Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 14, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 January 1918 — Drafted Men To Be Placed In Classes [ARTICLE]

Drafted Men To Be Placed In Classes

A recent order from Provost Marshal General Crowder is of interest to every man in Jasper county who is registered and who will J>e subject to conscription in the next call for soldiers. It means that there is a reasonable likelihood that they will be assigned to a duty which they might have chosen if they had volunteered and were givep their choice as other volunteers were.

The notification to conscription 'boards by Provi’st Marshal General Crowder states that it is the* selective features of the draft and to the effective employment of the manpower of the army that every man be so placed in it as to give the service most advantage from his particular qualifications. The problem, therefore, is to find the men who can do these necessary things. Under the first draft the problem was met by waiting until the men arrived at camp where the occupational qualifications of each one were ascertained. But these methods no longer suffice as the demands for skilled, men in the varied now exceed the supply of each man available for the first draft. So instead of waiting until the new contingent arrives in camp, the war department seeks to know .in advance the occupational distribution of all men liable to call throughout the country In order to assist the local boards in making such information available promptly, the first step is the mailing out of cards which are to be filled out according to the occupations of the various registered men and returned to the provost marshal’s office for filing. By use of ■this single central classified file, tne search of thofisands of questionnaires in each of the respective boards will be dispensed with and the process of selection can be achieved with a minimum of labor and time.

For the purpose of preparing such a central classified occupational file, it will be necessary to prepare a filing card for each man classified. The work of carding is to be delegated to one or more special volunteer assistants to be known as occuptional assistants. It is presumed that a splendid crops of assistants can be found in the school teachers and others who will place their services at the disposal of the board. The carding does not require special prior skill in that kind of work, but Consists merely in the careful copying of certain data from the questionnaire to the cards.