"Great News! The bonus became a law! Today at school Mrs Rosengren and Mrs Smith our teachers was late. We played colors till they came. I b[r]ought a grit for Billy to my teacher. I brought my playmate magazine to school. I went Down to aunt Elsie's house."
In 1932, 17,000 World War I veterans and their family members (totaling 43,000), marched on Washington D.C. to demand early cash redemption of their service certificates. They came to be called the Bonus Army. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of these certificates but they could not redeem them until 1945. The Bonus Army set up makeshift housing, called Hooverville, in "honor" of the president, Herbert Hoover, who then ordered the U.S. Army to clear out their campsites. The veterans were also met with resistance by the Washington city police who shot at the veterans; two were wounded and later died. When Franklin Roosevelt became president, he offered the participants of a smaller Bonus March in 1933 jobs in the Civilian Conversation Corps, most of whom accepted. On January 27, 1936, Congress overrode Roosevelt's veto against early payout and paid the veterans their bonus nine years early. This was very good news for all those unemployed veterans whose families were suffering.
Grit was a weekly newspaper that was published out of Pennsylvania. It was very popular in rural areas. I remembering getting it when I was a girl, living in Alaska. Billy must have had a subscription route.
Actually Grit is still being published today
ReplyDeleteYes it is, but it's now in magazine form instead of a newspaper.
ReplyDelete