The Bonus Army

by Paul Dickson

  Perhaps the most damaging testimony of this day came from Captain Ed Sheeran, an engineer with the Florida Highway Department and a survivor of a devastating 1926 Keys hurricane. He insisted that he had warned those in charge on Sunday that men would die unless they were evacuated. Sheeran asked for and got permission to give his full testimony in private.69 Behind closed doors, he told the Legion that he was in charge of $400,000 worth of road-building machinery located on Matecumbe. Using the same weather forecasts that the government men had, on Sunday he decided to move all his equipment to a safe location and then to lash it down, a job he completed thirty-six hours before the hurricane hit. All of Sheeran’s equipment was accounted for after the storm.70

  None of the six men interviewed by the American Legion on these two dates had been interviewed by Williams and Ijams.71 Before leaving Miami, the Legion investigators interviewed fifty people, including nine vets who had survived the hurricane but were still in the hospital. From Miami the panel members moved on to Tallahassee and then to Washington, where they talked with Ijams and others.

  The final report was submitted to the National Executive Council of the American Legion on November 1, 1935, in Indianapolis, with a copy forwarded personally to President Roosevelt two days later by National Commander Ray Murphy. The report said that the tragedy was first and foremost “not an act of God” but rather a situation in which lives

  could have and should have been saved. The vets were lost because of

  Inefficiency in the set up of the camps. Indifference of someone in charge as to the safety of the men.

  Ignorance of the real danger from a tropical hurricane.

  And these three “I’s” can be added together and they spell “Murder at

  Matecumbe.” 72

  The report suggested that the U.S. Army position a regiment of engineers in Miami for rescue work during future hurricane seasons, to erect temporary bridges, establish communications, and facilitate rescue operations. If such a unit had landed in Matecumbe on Tuesday, the report argued, “many lives” would have been saved. “Some witnesses told us that bodies discovered late in the week had been dead only 24 hours—according to physicians and undertakers.” This meant that there were men still alive when Williams and Ijams were writing their rush-to-judgment report.

  At one point in the report, the issue of the character of the men was addressed. During the course of their interviews with several authorities, the dead men were referred to as bums, drunkards, riffraff, and crazy men, and officials gave the impression that they “got what was coming to them.” The American Legion report disputed this conclusion, saying if, indeed, the men were “subnormal,” then it was incumbent on the government to take every precaution to protect them. “If they were incapable of caring for themselves then the government should have placed them in hospitals and not have sent them into the wilderness for rehabilitation.”*

  The American Legion report was read by the president—according to a letter of November 15 to American Legion commander Ray Murphy. Roosevelt told Murphy that the VA and FERA had concluded an investigation involving more than three hundred witnesses, “including the surviving veterans themselves,” which he would soon share with Murphy for his “information and consideration.”73

  Neither the Kennamer VA report nor Abt’s defensive FERA report ever made it to Roosevelt’s desk. There was no record of either in Roosevelt’s papers, nor is there any evidence that either report was ever sent.

  The American Legion report was published in the January 1936 issue of American Legion Magazine as an attachment to a report on the convention. Discussion of the report was sandwiched between a report on the operation of the American Legion Memorial Building in Paris and a discussion of a resolution on sound money. It seemed to create little, if any, stir in Washington or in the daily press, despite its conclusion of “Murder at Matecumbe.”74

  The Kennamer report, which landed on Hines’s desk on September 30, filled three volumes with testimony, documentation, and a five-page conclusion: Ray Shelton, assistant director of the camps, Fred Ghent, director of veterans’ camps for the state, and, to a somewhat lesser degree, Conrad Von Hyning, state FERA director, had not done what they should have to protect the men under their jurisdiction.

  Kennamer held that the weather advisories “were not entirely accurate” but accurate enough to tell them of danger lurking off the coast, and sufficient to warn others. The warnings were strong enough to have put those responsible on notice to prepare an evacuation. The report held that the officials of the railroad started a train within a reasonable time after it had been ordered and that the road-building superintendent was to be commended for moving his bridge equipment to safety as early as Sunday. There were eight things that Shelton should have done, including asking the camp commanders to get their men ready to move. Shelton was also cited for having countermanded the order of an underling who had cut off the sale of beer and wine on Sunday in anticipation of the storm. Ghent, who was in Jacksonville at the time of the storm, was assigned a list of four failings, ranging from not having an evacuation plan to his delay in giving an order for a train after Shelton called him at 5:00 A.M. Sunday. Van Hyning was faulted for not making sure that an evacuation plan was in place with the railroad and for not communicating with Ghent from time to time after he had first heard of the hurricane.75

  Kennamer stayed clear of larger issues—such as housing men in flimsy structures during hurricane season, just above the high-tide line—but he clearly saw ample evidence in the hours before the storm that there was plenty of blame to go around. FERA took aim at the Kennamer report, with Abt, Williams, and Hopkins working to rebut its major points. Ijams waded into the battle and sided with Kennamer, holding that, above all, arrangements should have been made for the train after the 10:00 A.M. Sunday advisory.76

  There was an impasse, broken by Hines, who suggested that both reports be given to the president with a joint Kennamer-Abt statement. Kennamer agreed, provided it could contain his general comments, which restated the results of his investigation in stronger language. At this point, Aubrey Williams borrowed the VA’s copy of the Abt report and the statement of facts agreed to by the two men. According to the records, Williams did not return either document, and apparently the president never saw them.

  *Another letter written the same day, but not received until a few days later, came from A. M. Coffin, who alleged that he actually talked with members of the president’s staff when they accompanied the president on a fishing trip about the danger to the men in the camps if a fall hurricane hit the Keys. The man in question, a veteran who felt these men had been left to die like “rats in a trap,” said he met with White House staffers at the Miami-Biltmore, where he was manning a tourist information bureau. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, President’s Official File #83, Disasters Box 2: Letter from A. M. Coffin, September 4, 1935

  *Father Coughlin was told of Long’s passing on his way to meet with Joseph P. Kennedy, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Terming it “the most regrettable thing in modern history,” he said that a year earlier he had warned the senator of a plot to kill him in an ambush on the way from Baton Rouge to New Orleans. Long, said Coughlin, had planned to run for president in 1936 under the banner of Share Our Wealth.

  †Though the term tidal wave has long been replaced by the more accurate tidal surge, this was the term used in 1932.

  *A reference to the New Deal’s Agricultural Adjustment Act, which had encouraged farmers to plow under abundant crops to keep prices up.

  *Little was actually known about the veterans who died in the Labor Day hurricane, but some of the men from Camp 3 were profiled before their deaths in the Key Veteran News. They included veterans who seemed to be using the camps as a place to regroup and rise to the middle class from which they had descended. These were, of course, the stars of the camps and included Bill Hendren, a graduate of the University of North Carolina and a former high school principa
l; A. W. Mewshaw, a Duke graduate and a prosecuting attorney in Charlotte; and John T. McNulty, a former Broadway and movie actor, who was wounded and gassed during the war. He had lost his job as a stage manager with the Schuberts on Broadway but would go back on the stage as soon as someone would “sweep the cobwebs out of the Broadway theaters.” At Camp 1 was boxer Jimmy Conway, once “close contender” for the light-heavyweight crown and winner of over $20,000 in three hundred fights. Key Veteran News, July 6 and August 10, from notes taken by author Willie Drye.

  12

  V Day for the Veterans

  Nineteen thirty-five is gone, nineteen thirty-five is gone, in come nineteen and

  thirty-six,

  I’m going to get the rest of my bonus money, Lord, and get my business fixed.

  Men be careful, men be careful, who you give your money to,

  Because as soon as you get broke, you know the whole round world is through

  with you.

  —From “The Bonus Blues,” Joe Pullium, 1936

  THE SUCCESSFUL WHITE HOUSE blockade of the cash bonus began to crack in late 1935 under the growing threat of filibusters on legislation known to be especially close to President Roosevelt. A newly modified bill was scheduled for priority consideration as James Van Zandt, head of the VFW, together with Ray Murphy, the new national commander of the American Legion, determined to solve the problem once and for all.

  To keep the National Economy League, a leading anti-bonus group, from making countermoves, VFW and American Legion officers met privately on November 10, 1935, to agree on tactics. The coalition was strengthened when the Disabled American Veterans came aboard. For the first time since the end of the war, the three largest veterans’ groups were working in concert toward a common goal.1

  On December 8, a Gallup poll was released that showed 55 percent of all Americans said yes when asked whether vets should get a bonus.2 In his broadcast of January 5, 1936, Father Coughlin told the nation, “My friends, I have no fear of being a false prophet when I tell you that, without doubt, this so-called soldiers’ bonus will be paid in the immediate future. Our long battle, in which I am happy to have played a part, is won! Victory is ours.”3 It was an open secret among his followers that there would be an attempt to defeat Roosevelt at the polls in November when he ran for his second term, thus picking up the standard dropped by the fallen Huey Long and his Share the Wealth movement.

  The new bonus bill was swiftly reported out of committee and passed by the House on January 10, 1936, by a vote of 346 to 59. It reached the Senate on January 20 and went through 74 to 16. The new bill differed from that of Patman and his followers, including Father Coughlin, in that rather than being financed by expanding the currency—by simply printing new money—this bill called for the issuing of bonds in $50 denominations (immediately dubbed “baby bonds”) that could be redeemed on June 15 or held at 3-percent interest to maturity in 1945. The government hoped at least some veterans would defer cashing them. The only suspense left at this point was whether Roosevelt would bother with another veto or simply approve the bill. The president actually had his press secretary prepare a press release for either contingency, then boasted that he had put one over on his staff.4

  Roosevelt promptly and perfunctorily vetoed the bill, but this time without trying to rally support to sustain it. “The veto message itself,” as summarized by Harold Ickes, “merely referred to the one on the previous bill and was totally lacking in vigor or argument of any sort.”5

  Back it went to the House on January 24 for a 325–61 override, then to the Senate on the following Monday, where the vote came as an anticlimax. This time, the issue was never in doubt: the senators destroyed Roosevelt’s veto with a 76–19 vote, with all 95 members voting (the ninety-sixth seat, that of the late Huey Long, was still unfilled). Among those voting to override the veto was Senator Harry S. Truman, who had voted the straight New Deal line up to this point—and for this reason was known as “go-along, get along Harry.” He felt compelled to break political ranks to support his wartime comrades.6

  On January 27, 1936, the cash-now bonus finally became a reality, and Patman was able to tell the Speaker of the House, “Today . . . ends a seven-year fight that commenced May 28, 1929.”7 At 4:50 that same afternoon, Frank Hines handed the first printed application forms to a jubilant Van Zandt. Fifty minutes later, the forms were aboard DC-2s of the U.S. Air Mail Service and headed for veterans’ organizations, local offices of the Veterans Bureau, and Hearst newspaper offices. The Hearst papers, longtime supporters of the bonus, announced a plan to set up a special Soldier’s Bonus Bureau at each Hearst newspaper to distribute the forms.8

  The government immediately put out an order for three thousand clerks to handle an estimated 45 million documents—applications, bonds, checks, and other forms—that would be needed to complete the job. In the old brick and steel Government Printing Office building, workers toiled around the clock to get ready. The next day’s Washington Post headline read, “Soldier Bonus Becomes Law as Senate Crushes Veto, 76–19, Full Payment Sped for June 15.”

  Washington was abuzz with the political impact of the event. Roosevelt had lost, but the bill he had vetoed had also put money in the pockets of millions of voters in a presidential election year. Roosevelt was a winner even with a veto. And Patman had won, in that the bonus was assured. But he had also lost in the sense that it would be financed through the government’s sale of Treasury bonds on the open market and not by printing new currency.

  Roosevelt kept a close watch on the surge of cash into the economy. Postmaster General (and Democratic Party chairman) James A. Farley regularly sent the president a report on cashed-in bonus bonds. By July 31, Farley reported, payments totaled “slightly less than one billion one hundred million dollars.”9

  With an election nine months away, Roosevelt was one of the clear winners of the long bonus campaign. A week after his veto was overturned, a memo circulated between Louis Johnson, a lawyer and new national commander of the million-strong American Legion, and presidential press secretary Stephen Early, outlining FDR’s record with veterans and contrasting it with Hoover’s record. The memo, written for the vet vote, turned the veto into a political asset: “Every one knows that the President could have mustered enough votes in the Senate to sustain a veto; everyone knows that he did not. The President refused to compromise with his public conscience so far as his own duty was concerned; but with the same determination he permitted Congress to exercise its own judgment above his. His veto did the veterans no harm. If it hurt any one, that person was Franklin D. Roosevelt. We cannot condemn him for being honest—and courageous.”10

  The memo also gave a rendition of the New Deal’s enduring appraisal of Hoover’s behavior in the summer of 1932 when it said, “Hoover was afraid of the men who had saved the country in 1917 and 1918.” From the moment Roosevelt had cut veterans’ benefits in first few days of the New Deal, through the aftermath of the Labor Day hurricane, and through the saga of this second veto, nobody could ever accuse Roosevelt of being afraid of the vets—or, it would seem, of the press. A piece of campaign literature distributed by the Democrats, entitled “Veterans 1932 versus 1936,” used photos of the expulsion, in contrast to the photos of vets working for the CCC and WPA, to show two different ways of reacting to the pleas of the needy. It credited the vets with bringing the realities of the Depression to the “doorstep of the Government.”11

  In mid-February an editor of the Washington Herald wrote to Stephen Early, asking about the state of the promised investigation into the deaths of the veterans in Florida. The editor said that the newspaper’s inability to answer questions about the matter had lately caused embarrassment. Three days later Early replied, telling the editor that the White House had only the preliminary reports, and that it was impossible for him to say anything about any final reports. The final Veterans Administration report had in fact been completed on October 30, three days before the American Legion report was
sent to the White House.

  For six months there had been a relentless call for a congressional investigation into the Florida disaster, from the VFW, from the American Legion— and from Republicans. Some of them would use the death of the veterans for political advantage in the upcoming election, others were genuinely puzzled by the unswerving Roosevelt administration adherence to the verdict that the veterans had been killed by an act of God. The single loudest and most persistent force was that of Representative Edith Nourse Rogers, a Massachusetts Republican. As a leading advocate of more benefits and more VA hospitals, she had no peer as a champion for veterans.12 After her husband died in 1925, she was elected to his seat in Congress and then was reelected in 1926. She immediately appointed herself the protector of disabled veterans and began proposing major legislation on their behalf. She became the first woman to ever have her name attached to successful legislation—a 1926 bill to expand the hospital system for veterans. The bill helped her gain a position on the House Committee on World War Veterans’ Legislation.13

  Rogers insisted repeatedly that the truth about the Florida deaths had been systematically withheld by the White House. At the end of February 1936, having demanded—and not gotten—an audience with President Roosevelt to obtain an official explanation of the Florida deaths, she claimed that there was a “reign of terror” at work in government agencies where, she charged, employees were “afraid to express themselves.”*14