2-378-205 - Historica Graphica Collection/Heritage Images

'Bonus Army' demonstrating outside the Capitol, Washington DC, USA, Great Depression, 1932. The 'Bonus Army' (Bonus Expeditionary Force) was a protest by First World War veterans (many of them made unemployed by the Great Depression), their families and supporters who demonstrated in Washington in the spring and summer of 1932. They demanded the immediate payment in cash of money due to them via Service Certificates granted by the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. The government insisted that the terms of the certificates meant that payment could not be made until they matured 20 years after they were issued. The demonstrations ended in violence after the government ordered forst the police, then the army, to clear the protesters from federal property. Four people were killed and over a thousand injured. Four years later, in 1936, Congress overrode a presidential veto to give the veterans early payment of their bonus.