100 years ago in The Saratogian
Monday, Aug. 6, 1917
On July 20, men from Saratoga County were drafted into the U.S. Army for the war against Germany. The winnowing-out process for local draftees begins today in Mechanicville.
Saratoga County must provide 316 men to the military in this first draft of the war. The county is divided into two draft districts, each of which must provide 158 men despite a controversial discrepancy in population. Draftees in the second district are called in for physical examinations starting today. Physical exams for the first district, which includes Saratoga Springs, will begin in the Spa City tomorrow.
Doctors in the second district examine 78 men over fourteen hours today, from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Draft officials scheduled physicals for twice the number of men needed by the army, on the assumption that half would flunk the physicals or claim exemptions from service. Today’s results suggest that their estimate was too conservative.
Twenty-six men are determined physically unfit for service, while 35 claim various exemptions. “Claims were made mostly because of dependent wives and children,” The Saratogian reports.
The paper’s Mechanicville correspondent has some trouble with math, or else a typesetter has a problem with numbers. Subtracting the 61 men who either flunk their physicals or claim exemptions leaves just 17 men out of the 78 examined today, but the reporter gives the number as 27.
Whatever the real numbers are, “The number accepted is so far below the estimate which was thought would be accepted.” As many as 200 additional men may have to be called in for exams to make sure that the second district meets its quota.
SARATOGA HOSPITAL CAMPAIGN
A $50,000 fundraising campaign for Saratoga Hospital “launched with a bang” with donations totaling $15,000 announced at a Masonic Temple dinner.
The object of the campaign is to pay the hospital’s debts and “guarantee the continued service to Saratoga and to neighboring towns of an institution the quality of whose service is excelled by no other hospital in northern New York,” says executive fundraising committee chairman Edgar D. Starbuck.
A successful campaign “will enable the hospital to take care of possible wounded soldiers and sailors brought back from the battlefields of war-ridden Europe,” Starbuck elaborates, “It will make it possible for the hospital to continue without diminution its generous services to those who are unable to pay the full amount of their expenses.”
The largest single donation tonight is a $2,000 gift from Annie Kimberly of Brooklyn, who spends her summers at the United States Hotel. Kimberly dedicates her donation to the memory of Mr. and Mrs. A. J. Starr.