<P> A problem that came up in the writing of the bill and its negotiation through Congress was the desire of former President Theodore Roosevelt to assemble a volunteer force to go to Europe . President Wilson and others, including army officers, were reluctant to permit this for a variety of reasons . The final bill contained a compromise provision permitting the president to raise four volunteer divisions, a power Wilson did not exercise . </P> <P> To sell the idea that the war and draft were right to an uninterested populace, George Creel, a veteran of the newspaper industry, became the United States' official war propagandist . He set up the Committee on Public Information, which organized 75,000 speakers and conducted 750,000 four - minute speeches in 5,000 cities and towns across America . Creel later helped form the American Alliance for Labor and Democracy, putting Samuel Gompers in charge as president in order to "unify sentiment in the nation" in favor of the war . With branches in 164 cities, many labor leaders went along although "rank - and - file working class support for the war remained lukewarm ..." and was ultimately unsuccessful . Many prominent Socialist leaders became pro-war, though the majority did not . </P> <P> By the guidelines set down by the Selective Service Act, all males aged 21 to 30 were required to register for military service . At the request of the War Department, Congress amended the law in August 1918 to expand the age range to include all men 18 to 45, and to bar further volunteering . By the end of World War I, some 2 million men volunteered for various branches of the armed services, and some 2.8 million had been drafted . This meant that more than half of the almost 4.8 million Americans who served in the armed forces were drafted . Due to the effort to incite a patriotic attitude, the World War I draft had a high success rate, with fewer than 350,000 men" dodging" the draft . </P> <P> The biggest difference between the draft established by the Selective Service Act of 1917 and the Civil War draft was that a substitute could no longer be hired to fight in a man's place . In the Civil War, men who did not desire to fight could hire a substitute . However, because it was expensive to hire someone, only very affluent people could afford to do so . This resulted in a disproportionately low number of wealthy men fighting in the war . There was not a specific draft order for the draftee to be put into the service . </P>

Whom did the selective service act of 1917 authorize the armed forces to conscript