Editor’s Note: This was published on Monday Jan. 29, 1973 in the Watertown Daily Times following a Jan. 27 announcement that the Vietnam draft was ending.
American involvement in the Vietnam war is ended, and the draft which supplied manpower for that involvement has been stopped, but as things stand right now the three woman who administer selective service procedures for Local Boards 46 and 47 will still have plenty to do.
Men will continue to have to register for the draft when hey reach the age of 18, they will still be assigned lottery numbers according to their birth dates, and they will still have to be classified by local board members. But the armed forces manpower supply of soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines will rely on volunteers.
Miss Kathryn Smith, executive secretary of the two local boards, today estimated there are about 23,000 men registered in Jefferson County, although she said not al of them are active registrations.
As far as she knows, the selective service machinery will continue to run to provide standby strength in the event of an emergency. Congress has mandated, however, that the government call up Reserves and National Guardsmen before using the draft again to satisfy needs of any future emergencies.
To preserve the present strength of both those units, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird has urged Congress to approve a bonus system for the Guard and the Reserves, which has in the past been a popular alternative to conscription in the regular army.
Miss Smith said she has not yet received official notification of Laird’s Saturday announcement, but said she expects young men will still be allowed 30 days before and after their 18th birthday to register. She said she did not know whether physical examinations would still be made.
Since there was no draft call in January, and none scheduled for February, no one was actually saved from induction.
The single qualification to Mr. Laird’s end-the-draft statement was for doctors and dentists, and both he and President Nixon have urged Congress to approve sizable bonuses to encourage volunteers from those health professions.
Two internal military factors produced trend toward the elimination of the draft: scaling down of American involvement in Indochina led to a decrease in armed forces from 3.5-million at peak of the war to about 2.3 million by the end of this fiscal year; and vastly increased to pay servicemen — a private earned $95.70 a month in 1968 whereas today a private earns $307.20.
Miss Smith expects the activity of local board members will continue as they classify registrants for possible future emergency induction.
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