Selective Service Act Passed - 9,586,508 Men Enroll

The creation of a new American Army, adequate in numbers to cope if need be with the full strength of the Germanic Allies, was now the chief task of Congress. Deeming it impractical to depend upon volunteer enlistments in raising such an army, President Wilson presented a modified form of conscription for the approval of Congress. The Selective Service Bill, as it came to be known, encountered much opposition in Congress and elsewhere, but it was finally passed on May 16, 1917, by a vote of 478 to 32 in both Houses, receiving the presidential signature two days later.

Under the provisions of this Act, all male citizens and intended citizens, between the ages of 21 and 30, were subject to call and required to register their names for possible enrollment. The bill also authorized President Wilson to raise the Regular Army by enlistment to its maximum strength of 287,000 men, to draft into the service of the United States all members of the National Guard and the National Guard Reserve, and raise by selective draft an additional force of 500,000 men (or so much as he might deem necessary) and another 500,000 at his discretion, this force to be known as the National Army.

June 5, 1917 was fixed, by proclamation, as Registration Day, save in Alaska, Hawaii and Porto Rico, where a time for registration was named later. The President increased the number of men to be drafted for the United States First Army from 500,000 to 687,000, in order to use drafted men to bring the Regular Army to its full strength of 287,000 and the National Guard to its full strength of 400,000. Before the draft registration was begun, there were 200,000 enlistments in the Regular Army, while the National Guard was recruited to 450,000, three times its former strength. At the same time the Navy personnel was increased to 100,000 as an emergency measure, and 100,000 additional men were secured by September.

Socialists Oppose the Draft

Socialists, slackers, cowards, pacifists and pro-...

The Selective Service Act or Selective Draft Act (P.L. 65-12, 40 Stat. 76) was passed by the Congress of the United States on May 18, 1917. It was drafted by Brigadier General Hugh Johnson after the United States entered The Great War. It authorized President Woodrow Wilson to raise an infantry force from the general population of no more than four divisions, and it created the Selective Service System. When the United States first entered World War I, the total size of the US army was around 110,000.

While President Woodrow Wilson, at first wished to use only volunteers to supply the troops needed to fight, it soon became clear that this would be impossible. Indeed, three weeks after war was declared, only 32,000 had volunteered for service. Receiving heavy criticism from his own party for destroying democracy at home while fighting for it abroad, Woodrow Wilson called for a draft. With the assistance of his Secretary of War, Newton Baker, he managed to pass the bill even with the opposition.

By the guidelines set down by the Selective Service Act, all males aged 21 to 30 were required to register for military service. (The age limit was later changed to include all men aged 18 to 45.) By the end of WWI, some 24 million men had registered, and some 2.8 million had been drafted. In fact, more than half of the almost 4.8 million Americans who served in the armed forces were drafted. Due to the effort to incite patriotic fervor, the World War I draft had a high success rate, with less than 350,000 men ”dodging” the draft.

Differences from Previous Drafts

The biggest difference between the draft instated by the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the Civil War draft was that replacements could no longer be hired to fight in a person’s place. In the Civil War, people who did not desire to fight could hire a replacement. However, because it was expensive to hire someone, only very rich people could afford to do so. This resulted in a disproportionately low n...