The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-07-20
MATERIAL CHANGE IS
 MADE IN SYSTEM FOR
 DRAWING WAR ARMY
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own group of serial numbers.
 It was a hopeless tangle. If the double drawing system were carried out, one vision might be swept clean of all it's young men to fill the quota, while the other election districts in the same ex- emption area furnished no men what ever. In other cases it might be neces- sary to pass upon and exempt 1000 aliens before a single American was called into service. In others a thousand negroes might be taken for examination before a white man was called, or vice versa
 There was only one way out and the war departme promptly an nounced that the whole intricate meth cd of drawing devised to save time and labor would be abandoned in fa- vor of the simple direct plan of draw ing sufficient numbers to fix the place of the last man in the largest exemp- tion district. That was the original plan and it was intended for weeks to draw in that way, but the enormous amount of labor and the time involved prompted the effort to devise short Cul LHdt WOulQ Dc ldlI lO dll.
 Officers of General Crowder's office congratulated themselves tonight that the difficulty in the way of the double drawing was found today rather than after the drawing. It was certain to have been discovered imm ediately aft erward, and then it would have been necessary to declare it's results can Celled and draw again
 MAIN DIFFICULTY
 The difficulty that forced abandon ment of the more elaborate method grew out of the detail of the plan. It was proposed to list all registrants in each district by thousands or fractions oi thousands. Men whose serial numbers were in the three thousands would have been put in one group, those with num- bers of less than thousand in another. those with numbers in the four thou sands, in another, and so on. The first drawing would have placed these groups of thousands in the order in which the numbers to 10 were drawn. The sec pnd drawing would then have fixed the ,fsirder of liability of the individuals in 'Ieach Of the thousands as betwe en them selves, a thousand numbers being drawn to that end.
 The result would then have been that II the SuUV group were IlFSL uTaWn III the little lottery. all the men bearing serial numbers in the 3OOO's would have been called for duty first and in the order ir which their serial numbers came ou in the big drawing The result of the big drawing would then have been ap- piled to the other thousands in their or der fixed by the little lett.f..
 1ANGLE EXPLAINED
 Each exemption district is composed of several election districts which were the registration precincts in the first revolu- ton of the draft machinery The regis tration cards were turned over to the exemption boards with instructions to shuffle them before placing on each its serial number. In some districts, how ever instead of the individual cards it was packs of cards, each representing a complete registration precinct, tha were shuffled. The first pack was opened then and the serial number one placed on the first card. Serial num- bers were placed in rotation until the package was exhausted, then continued with the next pack picked up.
 Supposing that pack contained a thousand cards and was numbered from 1 to 1000. Then if the 1000 group hap pened to be the first drawn in the lit. tie lottery, every registered man in this specimen registration district must have been called for service before his neigh bors just across the street, but in ar adjoining district, were summoned.