140. The American Protective League: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

140. The American Protective League: The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org

The American Protective League 

      By the first year of WWI, American political leadership was ferreting out disloyalty and  enforcing scientific conformity. Any number of private and secret societies appeared to  forward this cause. The "Anti-Yellow Dog League" was one of these, composed of  schoolboys above the age often, who searched out disloyalty each day from one of its  thousand branches nationwide, barking like German shepherds when a disloyal yellow     dog, otherwise someone looking like you or me, was flushed from cover and branded.  Schools enthusiastically cooperated in "Dog Hunts," as they were called.  

     The U.S. Justice Department secretly empowered private associations as volunteer spy-  hunters. One, the American Protective League (APL), earned semi-official status in the  national surveillance game, in time growing to enormous size. Founded by a Chicago  advertising man, the APL had twelve hundred units functioning across America, all  staffed by business and professional people. It was a genuine secret society replete with  oath and rituals. Membership gave every operative the authority to be a national  policeman. The first location placed under surveillance in every neighborhood was the  local public school. Assignments were given by the old (Federal) Bureau of Investigation  and by the War Department's Intelligence Division to report on "seditious and disloyal"  conversation. From the authorized history of the APL comes this specimen case: 

 Powers County, Colorado: investigated fifty cases of mouth-to-mouth propaganda, a  notable cause being that of a German Lutheran minister who refused to answer the  questions as to which side he wished to win the war. He asked for time. The next day he  declared very promptly that he wanted the United States to win. He was instructed to  prove this by preaching and praying it in private as well as in public, which he agreed to  do.  

     The APL checked up on people who failed to buy Liberty Bonds. It spotted violators of  food and gasoline regulations, rounded up draft evaders in New York, disrupted Socialist  meetings in Cleveland, broke strikes, threatened union men with immediate induction  into the army. The attorney general of the United States reported to Congress, "It is safe  to say never in history has this country been so thoroughly policed." (emphasis added)  Nor, he might have added, the training of the young so well regulated. 

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