Newton D. Baker to Woodrow Wilson

August 29, 1918.

In talking with General Crowder about the wish you had expressed that we could find some way to have the Department heads designate classes of persons for deferred classification, we found ourselves constantly facing the old objection, class exemption, which has proved a fruitful source of embarrassment in connection with Emergency Fleet exemptions and Navy exemptions, which were the only two granted in that generalized form. The machinery which has now been drawn up provides for a district advisory committee, composed of one person representing the industrial interests of the country and selected by the Department of Labor, and representing both employer and employe; one selected by the Department of Agriculture with similar relations respecting agricultural employments; and the third a representative citizen selected by the District Exemption Board, who will have as his function to consider the remaining employments, such as banking, insurance, etc., which have to do with the general industrial and commercial life of the community. If a regulation were added, for instance, which authorized the class exemption of chief clerks by a simple designation of their title, it would be found that there are many chief clerks in minor offices of the various Departments scattered throughout the United States who are young, replaceable, and not specially trained or technically indispensable, while if the several Department heads address letters to their subordinates throughout the country, asking them to bring to the attention of the expert adviser appointed by the District Board the cases of all their assistants and employes who are deemed indispensable, with short recitals of the supporting data upon which the claim ought to be presented, the Advisory Board will of course present the matter to the District Board with its recommendation and thus secure the deferred classification in appropriate cases without imposing upon the Department heads the burden of an enumeration by name of their widely scattered employes throughout the United States.

I feel very sure that the foregoing plan will save us from the embarrassment which would arise if we undertook to start class exemptions at all; it would be followed inevitably by suggestions that we should make class exemptions of mine workers, munitions workers, railroad employes, and other great groups whose personnel undoubtedly ought for the most part to be deferred, but in the lists of employes of each there are a number of men who can be readily replaced and ought to be; and if such class exemptions were entered into it would amount to distributing the exemption power practically away from the District Boards and into the hands of representatives of the great industries scattered all over the country and, therefore, not under the actual supervision and centralized control of those who here in Washington are responsible for their actions.

If this solution of the problem seems satisfactory to you, I will ask General Crowder to write to each member of the Cabinet, to each Board, and to the heads of the Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, etc., apprising them of the method here suggested for presenting the names of their indispensable employes and agents to the appropriate tribunal for the decision of their cases.d