Unemployed March on Washington: Coxey's Army (1896) and the Bonus Army (1932)

[JackRiddler]

Our history...


Coxey's Army: The 1894 March of the Unemployed to Washington D.C.
Mar 15, 2009 ... Businessman Jacob Coxey led a contingent of jobless men from Ohio to the nation's capital to promote a road improvement plan to create jobs.
www.suite101.com/content/coxeys-army-a102705

Coxey's Army - Wikipedia
Coxey's Army was a protest march by unemployed workers from the United States, led by the populist Jacob Coxey. They marched on Washington D.C. in 1894...
The march - Second March 1914 - Subsequent marches
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coxey's_Army

"...the first significant popular protest march on Washington and the expression 'Enough food to feed Coxey's Army' originates from this march."

snip

"Coxey and other leaders of the movement were arrested the next day for walking on the grass of the United States Capitol. Interest in the march and protest rapidly dwindled."

snip

"Some of the most militant Coxeyites were those who formed their own "armies" in Pacific Northwest centers such as Butte, Tacoma, Spokane, and Portland. Many of these protesters were unemployed railroad workers who blamed railroad companies, President Cleveland's monetary policies, and excessive freight rates for their plight. The climax of this movement was perhaps on April 21, 1894 when William Hogan and approximately 500 followers commandeered a Northern Pacific Railway train for their trek to Washington, D.C. They enjoyed support along the way, which enabled them to fight off the federal marshals attempting to stop them. Federal troops finally apprehended the Hoganites near Forsyth, Montana. While the protesters never made it to the capitol, the military intervention they provoked proved to be a rehearsal for the federal force that broke the Pullman Strike that year.<5>"

snip

"Among the people observing the march was L. Frank Baum, before he gained fame. There are political interpretations of his book, the Wonderful Wizard of Oz, which have often been related to Coxey's Army. In the novel, Dorothy, the Scarecrow (the American farmer), Tin Woodman (the industrial worker), and Cowardly Lion (political leader), march on the yellow brick road to Oz, the Capitol (or Washington DC), demanding relief from the Wizard, who is interpreted to be the President. Dorothy's shoes are interpreted to symbolize using free silver instead of the gold standard (the road of yellow brick) because the shortage of gold precipitated the Panic of 1893. In the film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz, the silver shoes were turned into ruby for the cinematic effect of color, as Technicolor was still in its early years when The Wizard of Oz was produced.<9>"

(Note as usual with populists of the past they understood the significance of easy money policy to economic prosperity for the working classes, unlike the counterpopulist Tea Partiers of today, following 35 years of widespread monetarist brainwashing.)

...


The Bonus Army
Veterans of WWI descend on Washington, DC during the Great Depression.
www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snprelief4.htm

In 1924, a grateful Congress voted to give a bonus to World War I veterans - $1.25 for each day served overseas, $1.00 for each day served in the States. The catch was that payment would not be made until 1945.

However, by 1932 the nation had slipped into the dark days of the Depression and the unemployed veterans wanted their money immediately. In May of that year, some 15,000 veterans, many unemployed and destitute, descended on Washington, D.C. to demand immediate payment of their bonus. They proclaimed themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force but the public dubbed them the "Bonus Army." Raising ramshackle camps at various places around the city, they waited.


Members of the Bonus Army encamp within sight of the Capitol, 1932

The veterans made their largest camp at Anacostia Flats across the river from the Capitol. Approximately 10,000 veterans, women and children lived in the shelters built from materials dragged out of a junk pile nearby - old lumber, packing boxes and scrap tin covered with roofs of thatched straw.

snip

A month later, on July 28, Attorney General Mitchell ordered the evacuation of the veterans from all government property, Entrusted with the job, the Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two marchers killed. Learning of the shooting at lunch, President Hoover ordered the army to clear out the veterans. Troops prepare to evacuate the Bonus Army and cavalry supported by six tanks were dispatched with Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur in command. Major Dwight D. Eisenhower served as his liaison with Washington police and Major George Patton led the cavalry.


Infantry Troops prepare to evacuate the Bonus Army
July 28, 1932

more at link

Note the role of the military leadership. This kind of "loyalty" is how brass move up in the world.

As these things usually are, I've seen other sources give higher numbers for the Bonus Army.

There's a lot more one could add about the despicable treatment of the World War I veterans who had been conned into fighting in the wars of the European empires after Wilson got himself re-elected on a peace platform in 1916 and almost immediately after turned the US around to join the war.

Is this how the government would respond today, if the unemployed held a mass march on Washington?

Or would a million unemployed (and foreclosed) at the Capitol steps shift the political balance? I'm half-optimistic.

.

[Blue_Tires]

1. Yeah, the Bonus Army was a truly ugly episode

One of several reasons (another was the squabble with Truman in Korea) MacArthur isn't as fondly remembered by history as some of his fellow WWII titans...

[JackRiddler]

3. With all due respect, screw MacArthur's standing in history.

In a world of sane, self-interested and loving people, they would remember and identify with the working class movements of the decades before World War II more than they do with the military leaders and campaigns.

[Blue_Tires]

7. exactly...

I was saying that even with everything he did in the Pacific and elsewhere, it was never going to erase the stain of attacking starving WWI veterans, nor should it...


Some excellent excerpts from here: www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAbonus.htm




(3) John Dos Passos, The New Republic (June, 1932)

A bunch of out-of-work ex-service men in Portland, Oregon, figured they needed their bonus now; 1945 would be too late, only buy wreaths for their tombstones. They figured out, too, that the bonus paid now would tend to liven up business, particularly the retail business in small towns; might be just enough to tide them over till things picked up. So three hundred of them started east in old cars and trucks, hitchhiking, riding on freight trains.

By the time they reached Council Buffs (Iowa) they found other groups all over the country were rebelling against their veterans' organizations and getting the same idea. It was an Army. They organized it as such and nicknamed it the Bonus Expedition Force.



(4) Time Magazine (8th August, 1932)

When war came in 1917 William Hushka, 22-year-old Lithuanian, sold his St. Louis butcher shop, gave the proceeds to his wife, joined the Army. He was sent to Camp Funston, Kansas where he was naturalized. Honorably discharged in 1919, he drifted to Chicago, worked as a butcher, seemed unable to hold a steady job. His wife divorced him, kept his small daughter.

Long jobless, in June he joined a band of veterans marching to Washington to fuse with the Bonus Expeditionary Force. "I might as well starve there as here", he told his brother. He took part in the demonstration at the Capital the day Congress adjourned without voting immediate cashing of the bonus.

Last week William Hushka's Bonus for $528 suddenly became payable in full when a police bullet drilled him dead in the worst public disorder the capital has known in years.



(5) Malcolm Cowley, The Dream of Golden Mountains (1934)

A few weeks later there was more talk of revolution when the Bonus Expeditionary Force descended on Washington. The BEF was a tattered army consisting of veterans from every state in the Union; most of them were old-stock Americans from smaller industrial cities where relief had broken down. All unemployed in 1932, all living on the edge of hunger, they remembered that the government had made them a promise for the future. It was embodied in a law that Congress had passed some years before, providing "adjusted compensation certificates" for those who had served in the Great War; the certificates were to be redeemed in dollars, but not until 1945. Now the veterans were hitchhiking and stealing rides on freight cars to Washington, for the sole purpose, they declared, of petitioning Congress for immediate payment of the soldiers' bonus. They arrived by hundreds or thousands every day in June. Ten thousand were camped on marshy ground across the Anacostia River, and ten thousand others occupied a number of half-demolished buildings between the Capitol and the White House. They organized themselves by states and companies and chose a commander named Walter W. Waters, an ex-sergeant from Portland. Oregon, who promptly acquired an aide-de-camp and a pair of highly polished leather puttees. Meanwhile the veterans were listening to speakers of all political complexions, as the Russian soldiers had done in 1917. Many radicals and some conservatives thought that the Bonus Army was creating a revolutionary situation of an almost classical type.



(6) Herbert Hoover, statement (29th July, 1932)

A challenge to the authority of the United States Government has been met, swiftly and firmly.

After months of patient indulgence, the Government met overt lawlessness as it always must be met if the cherished processes of self-government are to be preserved. We cannot tolerate the abuse of Constitutional rights by those who would destroy all government, no matter who they may be. Government cannot be coerced by mob rule.

The Department of Justice is pressing its investigation into the violence which forced the call for Army detachments, and it is my sincere hope that those agitators who inspired yesterday's attack upon the Federal authority may be brought speedily to trial in the civil courts. There can be no safe harbor in the United States of America for violence.

Order and civil tranquillity are the first requisites in the great task of economic reconstruction to which our whole people now are devoting their heroic and noble energies. This national effort must not be retarded in even the slightest degree by organized lawlessness. The first obligation of my office is to uphold and defend the Constitution and the authority of the law. This I propose always to do.

[JackRiddler]

8. Excellent additions! Thank you.

[Bigmack]

2. Won't happen now....

The Repubs and the RW generally have found out that propaganda will bend people to support things that are against their interest.

The Fux Snews people will never demonstrate/riot.

No radical leadership in this country.

[JackRiddler]

5. All conditions are temporary.

Won't happen now, might happen tomorrow.

[RandomKoolzip]

4. Thank you. This was very enlightening.

[JackRiddler]

6. By the way, if you didn't know about these events, there's a book you must read now.

It's even online but you should order it and read it like a book.

Of course, there's a lot more we should all read, but no finer start:

A People's History Of The United States

by Howard Zinn

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html

1. Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress

2. Drawing the Color Line

3. Persons of Mean and Vile Condition

4. Tyranny is Tyranny

5. A Kind of Revolution

6. The Intimately Oppressed

7. As Long As Grass Grows Or Water Runs

8. We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God

9. Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom

10. The Other Civil War

11. Robber Barons And Rebels

12. The Empire and the People

13. The Socialist Challenge

14. War Is the Health of the State

15. Self-help in Hard Times

16. A People's War?

17. "Or Does It Explode?"

18. The Impossible Victory: Vietnam

19. Surprises

20. The Seventies: Under Control?

21. Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus

22. The Unreported Resistance

23. The Clinton Presidency and the Crisis of Democracy

24. The Coming Revolt of the Guards

25. The 2000 Election and the "War on Terrorism"

[laughingliberal]

9. Big K & R! nt

[JackRiddler]

10. Thanks, laughingliberal.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

11. Would Be End Of America As We Know It If The National Guard Attacked Peaceful Unemployed Protesters

It would be an international black eye which would make Tiannemen Square look like Woodstock.

[JackRiddler]

12. If so, "America" as we think we know it ended several times in the past.

[TriMera]

13. k & r. Very enlightening. n/t

[JackRiddler]

14. kick for history

[JackRiddler]

15. & one more...