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.Registering for the draft proved quite different, however, than expecting to go towar.Although 24 million men eventually registered for the draft without incident,millions then took advantage of their right to request a deferment because of their occu-pation or support of dependents.Eventually, over 65 percent of those who registered36 WORLD WAR Ireceived deferments or exemptions from service.The Selective Service systemcontained five classifications.Class I was composed of men eligible to serve immedi-ately.Classes II and III included temporarily deferred married men and skilled workersin industry and agriculture; Class IV contained married men with economic dependentsand key business leaders, while those unable to meet physical and mental requirementswere placed in Class V.After receiving a white postcard scheduling him for a physical exam, a manhad seven days to file a claim for a deferment.A second white postcard in the mailalerted a man that the claim was approved, while a green postcard indicated that thedraft board had rejected his application and ordered him to report.Men requesting adeferment had to complete a daunting twelve-page questionnaire that was often beyondthe capabilities of recent immigrants with imperfect English skills or barely literateworkers and farmers.Selective Service regulations exempted foreign-born men whohad not declared their intention to become citizens.Because the burden of receiving anyexemption lay with the recruit, men who barely spoke English or were unknowledge-able about Selective Service regulations often found themselves caught up in the net ofthe draft.Nearly 200,000 nondeclarant immigrants served during the war.A few thou-sand contended that they had been drafted against their will.Once in the training camps,despite the pressure to stay, these men went to court or appealed to their embassies tocontest their conscription.Over the course of the war, the War Department received5,852 diplomatic protests over the drafting of nondeclarant aliens, and the armyreleased 1,842 of these men.The largest proportion (43 percent) of deferments went to married men who werethe sole providers of their families.As one applicant succinctly noted,  No one wantsto take care of another man s wife. 2 Not all married men with dependents receiveddeferments, however.Crowder left it up to local draft boards to determine which wivescould work to support themselves and which could not.Local boards all included aphysician to conduct medical examinations.Other members were generally a mix ofcounty clerks, sheriffs, lawyers, or businessmen.The composition of these boards putthe local professional elite firmly in control of deciding the fate of each community slower and working classes.Some local boards put financial considerations aside andinstead focused on preserving family stability in time of war.These boards oftenbragged of convincing alcoholic or wayward husbands to renounce their irresponsibleways and return home.In a few isolated instances, wives provided testimony againsttheir husbands to ensure their induction and a steady income for the family.Most wives,however, supported their husbands claims for deferment. My George ain t for sale orrent to no one, one farmer s wife told his draft board. If he goes, I got to go too.I don t want your money I jist wants George. 3In the South, the ability of local boards to issue deferments became yet anothervehicle to support white supremacy.White landowners sometimes exerted their con-siderable social influence to persuade local draft boards to defer their black tenantfarmers, thus protecting their labor force.Black farmers without the support ofpowerful white patrons often found that local boards viewed their claims unsympathet-ically.Few southern boards balked at the prospect of putting black women to workwhile their husbands served in the military, especially, as an Arkansas board noted,  incases where the wife had always worked by her husband in the crops. 4 Sending impov-erished black men into the military might even improve their families circumstances,one Alabamian board argued [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]