I thank you for your interesting letter of the 17th. Under the selective draft law it is the duty of the Local Board to place all single men without dependents in Class 1. The District Board may defer the calling of “indispensable, key and pivotal men” and place them in Class 4. You can readily understand that it would be impossible to make a rule exempting all farm laborers. Of course the vast majority of these laborers will not be called because no one is called before he is twenty-one, and a considerable portion of the labor on the farm is done by people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. Between twenty-one and thirty-one a great majority of farm laborers marry, they marry early, and a very large per cent of these farm laborers will be put in deferred classes on account of their wives and children. This leaves only the single men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one from whom selections will be made. I should say that no more than ten per cent of the people who actually do the work on the farms will be taken in this way; that is to say the laborers of over thirty-one years of age, the laborers under twenty-one years of age and the married laborers between twenty-one and thirty one do ninety per cent of the work that is done on the farms. I am insisting in this call that no married men shall be sent until the single list is exhausted.

I do not know how to deal with the agents who are taking the negro laborers from the farms. I think that I would indict some of these agents and make them prove their authority from the Government. I have an impression that it will be found that they have no such authority. If it should turn out that they do have it then we would know where to go to correct the evil. My suggestion is that you let it be known that every agent that goes into the county for the purpose of soliciting laborers will be indicted.