Voter reaction to march sealed election for FDR
As protests continue to rouse the nation in response to the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, it might be useful to recall an earlier protest. Doing so might help us see through the fog of the present and to better anticipate the short-term future.
The demonstrations I have in mind took place in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1932.
The government’s reaction to these expressions of discontent played an important role in the presidential election later that year – one of the pivotal elections of the 20th century.
Thousands of military veterans traipsed through western Pennsylvania in the summer of ’32 on their way to the nation’s capital to parade and to lobby Congress for the early release of “bonus” money related to their service in World War I.
The cash was a matter of some urgency. The Great Depression was in full swing.
Communities as disparate as Chicago, small towns in Missouri, and Portland, Oregon were represented. At a courthouse gathering in Uniontown in late June, the official in charge of “National Pike” Bonus March recruitment, declared, “There are one-million veterans who are destitute.”
On the eve of the first big march about 100 local men left by car for Washington, led by vet Joe Duggan and County Commissioner John Rankin. The Daily News Standard estimated as many as 200 area residents were on hand for the demonstration.
Forming at the Washington Monument, some 6,000 men and women made the trek up Capitol Hill.
Under the dome of the Capitol, the House approved the early payment of the bonus, but the Senate balked.
“I have bad news, comrades,” cried Warren Waters, a veteran from Portland, from the Capitol steps. Afterward, in a gesture of contempt for Congress, he led the crowd in singing America The Beautiful.
Some of the ex-servicemen left town after the vote, but many stayed. By the middle of summer, some 15,000 protesters were on hand.
Largely camped on the outskirts of official Washington, some with their families, the Bonus Marchers threatened public order, or that is how they were viewed by President Herbert Hoover and others in his administration.
The president refused to meet with the vets, although he did offer to loan them money – to leave town. Hoover proposed that the vets repay these advances from the government in 1945. The money would be deducted from the bonuses that were due that year.
As Congress neared adjournment, Waters told the crowd to “keep a lane open for the white collar birds inside so they won’t run into us lousy rats.”
He added, “We’re going to stay here until I see Hoover.”
The president continued to kept his distance, however. He even refused to take the customary trip to the Capitol from the White House on the last day of the congressional session, lest he provoke further demonstrations.
On July 28, at the administration’s urging, Washington city police tried to root out the veterans who were camped in abandoned buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue.
A melee ensued. A police officer, startled after falling through two rickety planks of wooden stairs, opened fire: one veteran was killed. Then a second fell mortally wounded.
Police asked for reinforcements from the federal government. Secretary of War Patrick Hurley turned to Army chief of staff Douglas MacArthur, who ordered troops and tanks to the scene. Using tear gas, the Army cleared Pennsylvania Avenue. On MacArthur’s express orders, troops proceeded to Anacosta Flats, near the Navy Yard in southeast Washington, where they torched the vets’ shacks.
Smoke rose in sight of the Capitol.
At a press briefing, Gen. MacArthur justified his actions by saying “beyond a shadow of a doubt” the BEF was on the cusp of seizing the government of the United States. MacArthur’s pronouncement was met with derision.
Franklin Roosevelt, the nominee of the Democratic Party for president, watching as events unfolded from his upstate New York estate, expressed deep distrust of MacArthur. He told an aide that the general was a “potential Mussolini (the fascist Italian dictator) here at home.”
He said that MacArthur’s actions in routing the veterans doomed Hoover’s re-election prospects.
Hoover, he said, lacking compassion for the vets’ p!ight, was morally unfit to serve in the White House.
In November, voters turned to FDR. The use of Army troops against American citizens that summer helped seal Roosevelt’s victory and Hoover’s defeat.
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.