Veterans and Friends Among Them

During early February 1918, "alien enemies" reported to local post offices or police stations to comply with the new registration requirement. In Hobart, Postmaster William Kostbade (himself a naturalized German immigrant) registered 61 alien enemies. They were his fellow townspeople, and some of them, I expect, personal friends. The Gazette could not resist commenting on the incongruity of the situation:

Their residence in this country varies from a few to over 60 years and several who had to comply with the law served in the Civil War, although they had never taken out their second [citizenship] papers. Are they enemies of the country of their adoption? Not a bit of it, but Indiana doesn't compel voters to be full fledged citizens. One of the registrants is 82 years old and another said he voted for Lincoln, the martyred President. Indiana should change her citizenship laws.

Upon registering, each man received an identity card that included his signature, thumbprint and photograph.

That experience is probably what spurred a few long-time residents to take steps, at last, to become formally naturalized. Conrad Bender and Charles Niksch applied in the Gary superior court for their citizenship papers — a process both had begun long ago, but neither had ever completed. Both men were Civil War veterans, and Mr. Bender had two sons in the U.S. Army, now in France. "Both Bender and Niksch," said the News, "took out first papers many years ago — in fact so many years ago that they have forgotten the date. … [B]oth had almost forgotten that they were anything else than American citizens. Then along came the law that failure to take out second papers within seven years after the issuance of the first papers rendered them aliens and they must begin all over again. They have been voting for years and years and had forgotten to take out their second and final citizenship papers."

John Ahrens, John Passow and William Foreman also went to court to begin their naturalization process — to begin it again, that is, they too having let it fall by the wayside the first time.

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Elsewhere, the wartime rumor factory was producing some nasty stories about German farmers hoarding wheat in order to impede the U.S. war effort. Those rumors probably reached Washington, as the U.S. Food Administration then gave its officers around the country the authority to seize any unmarketed wheat they discovered.


Sources:
♦ 1920 Census.
♦ "Civil War Veterans Ask for Their First Papers." Hobart News 28 Mar. 1918.
♦ "Local and Personal." Hobart News 28 Feb. 1918; 4 Apr. 1918.
♦ "Register 60 Aliens." Hobart Gazette 15 Feb. 1918.