The Veteran Racket
I
WHEN the Federal Government closed its books for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1932, the American people were shocked to learn that total revenues from income taxes — individual and corporate combined — did not quite cover all the costs of the Veterans’ Administration services for the twelve months just ended. Incredible as it seemed, the figures were indisputable. Income-tax collections for the year, as officially reported by the Secretary of the Treasury, were $1,057,335,853, while the combined disbursements for veterans’ pensions, hospitalization, disability allowances, construction, bonus loans and payments, and administrative expenses came to the neat sum of $1,064,268,966.
Of the many bewildering fiscal problems brought into sharp relief by the depression, this, perhaps, was the most alarming — and for very good reason. During the decade from 1923 to 1932, income taxes had provided, on the average, 51.41 per cent of the federal revenues. At the close of that period, a single function of government — one administrative unit out of fifty-one in the federal establishment — called for more money in a year than had been garnered from the principal source of revenue.
Here was a critical situation indeed. How did it happen that things were brought to such a pass?
Back in 1921 the full cost of veterans’ services had been $662,481,718. This figure was hailed at the time as far and away the largest annual appropriation for such purposes which any government had ever made in all human history. True, there were still on the rolls of the Pension Bureau a thinning group of Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans; but their share of the annual bounty was but $260,000,000, only about one third of the total. The balance of $402,000,000 was entirely for World War benefits. In the rosy dawn of the New Economic Era, the American people felt rather proud that they were caring for their war veterans in magnificent style. All of the direct death claims for field casualties in the World War had long since been paid, and the official records of the War and Navy Departments showed that, of the survivors of the conflict, there were only 234,161 who had been wounded in action. If each of these wounded veterans had been granted an outright allowance of $1000 a year (some $400 more than the then average per capita income in the United States), the maximum annual cost would have been but $234,161,000. To be actually paying ann ually almost twice that sum for hospitalization, vocational training, war risk insurance, and compensation, appeared, under the circumstances, a truly American expression of noble patriotism, a fine acceptance of a high moral obligation, satisfactory to the national conscience from every point of view.
By 1930 the combined disbursements in behalf of the veterans had increased to $835,275,349, and the next year the figure leaped across the billion mark for the first time, to $1,021,559,957. Since 1931 the annual expenditures, including authorizations for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1934, have averaged slightly more than $1,000,000,000. Nor is this all. The special economy committee of the House of Representatives reported on April 25, 1932, that veteran costs for the decade 1933-1942 would, under prevailing laws, aggregate $12,000,000,000, or an average of $1,200,000,000 annually. Actuaries of the Treasury Department have submitted informal estimates to the House Committee on Appropriations placing expenditures for the veterans during the fiscal year 1949 at $2,350,000,000.
If we may assume that existing laws will not be further ‘liberalized,’ — to use the word of pension lobbyists in Washington, — the grand total of all veteran outlays from November 1918 to the end of 1949 will come to the magnificent figure of $35,000,000,000. Such a regiment of ciphers defies the imagination. Let us, therefore, try to visualize it in a way that will convey to our minds just how much money that really is. Picture a house costing $10,000. Very well; the sum would provide 3,500,000 of them. Spaced on fifty-foot lots, they would line a street 33,143 miles long; or, to put it another way, that much money would build eleven solid rows of such houses between New York and San Francisco, without allowances for street intersections.
More than one sixth of this imaginary Bonus Boulevard is already completed. Since the Armistice, and including appropriations approved in the last short session of Congress for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1934, we have already provided for World War veterans an aggregate of $6,647,039,000. And in addition the several states have expended a total of $647,000,000 for bonuses, hospitalization, and rehabilitation.
It is interesting to compare America’s treatment of her veterans with that of some of the other principal powers engaged in the war. Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Canada mobilized between them 34,244,000 men. In 1932 these countries spent a total of $891,000,000 to take care of their ex-soldiers. The United States mobilized 4,757,929 men, and the sum set aside for veterans in 1932 (after excluding all save World War benefits) was $860,635,000. Our expenditure for veterans last year was at the rate of $2668.66 for every American soldier killed and wounded in action; the comparable figure for Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, and Canada combined was only $53.60.
These figures serve to emphasize the indisputable fact that the United States has lavished upon her ablebodied ‘heroes’ the care which other nations have reserved for their disabled men. How this disgraceful perversion of purpose was brought about is clearly revealed by a study of the tangled web of veterans’ legislation between 1920 and 1930. Pieced together from the legislative hearings, committee reports, and Congressional debates, this story stands as the most shocking record of systematic treasury raiding and organized political racketeering in modem history. The job was done chiefly by the ex-service guild, a high-powered minority group which at its maximum membership in 1927 numbered considerably less than 1 per cent of the population. What is more, this group represented a minority of the veterans themselves, for it has never included as many as one fourth of the total Army and Navy enlistments between April 6, 1917, and November 11, 1918.
II
A three-way policy of compensation, hospitalization, and vocational rehabilitation for all wounded soldiers and sailors was enacted in a measure which came out of Congress as early as October 1917. Six months after the declaration of war against Germany, President Wilson signed the enlarged War Risk Insurance Act, which provided (1) compensation for death and disability in the line of duty, (2) family allotments and allowances for the dependents of both officers and enlisted men, (3) hospital treatment for all men injured in the line of duty, (4) vocational rehabilitation for permanently maimed veterans, and (5) term life insurance at an average cost of $9.60 a year for every $1000 of protection — a figure which placed upon the national government all the extraordinary risks of war over and above those covered in the peace-time actuarial tables, as well as all administrative costs. Private insurance companies at the time were charging $70 a year per $1000 for the full war risks.
The general tenor and scope of this basic veteran legislation may be illustrated by a single provision (Section 302, subdivision 3), never before written into law by a nation at war: —
In addition to the compensation above provided, the injured person shall be furnished by the United States such reasonable governmental medical, surgical, and hospital services and with such supplies, including artificial limbs, trusses, and similar appliances, as the director may determine to be useful and reasonably necessary.
It is worthy of note that this bill, which still serves as the theoretical basis of all our elaborate veterans’ administration, and which has been accepted throughout the entire world as the most equitable and comprehensive rehabilitation programme ever enacted, became operative three years before the first veterans’ league was organized. While it was under legislative consideration it was criticized on the ground that it was too generous, since it provided double indemnity through both compensation and insurance; but Congress justified this on the principle that the government owed the compensation for war injuries, regardless of any other benefits which a disabled soldier might collect from insurance.
The central idea of this original programme for the veterans has been credited publicly by Mr. Newton D. Baker, Secretary of War in the Wilson Cabinet, to the late Samuel Gompers, founder and for forty-two years president of the American Federation of Labor. Mr. Gompers was serving at the time as a member of the Advisory Commission of the Council for National Defense, of which Mr. Daniel Willard was chairman. In a letter presented before a joint committee of Congress on December 20, 1932, Mr. Baker traced the development of the bill from the first presentation of the idea to its enactment into law. Of its general purposes, as set forth by Mr. Gompers, the letter said: —
The whole question of compensation and veterans’ legislation, which had proved so vexatious after the Civil and Spanish-American wars, would be solved in advance; the statute, providing a recognized scale of compensation, would be final, and it would never be necessary after the war to consider general or private pension bills. Upon this last feature Mr. Gompers spoke with great earnestness.
In urging the legislation before the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Mr. Gompers had ventured the bold prophecy: ‘I am under the impression that when this measure shall have been enacted into law you will hear very little about claims for pensions.’ William Gibbs McAdoo, then the Secretary of the Treasury, also urged the law as ‘a final, orderly, and equitable settlement of our obligations’ to those who should return from the war, and to the dependents of those killed in action. ‘The plan,’ Mr. McAdoo added, was ‘intended to be a substitute for, and to make unnecessary, future pension laws to cover this war.’ Similarly, Federal Judge Julian W. Mack, who drafted the bill for the Treasury, said in presenting it to the House committee: ‘What I hope for is that this insurance will set up a tremendous moral obligation against general pension legislation.’
Confronted by the immediate task of distributing allotments and allowances to almost one million dependents, the new Bureau of War Risk Insurance in the Treasury Department, which had previously comprised only twenty employees, expanded by thousands from week to week, gradually spreading itself to eighteen widely scattered stores, warehouses, office buildings, garages, clubhouses, and even dance halls, in Washington. Despite the difficulties of dealing with a mobilized force of 2,220,000 men, which was being augmented at the rate of 300,000 a month, the eighteen scattered segments of the Bureau were soon on top of their collective job. Early in 1918 they were issuing, to quote the House Committee on Invalid Pensions, ‘over four miles of checks each day.’
By the time the American troops actually entered combat in France, in the spring of 1918, checks for disability and death compensation were going forward regularly from Washington. For the first time in the history of the world, veteran care had been organized as a phase of war activity itself. Before the troops began to return from France in considerable numbers the next year, the government had already paid out $11,641,708 in death and disability compensation awards, plus some $200,000,000 in insurance settlements and administrative expenses. It had also authorized a general hospital building programme, which, through 1932, has called for $125,000,000.
In the vision of Woodrow Wilson, Newton D. Baker, William G. McAdoo, Samuel Gompers, Julian W. Mack, and Daniel Willard, the problem of caring for the veterans had been settled once for all. The financial burden would build up gradually to a peak load in the years from 1928 to 1935, and would then fall off with the curve of normal mortality. Justice would be served to every veteran according to his wounds; bereft dependents would be aided approximately according to their needs; the national treasury would be spared the shameless drain of pension scandals. Such was the alluring picture framed by the advanced science of mathematics and the high art of statesmanship in those throbbing, thrilling days of the war, when it still was an honor to serve one’s country unselfishly.
III
Before the Bureau of War Risk Insurance had been geared up to five miles of checks a day, a flood of liberalizing amendments to the original all-embracing compensation law poured in upon both Houses of Congress. So insistent became the demand for the inclusion of new classes of beneficiaries that an omnibus amendatory bill was soon passed, and it was signed by President Wilson on June 25, 1918. It provided a generally broader base of compensation, and abolished many of the legal formalities set up in the original law to limit awards strictly to those suffering disabilities directly connected with the military service.
Illustrative of the tendency to bring ever larger groups under the beneficent wing of the federal treasury — which has been the primary objective of every subsequent revision of the veterans’ laws — was Section 301 of the 1918 amendment. It redefined the word ‘wife,’ as it appeared in the original text, to include the husbands of all women who had served in the Army and Navy nursing corps. By this single revision a potential group of some 8000 men were made beneficiaries of the law, wholly without regard to their own military service. Another subtle revision at this time defined the term ‘widow,’ in the 1917 act, to include ‘widower.’
In February 1919, a direct cash allowance of $60 was provided for every person discharged from the military service, and in December of the same year the second general ‘liberalization’ of the 1917 law was enacted. One of the most burdensome indirections of this second revision was Section 300, which made retroactive to April 6, 1917, the legal fiction that everyone accepted in the military service during the World War was in sound physical and mental condition. Any incapacity whatever suffered during the term of service thereby became a disability ‘incurred in the line of duty.’
A further amendment to this section, in March 1925, provided specifically that in cases of paralysis, paresis, blindness, and similar afflictions, no application could be denied because of the veteran’s ‘own willful misconduct’ either before or after his discharge.
IV
By 1920 the first of the professional veterans’ organizations had been launched. From that date forward, the annual programmes of the several organizations charted the course of veteran legislation on Capitol Hill. The new spirit of the drive for service emoluments, born at this period, was indicated by an incident in the St. Louis caucus which organized the American Legion. When a long list of suggestions to Congress was under consideration, one Colonel Herbert, a delegate from Massachusetts, leaped to his feet and shouted to the chair: ‘I move you, sir, that the convention substitute the word “demand” instead of “request” where it says, “We request Congress . . . ”
The first demand was for a pooling of all veteran functions under a new Veterans’ Bureau. This was provided in a bill signed by President Harding on August 9, 1921.
On March 4, 1923, the 1917 law was again amended; this was its third ‘liberalization.’ The general legislative method employed in all these revisions was exhibited once more, in connection with the sections dealing with post-war tuberculosis. The original act provided conclusive presumption of service connection in all cases of ‘ pulmonary tuberculosis ’ developed within two years after discharge. Reopening the section on the ground that many gas victims might become patients after two years, the veterans’ lobby extended the presumptive period to three years.
But while thus revising the text they also struck out the word ‘pulmonary,’ thereby bringing in some 12,000 cases of other forms of tuberculosis developed since the war. Under the presumptive clause, of course, each of these new cases was automatically established as contracted ‘in the line of duty.’
Another provision in the original law denied all benefits to persons dishonorably discharged. The 1923 revision provided that those guilty of treason, mutiny, spying, or any offense involving willful and persistent misconduct, should not be deprived of statutory benefits save in those cases where the discharge followed a formal courtmartial. Under the administrative routine of the Army and Navy, which assembles courts-martial only for the gravest offenses involving high ranking officers, this little amendment restored to eligibility about 90 per cent of those originally disqualified by dishonorable discharges.
Meanwhile, the cash bonus bill had been presented late in 1920, precipitating a four-year legislative battle which involved stinging vetoes from Presidents Harding and Coolidge before the Adjusted Compensation Act became operative, over the presidential veto, on May 19, 1924. The two-thirds majority in both houses necessary to override the veto was obtained four days after the reading of Mr. Coolidge’s message of May 15, which said in part: —
America entered the World War with a higher purpose than to secure material gain. Not greed, but duty, was the impelling motive. Our veterans as a whole responded to that motive. They are not asking as a whole, they do not want as a whole, any money recompense. Those who do seek a money recompense, for the most part, of course, prefer an immediate cash payment. We must either abandon our theory of patriotism or abandon this bill. Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism. Our country has maintained the principle that our government is established for something higher and finer than to permit those who are charged with the responsibility of office, or any class whose favor they might seek, to get what they can out of it. Service to our country in time of war means sacrifice. It is for that reason alone that we honor and revere it. To attempt to make a money payment out of the earnings of the people to those who are physically well and financially able is to abandon one of our most cherished American ideals. The property of the people belongs to the people. To take it from them by taxation cannot be justified except by urgent public necessity. Unless this principle be recognized our country is no longer secure, our people no longer free. This bill would condemn those who are weak to turn over part of their earnings to those who are strong. Our country cannot afford it. The veterans as a whole do not want it. All our American principles are opposed to it. There is no moral justification for it.
As in the instance of the original compensation law of 1917, the adjusted service certificates, to mature in 1945, were granted by both the House and the Senate with stern admonitions that this was a final settlement of all veteran claims. In the words of President Hoover, in his veto of the cash loan bill on February 26, 1931, ‘When the bonus act was passed, it was upon the explicit understanding of the Congress that the matter was closed, and the government would not be called upon to make subsequent enlargements.’
Thus, by 1924, the World War veterans had been given two ‘ final ’ settlements in lieu of pensions.
V
By the end of 1923, the omnibus amendments of five years had reduced the veteran laws to a ridiculous maze of conflicts and cross-purposes. The clearly defined compensation policy of the 1917 act had been vitiated so gradually that even members of Congress could not say who was eligible for government benefits. So confused did the situation become on Capitol Hill that a special branch of the Veterans’ Bureau was established in the House Office Building, in charge of an expert in veteran law who had been approved by the veterans’ organizations. His principal job was to answer for members of Congress the bewildered queries of their constituents.
Meanwhile the ex-service lobby had been boring in assiduously on the House side of the Capitol, and had secured the creation of a special committee to handle all legislation relating to World War veterans. The first, chairman of this committee was one of the founders of the American Legion, and the majority membership was selected as if by appointment of the veterans’ organizations. In the Senate, the bills were still being handled in the Finance Committee, but by a sort of gentlemen’s agreement a subcommittee on veteran affairs had been set up. This too was headed by a member of the American Legion. With the establishment of this happy legislative arrangement, the way was paved for the presentation of some real, red-blooded, he-man demands upon the Congress.
First, the bonus bill was whipped through both houses over President Coolidge’s veto. Next, the whole body of veteran law was codified in the World War Veterans’ Act of June 7, 1924. In the process, scores of new ‘liberalizing’ amendments were added, one of which extended to January 1, 1925, the presumptive period of service origin in all cases of tuberculosis, neuropsychiatric disease, paralysis agitans, and certain other afflictions. Another provision of this act recognized the agents of the three principal veterans’ organizations as claim prosecutors before the Bureau, in which capacity they were entitled to inspect all the military service records of the government, as the potential basis for new claims.
As it turned out, this provision came nearer to precipitating a national scandal of the first magnitude than any other section of the codified law. Reviewing six years’ operations under the 1924 policy, members of the Committee on Invalid Pensions of the House of Representatives reported in 1931: —
The case records of the United States Veterans’ Bureau, and especially the medical examination reports, social workers’ reports, etc., are essentially confidential in nature; they are of the kind which a court would hold to be privileged communications. There is, therefore, questionable propriety in the authority granted in section 30 of the World War Veterans’ Act of 1924, as amended July 3, 1930, whereby representatives of the veterans’ organizations are permitted the inspection of these records. ‘Inspection,’ as often administratively applied, is extended to temporary physical possession. This, apart from the withdrawal of protection for peculiarly confidential data, is a privilege that invites fraudulent practices; e.g., the extraction of vitally important exhibits, or the substitution of other papers. Moreover, it tempts to the fabrication of fraudulent affidavits incorporating data disclosed by the case records. Finally, if the claimant be contemplating the filing of a suit for insurance, he will have been put in full possession of the facts upon which the government’s defense of the suit would rest.
Interesting, too, is the history of this indictment of the veteran racket. The paragraph quoted is an extract from a report of 150 pages completed by the Committee on Invalid Pensions in the winter of 1931. Although the document was ordered set in type by the Government Printing Office, only forty copies ever came from the presses. These have been closely held by committee members, apparently in response to extraordinary pressure from some quarter. To this day the report has never been catalogued as a public document in the index of the Library of Congress.
Their vast power and influence, both upon legislation and upon the routine of veteran administration, is not denied by the service organizations. The 1927 report of the National Legislative Committee of the American Legion contains this thumb-nail outline of history:
The Legion alone was responsible for the enactment into law of many of these measures, having drawn the legislation, obtained its introduction, aided in its progress in committees by testimony and legislative effort, and finally prevailed upon the House and Senate to take favorable action in time for approval by the President.
In the same vein, National Commander Henry L. Stevens was proud to tell the American Legion Convention at Portland, Oregon, in September 1932:—
During the past session of Congress every appropriation bill was reduced to the limit with the exception of the Veterans’ Administration appropriation of $928,387,795, and this was saved only through the tremendous influence exercised by the Legion.
Mr. Stevens spoke at that time for an organization whose total affiliated strength was several thousand short of 1,000,000. As has already been said, the combined service roster of the American forces in the World War was 4,757,929.
VI
The two great legislative achievements of 1924 — the bonus and the codification — demonstrated the central political facts which have influenced all service legislation since that year. These measures were evidence, first, that the veterans’ lobby was securely in the saddle on Capitol Hill; and, second, that the several organizations had, in fact, become part and parcel of the vast administrative machinery set up to dispense the nation’s now apparently boundless gratitude. From 1924 to 1932, therefore, the process of ‘ liberalizing’ the veteran code was considerably less faltering.
The fight for the bonus had also demonstrated the efficacy of the Legion’s system of stimulating telegrams from home, under which a hesitant member of the House or Senate might have as many as 1500 telegrams and letters dumped upon his desk in the course of twenty-four hours. Under the secret instructions in the hands of all post commanders — and there are some 10,600 of them throughout the country — a brief wire from the Washington office stating that Representative Blank was ‘off the reservation’ concerning a given piece of legislation would call forth instantly a veritable deluge of protests, not only from bona fide members of the various posts in the Congressional district, but from friends and relatives as well. By thus reflecting a popular demand which was out of all proportion to their real voting influence in the district, the veteran groups were able in several notable instances literally to scare elected officers of the government out of their wits in as little as three hours.
‘If you don’t support this bill, your successor will,’ became the stock greeting of one of the most notorious veterans’ lobbyists when he called on a Congressman after having passed the word back home to ‘give him the works.’ While this situation prevailed on Capitol Hill, no one dared challenge publicly any demand of the organized veterans. Some there were, to be sure, who suspected that it was all a racket. But to oppose the veterans was like sticking one’s head out a train window: it might be that nothing would happen, or, again, one’s political head might be knocked completely off. Under the circumstances nobody would risk it.
Hence, there was another general revision of the administrative code in 1925, another in 1926, another in 1928, and yet another in 1930. Each brought large new classes under the provisions of the hand-out system. Each ‘liberalized’ the requirements regarding evidence of service connection in disability claims. Each placed the administrative routine ever more completely in the hands of the professional veterans’ organizations. And each added new categories of beneficiaries to the government rolls.
Indeed, things were moving along so smoothly that the Spanish War Veterans, who had been granted their own ‘final’ settlement as early as 1920, came back to life in Washington and pressed vigorously for enlargement of their bounties. Their last general pension bill was adopted on June 2, 1930. The degree of this ‘liberalization’ is indicated by the fact that in 1920 there were only 30,432 Spanish War pensioners on the federal rolls, at a cost of $4,624,094, while the number in 1932 was 235,306, provided for in the budget to the tune of $119,396,447.
In 1930 the last pretense of limiting pensions to line-of-duty disability was abandoned. In that year a blanket provision was written into the law authorizing any veteran to claim benefits for sickness or injuries suffered after his term of military service. This eligibility extended to hospitalization as well as to monthly maintenance checks. So inclusive were its terms that a veteran who, in 1926, fell off a ladder in his own basement actually received free hospitalization plus a ‘disability allowance’ for his broken leg. This general class of disability allowances, for injuries not even presumably connected with the military service, cost no less than $105,147,800 during the first two years. And this sum was in addition, of course, to the $189,540,380 paid out in 1932 for compensation in cases in which the disability, either presumably or in fact, arose from war service. It was in addition also to hospitalization costs of $60,000,000 for the fiscal year 1932.
Testifying before the joint committee of the House and Senate which was set up to investigate abuses of the veteran laws, spokesmen for the National Economy League, in December 1932, tabulated annual expenditures of $457,000,000 which might be stricken from the 1934 veterans’ budget without depriving any individual of either compensation or care originally awarded for military disabilities.
Similarly, in his last annual report, the Director of the Veterans’ Administration, Brigadier General Frank T. Hines, informed Congress that the veterans’ hospital load as of June 30, 1932, was 39,393, of which number 15,460 patients were being treated for service-connected disabilities, real or presumptive, while 23,472 were hospitalized for post-war sickness or injuries. In two special reports during the last five years the American Medical Association has vigorously denounced the hospitalization of nonservice cases as an indefensible drain upon the national treasury. But, as one of the Capital’s most flamboyant veteran fixers once observed in an informal moment, ‘Who is the American Medical Association?’
VII
The march moves merrily forward. Everybody who had ever worn a federal uniform being now eligible for some sort of remittance or care, the veterans turned back once more, in 1930, to the bonus. The success of the 50 per cent loan drive during the trough of the depression, in 1931, still is remembered as one of the high points of the Seventy-second Congress. Under this act, which was passed over President Hoover’s ringing veto, the Veterans’ Administration had loaned, up to October 31, 1932, a total of $1,418,679,351. The 1931 act, incidentally, threw over completely the actuarial basis on which the whole system of adjusted service certificates had been set up in 1924.
By fixing the interest rate on the loans at 4 1/2 per cent, Congress undertook to restore the plan in time to an actuarial basis. At this rate the compound interest on the 50 per cent loans would practically wipe out the certificate value by the date of maturity in 1945. But under a law of July 21, 1932, the interest rate was reduced to 3 1/2 per cent. In December 1932, at the opening of the last lameduck session, a bill was presented in the House to abolish the interest charge entirely.
Meanwhile strong foundations have been laid in Congress for a general pension system. Measures were presented by the American Legion, in December 1931, looking to a general pension law applicable to widows and orphans of all World War veterans, regardless of the cause of the principal’s death. This demand was smothered at the time by the fight for immediate prepayment of the remaining maturity value of the 1945 bonus certificates, and little progress was recorded on the pension programme. But the bill is still before the committee. According to its sponsors, it will cost $150,000,000 for the first five years’ operation.
After widows’ and orphans’ pensions are firmly established, the next step will be to secure direct pensions for all living veterans. That step is already well advanced through the preparatory stages in the high councils of the veterans’ organizations. And now another member of the American Legion, this time a Democrat, is chairman of the House Committee on World War Veterans’ Legislation.
Meanwhile the Washington contact men who act for the veterans have not been discouraged by the stand which President Roosevelt took during the 1932 campaign on the bonus issue. Pressed for a statement of his views on immediate payment, Mr. Roosevelt repeated, in his Pittsburgh address of October 19, the policy outlined in an earlier newspaper interview. He said on both occasions: ‘I do not see how, as a matter of practical business sense, a government running behind two billion dollars annually can consider the anticipation of bonus payment until it has a balanced budget, not only on paper, but with a surplus of cash in the Treasury.’
Presidential vetoes are obstacles, to be sure, but the veterans’ organizations have demonstrated more than once that they are not insuperable. Thus, those who guide the destinies of the aggressive million still tingle to the great vision held out to them in 1924 by National Commander Hanford MacNider. After saying that the American Legion was, by the terms of its own constitution, ‘absolutely non-political,’ Mr. MacNider roused his audience to feverish enthusiasm with these beckoning words: ‘The G.A.R. dominated the United States for years after the Civil War, although it had a membership of but 20,000.’ He developed the thought in some detail and then drove it home with the challenge, ‘ What an opportunity for the Legion!’