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
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.
Other raids followed, the sixth taking place on August 2, 1918, at
Woodside Park, an amusement place which was filled with slackers. Two
hundred A. P. L. members and agents of D. J. surrounded the place and
handled in all 2,000 men, out of which more than three hundred were
detained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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