Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 170, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 August 1917 — SEEK SAFE HAVEN ON FARMS [ARTICLE]

SEEK SAFE HAVEN ON FARMS

Some Rich Men Are Said to Be Paying Landowners to "Employ" Their Sons to Escape Draft. Government agents have been at work in Queens Investigating the cases of several farmers in the Newtown, Flushing and Great Neck sections who are reported to have accepted money to keep sons of wealthy men on their payrolls so as to escape the draft, says the New York Herald. The agents have obtained the names of young men who registered as farmers, but who, It is said, have not been tilling the soil. Government officials have been told that farmers have been well paid by wealthy parents to “employ” the youths. According to reports that have been openly discussed in these sections at least a dozen farmers have men on their payrolls who do not know a grubhook from a cultivator. These men, according to the story, are supposed to report dally to the farmers and to receive wages of $0 a week. Instead of working on the farm the young men are devoting their time to playing golf or driving about the island in their motor cars.