bullets in maintaining law and order in these times of Depression, unemployment and hunger.â
The fallout was swift and decisive. âHounding men who fought for their country was not a political master stroke,â one historian wrote. âWhat a pitiful spectacle is that of the great American government, mightiest in the world, chasing unarmed men, women and children with army tanks,â the Washington News admonished. Newsreel audiences throughout the country hissed as they watched the U.S. Army attack the Bonus Marchers.
At the governorâs mansion in Albany, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt were appalled. Sitting up in bed in the master suite, on the morning of July 29, Roosevelt was surrounded by a sea of newspapers. Rexford Tugwell, a professor of agricultural economics and one of Rooseveltâs advisers, later recalled that the governor felt deeply ashamed for his country. Embarrassed that he had once held Hoover in high regard, he revoked that opinion, telling Tugwell, â[There] is nothing left inside the man but jelly; maybe there never had been anything.â
To Roosevelt, Hooverâs overreaction underscored his own evolving mindfulness of how deeply divided America had become, how wide the swath was between the âhavesâ and the âhave-notsââas Depression-era novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald described Americaâs divisions along lines of money and class. Hooverâs actions highlighted to Roosevelt âthe deep social cleavage in the nation and the possible difficulties posed by alarmistsâ such as MacArthur, whom he considered âa potential Mussolini.â
In any case, Roosevelt knew better than anyone that the episode had sealed the presidentâs fate, predicting, rightly, that Americans would be outraged by the events.
âWell, Felix,â he said to his adviser Felix Frankfurter, âthis will elect me.â
Chapter Seven
Happy Days Are Here Again
The Bonus Army fiasco was the final blow to an ill-fated president. The 1929 stock market crash monopolized Hooverâs first year in office; the spiraling American economy plagued his next three years. While the Depression obliterated Hooverâs standing as a forceful American leader, his antisocial personality further undermined him. âBut the rout of the bonus marchers shattered the remaining credibility of his administration,â concluded one historian. âHis personal reputation might have weathered some of the discontent engendered by the depression if federal troops had not attacked unarmed, hungry petitionersâvictims of that depression.â
Roosevelt was quick to capitalize on his rivalâs floundering, referring to him as âHumpty Dumptyâ and never missing an opportunity to highlight his failures. In what would go down in history as a particularly bitter campaign, the Republicansâ ad hominem attacks included spreading rumors that Rooseveltâs paralysis was caused by a venereal disease, which had gone to his brain and was driving him âcrazy.â The Democrats held no punches either, accusing Hoover of colluding in the export of fifty thousand coolies as cheap labor to South African gold mines while he was a Chinese mining company executive.
In any case, Americans were uninterested in political squabbles and impatient for solutions to rescue them from the hardship that was growing harder. As the campaign headed into the general election, a journalist asked British economist John Maynard Keynes whether there was a historical comparison to the Great Depression. âYes,â Keynes replied. âIt was called the Dark Ages, and it lasted four hundred years.â Earlier, Keynes had warned a Chicago audience of the impending collapse. âWe are today in the middle of the greatest catastropheâthe greatest catastrophe due almost to entirely [sic] economic causesâof the modern world. I am told that the view is held in Moscow
Kimberly Readnour
Margaret Tanner
Lora Leigh
Carl Quiltman
Walter Mosley
Duncan Lay
JC Coulton
Louisa May Alcott
Stina Leicht
Perrin Briar