Page:The web (1919).djvu/147

 But the blood had really nothing to do with the real question between the government and the man needed with the colors. The law was the law, and it played no favorites after the exemption boards were done. The fit man of proper age must show himself.

Orders went out, in the summer of 1918, from the Department of Justice to throw the net for slackers. That meant the immediate mobilization for police duty not only of many soldiers and sailors, many policemen and all the force of the Bureau of Investigation, but also of the entire personnel of the American Protective League. With the exception of the I. W. W. cases, the aid the Chicago division of the League gave in the great raids of July 11, 12, 13 and 14, in 1918, was its most important single contribution to the welfare of the country. The New York slacker raids (of a certain publicity), those carried on also in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other cities, were all so similar in method, that the story of the Chicago raids will describe them all.

The big slacker drive in Chicago meant the mobilization of the entire League membership, and over 10,000 men were enlisted from this organization alone as operatives in the slacker search. These men interrogated over 150,000 suspects, and seized over 20,000; and they inducted into the army, as willing or unwilling patriots, around 1,400 young men of that one city who otherwise would not have served. At one time they had herded on the great Municipal Pier over 1,100 men, all of whom had to pass the night there. Countless motor cars and wagons carried loads under guard. A big tourist motor-bus was requisitioned also, and all the street cars were packed. Hundreds of men were crowded over night in the rooms of the Bureau of Investigation in the Federal Building. The courts and jails were jammed. Vacant store-rooms were filled with prisoners. Mothers, wives, sweethearts, sisters, brothers and babies made the Federal Building an actual bedlam when they rallied to the attempted rescue. But the grist ground on through, and the guilty were found and dealt with. Most of the young men were glad enough to exchange a bed on a stone floor for one in an Army tent. No doubt, most of them made good soldiers afterwards. They were rather