The short answer as to where the government got names & addresses is they got the info from the Draft Registration held 1917-1918. That was the main purpose of the Registration; to find out who was where, etc. There were 3 registration days, based on a man's DOB. The law required all men who were permanent residents to show up and register. Only those men already in the US military were exempt from this process. Registering for the draft does not mean a man was drafted or otherwise served; just means simply that he complied with the law and registered.

Do not confuse a registration with an actual draft. The purposed of the registration was to get a handle on who was available and where they were, should a draft become necessary. Due to the exceptionally high volume of volunteers who enlisted, only a small percentage of men were actually drafted vs those who registered.

Strongly suggest you do some additional research/reading on the topic. A simple search for "WWI Draft" brings up a lot of info. Ancestry.com also has a decent tutorial for both WWI and WWII:


http://content.ancestry.com/iexec/?htx=List&dbid=6482&am...

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You wrote:
"What data? My theory is in 1910, the American government knew war was brewing in Europe. They used the census to gather pre-selective service data. Any thoughts or comments on this?"

They counted things like # of men/women, ages, occupation [& if currently working], married vs single, nationality, occupation, able to read/write, etc. The primary role of the census was and continues to be a way to find out how many people are living in the US and exactly where. In addition to gathering statistical information about residents, the census is used as a way to decide how many and where US congressmen are allocated [read the Constitution]. Keeping track of demographics is how our government determines where our representatives in Congress are located and/or relocated. You must have noticed that the newer census asks a lot more questions than the older ones; again demographic questions [age first married, # of births, immigration/naturalization, own/rent, lives on a farm, veteran, etc.]

I somehow seriously doubt any kind of "conspiracy theory" existed in 1910 between the War Dept and the Census Bureau. By 1917 info from 1910 would be hopelessly out of date given the fact that people died, came of age, married/divorced, had kids, moved [multiple times] and waves of immigrants had entered the country.

By the way, look at a few census records for those living in farm/rural America. No address info given for 98% of them.

It is reasonable to assume that all the henscratch and other marks one finds on almost all census pages was done by multiple people doing all manner of counting this and that. If you've done any research at all on the census you will find that the "original" forms we see today are, in fact, probably hand-copies of the originals. Locals kept their copies and forwarded one or more copies [no Xerox machines then] to the Feds. The more people who fiddled with these forms, the more likely you are to find little notations all over the place [no small hand-held calculators]. I'd be willing to bet if you or I were locked in a room 5-6 days a week transcribing someone else's scribble, we'd make notes too. Can you even imagine doing that? Working, possibly by gas lighting and no central heat/ac?

I couldn't pull up the link you included referencing the 1910 census.