June 5, 1918, was the first anniversary of the Selective Service Draft Act. Almost six million men across the nation between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one had registered for the draft in that year. The draft was considered fairer than the Civil War draft in that it hit all aspects of society equally.
During the Civil War a conscript could hire a substitute to take his place and thus avoid military service. During World War I, most of the exemptions favoring the rich had been eliminated, and men of draft age from well-to-do families were actually drafted in proportionately greater numbers than the children of the poor, since men from poorer families were needed at home to support dependents or to work in essential war industries and were therefore exempted.
The 1917 Selective Service Act allowed for the conscription of six hundred and fifty-five thousand men to fill the ranks of the regular army and the National Guard, plus it provided for the drafting of an additional one million men to train for military service. North Dakota had been required to send almost eight thousand men, but since one third of that number had already volunteered, that left slightly over five thousand who were drafted and now on their way to Fort Lewis, Washington.
The second round of draft registration began on this date in 1918, with the intension of including all men who had attained the age of twenty-one during the previous year. Cass County alone registered almost three hundred men. It is interesting to see how the 1917 registry listed them: two hundred ninety-two American born men, eighteen friendly aliens, fifteen enemy aliens and one Negro.
The second draft registration brought one significant change regarding exemptions. Those engaged in farm and industrial occupations that supported the war had been allowed a Class III exemption. But that exemption was now gone, replaced by a policy called “Go to Work or Go to War” in which anyone whose number hadn’t been drawn could still be drafted if they weren’t engaged in productive labor. It was hoped this anti-slacker policy could make up for the workers lost to the draft, but with an unprecedented acreage of crops now in the ground, it was a major gamble.
Dakota Datebook by Jim Davis
Sources:
Oakes Times, March 14, 1918
Grand Forks Herald, February 18, 1918
The Courier News, Fargo, North Dakota, June 6, 1918
