In early May 1933, a new wave of Bonus Army marchers began to show up in Washington, again demanding their bonuses but also arguing for the restoration of benefits veterans had just lost. Unlike the first Bonus Army, this group came in with a list of grievances, including the lament that they were too old to be eligible for the nascent CCC. They seemed angrier than the 1932 marchers. Hoover’s problem became Roosevelt’s, as the trickle turned into a steady stream.
Soon some 3,000 veterans had arrived and were housed in a tent city, which the new president had ordered the Army to build on the grounds of an abandoned fort near Mount Vernon, on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. In an outing arranged by the White House, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt withstood the rain and the mud to join the vets in a friendly get-together and sing-along. “Hoover sent the Army; Roosevelt sent his wife” became a new rallying cry among the vets.20
Opposed to paying the bonus, Roosevelt realized that he needed to get the marchers out of town by any means other than force. Although the Civilian Conservation Corps had been created for single young men, FDR unveiled a plan on May 11 to include war veterans, waiving age and marital requirements. Executive Order 6129 provided special camps for an initial placement of 25,000 veterans, including older men who had fought in the Spanish-American War.
About 2,500 of the vets in Washington signed up immediately; others rejected the proposal, likening the dollar-a-day wage to slavery. On May 19, about 400 of the men who had rejected the offer marched to the White House, chanting: “We want our back pay—not a dollar a day.” But the edge had been taken off the demonstrations, and many of those who rejected the CCC accepted the government’s offer of a free ride home. Eventually, 213,000 mostly middle-aged vets would spend time in the CCC during its nine years of operation.21
Under MacArthur’s direction, all Army training programs were suspended and all resources of the Regular Army were made available to the CCC. For example, all the instructors and recently graduated officers from the Army’s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, were ordered to report immediately to CCC camps throughout the country.
Ecstatic to have surpassed FDR’s goal by mobilizing close to 300,000 recruits by the July 1, 1933, deadline, MacArthur sent out a personal congratulatory message to all members of the Army in which he deemed the mobilization an exercise that boded well for the actual preparation for war. “Such splendid results,” MacArthur declared, “could have only been possible because of ‘high morale’ and ‘devotion to duty’ by the Army.”22
By embracing FDR’s plan, MacArthur had not only helped to reestablish his public reputation after the Bonus Army expulsion, but he had also gained strength in his battle to keep the Army from suffering even deeper budget cuts. Using the Army’s dedication to making the CCC a success, MacArthur was able to convince the White House and Congress to revise the originally demanded 33 percent cuts in the Army’s budget down to 11 percent. “Gen. MacA. finally won the most important phases of his fight against drastic cutting of National Defense,” Dwight Eisenhower wrote in June 1933. “We will lose no officers or men (at least at this time) and this concession was won because of the great numbers we are using on the Civilian Conservation Corps work and of Gen. MacA’s skill and determination in the fight.”23
MacArthur also saw the CCC as a windfall to the Army. Although the demands of this massive new program brought to a sudden halt the Army’s normal garrison routine, as officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) went off to establish and supervise the camps, these camps could be converted to military use and were populated with potential military recruits. The young men of the CCC were vaccinated, properly fed, subjected to basic discipline, and in many cases taught to read and write. Emergency dental care was widely given, and simple skin diseases were treated with drugs—including some that were too expensive for poor civilians. When a man left the CCC in good standing, he was given honorable discharge papers containing work experience and a health record that could be used in applying for a job.
In addition, anyone who wanted to sign up for a second hitch in the CCC had to rise to a leadership position. This meant that the CCC was, in effect, training its own cadre of disciplined non-commissioned officers—including that ofttimes rarest of wartime commodities: sergeants.24
However, the new administration feared that this welfare program would be seen as the American equivalent of the paramilitary Hitler Youth movement, which was making headlines in 1933. Roosevelt thus forbade military training as part of the CCC curriculum. American Socialist Norman Thomas was quick to remark that the CCC work camps seemed more like the product of a fascist state than a socialist one.
Furthermore, not all CCC recruits were comfortable with the relationship between the Tree Army and the real one. Oscar Baradinsky, a recruit from New York City, saw the CCC as nothing more than a propaganda and recruiting arm of the military. He made his case in an open letter to the president, which was published in the July 1934 edition of Panorama: A Monthly Survey of People and Ideas, an ephemeral periodical with a clear antiwar slant published in Boston. Baradinsky reported that at his camp in New Jersey, on the night of June 21, 1934, the Army was recruiting men from the camp for three-year hitches. “He painted a pretty picture of Army life, sunny Hawaii, glamorous Panama, etc.,” Baradinsky wrote of the recruiter. The young Corpsman believed this was contrary to the president’s promise that the camps would not be used to recruit.
Disturbed by the realization that the CCC had strong military ties, Baradinsky entered the mess hall a few nights later and recalled for his fellow Corpsmen accounts that he had read of shrapnel blowing away the faces of young soldiers in the previous war. He foresaw a terrible tragedy in the offing, fearing these faces were fated to be blown away in the next war. He then got up from the table, walked to headquarters, and told the Army captain in charge that he was quitting, which he was allowed to do without penalty.25
As if to bolster Baradinsky’s case, in early 1935—in opposition to Roosevelt’s stance—MacArthur proposed that two months of military training be added to service in the CCC. He suggested this before the House Appropriations Committee, saying, “I think there would be nothing finer than the men in the CCC camps should be used as a nucleus for an enlisted reserve.” He added: “These men are already fit for military training. I think the idea would be popular with them. I think if we had, for instance, 300,000 list reserves who could be called up to the colors immediately our military condition of preparation for defense would be immeasurably better.” MacArthur argued that the program would be cost-effective and that the new Reservists could be paid as little as a dollar a month for their service as Reservists.26 The proposal was rejected then and again later. Congress and the administration had no stomach for the inevitable photographs in the papers of CCC men drilling with rifles and bayonets rather than laboring with rakes and shovels.
Although forbidden by the president to recruit CCC prospects directly, MacArthur’s recruiters resorted to a sly scheme to convince men who were on the fence. The CCC paid $30 a month, compared to only $21 a month in the Army (full pay had been restored in 1934). But clever recruiting officers quietly pointed out that $25 a month from the CCC was automatically sent home to help the man’s family, while a private in the Army could keep the whole $21. “The sales talk is working,” wrote Ray Tucker in his syndicated column, Washington Whirligig, of August 5, 1935. “Soldiers are signing up at the rate of 2,500 a week—faster than quartermaster and medical office accounts can handle them.”27
The overall impact of the CCC on the military proved to be positive in that it made the Army stronger and better able to deal with a sudden influx of new men. At Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1933, Major Omar Bradley took command of six all-black CCC companies. These recruits he said were from the poorest farm areas of Georgia and Alabama, and some of the men had not had a square meal for at least a year. Bradley gave them food and physicals, set up a pay account, put them through a few weeks of training, and sent them on to replant the large deforested areas of the Deep South.
Bradley’s enthusiasm for the CCC seemed boundless.