CHAPTER IX
THE STORY OF DAYTON
Aircraft-Center Well Cared For—Midnight and All's
Well—Some Stories of the A. P. L. and the Melting Pot—Possible
and Impossible Citizens.
The thriving city of Dayton, Ohio, is one of the best known towns of the size in the Union. In some way the idea has gone abroad that Dayton is up-to-date, modern and advanced alike in industrial, civic and social ways. There surely is no reason to alter that belief from the story of the A. P. L. turned in from Dayton. An additional interest attaches to the report from this industrial capital because of the fact that it has always been a sort of a capital of industrial enterprise, and has been known as one of the points of manufacture of Government aeroplane material.
The large foreign element gave rise to 661 disloyalty cases and made necessary 269 instances of persuasiveness in Liberty Bond matters. For the War Department there were handled 1,681 slacker cases and 1,078 other cases under the Selective Service Act, with 387 cases of deserters and 241 character and loyalty examinations. The total number of investigations was 6,118. Many of the local "case stories" show that Ohio still has her claim to be called a center of pro-German sentiment, but the A. P. L. did fine work in the reclamation of such citizen material as was worth reclaiming—some of it was not worth while. The American Protective League has been the best and almost the first real Immigration Board this country ever knew, and the one great need of America to-day is a wise and wholly fearless combing out of the aliens.
Mr. George S. Blanchard was first Chief of the Dayton Division. In the early days of April, 1917, he was talking with a friend from St. Louis and during the conversation asked him what he was doing toward the progress of the
