Scouting, Volume 1, Number 10, September 1, 1913 Page: 4
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SCOUTI NG
SCOUTING
published semi-monthly by national iiead-
quartelis, boy scouts of america, for scout
officials and others interested in
the boy scout movement
officers of the national council and
executive loard
Honorary President: Woodrow Wilson.
Honorary Vice-President: William H. Taft.
Honorary Vice-President: Theodore Roosevelt.
President: Colin H. Livingstone, Washington.
Chief Scout: Ernest Thompson Seton.
Nat'l Scout Commissioner: Daniel C. Beard.
Treasurer: George D. Pratt, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Chief Scout Executive: James E. West, N. Y. C.
Office of Publication: 200 Fifth Avenue,
New York City
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office,
New York, N. Y., under the act of
August 24, 1912.
VOL. I.
SEPTEMBER i, 1913.
No. 10
THE NEW STEP FORWARD
ALL who are connected in any way
with the Boy Scout movement and
interested in the proper progress of
this successful welfare work with boys,
should bear in mind that two distinct pur-
poses will be served by the membership
plan which, adopted by the Executive
Board of the National Council, goes into
effect October 1 next.
First, the local and national Boy Scout
work will be provided with a regular reve-
nue which, while not being sufficient to
cover all of the expenses, will help ma-
terially. Local councils maintaining offices
will be assured a definite sum toward their
yearly budget. Likewise the National
Council will be provided with funds to
give field service, especially in places where
there are no local councils, and to extend
Scout work to cities and towns where the
boys are still without Scout instruction and
inspiration.
Secondly, the plan provides a way by
which the Scout movement may rid itself
of its previous contradiction of a funda-
mental Scout law, and prove to boys, what
they are bound to learn sooner or later,
that the "something for nothing" prin-
ciple is wrong. The Scout movement has
consistently advocated that Scouts and
troops of Scouts be self-supporting—earn
money to pay their own way in all Scout
activities. This principle is now to be ap-
plied in the administration of the local and
national councils.
Scout Masters in all parts of the coun-
try who have written about the financial
problem of the national movement have
made emphatic the point that perhaps the
most important thing about a plan which
calls for a small payment by each S"out
is that it will enhance the Scout's opinion
of the movement, broaden his interest in
it, make him realize more definitely that he
is a part of a great brotherhood of boys
and that he is doing his little share in mak-
ing possible the spread of this movement
so boys everywhere may have its pleasures
and benefits.
It has been pointed out, moreover, that
there will be a very real advantage to the
boys in gaining the business experience
that will come to them in their financial
relations with the organization. It will
make clearer to the boy that it is but right
that he should pay something for what he
gets, and that what he pays for with money
earned by himself has greater value and
brings greater pleasure than anything
which comes to him by way of gift. The
necessary business of the collection and
transmission of money will introduce to
the boy, at his most impressionable age,
simple principles which he is certain to
find profitable all through life. One Scout
Master has pointed out that " troop secre-
taries and treasurers will be developed and
general business management stimulated."
All of this, of course, is in addition to
its obvious influence in the development of
thrift, a trait which is so important that
it is named as the subject of one of the
twelve fundamental laws of Scouting. It
is probable, too, that other traits which are
taken into account by those laws will be
similarly developed by the application of
the new membership plan. For instance,
trustworthiness, loyalty, helpfulness and
friendliness; it will not take the boy long
to understand that his mite, earned by his
own industry or ingenuity and sent to a
distant place, is used to bring to other boys
the fun and help which have come to him
through his Scout play and work.
of the magnificence of the spirit with which
the boys earned and voted to transmit these
funds.
It should be understood that this mem-
bership plan has not been written into the
law of this movement without a full re-
alization of its importance. The men of
the special committee of the Executive
Board who drafted this plan are men
of business ability whose sincere and
unselfish interest in welfare work for
boys is beyond question. In this mat-
ter they have sought through many
months of correspondence and personal
conference the judgment of members
of Scout councils, Scout Commissioners
Scout Masters and Assistant Scout Mas-
ters. They applied themselves to this
problem with the advantage of intimate
knowledge of all the facts and had in
mind only what is for the best interests
of the Boy Scout movement today and for
the years to come. The final draft as
adopted was the result of this careful and
conscientious effort.
Already approvals of it have begun to
pour into Headquarters from Scout officials
to which copies were submitted, with
pledges of prompt action in accordance
with its provisions. Indeed, the suggestion
of having the Scouts participate in the
maintenance of Scout work has been re-
ceived enthusiastically by the boys them-
selves, as has been indicated by voluntary
remittances to Headquarters by many
troops without knowledge, on their part, of
the proposed plan. In every letter sent by
Scout Masters about these voluntary con-
tributions of their boys, mention is made
It is expected that the men who are re-
sponsible for the leadership of the Boy
Scouts of America, the men to whom these
boys look as exemplary, upon whom they
depend for counsel in matters which they
don't understand, will be explicit and pa-
tient in their explanation to the boys of
this fresh application of an old principle in
Scoutcraft. They have before them now
an opportunity to inculcate in their Scouts
an appreciation of business responsibility
and, at the same time, a still more unselfish
spirit than that which has come to charac-
terize Boy Scouts. The sincerity and care
with which Scout Masters explain this mat-
ter to their boys, and the spirit with which
they, as the leaders of these boys, follow
what is now to become a fundamental law
of the Scout movement, will be the meas-
ure of their success in one of their greatest
opportunities for service to the boys of
their troops and the Scout movement
everywhere.
BOYS AS ANIMALS
ON MOUNTAINS.
Did you ever spend a night on a moun-
tain with a patrol of Boy Scouts? The
experience is exhilarating.
You start off, say, with a dozen of them.
Everybody is whistling cheerfully, joking,
cutting capers. As the sun mounts higher,
and the mountain seems to grow but little
nearer, and the packs become heavier, it
is surprising how the whistles die to si-
lence. The beauties of the country land-
scape do not tremendously appeal to a nor-
mal boy of 14, nor is his spirit cheered by
the exquisite long sweep of the white road
ahead, where it ribbons the plain. About
11 he begins to talk of luncheon. About
12 he can no longer be restrained. Then
is the time to look for a spring or a brook,
and let him drink his fill (if the brook
holds out!) and stay his vociferous stom-
ach. After luncheon the whistling is re-
newed, and soon the climb begins.
Once on the slope of the mountain—the
steeper and rockier and more difficult the
better—he is a new animal. You have to
hold him back rather than urge him 011.
All mountain-climbers are men who haven't
grown up, who have kept alive that thrill
of adventure in conquering a sheer phys-
ical obstacle and getting up above the
world and peeping over. The last 200
yards your boys will take on the run, and
nothing can hold them back; when 12
small forms are wrapped in blankets, feet
to the fire, and the Scout Master is about
to stroll back toward the summit and
watch the patient stars swine by overhead,
the youngest Trish imp of the troop will
tickle his neighbor and fro off into an un-
controllable fit of the snickers. The snick-
ers is a disease which particularly attacks
young Scouts on their first camp in the
open. Tt is an extremely unsocial disease
and calls for radical treatment. An order
to wash all the breakfast plates and pans
is one of the best prescriptions.
The foregoing is an extract from an article in
the June American Magazine, ertitled "The Joys
of the True Walker." bv Walter Prichard Eaton,
the Scout Master whose article, " The Scout in
School," appears in the September issue of Boys'
I ife, and who has written another article for the
October number of the Bov Scouts' magazine.
The above has been reprinted by over half n hun-
dred newspapers. It is a fair sample of Mr.
Eaton's charming style.
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 1, Number 10, September 1, 1913, periodical, September 1, 1913; New York, New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth282642/m1/4/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.