Word: bonus
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...bloody battle was a third march toward the White House by some 200 Reds, led by Communist John Pace, Michigan contractor. It was a routine performance which the police efficiently squelched with much pate-thwacking and nine arrests. One veteran climbed a tree, kept shouting "We want our Bonus!" until police dragged him down, gagged him. This radical demonstration, outlawed by the regular B. E. F. was important only in that it gave Administration officials the idea of blaming Communists for all that followed...
...into a park. Wreckers had knocked the walls out of the buildings when the B. E. F. began to arrive last May. Brigadier General Pelham Glassford. Washington's long-legged, kindly police chief, arranged to halt demolition, have veterans quartered in the skeletonized buildings. With Congress gone and the Bonus fight over, the Treasury sought to evict the veterans and start work again. Four times 200-odd veterans were ordered out. Four times they refused to budge...
...Pennsylvania Avenue broke its back. But the military was not yet through. It "gassed" small scattered camps in the vicinity of the Capitol, shoved out their occupants, left smoking ruins behind. By 9 p. m. the troopers had advanced to the Anacostia bridge, beyond which on the mudflats lay Bonus City, the B. E. F.'s main encampment. The camp commander rushed out waving a white shirt for a truce, asked for time to evacuate the several hundred women and children. He got an hour's grace...
...infantry moved into Bonus City (10:14 p. m.) gassing each wretched shack and shanty, veterans by the thousands trudged off into the night. Some carried their belongings wrapped in bundles on their backs. One drunk went lurching away bearing only a large oil lamp. A few sang old War songs. Women carried babies in their arms. Huts and lean-tos were set afire, partly by the departing veterans, partly by the soldiers. By midnight Bonus City, once the home of 10,000 jobless hungry men & women, was a field of roaring bonfires. President Hoover could see its fiery glow...
...Congress made provision for the return home of the so-called Bonus marchers. . . . Some 5,000 took advantage of the arrangement. . . . An examination of a large number of names discloses the fact that a considerable part of those remaining are not veterans. . . . Many are Communists and persons with criminal records...