In the late spring and early summer of 1932, 40,000 middle-aged and impoverished World War I veterans descended on Washington, D.C., to demand immediate payment of their adjusted compensation certificates, or bonus. The government had given veterans these bonds to settle an earlier political dispute. World War I veterans returned home in the midst of the 1919 recession and soon grew angry with war profiteers. The draft, veterans argued, gave the government the power to determine who went into the army and who stayed at home. Those who went into the army received one dollar a day, while civilians earned high wages and profits in the booming wartime economy. The government, in veterans' eyes, had the responsibility of ensuring equality of sacrifice in time of total war by distributing the financial burdens of the war fairly between soldiers and civilians. In 1924 the government offered veterans a compromise. Instead...