The Glory And The Dream
by
william manchester

BOOKS BY WILLIAM MANCHESTER

HISTORY

THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT November 20 November 25, 1963

THE ARMS OF KRUPP 1587 - 1968

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM A Narrative History of America, 1932 - 1972

BIOGRAPHY

DISTURBER OF THE PEACE The Life of H. L. Mencken

A ROCKEFELLER FAMILY PORTRAIT From John D. to Nelson

PORTRAIT OF A PRESIDENT John F. Kennedy in Profile

FICTION

THE CITY OF ANGER SHADOW OF THE MONSOON THE LONG GAINER

DIVERSION

BEARD THE LION WILLIAM MANCHESTER

THE GLORY AND THE DREAM

A Narrative History of America

LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY BOSTON- TORONTO COPYRIGHT 1973, 1974 BY

WILLIAM MANCHESTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

" resembled the besieged capital of an obscure European state.  Since
May some twenty-five thousand penniless World War veterans had been
encamped with their wives and children in District parks, dumps,
abandoned warehouses, and empty stores.  The men drilled, sang war
songs, and once, led by a Medal of Honor winner and watched by a
hundred thousand silent Washingtonians, they marched up Pennsylvania
Avenue bearing American flags of faded cotton.  Most of the time,
however, they waited and brooded.  The vets had come to ask their
government for relief from the Great Depression, then approaching the
end of its third year;

specifically, they wanted immediate payment of the soldiers' "bonus"
authorized by the Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 but not due until
1945.

If they could get cash now, the men would receive about $500 each.

Headline writers had christened them "the Bonus Army,"

"the bonus marchers."

They called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force.

B.E.F members had hoped in vain for congressional action.

Now they appealed to President Hoover, begging him to receive a
delegation of their leaders.

Instead he sent word that he was too busy and then proceeded to isolate
himself from the city.

Presidential plans to visit the Senate were canceled; policemen
patrolled the White House grounds day and night.

For the first time since the Armistice, the Executive Mansion gates
were chained shut.  hoover locks self in white house, read a ~New York
Daily News headline.

He went even further.

Barricades were erected; traffic was shut down for a distance of one
block on all sides of the Mansion.

A one-armed veteran, bent upon picketing, tried to penetrate the screen
of guards.

He was soundly beaten and carried off to jail.

In retrospect this panoply appears to have been the overreaction of a
frightened, frustrated administration.

The bonus marchers were unarmed, had expelled radicals from their
ranks, and- despite their evident hunger- weren't even panhandling
openly.

They seemed too weak to be a menace.