When one pauses to reflect on these different classifications of the work and the different ramifications of the League’s operative forces, one is pretty nearly ready to admit that without a perfect office system the whole thing would have been jolly well messed up inside of a week. This amateur organization sprang into being almost over night, a smooth-working, modern business machine, which rendered invaluable services at no cost at all. When you stop to think of it, this is one of the most wonderful phenomena of American business life. The total membership of officers and operatives in the New York Division numbered over four thousand five hundred substantial business and professional men, chosen from every field of activity. They were classified and reclassified to such an extent that, from speaking any required language on earth to expert knowledge in any profession on earth, aid could be furnished on demand. Two significant facts stand out in comparing New York with other cities. The first, the rather smaller number of men; the second, the rather small amount of money spent in the work. It is due to the excellent business system of that division that the cost per case was kept so low, for New York runs more cases to the operative, and more to the member, than any other city in the country. CHAPTER III THE STORY OF PHILADELPHIA Splendid Record of a Ship-Shape Office—A Model Organization and the Way it Worked—Stories of the Silent Soldiers—A Banner Report. The City of Brotherly Love gives us pause. Is it indeed the truth that Americans do not know their own country? The story of the American Protective League, covering some millions of typewritten words, some hundreds of thousands of pages of typewritten copy, might be called one of the largest and one of the best histories of America ever written. It offers no pretense at deductions, but only an abundance of facts, objective and not subjective, concrete and not abstract. Popular impression hath it that the city founded by good William Penn is a simple and quiet sort of community, where life goes on lawfully and all is ease and comfort, peace and content. The facts do not seem to bear out this supposition. Philadelphia was as lawless as the next city during war times, possessed of as many undesirables and offering as many urgent problems in national defense. Tucson, Arizona, reports peace. Philadelphia is bad and borderish!