Work or fight: The use of the draft as a manpower sanction during the second World War.

The interrelationship between Selective Service during WorId War II and the questions of nonessential employment and wartime strikes posed important problems of policy in the United States. The issue was whether the draft should be limited to the purpose of raising an army or could also properly be used as a device for nonmilitary manpower control. This article traces the development of that debate and the shifts in government position. The author concludes that, in the main, use of the draft for other than its principal purpose was limited, although actual or threatened cancellation of deferments was a factor in a number of important labor disputes. (Author's abstract courtesy EBSCO.)