Hard Times (5 page)

This was the beginnning of a riot, in a way. These soldiers were pushing these people. They didn’t want to move, but they were pushing them anyway.

As night fell, they crossed the Potomac. They were given orders to get out of Anacostia Flats, and they refused. The soldiers set those shanties on fire. They were practically smoked out. I saw it from a distance. I could see the pandemonium. The fires were something like the fires you see nowadays that are started in these ghettoes. But they weren’t started by the people that live there.

The soldiers threw tear gas at them and vomiting gas. It was one assignment they reluctantly took on. They were younger than the marchers. It was like sons attacking their fathers. The next day the newspapers deplored the fact and so forth, but they realized the necessity of getting these men off. Because they were causing a health hazard to the city. MacArthur was looked upon as a hero.
¹⁵

And so the bonus marchers straggled back to the various places they came from. And without their bonus.

 

POSTSCRIPT: “
After the Bonus March, I bummed my way to New York.
I couldn’t get on relief there because I wasn’t a resident. So I resorted to one of the oldest professions—that is, begging. I became a professional panhandler. I had quite a few steady clients. One of them was Heywood Broun. Every time I put the bite on him, he’d say, ”For Chrissake, don’t you know any other guy in the city beside me?”
(
Laughs.
)

Federal Trade Commissioner
.

 

ON A PARTICULAR MORNING—I believe this was on the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh of June, 1932—the police blocked the avenue and turned the marchers back. The bonus men had undertaken to march around the White House. The President didn’t like that. A lot of other people didn’t like it, either, because they were clogging up Pennsylvania Avenue, in the busy part of the day.

About five thousand of the bonus marchers and their families were camping in some of the demolished buildings. The police encircled them. There was some brick-throwing. A couple of the police retaliated by firing. A bonus man was killed and another seriously wounded.

During lunch time, the following day, I heard some army commands. To my right, down by the ellipse toward the monument, military units were being formed. It looked like trouble. We didn’t have long to wait.

A squadron of cavalry was in front of this army column. Then, some staff cars, and four trucks with baby tanks on them, stopped near this camp. They let the ramps down and the baby tanks rolled out into the street. When the army appeared, the bonus people, who were in these old buildings, started beating on tin pans and shouted: “Here come our buddies.” They expected the army to be in sympathy with them.

One of these staff cars unloaded—not very far from where I was standing—and out of it came MacArthur, Chief of Staff. He had a youngish major as an aide. His name was Dwight Eisenhower. With their hands on their hips, they surveyed the situation.

The 12th Infantry was in full battle dress. Each had a gas mask and his belt was full of tear gas bombs. They were given a “right face,” which caused them to face the camp. They fixed their bayonets and also fixed the gas masks over their faces. At orders, they brought their bayonets at thrust and moved in. The bayonets were used to jab people, to make them move.

Soon, almost everybody disappeared from view, because tear gas bombs exploded. The entire block was covered by tear gas. Flames were coming up, where the soldiers had set fire to the buildings to drive these people out. The infantry was apparently under orders to drive this group toward the bridges, across the Potomac. Through the whole afternoon, they took one camp after another.

My colleagues and I decided that the army would assault the camp in Anacostia Flats, across the river. There were about twenty thousand to
forty thousand bonus people there. We went on the roof of a building and watched what occurred there that evening. It happened after dark.

The 12th Infantry did march across the bridge, in full battle dress as before. This was quite a sight. We could see the fires. Soon, all the occupants of that camp were driven into the Maryland Woods, into the night.

The next day, I read accounts of some of the people who had been jabbed with bayonets. Some had been injured seriously. People who had raised their arms had their arms cut by some sabres. Others were hit by the flat of the sword. In some instances, ears were cut off….

A veteran of World War I
.

 

WHEN THE ARMY came out, what else could they do? They just walked off, like good Spartans would do.

I remember when they come back from Washington. They landed over here on State Street. They had sort of a reunion. It was nice weather, summertime. And all kinds of people came to visit ‘em. They had a flag spread out, and everyone was throwin’ money in—quarter, half a dollar. Showin’ that they were welcomin’ ‘em back and were all for ’em. They had quite a time. After that, where they went, nobody knows.

Song lyricist and writer of light verse. Among the works in which his lyrics were sung are:
Finian’s Rainbow, The Bloomer Girl, Jamaica, The Wizard of Oz
and
Earl Carroll’s Vanities.

 

I NEVER LIKED the idea of living on scallions in a left bank garret. I like writing in comfort. So I went into business, a classmate and 1. I thought I’d retire in a year or two. And a thing called Collapse, bango! socked everything out. 1929. All I had left was a pencil.

Luckily, I had a friend named Ira Gershwin, and he said to me, “You’ve got your pencil. Get your rhyming dictionary and go to work.” I
did. There was nothing else to do. I was doing light verse at the time, writing a poem here and there for ten bucks a crack. It was an era when kids at college were interested in light verse and ballads and sonnets. This is the early Thirties.

I was relieved when the Crash came. I was released. Being in business was something I detested. When I found that I could sell a song or a poem, I became me, I became alive. Other people didn’t see it that way. They were throwing themselves out of windows.

Someone who lost money found that his life was gone. When I lost my possessions, I found my creativity. I felt I was being born for the first time. So for me the world became beautiful.

With the Crash, I realized that the greatest fantasy of all was business. The only realistic way of making a living was versifying. Living off your imagination.

We thought American business was the Rock of Gibraltar. We were the prosperous nation, and nothing could stop us now. A brownstone house was forever. You gave it to your kids and they put marble fronts on it. There was a feeling of continuity. If you made it, it was there forever. Suddenly the big dream exploded. The impact was unbelievable.

I was walking along the street at that time, and you’d see the bread lines. The biggest one in New York City was owned by William Randolph Hearst. He had a big truck with several people on it, and big cauldrons of hot soup, bread. Fellows with burlap on their shoes were lined up all around Columbus Circle, and went for blocks and blocks around the park, waiting.

There was a skit in one of the first shows I did,
Americana
. This was 1930. In the sketch, Mrs. Ogden Reid of the
Herald Tribune
was very jealous of Hearst’s beautiful bread line. It was bigger than her bread line. It was a satiric, volatile show. We needed a song for it.

On stage, we had men in old soldiers’ uniforms, dilapidated, waiting around. And then into the song. We had to have a title. And how do you do a song so it isn’t maudlin? Not to say: my wife is sick, I’ve got six children, the Crash put me out of business, hand me a dime. I hate songs of that kind. I hate songs that are on the nose. I don’t like songs that describe a historic moment pitifully.

The prevailing greeting at that time, on every block you passed, by some poor guy coming up, was: “Can you spare a dime?” Or: “Can you spare something for a cup of coffee?” … “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” finally hit on every block, on every street. I thought that could be a beautiful title. If I could only work it out by telling people, through the song, it isn’t just a man asking for a dime.

This is the man who says: I built the railroads. I built that tower. I fought your wars. I was the kid with the drum. Why the hell should I be standing in line now? What happened to all this wealth I created?

I think that’s what made the song. Of course, together with the idea and meaning, a song must have poetry. It must have the phrase that rings a bell. The art of song writing is a craft. Yet, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?” opens up a political question. Why should this man be penniless at any time in his life, due to some fantastic thing called a Depression or sickness or whatever it is that makes him so insecure?

In the song the man is really saying: I made an investment in this country. Where the hell are my dividends? Is it a dividend to say: “Can you spare a dime?” What the hell is wrong? Let’s examine this thing. It’s more than just a bit of pathos. It doesn’t reduce him to a beggar. It makes him a dignified human, asking questions—and a bit outraged, too, as he should be.

Everybody picked the song up in ’30 and ’31. Bands were playing it and records were made. When Roosevelt was a candidate for President, the Republicans got pretty worried about it. Some of the network radio people were told to lay low on the song. In some cases, they tried to ban it from the air. But it was too late. The song had already done its damage.

 

LILY: My grandmother’d tell us things about the Depression. You can read about it, too. What they tell us is different than what you read.

Roy: They’re always tellin’ us that we should be glad we got food and all that, ’cause back in the Thirties they used to tell us people were starving and got no jobs and all that stuff.

LILY: The food lines they told us about.

Roy: Yeah, you had to stay in line and wait for food.

LILY: And everything. You got when it was there. If it wasn’t, then you made without it. She said there was a lot of waiting.

BUCKY: I never had a Depression, so it don’t bother me really.

Roy: From what you hear, you’d hate to live in that time.

BUCKY: Well, I ain’t livin’ in that time.

ROY: We really don’t know what it would be like. It seems like a long time ago.

LILY: There’s a time I remember bein’ hungry. Livin’ away from home. I didn’t have anybody to depend on. (Indicates the others.) But they didn’t leave home. They stay home where it’s at.

ROY: Like little things when you’re home: where’s the butter? There’s no butter, you go out and buy it. But like them people: where’s the butter? No butter, you gotta wait till you get the butter.

LILY: Maybe it was margarine.

ROY: Now you just walk into your house and sit down, turn on the TV, walk out into the kitchen, get a glass of milk or somethin’, watch a football game, baseball game for a few hours. They couldn’t do that. If they were hungry and there was nothin’ there, they’d just have to wait.

BUCKY: When my parents talk: you should be glad and happy that we got all this now. The clothes you’re wearin’, the food we eat and all that stuff.

LILY: They used to tell us about this one silver dollar that they had. Whenever they ran out, it was this silver dollar they used to take down to the little shop on the corner and get a dollar’s worth of food. They’d give the silver dollar. The guy’d hold it for ’em and when they got a dollar of currency, they could take it in and get their silver dollar back.

I think we’d hurt more now if we had a Depression. You don’t see how they’d make it if it happened to ‘em again. Because they take a lot of things for granted. I mean, you see ’em now and they have everything. You can’t imagine how they would act if they didn’t have it. If they would even remember what they did. ’Cause they’re past it now. They already done it, and they figure they’re over it. If we fell now, I think everybody would take it a lot harder.

Everybody’d step on each other. They’d just walk all over and kill each other. They got more than they ever need that they’d just step on anybody to keep it. They got cars, they got houses, they got this and that. It’s more than they need, but they
think
they need it, so they want to keep it. Human life isn’t as important as what they got.

 

EVERY TIME I’ve encountered the Depression, it has been used as a barrier and a club. It’s been a counter-communication. Older people use it to explain to me that I can’t understand
anything
: I didn’t live through the Depression. They never say to me: We can’t understand you because we didn’t live through the leisure society. All attempts at communication are totally blocked. All of a sudden there’s a generation gap. It’s a frightening thing.

What they’re saying is: For twenty years I’ve starved and I’ve worked hard. You must fight. It’s very Calvinistic. Work, suffer, have twenty lashes a day, and you can have a bowl of bean soup.