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The charges of unfairness against the draft are widespread—and to a certain extent they are true. Says General Hershey: "I wouldn't argue with a guy who says we're being unfair when he's being taken." Hershey insists that the draft works about as well as it can under the circumstances, but that it was not meant to treat everyone equally. The Selective Service System is just that: selective. It was designed to provide an orderly flow of manpower for the armed services while seeing to it that the nation retains at home people who are considered necessary for its welfare. Since in normal times only about half of all those who reach 26—the present practical upper limit of the draft—will ever don a uniform, the draft obviously has to excuse as many as it calls.
In cold fact, the law states that every man between 18½ and 36 is eligible for military service, although few above 26 are called to serve. Eligible men are therefore 1-A until they are otherwise classified. General Hershey and his Washington assistants lay down overall guidelines for deferment, but the disposition of each individual case is the responsibility of the local draft board, a group of from three to five unpaid citizens who usually meet once or twice a month to decide the fate of the young men within their jurisdiction. This allocation of responsibility to the nation's 4,050 local boards is at once Hershey's proper pride and the source of most charges of inequity.
Hershey believes that local people know best the problems of their own areas and people, and can make the fairest judgment about who should be deferred and who should not. But the very fact that local boards are allowed a wide measure of discretion arid are made up of individuals of varying standards and prejudices gives rise to the chief charges of unfairness—what one board snatches, another will defer. In farm areas, a board may defer a farm boy for occupational reasons more readily than a classics student studying abroad. One board may believe that part-time students should be taken before married men and another the exact opposite. Of two registrants in almost identical circumstances, one may be taken by his board while his buddy is deferred by another. Draft officials deny, however, the frequent charge that the system is "undemocratic" because it calls some while deferring others. "It's anything but undemocratic," says Clifford Gates, chairman of the Bergen County (NJ.) draft board, "because the system recognizes that all the registrants are individuals with their own peculiar problems and their own peculiar needs. What would be undemocratic would be to draft everyone regardless of his individual circumstances."
The Rich & the Poor