The lack of any extended reports from this state would indicate an absence of many of the tortuous problems that assailed her larger New England neighbors. Manchester, N. H., reports that the local division coöperated with almost every governmental activity in the State, including the Department of Justice, draft boards, Red Cross, Four Minute Men, and other branches too numerous to mention. We may write almost identically the same comment for Maine and Vermont.
CHAPTER II
THE STORY OF THE NORTH
Nature has not put upon the face of the globe any region more fit or more inviting for human occupancy than the temperate zone of North America. The soil is fertile, producing with fair tillage all the forms of food needful for the full development of the human species. The climate is precisely that which calls for sufficient human exertion in the unescapable battle of life, but not enough to debar men from a rich surplus of things beyond the mere living, which in the tropics is all a man asks, or in the Arctics is all a man may hope. Lastly, its natural transportation is easy and abundant. The rugged, virile, enterprising and successful population of that region is Nature’s offering to the problems of the world’s future, and it is safe prophecy that in this region of America always will be produced many of the world’s greatest thinkers and greatest doers; because here, surely, is a splendid human environment.
But man, like other species, is a product of two forces, environment and heredity. What was the heredity of the temperate zone? Of the best, the strongest, the most enterprising. The Colonies, New England and the upper South, sent their strongest sons west in the early days. Later, the restless populations of Europe, of Irish, Teutonic and Scandinavian stock, began to swarm into that favored region, a good part of which, then known as our West, lay unoccupied. The Civil War prevented what we might call the Americanization of the Northwest, which attracted heavy immigration of North-European stocks. But all the men moving out along the forty-second parallel as a meridian line of latitude were of strong, well selected human stock. That was the original ancestry of what we might call our “North.”
We rudely may group this region as that lying along the Mississippi, the Missouri and their upper tributaries. Here lies one of the great future countries, one of the anchoring grounds of humanity. Beyond doubt it will eventually offer support to a vast population. The great population-centers, the great civilizations of the world, always have been along the great river valleys.
In the North, then, we see a rich region, rich in soil, in forests, in minerals. Consider what ore Minnesota and Michigan, by means of natural transportation, have sent to Ohio and Pennsylvania for manufacturing! Consider what millions of feet of rich pine Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota have given the world! And consider, if you can, the wealth which has come out of the soil of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas and all the rest of what we call the North! The earth has known nothing like it. Here was won the great war of the world, in which Peace overthrew Militarism, let us hope, for all time. Here grew the sinew which America put into this war, and it is in great part because of her rich river valleys that America to-day is the hope of all the world in the day of peace.
Naturally, if we should consider all these things, consider the persistence of racial types, consider the natural contest of all these strong men for the wealth of a rich new region, we could in advance predict that here in the North, there would be presented bitter phases of that combat which the enemy fought on this side of the Atlantic.
OHIO
Typical among the thriving industrial cities of the Middle West is Akron, Ohio, a city of 150,000 inhabitants, well known for its prominence in the rubber industry and other lines of manufactory of great use to the Government. The A. P. L. division in such a city might naturally be expected to have something to do. The Akron division began in the brain of a somewhat solitary agent of the Department of Justice, W. A. Garrigan, who was sent to Akron to serve his country all alone, equipped with one perfectly good aegis of the law, but not much else. There were men all about who were more or less actively engaged in helping Germany—men who were spreading Socialistic propaganda hindering the draft; men failing to qualify, knocking the Liberty Loan, and doing everything else they ought not to do and leaving undone the things they ought to do. Mr. Garrigan found that the Government had not appropriated money enough for his office rent, much less enough to employ men to keep in touch with the Akron conditions. He needed men. Then overnight the Akron division of the A. P. L., beginning with two hundred men, sprang into existence, as it did so magically and mysteriously all over America. Mr. Elihu Harpham, manager of a local manufacturing concern, took the position of Chief. He had able assistants, and always these men worked in close touch with the Department of Justice, even in its most delicate and dangerous enterprises.
Akron, according to all reports, had an exceptionally large number of draft slackers—men who had registered here and disappeared before the numbers were drawn. It was estimated at one time that 3,000 men had registered in Akron and never been heard of again. It was indeed a Port of Missing Men. Akron Division took this matter up, and in its first year’s work rounded up 6,856 men. The word passed among all the employees of Akron’s great factories that it was not a good thing for a man to be around without his draft card in his pocket. Many hundreds of men who were delinquent came in voluntarily to their draft boards. Perhaps the figures will tell the tale as well as words: