Because of the importance and confidential nature of the business entrusted to the League, extreme care was exercised in the selection of the operatives. They were men of proved loyalty as well as of ability and influence. As the work of the division increased, the personnel was enlarged until a total of more than four hundred operatives from all lines of business, trades and professions had finally been called to service. All served without pay or expense allowances. Some of them gave practically their entire time to the work of the League. Most of them definitely pledged and gave from six to twenty hours of service every week.
The total members sworn in numbered 491 on November 30, 1918. The active list at that date included 326 officers and operatives and sixty members of the so-called "Eye and Ear" division, consisting of men not able to render continuous service, but so situated that they were in a position to communicate to headquarters reports of anti-American activities and other Federal offenses. Among the active members were scores who had tried in vain to enter the Army or Navy, and who, failing to find any other essential war service open to them, found an outlet for their patriotic energy in the ranks of the American Protective League. Notwithstanding this, the League report shows that twenty-four members resigned during the thirteen months to go into the army; five to enter the overseas service of the Y. M. C. A. or Red Cross; and eighteen to accept other Government service.
In the pursuit of their duties, operatives and officials of the Minneapolis Division, A. P. L., arrested several well-known criminals, and encountered scores of desperate offenders of various kinds. It is a tribute to their courage and efficiency that there was not a single case of extreme violence. Men who were recognized everywhere as dangerous were apprehended as easily as persons who had offended unwittingly. In its work, the League employed all of the scientific as well as the ordinary devices utilized in the detection and conviction of violators and evaders of the law. Dictaphones and disguises were used, and miles were covered and hours spent in skillful "shadowing."
