 1932 members of the W.E.S.L. appeared before Congress and emended that the 1945 "Tombstone Bonus" immediately be paid in full. When Congress refused to act on the Bonus, the W.E.S.L. sent out a call for a demonstration in D.C. But even without this call vets had spontaneously begun moving on their own; the main impetus was the condition of the ravaged economy.

In broken-down vehicles, on foot, in boxcars, riding the rails, hitchhiking, however they could make it, vets and their families began to trek to Washington to fight for the Bonus. The fist contingent left Portland, Oregon, in May 1932 with 200 vets and their families. Several thousand of the Oregon vets arrived in Cleveland and physically seized the railroad switchyard, stopping all traffic until they were given a train to D.C. Some 500 left from Chicago, 600 from New Orleans, and 200 disabled vets left from the Soldiers Home in Tennessee. And so it went throughout the month of May 1932. On May 29th when some 300 Cleveland vets announced their intention of joining their fellow vets on the march to D.C., the papers started calling them the "Bonus Army" on the "Bonus March." The name stuck. By the time they began arriving in D.C. in late May and early June they were arriving in contingents as large as 1000 people.

Too late, the government officials realized the seriousness of the march. Telegrams were sent from Washington to governors all over the country demanding that the marchers be turned back and split up. But it was no avail. Things had already gotten out of hand. The Bonus March had begun.