The League in Philadelphia did not attempt secrecy. On the contrary, it openly availed itself of the services of the newspapers, and had the confident backing of all the great journals. It did not always go out after its man personally, but saved a great deal of time by inventing a little form letter which read as follows:
Mr. John Doe:
Kindly call at this office immediately upon receipt of this letter with reference to a matter of great importance. Bring this letter with you and ask for Mr. Bouton.
Respectfully,
American Protective League.
This was the letter sent out to draft evaders. It was thought at first it would not work, but, as a matter of fact, it brought in a stream of men who otherwise would have needed to be found. Once in the office, the rest was easy.
At the time that Mr. Kline came into the League there were 1,225 members. Additional members were selected with great care, but politics, religion, lodge affiliations, and so forth, were not factors in the working of the League. There were on February 7, 1919, 3,440 members of the A. P. L. in Philadelphia, all working for purely patriotic motives.
The training of operatives under the skilled secret service instruction available in the division offices resulted in losing a good many men to the Department of Justice forces, who were not slow to recognize the value of good, well-trained men when they saw them. There were many departments of the United States Government which lie under deep debt to-day to the Philadelphia office of the American Protective League.
The Philadelphia work was perhaps most famous through its great system of drives. That city is indeed the original drive center, and there, better than anywhere else, perhaps, may be seen the working of a thoroughly differentiated system of drag-nets. There were a number of these raids which may be summarized briefly.
The first was a small affair conducted on May 17, 1918, which took in a couple of roadhouses where uniformed men were buying liquor.
The second raid was conducted on July 15, 1918, when about 2,000 members swooped down on the Tenderloin district of Chester, Pennsylvania, arresting about four hundred persons, mostly of the lowest type. About ninety per cent of these prisoners were convicted for bootlegging or crimes of a worse character—denizens of the section known as Bethel Court and Leiper’s Flat, which the officers call the worst hell-holes they have ever seen—“such places as make the Mexican border look like a Sunday School picnic,” says one. In this tough district many desperate characters were met who were quick to use weapons; but the agents of the law sustained practically no personal injuries.