The Bonus Army

by Paul Dickson

  4. Office of the Adjutant General, Major General C. H. Bridges, June 10, 1932; document provided to “10110” files of the Military Intelligence Division (10110-2669/455 to 10110-2723/32), National Archives. Villa was ambushed and assassinated on July 20, 1923; his assassins were never caught.

  5. William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, D. N. Diedrich World War I Collection.

  6. Roger Daniels, The Bonus March, 77.

  7. Maurice P. Sneller Jr., “The Bonus March of 1932: A Study of Depression Leadership and its Legacy,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia, 1960).

  8. Waters’s recollection of the beginning of the Bonus March appears in his ghostwritten memoir B.E.F. by W. W. Waters as told to William C. White. New York: AMS Press, 1970; reprinted from the original 1933 edition, p 14. In a 1992 interview, Mrs. Waters wondered whether copies of the book had been “bought up” to keep the story of the Bonus March from being known. The book was never suppressed; it can be found in many academic libraries and is routinely offered through used-book dealer groups on the Internet.

  9. Nowhere in Waters’s carefully parsed recollection was there any hint that there were others in Portland planning a bonus march. Veterans on the March, by Jack Douglas, the pseudonym of Izzie Zalph, a lifelong Communist, is described by Zalph’s cousin, Larry Zolf, as the “official communist history” of the Bonus March. (“Reds under My Bed,” CBC News Viewpoint, July 15, 2002.)

  10. Waters, B.E.F., p 11.

  11. Daniels, Bonus March, 72; Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress.

  12. “Massed Veterans Present Congress With Bonus Plea,” Washington Star, April 8, 1932, unpaginated clipping, Bonus Army scrapbook.

  13. New York Times, April 9, 1932.

  14. Robert V. Parker, “The Bonus March of 1932: A Unique Experience in North Carolina Political and Social Life,” North Carolina Historical Review, January 1971, 64–89.

  15. Committee on Ways and Means, 72nd Cong., 2nd session, April 11–29, 1932, 50–52.

  16. New York Times, April 20, 1932.

  17. Morning Oregonian, April 23, 1932.

  18. Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette,May 6, 1932.

  19. Washington Star, April 8, 1932, unpaginated clipping, Bonus Army scrapbook, MLK Library.

  20. Portland Oregonian, December 1, 1974.

  21. Waters, B.E.F., 16; Daniels, Bonus March, 74.

  22. Historian Roger Daniels, in The Bonus March, points out (73–74) that Oregon veterans, beneficiaries of a state bonus ($15 for every month of service after the first 60 days), were probably more aware of potential benefits than veterans from states that had not given bonuses.

  23. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932,” 7.

  24. Portland Oregonian, August 28, 1975.

  25. A copy of the diary was given to the authors by Madeline and Bill Linebarrier of Asheboro, North Carolina. Through genealogical research on her family, Madeline Linebarrier had learned that the father she had known as “Steve Murray” was actually named Steve Mesker. Prior to joining the Bonus Army he had changed his name. He did this after his papers, including his bonus certificate and discharge, were found on the body of a dead railroad detective. Steve, in his daughter’s words, had been “hoboing” nearby and had fled, taking on a new name, which he continued using for the rest of his life. We respect his Bonus Army nom de guerre. Steve Murray had fine handwriting and a fine grasp of the English language. When quoting from the diary, we have changed only punctuation, for clarity, and misspellings, which are rare.

  26. Hazen, the original commander in chief of the march, would later claim he “organized the Bonus March,” though he did not say how far he marched. H. B. Dewitz was his field marshal. As Waters tells it, without naming anyone, the commander in chief “was to travel ahead by automobile, arranging for food and transportation.” Dewitz, also unnamed in Waters’s memoir, had assistants, and one of them was Assistant Field Marshal Walter W. Waters. About 250 men (including about a dozen who had gone to Washington in the November 1931 march) signed up. Daniels, Bonus March, 76, 321.

  27. “Survey of Transient Boys in the United States,” Monthly Labor Review, January 1933, 92.

  28. A. Waymen McMillen, “An Army of Boys on the Loose,” Survey, September 1, 1932, 390.

  29. “Homeless Wanderers Create a New Problem for America,” New York Times, December 11, 1932; reprinted in David A. Shannon, ed., The Great Depression (New York: Prentice-Hall Spectrum, 1960), 55–58. The railroad information comes from a hearing in the U.S. Senate in 1933, an excerpt of which was published in The Great Depression, 58–61. Caroline Bird in The Invisible Scar says that in 1933 there were between 1 and 2 million on the road (66).

  30. All Waters quotations are from his book unless otherwise credited.

  31. Douglas, Veterans on the March, 28. Waters, always trying to keep a positive record for posterity, says, without naming Hazen, that the veterans “turned over to the police” a man who “had a gun in his possession.”

  32. Ibid.

  33. Douglas, in Veterans on the March, 28, calls him “Taylor.” The A. F. comes from the Morning Oregonian, July 8, which refers to “A. F. Taylor” as “camp commander of the Oregon unit.”

  34. Waters, B.E.F., 33.

  35. Murray seems not to have had discharge papers. He later said that all his identification papers were found on the body of the railroad detective. At this point in the march, Waters did not seem to be scrupulous about seeing official discharge papers.

  36. Richard Norton Smith, An Uncommon Man, 136.

  37. Prime sources for the Portland–to–East Saint Louis leg: Waters, B.E.F., 19–40; Douglas, Veterans on the March, 25–29. (Cheyenne elevation is 6,062 feet.)

  38. Clinton (Iowa) Herald, May 18, 1924; Jorgenson, “Bonus Expeditionary Force.”

  39. Jacob Spolensky, The Communist Trail in America (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 44–45.

  40. “Relief and Revolution,” Fortune, August 1932, 74, 75.

  41. Waters’s version (B.E.F., 34–38) differs slightly from Alman’s, as reported in Douglas, Veterans on the March. Alman says the train got under way after officials in East Saint Louis sent a telegram saying, “Put on enough empties to carry that bunch of hoodlums” (29–30).

  42. Morning Oregonian, May 19, 1932, 6; Jorgensen, “Bonus Expeditionary Force,” 13.

  43. Waters, B.E.F., 40. Mention of the two-meal regime in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 20, 1932.

  44. Waters, B.E.F., 40–41.

  45. Waters did not explain in his memoir how the B&O was able to serve an Illinois court order in Missouri. The information on Illinois comes from Alman, as quoted in Douglas, Veterans on the March, 30.

  46. Rexford G. Tugwell, “Roosevelt and the Bonus Marchers of 1932,” Political Science 87, no. 3 (1972): 363–376.

  47. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 22, 1932.

  48. St. Louis Journal, May 22, 1932.

  49. Murray refers to the “Hoover line” several times.

  50. This account of events in East St. Louis is based on Waters, B.E.F., 41–56; St. Louis Post-Dispatch stories from May 20 to May 25, 1932; New York Times, May 23 and May 25; and Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932.”

  51. Waters, B.E.F., 49–51.

  52. A reference to the Workers’ Council appears only in Douglas, Veterans on the March, 32–33. Alman gives a left-wing tone to his account, using “workers” and “rank and file,” rather than “veterans,” following the semantics of the Communist-backed Workers’ Ex-Servicemen’s League.

  53. Sneller, “Bonus March of 1922.”

  54. St. Louis Journal, May 24, 1932.

  55. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 24, 1932; an Associated Press dispatch in the Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), May 24, 1932, has a slightly different version of Munie’s remarks.

  56. Waters, B.E.F., 54–55; Sneller, “Bonus March of 1932”; New York Times, May 25, 1932.

  57. George Kleinholz, The Battle of Washington: A Nationa
l Disgrace (New York: B. E. F. Press, 1932), 7.

  58. “Loan of $25.5 to B&O Approved,” New York Times, May 17, 1932. The B&O did get refinanced by the RFC in February 1933 by the lame-duck Hoover administration, according to the Wall Street Journal: “ B&O Refinancing Plan in Operation,” February 21, 1933.

  59. Pelham D. Glassford Papers, University of California, Los Angeles Library Special Collections RG 679, box 14, folder 2; “Glassford Plans to House ‘Army,’” Washington Star, May 25, 1932, Bonus Army scrapbook.

  60. Glassford Papers, ibid.

  61. The East Wing of the White House had not yet been built, and West Executive Avenue, not yet closed off by the Secret Service, was open to traffic.

  62. Eisenhower, At Ease, 216: “In that administration, officers went to work in Washington in civilian clothes because a military appearance around the nation’s capital was held to be undesirable.”

  63. Ibid., 213.

  64. “One Soldier’s Journey,” unpublished memoir, George Van Horn Moseley Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. Moseley quotations are from the memoir, unless otherwise stated.

  65. General George Van Horn Moseley to Herbert Corey, May 24, 1932, Moseley Papers; also quoted in Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (New York: Basic Books, 2000), 202.

  66. Lucian King Truscott, ed., The Twilight of the U.S. Cavalry, 9–17.

  67. During the Great War, Miles, as a colonel, had commanded the 371st Regiment, an African-American unit that he ranked with “any regiment of any nation.” Emmett J. Scott, Scott’s Official History of the American Negro in the World War (Chicago: Homewood Press, 1919), chap. 16. The 371st, like the Harlem Hellfighters, served under the French flag.

  68. Clayton D. Laurie and Ronald H. Cole, The Role of Federal Military Forces in Domestic Disorders, 1877–1945, 372.

  69. Military Intelligence Division, file 10110-2661, “Estimate of the Subversive Situation,” First Corps Area, January 2, 1932 (secret); National Archives.

  70. The break-ins are described by Jeffery M. Dorwart in Conflict of Duty (Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1983), 1–3, 45–46. The operatives were Third Naval District Intelligence Officers Paul F. Foster and Glenn Howell. Strauss, who met Hoover in 1917 when Hoover was U.S. food administrator, served as an intelligence officer in World War II and later was chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). Foster carried out confidential missions for President Roosevelt during World War II. He retired as a vice admiral and later became the general manager of the AEC. Nothing would be officially known about the ONI break-ins had not Howell kept a log (the source of the quotes). By ONI orders, no records were to be “supplied to the National Archives or any other agency to which the general public has access” (5). Howell, a swashbuckling counterspy, in a 1929 letter to the director of naval intelligence, became the first known officer to advocate the creation of a Central Intelligence Agency.

  71. “Glassford Pleads for Bonus Vote to End Marches,” Washington Star, May 26, 1932, Bonus Army scrapbook.

  72. Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress.

  73. Lisio, President and Protest, 72.

  74. B.E.F. News, June 1932.

  75. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 5, folder 16.

  76. Crosby himself had been involved in controversy as a general turned civilian. A major general and chief of cavalry in 1926, Crosby was living in Washington and was interested in becoming the District commissioner in charge of a scandal-rocked police force. When he retired in 1930, opposition developed; District law called for commissioners to be civilians, and he was seen as more military than civilian. But President Hoover wanted a disciplinarian running the police force, and he appointed Crosby. The opposition died down and did not arise over the appointment of another general as chief of police.

  77. “Glassford Named by Bonus Seekers,” Washington Star, May 27, 1932.

  78. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 2.

  79. In the center of Judiciary Square is the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, dedicated to officers who died in the line of duty. See Douglas E. Evelyn and Paul Dickson, On This Spot: Pinpointing the Past in Washington, D.C. (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1999), 108. One of the names on the memorial is George W. Shinault, a Washington police officer who figured in the Bonus March saga.

  80. Glassford Papers, RG 679, box 14, folder 2.

  81. Washington (Ind.) Herald, May 25, 1932. Salem had a sense of history as both the birthplace of William Jennings Bryan and the boyhood home of John T. Scopes, defendant in the famed 1925 “Monkey Trial” in which Bryan was the prosecutor.

  82. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, May 25, 1932. Waters takes credit for arranging the escort, but the news account credits police initiative.

  83. “State to Move ‘Bonus Army,’ ” Washington (Ind.) Herald, May 25, 1932; quoted in Kleinholz, Battle of Washington, 7.

  84. Douglas, Veterans on the March, 39.

  85. Portland Oregonian, May 28, 1932.

  86. Mixer’s Road Guide and Strip Maps (1926), Wheeling, W.Va.–Uniontown, Pa.; Uniontown, Pa.–Cumberland, Md.

  87. Wilbur E. Garrett, ed., Historical Atlas of the United States (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1988), 187, 192–93; James Thomas Flexner, Washington: The Indispensable Man (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 24–26.

  88. Waters, B.E.F., 61.

  89. New York Times, May 30, 1932.

  90. Waters, B.E.F., 66–63.

  Chapter 5: An Army of Occupation

  1. Waters, B.E.F., 62.

  2. Ibid., 63.

  3. “Veterans’ Army Is Due to Arrive in Capital Today,” Washington Post, May 29, 1932.

  4. Waters, B.E.F., 63.

  5. Daniels, Bonus March, 99.

  6. U.S. Military Intelligence, Surveillance of Radicals.

  7. Ibid., reel 21. Handwritten on the first page of this four-page report, which is stamped “Secret,” is “Report from NY Police Dept.” New York, like many large cities, had a Red Squad that kept known and suspected Communists under surveillance.

  8. Daniels, Bonus March, 69.

  9. Lisio, President and Protest, 55.

  10. The report is attached to a letter, dated November 7, 1931, from Frank T. Hines, administrator of the Veterans Administration, to Theodore Joslin, a presidential secretary who dealt with the press. (Officially, there was no press secretary.)

  11. Lisio, President and Protest, 58.

  12. Starling, Starling, 296.

  13. As quoted in Ottanelli, Communist Party, 18.

  14. James G. Ryan, Earl Browder: The Failure of American Communism (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997), 51.

  15. Douglas, Veterans on the March, 120. Douglas also says Pace’s family went back to colonial times, when a curve in the Duck River in Tennessee was named Pace’s Bend.

  16. Washington Daily News, June 3, 1932, Bonus Army scrapbook.

  17. “‘Bonus Pilgrims’ Reach Washington,” Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, May 30, 1932.

  18. New York Times, June 6, 1932; cited in Matthew Stephen Simchak, “The Bonus March of 1932: The Failure of a Radical Alternative” (master’s thesis, Trinity College, Hartford, Conn., 1969), 57.

  19. May 25, 1932, papers of Irwin H. (Ike) Hoover, chief usher at the White House and no relative to President Hoover. Library of Congress. He kept a log of events, using it as the basis for Forty-two Years in the White House.

  20. “President Hoover’s Visit on Memorial Day, 30 May 1931,” 13–17, Reed Collection, Valley Forge National Historic Park, National Park Service. Memorial Day was marked on May 30 from its inception in 1868 until 1971, when Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be marked on the last Monday in May.

  21. The New York Times and other newspapers made mention of Hoover’s remaining in the White House on Memorial Day, 1932: “Homage to War Dead Will Be Paid Today Throughout Nation,” Times, May 30, 1932; “25,000
in Washington at Massing of Colors,” Times, May 30, 1932; “Hoover in Conferences over G.O.P. Platform,” Fort Wayne (Ind.) Journal-Gazette, May 31, 1932.

  22. Seale, President’s House, vol. 2, 903.

  23. Ibid.

  24. Joel Boone Papers, Box 31, Folder Hoover 1930–1931, HH Notes—JTB 1930–33, 1959. Boone was a physician and career officer in the U.S. Navy. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for his courage as a medical officer in France in 1918, going after wounded Marines under machine-gun fire and “through a heavy mist of gas.” During Coolidge’s presidency, Boone served as medical officer for the Coolidge family on board the U.S.S. Mayflower, the presidential yacht, and was second in command to the White House physician, Dr. James F. Coupal. Coolidge preferred Boone to Coupal and saw him much more. Boone was also Mrs. Coolidge’s personal physician; he was at the bedside of Calvin Coolidge Jr. when the boy died from blood poisoning in 1924. He also treated Herbert Hoover Jr., who had tuberculosis.When Boone began writing his autobiography in 1963, he used his notes, which were held with restricted access at the Library of Congress until they were opened to the public in 1995. Boone’s son-in-law, Milton F. Heller Jr., wrote a short biography, The President’s Doctor, which was published by Vantage Press (New York) in 2000.

  25. Donald J. Lisio, in The President and Protest (73–74), says that President Hoover worked behind the scenes, secretly approving “the loan of hundreds of tents, cots, bedsacks, several field kitchens, the low-cost sale of Army rations and clothing to the veteran, and the use of federal property for quarters.” Lisio notes that Glassford usually gets the credit for aiding the veterans, but “without Hoover’s approval . . . the crucial supplies would not have been available.”

  26. Waters may have picked up the idea of passive resistance from the recent actions of Mohandas Gandhi, the Indian spiritual and political leader. In 1930, protesting the salt tax imposed by British rulers, he led a 320-mile march to the sea, where his followers could extract free salt. Waters’s account of becoming commander is in B.E.F., 65. Glassford’s Information Notice appears in Daniels, Bonus March, 100.