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Sounds like a very interesting little piece of Americana, but you're probably a little off as to the date that it was in use.......
I would venture to say that the badge is actually from World War I, and that some people would not want to talk too much about it even if they knew what it was. It seems likely that the badge was for a Pennsylvania member of a larger organization known as the 'Home Defense League', one of a number of 'super-patriot' groups that was formed during World War I. I've seen some other examples, but as far as I knew there was no 'standard' badge style, people simply used one that looked nice or was similar to local police badges. These 'super-patriot' groups were a rather unsavory aspect of World War I in the United States. Ostensibly, their purpose was to root out spies and protect the nation. In reality, most of them were used to squash dissent against the war and harass unpopular people (like 'foreigners', Jews, labor organizations, etc.). Such organizations, on a fairly routine basis, beat people, arrested them on trumped up charges, tarred and feathered people (sounds silly
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