Hoovervilles

By Chef Jeff

I am a veteran, and a historian. I often have read lots of pages on various subjects and I often formulate my own opinions about things. In this article I do not pretend that I am not biased in favor of vets. This is a story of how if we, Americans, do not keep a close eye on our public servants, they may begin to believe that we serve them, instead of the other way around.

This article is not meant to make you angry at the government; after all, we are the government. Or, at least, that is how it is supposed to be!

So, here is the story of Hoovervilles and the Veterans and their families who dared to demand better of their elected leaders.

In 1917 American entered The Great War, also called The War to End All Wars. About 4.3 million U.S. soldiers entered the ranks, and of that, around 126,000 were killed and 234,000 were wounded. When the war ended, some veterans were psychologically damaged and seldom recovered. But America was entering The Roaring Twenties, and few people noticed the daft or crazy old vets who were shoved aside because people wanted to have a good time.

Long about October 1929, however, things went sour, and our nation, along with the rest of the world, entered what we now call The Great Depression. Herbert Hoover was president then, and people had elected him in a time of prosperity. His greatest attribute, they believed in 1928, was that he kept government from meddling in things, and that was OK at the time. No government regulations meant that people were free to win or lose fortunes in the stock market and in speculation.

However, as factories closed and people lost their jobs, Americans started to get worried about the basics. How could they buy food for today if they had no paycheck? Were there jobs somewhere else, because there sure as heck weren't any here! Farmers lost their land to foreclosures; people living in cities lost their homes to the same. Banks closed; savings were lost, and just about everybody suffered.

America was as close to anarchy as it had ever been, and with the rise of both Communism and Fascism, was also ripe for these "new" philosophies of government to take root, shoving Democracy aside. There was truly a battle for the hearts and minds going on here, and a lot of people were quite ready to abandon what we had for that which looked oh, so good over in Italy, Russia or Germany.

Mussolini in Italy had brought about a Fascists revolution, was bringing prosperity to his people, while the propaganda from the Soviet Union spoke of bread, jobs and work, as if they had a surplus of each of these. Americans were naïve about other nations: we had spent the better part of our existence avoiding foreign entanglements, so most people didn't see the warts inherent in fascism and Communism. But they did know that something was wrong here in the United States, something the government seemed unwilling or unable to fix.

People were hurting in large enough numbers that danger loomed around the corner.

Veterans, and their families, felt the most betrayed. After all, they had gone to war to end tyranny, to bring Democracy to the world, and now they were being forced out of their homes, they lost their jobs, and they were angry - very angry, and they remembered how to unite. So, unite they did.

Hoovervilles were shanty towns, made from whatever materials people could scavenge. They sprang up all over the nation, but in Washington D.C., right in the heart of our nation's capital, the most noticeable Hooverville, with the most vocal leaders, grew on the flats of Anacostia. Here, in 1932, the Bonus Army of veterans gathered, at first to seek and later to demand, relief that had been promised by the government. Altogether about 15,000 people were camped there.

These were men with skills, who were organized, and they made their little Hooverville into as comfortable a place as they could, but they were also desperate people, starving save for what they could scavenge, unclothed except for what they could find tossed aside by others, and without means, hope or a voice.

We Americans love to say that we are the government, that the people we elect serve us, at our pleasure, but this is rarely so. People in power tend to look down upon us, unless there is an election looming, in which case they are out there shaking hands and smiling at us. I dare say that few, if any, politicians set foot in a Hooverville, unless they had armed guards close at hand.

Now imagine a situation where more than half the people in the nation are either or both homeless and jobless. To my mind it is a testament to We, the People that there wasn't violent revolution seen in the streets. Perhaps people didn't want trouble; they merely wanted jobs.

Whatever the case, the government leaders decided that this was Communism rearing its ugly head right in the heart of the nation, and they did as governments usually do: they sent in the troops.

Douglas McArthur, Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton were amongst the military men who led troops into the Washington D.C. Hooverville and evicted every man, woman and child there. The buildings were torn down, the entire flat was leveled.

Troops were used to evict veterans. I can only imagine that in the minds of those troops, who had to do their duty, were the thoughts that someday this could be their fate.

Today we hear a lot of talk about supporting the troops. That idea came at a price. Outside the Hoovervilles of the past, there was little talk about supporting the veterans. Congress delayed, talked, and did little.

Meanwhile the nation starved, froze and grew angrier. Hoover Blankets, newspapers, were all that some people had to keep them warm in winter. Hoover Flags were pockets symbolically turned inside out to show that you had absolutely nothing. Hoover Leather was a bit of cardboard shoved into your shoe to cover the holes in the leather. People who still possessed a car called it Hoover Wagon when they tied a horse to pull it along, since they couldn't afford gasoline.

And then on top of all this came The Dust Bowl. It was the ultimate adding of injury to insult, and people had had enough. From 1919 to 1933 the Republicans had controlled the Senate, and in the eyes of many Americans, they had done little to alleviate the crisis. From 1917 to 1933 Republicans controlled the House of Representatives, and they also were perceived as a do-nothing Congress. People voted in change.

There are many pundits today who knock the change people demanded back then, who now say that it really wasn't Hoover's fault, and that he tried to do things to make the situation better. Some even say that Roosevelt established Socialist Ideology into American government, and that we still suffer from that today. People who forget the misery and suffering of millions of ordinary Americans, people who sit in luxury while others starve, are often prone to saying such things.

And people like us who forget the lessons of the past are always subject to reliving them again. Veterans and other people of the 1930's were children of the horrors our nation went through, and that is why, I believe, programs such as Social Security and health care were not seen as Communist plots or Socialist programs. They were viewed by a great many Americans as promises fulfilled, American reaching once more for greatness instead of basking lazily in laissez faire policies that tended to favor the already wealthy.

Over the next decades people with short memories and other agendas would knock the New Deal programs, rename them under the banner of Socialism and try to make them look evil. And they would convince many of these things. We have, after all, short memories ourselves.

But the Generation of the Hoovervilles, the Generation of the Dust Bowl, could see through the propaganda of the leaders and pundits who wanted to return everything to the way it was before the government remembered that it is Constitutionally "of the People, by the People and for the People", would not allow it to perish beneath the tirades of those who would divide us, create artificial barriers between us, and give us the trickle down droppings from their table of plenty.

The baton in this race has passed to a new generation. I can only hope they realize how precious, how rare is this gift we have given them, and that they will work hard to keep it noble, to keep it pure and to keep it going. I pray so in order that: "...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."