The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective LeagueHough, Emerson
History
The Web : $b The Authorized History of the American Protective League
Hough, Emerson
American Protective League; Propaganda, German; World War, 1914-1918 -- Secret service -- United States
District No. 8 lies in the extreme southern part of Chicago. “The
Gold Coast” of this territory, lying along “The Ridge,” is a strictly
residential district, but a veritable melting-pot of foreigners has
sprung up in the neighborhood of the mammoth factories and mills in
the suburban towns of Kensington, West Pullman, Roseland, Riverdale
and South Chicago proper, east of the Southern Division Gold Coast. In
this modern Babel there are fifty or sixty different nationalities.
Even a short season with such a racial hodge-podge as exists in and
around Kensington is almost equivalent to a trip around the world.
Practically the only work in this community (Districts 41 and 47)
consisted of draft evasions and pro-Germans. The last named were kindly
but positively reminded that our country was at war. The operatives
in this Gold Coast district were practically all business men, being
recruited from banks, business houses, schools and the ministry. It was
no uncommon thing to have two ministers, one of them a leading “dry
exponent,” go out with a squad of men through saloons and pool-rooms,
picking up suspects and evaders. During the four-day raid in July, one
of the captains working out of Draft Board No. 22 remarked: “I just
sent out the vice-president of our bank. I commanded him to look up one
of these draft cases and he went right to it without question. That man
holds the mortgage on my home, and I am bossing him around as though he
were my office boy!”
Another captain tells something more of this foreign part of the city,
Districts 39, 40, 42, 46 of the South Division. This comprises the
large territory on the lake, at the extreme southern end of the city,
and has in it a large harbor and river which is lined with elevators,
shipyards, and important steel industries of all kinds. The population
is mostly of foreign origin, anything from a descendant of the Pilgrim
Fathers to a Tartar from Siberia. Poles, Austrians, Serbs, Swedes,
Germans and Italians predominate, and many of the A. P. L. operatives
were recruited from this source, thereby giving access to all tongues.
This division captain says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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