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 CHAPTER XIII

THE STORY OF MINNEAPOLIS

Clean-Cut Work of One of the North-West's Capitals—Straightaway Story of a Good Division—Many Anecdotes Showing How Operatives Worked—The Dignified and Sober Side of Saving the State and Making Over Citizens—A Model Report.

The great city of Minneapolis is one of the foci of the agricultural and industrial realm of the vast Northwestern country for which the Twin Cities make the gateway. It was not to be supposed that its staid and sober population would cause any great amount of trouble. None the less, trouble did develop in Minneapolis as elsewhere, and A. P. L. cases and figures mounted steadily upward, just as they did in other large centers of industry the country over.

Alien enemy cases for the Department of Justice ran 127; disloyalty and sedition, 1,222; sabotage, 17; interference with draft, 44; propaganda, 392; I. W. W. and other radicals, 70. War Department cases had 5,725 investigations under the selective draft: 997 slackers; 507 work-or-fight cases; character and loyalty, 337 cases; liquor, vice and prostitution, 593 cases. The Treasury Department had 1,129 cases on war risk and allowance grounds. The Fuel Administration turned over 2,356 cases for investigation; the gasoline work, 427. The grand total of cases handled by Minneapolis division men, November 26, 1917, to December 16, 1918, was 15,415.

Minneapolis had a very thorough organization, and has reported the results in so thorough and explicit a fashion as to leave small option in matter of handling the report. It could not well be amended or improved upon, and is given in substance in the following pages.

Entries on the case cards include every conceivable