Unlike the first two posts in this series, this one will not deal with any particular Buller; rather, this post will take a step back to describe the registration and draft process as it evolved from the first registration through to the third. In so doing, it will help us appreciate what the various Bullers who did register went through during this interesting time.
The U.S. did not have much experience organizing a military draft; in fact, the country had previously conducted a draft only once, during the Civil War of the 1860s. That draft had been “widely denounced as tyrannical, oppressive and un-American” (Chambers 1987, 41). The draft provision permitted wealthy individuals to “purchase” substitutes or to pay a $300 commutation fee that allowed them to avoid service (52). So it was that the Civil War, at least in the North, became regarded as “a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight” (41). In other words, the country’s only experience with military conscription had been negative.
This brief background sheds important light on the U.S.’s next organization of a military draft, after the country’s 1917 entry into World War I. The driving goal of the draft, of course, was to raise an adequate number of troops so that the U.S. could contribute to an Allied victory over the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria). Its guiding principles were to conduct the draft fairly, with no privileging of one class over another, and intelligently, with minimal disruption to the economic health or social fabric of the nation.
So, for example, workers in industries vital to the war effort and the economy at large were exempt from the draft, provided that they remained with their current jobs. In addition, husbands who were essential to the financial well-being of a family could also be exempted from the draft. Certain local and federal governmental officials were also excused, as were ministers and students at theological schools and, of course, members of churches who historically had committed themselves to nonresistance.
It is important to distinguish between the registration and the actual draft. All men within the specified age range were required, without exception and under threat of a year in prison, to register. However, some who registered had a legitimate claim of exemption from being drafted (see the earlier discussion toward the end of the post here). Determining whether or not someone was exempt or subject to the draft was the job of a local (e.g., county) draft board, which typically included three individuals: “the local sheriff as executive officer, the county clerk as custodian of records, and the county medical officer as the person in charge of physical examinations” (Chambers 1987, 41). That board was given the dual task of ruling on claims of exemption and meeting its government-imposed quota of potential draftees.
Complications and confusion arose after the first registration, on 5 June 1917. Some local boards granted more exemptions than were warranted, while other boards granted too few (e.g., denial of exemptions to African American men because they were not thought vital to the financial well-being of their families; see further Geva 2011).
To bring order to the chaos, the Selective Service developed both a classification system for organizing registered men and a sixteen-page questionnaire designed to provide the information necessary for the local boards to assign men to the correct class. The classification system was reasonably straightforward.
Those in Class I were eligible for immediate military service. They included unskilled workers and those engaged in industrial or agricultural enterprises not considered essential. Class I also included bachelors, and husbands and fathers who either habitually failed to support their wives and families or who were not usefully employed. … Those temporarily deferred until after Class I men had been drafted, Classes II and III, included married men usefully employed, and skilled industrial and agricultural workers engaged in necessary enterprises.… Class IV, not to be drafted until after the other classes, included married men whose dependents had no other means of support and the heads of necessary business or agrarian enterprises. (Chambers 1987, 191)
Men assigned to Class V (e.g., federal or state officials, ministers, seminary students, those physically or morally unfit to serve) were permanently exempt from the draft. One would think that Mennonites and other men claiming a religious exemption would have been assigned to Class V, but it seems that they were treated differently. This becomes evident when we look carefully at the questionnaire mentioned above.
As noted, the questionnaire was designed primarily to gather the information needed for the local board to make an informed decision about a registrant’s proper classification (for the full questionnaire, see here). To that end, the first page immediately asks the registrant to choose the correct classification based on his circumstances. So, for example, a “single man without dependent relatives” was to put an X in line A of Class I, whereas a “necessary skilled farm laborer in necessary agricultural enterprise” was to mark line C of Class II. What I find interesting is that religious exemption is not included in any of the classes but appears in its own section beneath the other five (see the very bottom of the figure below).
Why were religious exemptions not included in Class V? Because, although they were exempted from participation in military activity, they were not “exempted from service in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant” (HR 3545, §4; see here). That is, they could be drafted, as it were, into any noncombatant role that the president so designated. If I understand correctly, some Mennonites were assigned to farms in need of labor under the terms of this law (see Hartzler 1922, 105–9).
In addition to making the claim on page 1, those seeking an exemption on religious grounds also were required to complete a section on page 7 documenting the validity of their claim.
Although we cannot say for certain, it seems likely that all of the Bullers who registered for the draft in York or Hamilton Counties were spared induction into the army. Nevertheless, they, along with all other men eligible for the World War I draft, had to invest considerable time and effort in order to comply with the demands of the Selective Service Act of 18 May 1917.
In a final post in this series, we will turn our attention back toward York County and read a contemporary account of how the conduct of the World War I draft proceeded there.
Works Cited
Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. 1987. To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York: Free Press. Available for checkout here.
Geva, Dorit. 2011. “Different and Unequal? Breadwinning, Dependency Deferments, and the Gendered Origins of the U.S. Selective Service System.” Armed Forces and Society 37:598–618.
Hartzler, J. S. 1922. Mennonites in the World War: Or, Nonresistance under Test. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House. Available online here.
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