Bonus Marchers Analysis

In the midst of the Great Depression, our WWI veterans asked for the ‘bonus’ they had been promised by the government, requesting it earlier than when it was to be distributed. They did this, not because they were trying to ‘loosen the purse strings of the government’ as some put it, but because as American citizens and workers, they were suffering too, and they knew the government-- the country—they fought for had the means to help them. They marched on Washington, DC, peacefully, trying to convince congress to give them the money that they had earned in the trenches. When congress refused to pay for anything but a train ticket back home, which the marchers would have deducted out of their bonus later, the bonus marchers camped out in Washington, in what they called Hooverville’s, which were little more than a stretch of hovels just past Anacostia Bridge. They continued to utilize their right to peaceful assembly and petition, and hoped for a different outcome, than the one they were given. They lived in ‘squalid, miserable, and unhealthful’ conditions, as said by Mauritz A. Hallgren, and survived the brutal treatment they received from their own government, so they could have a better life afterwards. After one scuffle with the Police

Anderson wrote, in regards to the bonus marchers, ‘[They] were characterized by extraordinary discipline and restraint. To one who visited their camps many times and talked to scores of them, any suggestion that they constituted a threat against the government is preposterous.’ Along the same lines, John H. Barlette commented, ‘None of [the veterans] were harming anybody where they were. They were absolutely ragged, penniless, hungry and sick.’ Would these people, described as hungry as sick, be in any state of body or mind to propose a threat to the government? Why did we need the United States Troops to clear the area, when they were poor and starving and the police force was capable of resolving the