Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 58, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 October 1917 — GENERAL AND STATE NEWS [ARTICLE]

GENERAL AND STATE NEWS

Telopphic Reports From Many Parts of the Country. SHORT HITS OF THE UNUSUAL Happenings in the Nearby Cities and Towns-—Matters of Minor Mention From Many Places. NEW DRAFT PLAN PROPOSED Would Classify All Men Into New Order of Liability. Washington, October 18.—A comprehensive new plan for applying the army selective draft which would take first only men without dependents and of no particular value to war Industries, and establish various grades of dependency and industrial value from which future drafts would be imade strictly on the selective basis has been worked out tentatively by the provost marshal general’s office and discussed with the President. The plan, it was learned today, was submitted recently to a conference of civilians who investigated exemption hoard activities in a number of states and received the endorsement of most of them, who are now discussing the proposed plan with their state governors, it is proposed to formulate in each local draft district a table of all registrants, placing each in a column denoting his dependents and industrial value in the war’s prosecution. For instance, horizontal columns or classifications would be based on dependency. Men with no dependents would be placed in the first class, those with dependent distant relatives in the second class, those with wives in the third class, those with a wife and one child in the fourth and so on. Similarly the vertical columns might represent certain industries arranged according to their respective merit as war necessities. Industrial classes under consideration in this connection are farmers, ship yard employes, munition workers, railway and transportation employes, miners, steel plant and motor industry workmen, and certain other individual plants or industry branches to be designed from time to time by the President or the war department as temporarily essential.