June 22, 1944. Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, which would be known as the GI Bill of Rights. He had seen the writing on the wall, 16 million GIs were about to return home from the most destructive war in the history of mankind. They would rightly expect a reward for their sacrifice. FDR needed only to look to the past to understand the importance of providing a comprehensive benefits package for these brave souls. The eyes of history were upon him, he would not be found wanting.
A great deal of fear surrounded the creation of the GI Bill. The wartime production boom, from the manufacture of everything from tanks to trousers, was slowing down. Predictions of widespread unemployment for these returning veterans could potentially cause a second Depression. Legislators in Washington could certainly not sit on their hands. In response to this threat to prosperity, they drafted the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944. In this bill, veterans were assured unemployment pay of $20 a week for up to 52 weeks, guaranteed home and small business loans, and assistance in finding employment. While very few veterans took the offer of unemployment pay, one million of them attended colleges in 1946 and 1947. By the end of the 1948 nearly half of those that qualified had taken advantage of the educational benefits. In fact, from the end of the war until the end of the 1950’s half of all American college students were veterans utilizing their bill, the GI Bill. This is a staggering number and shows the absolute success of this system.
With higher education came higher pay. With higher pay came higher standards of live. In effect, the GI Bill created the American middle class as we know it today. This sense of obligation to our veterans, coupled with the real fear of total economic collapse, helped to fuel the economic booms that salted the later part of the 20th century.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. Despite repeated reworking of the original Bill, by the end of the Viet Nam War, it was a shadow of its former self. No longer could a veteran return from war and have his or her educated paid in full. A new day of mostly unused benefits and a drastic change in attitudes towards veterans in general was on the horizon.
Verstegen, D. & Wilson, C. (2002). G.I. Bill of Rights. In J. W. Guthrie (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Education, 2nd ed., Vol. 3, pp. 928-930. New York: Macmillan Reference USA. Retrieved October 22, 2010, from Academic Research Complete.
Image of FDR signing the GI Bill of Rights retrieved on November 12, 2010 from: http://veterans.house.gov/benefits/legacy.shtml
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