The Bonus Army was an “Operation Wall Street” type deal. What few realized is that newspapers kept up various mentions of the possibility that because of the Depression...the bonus would be paid out more than a decade prior to the intended date. The amount of the bonus per individual differed. Some would have taken less than $50, and some might have gotten up to $800. If you were unemployed and standing in food lines...a mere check of $300 would seemed like a million bucks.
The problem was....the nation on acting on stupidity when they promised this in 1924 (Congress acted to get vote favors). They had no idea how they’d ever pay this in 1945).
All throughout 1931, with Hoover still running on his presidency...newspapers pressed on this issue. Congress had no intention of being forced into paying this. Somewhere in the background, some groups began to organize the Bonus Army, and they “deployed” to DC, and set up camp in Anacosta (today, the ghetto area of DC...far southeast corner).
Oddly enough, they had trucks deliver tents, cots, and blankets. The military guys organized the camps....had details to cook, tend to the latrines, etc. Some “talkers” were always in the middle to stir up their convictions, but strangely enough....disappeared after the riots. No one hears much of them ever again.
Once summer arrives in 1932...full heat on the Bonus Army topic, and neither Senate or House want to deal with it. Riots start up, and everyone realizes that the DC cops have no power to stop it. So, they decide to use the US Army, and Hoover calls MacArthur to head the anti-riot force. There were some simple instructions....mostly just to run the riot folks out. I don’t think anyone on the Hoover staff except for Maj Eisenhower knew the full extent of MacArthur’s stupidity.
MacArthur took his Army troops, turning them into thugs....turned loose tear gas....and in one afternoon brought Detroit-style riots to DC. Reporters covering the event were shocked at the mess. To be honest, the only deaths reported during the event (as I remember this) were a couple of newborn kids from women who’d come to the camps because of their husbands. Doctors tending the assault victims and the couple of dead kids...commented heavily against MacArthur’s actions, but labeled it all Hoover’s fault.
This was July, and the newspapers talked about this nationwide for weeks. November’s elections came, and it was a massive nationwide vote for FDR.
This single event....not really the Depression screw-ups by the FED or Hoover....was what did the massive vote for FDR. This is why no one can talk about this in a college history class because it strongly suggests some Democratic planners using this Bonus Army deal to draw masses into DC...lay out a problem that the Senate/House refused to handle....and then do a massive nationwide media event to counter Hoover.
If you notice all these efforts to digitize newspapers...a large number of the efforts stop prior to the Depression and start up again at start of WW II. Very few national newspapers have their editions out there that you could go back and follow events like this and ask stupid questions to the history professors.
It was the beginning....of the manipulation era.
“If you were unemployed and standing in food lines...a mere check of $300 would seemed like a million bucks.”
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My parents lived through it and used to talk about how people worked all day for fifty cents. Three hundred dollars would have been worth more in real terms than thirty thousand would now. Even after the end of WWII a lot of people would have been happy to work three months for three hundred dollars. I read a novel, the title of which I cannot remember now, about a woman who received ten thousand dollars during WWII when her husband was reported killed and she was the beneficiary of his GI life insurance. The family thought she was rich and she was in comparison to anyone else they knew. All kinds of problems developed because everyone wanted a share of her newfound “wealth”.