Weight, Job and Marriage

Last week New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia emitted an angry Donald Duck squawk. Subject: U. S. draft boards. "The trouble with the administration of the draft in New York City," quacked the Little Flower, "isn't in Washington. It's in the laundry. I think someone is using too much starch in the shirts of the administration."

What drove the blood to Mayor La-Guardia's head was the refusal of some draft boards to defer his carefully selected and trained policemen and firemen as essential employes. The Mayor might further have observed that not only is many a draft board's shirt front stiff, but that no two boards wear the same size shirt. Some of New York City's 280 local boards deferred policemen and firemen while others did not. Some gave deferment to such "necessary" workers as the manager of a meat store, an executive of a firm making babies' bonnets, the manager of a retail linoleum store, an advertising production executive, a stylist for a textile firm. One board gave occupational deferments to an average of one in 191 registrants; another deferred one in 18. Meanwhile Colonel Arthur V. McDermott, supervisor of the New York City area, instructed his boards to consider deferments even for men married after registration day, unless it could be shown that they went to the altar to escape the Army.

What was true of New York City was true of the rest of the 6,253 draft districts from Bar Harbor to San Luis Obispo. Told to administer the draft and grant deferments as they saw fit, no two boards saw eye to eye. In Los Angeles, a board placed Cinemactor James Stewart in Class I-B (for limited service) because he was ten pounds underweight. (Jimmy Stewart, weight 145, declared he wanted to serve.) In Chicago, a husky named Len Weiner was drafted although (at 245 Ib.) he was well over Army weight standards.

Even more vexed and vexing was the question of deferment for dependency. Last month in Washington Chairman Andrew May of the House Military Affairs Committee said that the intent of his committee was to defer men for dependency, not for marriage. Yet in Washington itself only seven or eight draft boards followed this principle, ordered draftees to service if their wives were selfsupporting. The other 17 or 18 held that homes should not be broken up in peacetime, deferred married men somewhat on the pattern ordered for the New York City boards. In Cleveland, Ohio, the Cuyahoga County Board of Appeals heard the stories of 14 married men, ruled that thirteen of them must serve because their wives were selfsupporting. In Evansville, Ind. draft boards followed a similar plan, but differed among themselves on what self-support is. Some held that $600 a year was enough to make a wife selfsupporting, a few put the figure as high as $1,200.

Distressed by this confusion, Chairman May promised to see national draft officials, try to get more specific rules for deferments. So far the national draft administration has made none, still holds hard for local interpretation. Eleanor Roosevelt put in her word, said that what the draft administration needed was a ruling deferring married men living with their wives. What most registrants wanted most was just a uniform ruling. And they wanted it soon. By last week only 92,000 draftees had been sent to training camps and 83,000 of them were volunteers. In the next five months, when 722,000 are to be put into uniform, the going will get tougher.

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