Referring to my conversation with you a few days ago, during your visit to North Wilkesboro, I beg to say that I have a special report from the Chief Mustering Officer, at Camp Jackson, S. C., sent me upon my own request, giving a list of men from Wilkes County’s contingents rejected on physical examination, together with the cause for the rejection in each case.

While I have no means of knowing the average per cent of men rejected from the contingents from the other counties of this State, I fear that ours is unusually large, due to certain peculiar conditions existing here. Out of 195 men sent to Camp Jackson 44 were rejected for one cause or another. I was disappointed with this because our own examining physicians here had rejected between 40 and 50 per cent of the registrants examined by them. I felt at the time that this was rather a large percent of rejections, still there was an apparently good reason, even to a layman, for most of these rejections.

The fault does not lie with the examining physicians for they are competent, careful and conscientious in the performance of their duty. Most of them stand in the forefront of their profession, not only in this county, but in this entire section.

The low physicial condition of our registrants principally lies in the fact that hundreds of our best young men have recently left the county. The ravages of the July flood of last year gave this exodus an impetus. Quite a number of these registered here and had their physical examinations transfered. Nearly all of them passed. Most of them, however, registered in other jurisdictions.

Another reason is that our population is largely rural and young men living in the country marry earlier than they do in cities and large towns. Many fine looking young married men were discharged by our Board because of dependent wives and children. Indeed it has required the examination of half of our registrants to obtain our quota. You will recall that our registration is 2231 and our first quota is 230.