Selective Service Act Research Paper

* Selective Service Act-forced draft boards to induct them for combatant or noncombatant duty depending on the nature of their objections

World War II helped generate jobs and put many African Americans and women to work as men were being drafted into the armed forces. This was also a war that many Americans wanted to fight after being attacked. During the War the United States passed the Cash and Carry policy which sold supplies such as food and oil to their allies as long as they agreed to transport it themselves. The Lend Lease Act was passed in 1941 which gave weapons and materials to their allies on long term

Starting with the First World War and ending with the Korean War, there were 16,307,243 American’s inducted into wars by the Selective Service (Induction Statistics). These men were inducted into the wars by the draft method. A draft is an imperative recruitment for the military services. Drafts were very helpful with gathering men for the wars that America fought in. Many people did not want to be apart of the drafts, but there were many ways to get out of one as well. Drafts were a necessary action in order to get the men of the United States to fight for their country, and protect the freedoms of others.

The American home front during World War II is recalled warmly in popular memory and cultural myth as a time of unprecedented national unity, years in which Americans stuck together in common cause. World War II brought many new ideas and changes to American life. Even though World War II brought no physical destruction to the United States mainland, it did affect American society. Every aspect of American life was altered by U.S. involvement in the war including demographics, the labor force, economics and cultural trends.

about 350,000 women worked in newly formed female army positions, such as women pilots, or WASPs, and women marine corps. Men were hesitant to let the women help out, but as stated by womensmemorial.org, “Commanders who had once stated that they would except women ‘over my dead body’ soon welcomed them and asked for more” (World War II:Women and the War). What this shows is that men were not accepting of the women, but once they realized what great workers they were, they were happy to hire them for uniformed positions. Women took jobs as cooks, nurses, factory workers, and mechanics, all of which were necessary for America to win the war. They didn’t need to draft as many men due to the increase in

In 1917 the act decided that there could not be any replacements for anyone who was supposed to fight.Therefore the wealthy men couldn't buy themselves out of serving the military under any circumstance,Aliens also had to take part of the war as well. This was to make sure that every american man served in the war . Only a small percent of the men that registered would of been chosen to fight in the war. In 1918 World War 1 came to an end and the draft was put to rest.

There were many who wanted to join not only the army but as well as the navy. In the course book on page 718, it mentions that 2.8 million were drafted and 2 million volunteered and of these 4.8 million men 370,000 were black Americans. I did some research and found an article titled, “U.S. Congress passes Selective Service Act”, written by History.com Staff. In this article, it talks about the Selective Service Act, which was responsible for the drafting of the 2.8 million men. It wasn’t just men that served, women participated in the war effort. The war led to the American ideals of “freedom” and “democracy” expanding to women. In my opinion, these ideals thrived between 1914 and 1920 due to the war. Women gained the right to vote

The war gave women, who weren't yet allowed to vote, the chance to show that they were equal to men. It forced many men to change the way they regarded women. More people realized that women could make a contribution in the workplace as well as at home. The first World War could be said to have begun the movement for equal opportunities for men and women.

Congress passed the Selective Service Act in May of 1917, and eventually 2.8 million men were drafted—about 72 percent of the entire Army. No women were drafted, but 13,000 joined the military, serving in clerical capacities in the Navy and Marines.

Civilian positions also needed to be filled. Scientists and engineers were needed to maintain industry, and students had to finish school to fill the demanding job market. The goal of the Selective Service System was to direct people into the areas where they would be most valuable.2 However, the Selective Service System was unable to prevent people from going into areas that they were not necessarily qualified for in order to avoid being drafted. A man might decide to go to college solely to earn a deferment rather than an education. The policies set were set with good intentions, but were taken advantage of.

Soon after the outbreak of war, the Espionage Act of 1917 was put into law. This was a federal law with intentions to restrain interference with any military operations or involuntary enlistment into the military. After this, the Federal Government held a draft for World War I. All male citizens within a specific age range were selected randomly to serve in the military during this war, and it was not optional, but forced. Charles Schenck was an associate of the Socialist party of America in Philadelphia, therefore he had disagreements with the Capitalist government. He was the general of this party, and believed that the war was caused by the rich only to benefit themselves, while poor lower class men were doing all of the suffering and hard work. When Schenck became aware of the government's intentions for recruiting military, he was furious. The government had seemed to have taken the natural born rights of man for themselves to use as they pleased.

Prior to the war, women generally held jobs that were either low paying, or held little appeal for male workers. One the men went off to war, the shortage of labor occurred in much higher paying jobs than most women were accustomed to. During the course of the war, "fifty percent of all women who had been in trade and personal service and sixty-six percent of those who had been employed in eating and drinking establishments shifted to war manufacture" as their main source of income. (7) Women saw the situation as a wonderful opportunity for them to excel financially. Women gained more independence, which gave them increasingly more freedom. The role of married women changed drastically. The largest group of women to enter into the work force during the Second World War was married women. In 1944, at the height of war production, almost one in three defense workers was a former full-time homemaker. Their addition meant that married women outnumbered single women workers for the first time in United States history. This statistic proves that the great efforts of wartime propaganda were quite successful. The vacant jobs were being filled as needed, especially once married women joined the force. Approximately

As more men entered the armed forces, women needed to replace them. By the war's end, hundreds of thousands of women had entered the workforce, many of them in traditionally masculine occupations such as engineering, munitions, transport, business, and eventually even the military. The war produced a leap in women's employment from twenty-six percent in the workforce in 1914 to thirty-six percent by 1918. One million women worked in munition industries, forty-thousand served as nurses, and twenty-thousand joined the Women's Land Army as agricultural workers (Marwick, 1977). For the young and the middle-class, work outside their homes was indeed a new experience. On the other hand, working-class women were used to paid work, but the type of work was new. Many left low-skill, low-wage jobs, especially in domestic service, for better paying skilled labor in factories and workshops (Kent, 1993).

Origins: As U.S. military involvement in Vietnam came to an end in 1973, so did the draft. For the first time since the days of World War II, the U.S. military shifted to an all-volunteer force; all vacancies in the armed forces were filled through recruitment and re-enlistments rather than conscription. (The requirement for young men to register with the Selective Service was not abolished until 1975, however, and it was reinstated in 1980.)

World War II was the first time that women were greatly encouraged to join the workforce. Nearly 6 million women took industrial jobs such as steel plants, shipyards, and lumber mills at the urging of the government and media (“Women of the Century”). Because the men were away fighting in