Page:The web (1919).djvu/208

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York and about fifty in Brooklyn. There were ten special agents of D. J. in Brooklyn and twenty in New York. Mr. DeWoody prepared printed instructions to be used by the sailors, soldiers and A. P. L. operatives in the work.

The system used on the streets was to interrogate a man, and ask for his registration card and his final classification card. If he had none, he was taken to the nearest police station, where he was questioned further by the operatives in charge, and if thought to be a delinquent, was then sent by a motor car to the armory to be held. From that point his local board was communicated with by telephone or telegraph, and the true status of the man obtained at the earliest possible moment. In these raids, there were apprehended 21,402 men, of whom 756 were inducted into the service. There were found 2,485 men who were delinquents from their local boards.


Up till December 11, 1918, there were 45,150 filed cases of a general nature in the New York Division: 3,610 civil service case, 2,920 passport visés, 471 passport cases, 2,507 overseas investigations, 2,539 investigations of officers' commissions, and 29,680 cases connected with selective service matters. This makes a total of 86,877 cases.

It is to be noted that the above numbers apply to folder numbers only, and many folders contain more than one case, some of them as high as 250 cases. For instance, the investigations of a jury panel would be carried all in one folder under the name of the trial on which that jury was to sit. The figures in selective service matters are the actual number of cases turned over to the League at the time they started work with the various local boards. Subsequent to this date the A. P. L. officers in charge of the work at the various boards were given thousands of cases which they reported directly to the board, there being no file in the office in such instances. The A. P. L. Chief of New York therefore thinks it a very conservative estimate to say that the number of individuals investigated by the New York Division would run between 300,000 and 400,000. All these cases in the New York office system were filed alphabetically under the name of the person or firm to be investigated; for that reason definite figures could not be given in any summary. As League operatives became better acquainted with the Chairmen of the Draft Boards, more and more cases would be turned in directly