Upon the 1918 homecoming of nearly four million soldiers, many states provided assistance to men returning home, independent of any federal backing—seventeen granted cash bonuses, some gave land grants and others provided jobs through employment programs and bureaus. 4 One million men were put back into the workforce, but three million remained unemployed and resentful—while civilian war workers enjoyed the fruits of increased pay during the 1920s, the veterans who fought to protect them just barely subsisted on their meager military pay. 5
As these disgruntled sentiments grew stronger, so did the push for passage of legislation that would correct servicemen’s low pay during the war in providing some sort of adjusted compensation. By May of 1920, over seventy-five bonus bills were pending in Congress—yet, despite popular opinion, none of them received much support. 6 To grant the bonuses—particularly in the form of immediate payout, which would cost around two billion dollars—would, as Secretary of Treasury David F. Houston put it, “result in disaster”; there was simply no room in the federal budget. 7
In 1924, Congress did secure WWI veterans a bonus of $1.25 for each day they spent overseas, and $1.00 for each day they passed enlisted in the States. Yet this stipend— officially labeled the World War Veteran’s Act, but later deemed the “Tombstone Bonus”—provided little satisfaction, for payment was assured by 1945, or upon death. 5 Texas governor and WWI vet Wright Patman, unhappy with the distant payment date, proposed alternative legislation in 1929 calling for an immediate cash bonus financed by the government at a cost of $3.4 billion dollars. 8 Initially, the bill never made it out of committee, drifting into obscurity with little notice. But, reintroduced in 1931, the proposal galvanized an even more deeply impoverished nation, instilling the possibility of some relief. 9
4 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic
5 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic
6 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic
7 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic
8 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic
9 Allen, Thomas B, and Paul Dickson, The Bonus Army: An America Epic