4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL APRIL 26, 2017
O PINION
S
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Congratulations to Williams
I would like to offer my heartfelt congratulations to Gary Wil-
liams with his appointment to the County Commission. Gary has
been an outstanding leader in our community for many years and
it has been my privilege to serve with him for most of those years.
I am confi dent that Gary will be an excellent commissioner and he
has my full support.I would also like to thank the County Commis-
sioners and the County staff for the selection process. They handled
a diffi cult process with fairness and professionalism.
Mike Fleck
Cottage Grove
Honor flight
The veterans, volunteers and Board of Directors of South Willa-
mette Valley Honor Flight would like to take a moment and thank
Payne West Insurance for their fi nancial donation in support of
Honor Flight.
The Payne West Insurance donation means that more veterans of
World War II, the Korean War and the Vietnam War will be able to
experience their memorials. They will also get to experience the
love and appreciation the citizens of the USA have for them as they
are thanked, have their hands shook and more than a few of them
will get hugs and kisses.
The entire Cottage Grove community has been supportive of
South Willamette Valley Honor Flight and we appreciate that.
Please keep sending your veterans to experience their own person-
al Honor Flight.
Ed Bock
Director
SWV Honor Flight
Offbeat Oregon History
T
he state of Oregon had a remarkably outsized impact on
the life and career of President Herbert Hoover. It gave
him his start, from age 9 until he went away to college at
Stanford; and, 40 years later, it gave him the movement that ended
his hopes for re-election.
That movement was called The Bonus Expeditionary Force. It
got its start as the brainchild of a charismatic down-on-his-luck
Army veteran named Walter Waters.
Waters was born and raised in Burns — a frontier community
that, in the pre-First-World-War years, was something of a cul-
tural hot-spot and the home of the “Sagebrush Symphony.” Wa-
ters, though, was drawn to the military, and he joined the National
Guard at a very young age (one source claims he was 12) for action
against Poncho Villa in Mexico.
In 1917, of course, he was off to France to fi ght the Great War.
By the time he mustered out at war’s end, Waters had been promot-
ed to the rank of Sergeant. Then he set about trying to make a living
in the postwar civilian world.
Throughout the 1920s, Waters did OK. He had a winning person-
ality and a strong work ethic. But when the Great Depression hit, it
took him down, along with millions of others. By the early 1930s
he was working as a “fruit tramp,” a migrant worker traveling from
place to place picking fruits and vegetables when each came into
season.
The winter of 1931-1932 found Waters in Portland, there being
no fruit in season to pick. And it’s there that he developed the plan
for the Bonus Army march to Washington.
C ottage G rove
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The Bonus Army came into being out of thousands of unem-
ployed veterans of the First World War who wanted to be able to
draw on their service bonus. The service bonus had been given
them at the end of the war by Congress, which was eager to get po-
litical credit for doing something nice for veterans without having
to actually pay for it. So, in the grand tradition of modern politi-
cians in America and around the world, they sent the bill into the
future for their successors to worry about paying: They voted to
give the veterans a service bonus payable in 25 years, in roughly
1945.
By early 1932, tens of thousands of unemployed and increasing-
ly desperate veterans were eager to cash that bonus out early, in
their greatest hour of need. But the federal government — which
was, of course, having some cash-fl ow problems of its own —
wouldn’t hear of it.
Waters got to thinking: Special-interest groups got results by go-
ing to Washington and lobbying Congress to help them out. Why
not put all those unemployed veterans to work as lobbyists, and
bring them all to Washington to petition the government for a re-
dress of grievances?
By March, Waters was no longer just thinking about it. Proud-
ly wearing his 15-year-old Army uniform, he was marching out
of Portland in good military order at the head of an actual mili-
tary company — hundreds of veterans embarking on a 3,000-mile
march to Washington.
Along the way, Waters and his crew got plenty of press coverage,
and almost all of it was favorable. The Bonus Army was — at that
time at least — respectful, disciplined and patriotic. Walters strictly
forbade drinking, begging, and anti-government talk, and enforced
these rules with a paramilitary court system that sentenced offend-
ers to lashings and sometimes expulsion from the group.
Most of the country was in support. Businesses brought the
marchers food and supplies, railroads made empty boxcars avail-
able for them to ride on, and toll-bridge operators stood by and
saluted as they marched across for free.
It being the early 1930s, representatives of the various commu-
nist and socialist organizations joined the march and tried to swing
it in their direction. They did not get far with this. Under Waters’
command, they were arrested, tried in the paramilitary court, and
sentenced — usually to 15 lashes and expulsion from the group.
By the time the Bonus Army arrived in Washington, it was
20,000 strong, and it wasn’t just a lobbying effort. It was also the
beginnings of a challenge to the social order. It would not have
taken much to turn the Bonus Army into something like one of the
Freikorps, the paramilitary gangs of war vets that formed in Ger-
many after the war, out of one of which Hitler’s “Sturm Abteilung”
militia developed.
So it’s understandable that the government would have wanted
to handle the Bonus Army very carefully when it arrived. President
Hoover, in particular, knew very well what nascent fascism looks
like, and chances are good that the Bonus Army made him very,
very nervous.
Maybe that’s why, when they arrived, Hoover refused to meet
with Waters. He may have been concerned that doing so would en-
courage the next charismatic populist to do what Waters had done,
with less benign intent.
This decision backfi red badly, and almost certainly cost Hoover
the election. Had Hoover met with Waters, something probably
could have been worked out, and the Bonus Army would have
dispersed; even if Waters had wanted to be America’s Mussolini
(which, at that stage, he clearly did not) he wouldn’t have been able
to keep the Bonus Army together without its raison d’étre, and it
would have instantly ceased to be a threat.
But that’s not what happened. Denied a chance to give their
message directly, the Bonus Army was forced to choose indirect
means. So they started holding daily demonstrations, requesting
payment of the bonuses they felt they were owed.
Matters settled into a stalemate as the B.E.F. camped there near
the White House in a ramshackle array of knocked-up shacks and
tattered tents. Congress showed no sign of giving in. And as time
went by, the Bonus Army’s morale suffered, and they became
noticeably less diligent about policing their movement. Radical
groups’ infi ltration efforts started bearing fruit.
At the same time, the power at Waters’ command seems to have
started to work its legendary magic on him. He started talking about
forming a movement of American “Khaki-shirts,” in the spirit of
Italy’s Blackshirts and Germany’s Brownshirts — a paramilitary
organization dedicated to getting America back on its feet — in
other words, an American Freikorps. Given what had happened to
the leaders of the Blackshirts and Brownshirts — one was dictator
of Italy and the other was well on track to taking over similar pow-
er in Germany — this was very alarming.
So at last, in July, Hoover made his second big mistake: He called
upon the U.S. Army to get the bonus marchers out of town. And in
giving the order, he essentially gave General Douglas MacArthur a
blank check to get it done.
MacArthur, who had convinced himself that the Bonus Army
was composed almost exclusively of communists and radicals,
didn’t have to be told twice.
The resulting scene, covered breathlessly by the press, shocked
and outraged the entire country. Grizzled middle-aged men in ill-fi t-
ting Doughboy uniforms carrying American fl ags were chased and
pounded with the fl ats of soldiers’ swords, cursed at and blasted
with tear gas. Meanwhile MacArthur, in full dress uniform with
medals and riding crop, rode around barking orders and preening.
When Hoover saw how things were shaping up, he ordered
MacArthur to stand down. MacArthur ignored the order and pro-
ceeded with the sweep. Somehow the Bonus Army’s shantytown
caught fi re during the action, and the fl ames quickly spread. One
Bonus Army soldier’s wife and baby were not able to escape in
time, and the baby died.
A strong case can be made that this sweep had to be done. The
longer the Bonus Army camped in Washington, the more it acted as
a lure to disaffected radicals, who infi ltrated its ranks and guided it
in their own devious directions. But, of course, it only got like that
because Hoover refused to meet with its leader when he fi rst ar-
rived at the head of 20,000 respectful, well-intentioned petitioners.
In the aftermath of this crackdown, the nation’s initial shock was
hardened into outrage by MacArthur’s smug statements to the me-
dia, congratulating himself on a great victory over the forces of
communism and anarchy. The marchers had come from all over
the country, and many Americans knew one or more of them. They
weren’t buying the “bunch of communists” spin that MacArthur
was trying to sell.
Hoover had no choice but to issue statements in support of his
loose-cannon Army Chief of Staff and hope for the best.
But July 28, 1932, is generally accepted as the day Hoover’s last
hope for re-election was demolished. It may also have been his last
hope to be remembered fondly as an ex-president, for the majority
of Americans alive at the time.
“I voted for Hoover in 1928,” one woman wrote to the Washing-
ton Daily News in response to the situation. “God forgive me and
keep me alive at least ‘til the polls open next November!”
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon history. For details, see http://fi nnjohn.
com. To contact him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@offbeatoregon.com
or 541-357-2222.
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