Compelling Policy Question:

What is our Country's responsibility to our military Veterans?

Policy Case Study:

H. R. 7726, A BILL To provide for the immediate payment to veterans of the face value of their adjusted-service certificates

(Excerpts / link to the full text of the Bill)

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That Title V of the World War Adjusted Compensation Act*, as amended, is amended by adding at the end thereof three new sections to read as follows:

“PAYMENT OF CERTIFICATES BEFORE MATURITY”

Sec. 509. (a) The Administrator of Veterans' Affairs is authorized and directed to pay to any veteran to whom an adjusted-service certificate has been issued …. the amount of the face value of the certificate..

*The World War Adjusted Compensation Act was a piece of legislation from 1926. It promised WWI veterans a bonus based on length of service between April 5, 1917 and July 1, 1919. Soldiers would be paid $1 for every day they were stationed stateside, and $1.25 for every day overseas. The payouts were capped at $500 for stateside veterans and $625 for overseas veterans. The money given by the Act would grow to be worth $1000 by 1945, the original payout date.

Context of H.R. 7726

Source: The Bonus March - Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer

1919 Approximately 4.7 million veterans participated in World War I. About half went overseas for an average of 5.5 months. Of the 1.1 million who actually saw combat, 116,000 died in service and 204,000 were wounded or otherwise disabled. After the war, veterans were simply mustered out of service from their bases in the United States and received a $60 bonus.

1924 On May 15, President Calvin Coolidge vetoed a bill granting bonuses to veterans of World War I, saying: "patriotism... bought and paid for is not patriotism." Congress overrode his veto a few days later, thereby passing the World War Adjustment Compensation Act that provided a bonus to WWI veterans based on the length and location of their service - $1 for each day in the service (up to $500) if they stayed in the U.S. and $1.25 per day of service (up to $625) if they were stationed outside U.S. borders. Veterans owed $50 or less were paid immediately in cash. Soldiers who were owed more than $50 were given a "bond". This bond would grow in value due to compound interest. The bonds were to be paid out by the Government in 1945. The average payout would be $1,000.

1929 In January, Wright Patman, Congressman from Texas, introduced a Veteran's Bill that would release the WWI bonuses early. The bill did not make it out of committee.

In October the Stock Market Crashes, plunging the United States into the "Great Depression". Unemployment starts to climb.

1931 In January, Patman reintroduced his bill to Congress. While it made it through Congress, President Hoover vetoed the bill, denouncing the bonus as "a dole" and "a step toward government aid to those who can help themselves."

1932 In May, a former cannery worker named Walter W. Walters led to Washington a band of jobless WWI veterans who had been greatly impoverished during the great depression. Calling themselves the "Bonus Expeditionary Forces," they demanded early payment of the bonus Congress had promised them in 1924.

• Walters organized the various encampments along military lines and announced that there would be "no panhandling, no drinking, no radicalism;" the marchers were simply "going to stay until the veterans' bill is passed."

• They occupied parks and a row of condemned buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue, between the White House and the Capitol. When new arrivals overflowed that site, they erected a shantytown on the flood plain of the Anacostia River, southeast of Capitol Hill.

• By the end of June, the movement had swelled to more than 20,000 tired, hungry and frustrated men.

• In June, Congressman Patman again introduced his bill

The Bonus Expeditionary Forces camp on Anacostia Flats, Washington, DC.

Section One - Guiding Question, Why do some people believe our Country does have a unique responsibility towards our Veterans?

On February 25th, 1932, World War One Veteran Jack Rast wrote a letter to Representative Patman. In that letter he said...

(excerpts, link to full letter)

I have five little children and a wife who are insufficiently fed and are at this present moment hungry.

I have stood in water, mud, and filth up to my waist fighting for my flag, until now, broken in health, out of work, I am obliged to accept charity. To-day they left me a bunch of spinach and a small, very small, piece of meat to feed eight people.

My God, gentlemen, do you think have I no pride? Let me tell you, Representatives of the American people, I am as good an American citizen as any of you .... I want work, not charity, and the people must have it.

If the Government will pay us what they owe us it will put just that much money in circulation, for there is no doubt that almost all of the World War men need money as badly as I do...

There are thousands of ex-soldiers in actual want right now. I know I am, for as God is my judge. There is not a single penny under this roof at this writing and none in sight...

I want you to know I thank you personally, for what you have done for the soldiers.

Would to God there were more men in Washington like you—men who know what the Government owes us, and what is our due.

Mr. Patman, I thank you, so do my babies and my dear wife, and we all say God bless you.

Sincerely yours,

Jack Rast

In 1931, the Veterans' Service Magazine created a cartoon titled "THEN AND NOW".

In 1931, the National Veterans Association of Enlisted Men Magazine from Seattle Washington, published a cartoon by A.H. Robinson titled, “The Changing Years”

Section Two - Guiding Question, Why do some people believe our Country's responsibility towards our Veterans has limits?

In 1932, a World War veteran named Richard W. O’Neill gave a testimony on the Bonus Bill during Hearings Before the House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means during which he said...

Mr. O’Neill was awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions during WW1. Link to a biography of Mr. O’Neill (excerpts / link to full testimony)

I wish to go on record at this time to state .... that there are no living heroes, except those veterans who are lying on their backs in hospitals today. The real heroes are the boys lying over there under the white crosses.

….

[I]f cash payment in full of the certificates is authorized now every man holding one will demand and receive it. Thus at a time when the country can ill afford .... (paying) nearly $1,600,000,000 to men not certainly in real need of it...

….

With unemployment and general depression prevalent in the country to-day the (communists), are …. (using) the bonus issue as an excuse to .... strike at the very foundations of American liberty.

...

Real veterans do not desire to live on their Government and are willing to take honest employment any time in preference to gratuities.

Real veterans are men with pride and character. They have earned for themselves the right to participate in the general scheme of American life.

My earnest plea to them is that they let the question of cash payment of the bonus …. die now, (and) combine themselves into an effective organization …. with a purpose and aim to take that part in the upbuilding of their country which it is their right and duty to take.

The Evening Ledger newspaper ran a cartoon by Charles "Bill" Sykes in 1932 titled "Well Done!".

In this cartoon President Herbert Hoover is standing in front of the United States Treasury (department in charge of the Government's $). He appears to have just used a rolled up paper labeled "Bonus Stand" to swat away "political Expediency". Based on their footwear, that person that was swatted away was a soldier. "Political Expediency" means to do something because it is politically "convenient", instead of doing what the morally "right" thing is.

What happened to H.R. 7726

Source: The Bonus March - Dr. Gayle Olson-Raymer

• . On June 15th 1932, the House passed the bill in a 209-179 vote; two days later, the Senate rejected the bill by 62-18 vote.

• Army Chief of Staff Douglas MacArthur was convinced that the march was a communist conspiracy to undermine the U.S. government.

• On July 21, President Hoover ordered the evacuation of several buildings on Pennsylvania Avenue and authorized the use of force if necessary.

On July 28, July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Some marchers resisted the police by rushing them and throwing bricks. Washington shot at the protestors, and two veterans were wounded and later died.

• President Hoover ordered the Secretary of War to "surround the affected area and clear it without delay."

• Led by MacArthur, 600 Army troops began pushing the veterans out, destroying their makeshift camps as they went. Although no weapons were fired, cavalry advanced with swords drawn, and some blood was shed. By nightfall, hundreds had been injured by gas (including a baby who died), bricks, clubs, bayonets, and sabers.

• Secretary of War Hurley sent two orders to MacArthur indicating that the President did not wish the Army to pursue the Bonus Marchers across the bridge into their main encampment. But MacArthur sent his men across the bridge anyway. The day's toll was three dead, 54 injured and 135 arrests.

Video below shows footage of the Bonus Army being chased out of their camp by U.S. Soldiers, Calvary, and Tanks.

1933 In May, about 1,000 veterans marched on Washington to again demand their bonuses. While President Franklin Roosevelt opposed the bonus, he responded by issuing an executive order permitting the enrollment of 25,000 veterans in the Citizens' Conservation Corps for work in forests.

1935 Congress passed the Patman Greenback Bonus Bill, which Roosevelt vetoed. Roosevelt argued that the program was not a relief bill and that it would invite demands for similar treatment by other groups. With respect to the veterans, he said, "I hold that able-bodied citizens should be accorded no treatment different from that accorded to other citizens who did not wear a uniform during the World War. . . . The veteran who is disabled owes his condition to the war. The healthy veteran who is unemployed owes his troubles to the depression."

1936 Congress sent another version of the Patman bill to the President on January 22. The bill became law when the Senate overrode the President's veto on January 27. The Act replaced the service certificates awarded to veterans under the 1924 Act and issued Treasury Department bonds in denominations of $50 which paid interest at an annual rate of 3 percent for the next nine years - higher than rates available in savings accounts. Amounts less than $50 were paid immediately. The bonds could not be sold, but the Treasury would redeem them for cash at any time after June 15, 1936. Most veterans redeemed their bonds promptly.