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Amid the precipitous decline in the national economy, President Hoover faced another public-relations nightmare. Americans who had served in World War I, which President Woodrow Wilson had labeled "the war to end all wars," had been promised bonuses to be paid by the federal government in 1945 —as a kind of retirement supplement for risking their lives defending democracy. With the onslaught of the Great Depression, many veterans called for early payment of their bonuses. In February 1931 Congress agreed to lend them half their bonus money but would not pay them their full bonuses outright, in part because the available money in the U.S. Treasury was shrinking in the economic downturn. Beginning in May 1932, some twenty thousand veterans started arriving in Washington and setting up "Bonus Army" encampments around the city, insisting that they would stay until Congress met their...
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This section contains 273 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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