Scouting, Volume 8, Number 18, November 25, 1920 Page: 6
8 p. : ill. ; 31 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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SCOUTING, NOVEMBER 25, 1920
The Fire-Safety Awards
A BOY SCOUT has just been awarded
a solid gold medal and a superb
camping outfit of 33 pieces, seven other
scouts have each been awarded a solid
gold medal, and about thirty others bronze
and silver medals for essays submitted
in a nation-wide contest on Fire Preven-
tion, confined to boy scouts. The chair-
man of the board of judges was General
Leonard Wood, Commander of the Cen-
tral Division of the United States Army,
who declared that if as a consequence
"the boy scouts take up the campaign in
behalf of fire prevention and speak as in-
telligently as they have written, I feel that
we shall soon reduce the danger from
fire."
A few months ago Boys' Life published
an offer of various medals by the National
Board of Fire Underwriters for the best
essays by scouts on Fire Prevention.
Several hundred scouts 'entered the con-
test, representing thirty-five States. The
offer was referred to in Scouting, April
22, and scoutmasters urged to make much
of the opportunity as solid, practical re-
sults were bound to follow in the educa-
tion of scouts along this line of civic re-
sponsibility.
Upon the board of judges with General
Wood were Mr. Charles Lyman Case,
President, and Mr. Wilbur E. Mallaieu,
General Manager, of the National Board
of Fire Underwriters, President Colin H.
Livingstone, and Chief Scout Executive
James E. West of the Boy Scouts of
America.
Entries were marked for identification
by number only and by successive read-
ings the several hundred essays were re-
duced to a selection of sixteen for final
decision by the judges.
The awards were divided into three
groups—the camping outfit as a national
prize, eight gold medals as section prizes
(geographical sections according to classi-
fications used by the Boy Scouts of
America), and silver and bronze medals
for first and second State prizes. The
highest honor goes to Lewis Adam Vin-
cent of Oakland, Cal., who also won the
gold medal in section 8, Wesley Curtis,
of Colorado Springs, Colo., being his
nearest competitor. The other winners
of section gold medals and their nearest
competitors in each case are as follows:
(Continued from page 2)
not allowed to go without
scouts as leaders. Assign the
photographs and direction
sheet to the senior in each such
party and start them on the
way with every instruction
written on their sheet.
To verify the work of each
patrol, have painted some-
where upon land mark num-
ber 1, inconspicuously, the last
word of a counter-sign sen-
tence; upon land mark num-
ber 2, the next to last word;
and so on to the end of the
trail. At the last land mark
arrange to have this message
as picked up on the trail, sent
By W. B. Ashley
Section 1. Henry F. Howe, North Main
Street, Cohasset, Mass., winner. (Wilbur
E. Mallalieu, Jr., 38 Bentley Avenue, Jersey
City, N. J., nearest competitor.)
Section 2. Dudley Francis Snowman, 58
Berlin Avenue, Southington, Conn., winner.
(George Albert Hess, Box 15, Roslyn, N. Y.,
nearest competitor.)
Section 3. Robert Nelson Young, 2146 East
Huntington Street., Philadelphia, Pa., winner.
(Billy J. Somerville, Ludbrook Lane, Pikes-
ville, Md., nearest competitor.)
Section 4, Wendell Ayres, Upland, Ind.,
winner. (Fred Bradley, Detroit, Mich., near-
est competitor.)
Section 5. Cecil C. Hunnicutt, Giltner, Neb.,
winner. (William W. Newcomb, Bismarck,
N. D., nearest competitor.)
Section 6. Clifford Ray House, Jr., 1128
Banklick Street, Covington, Ky., winner.
(T. B. Ford, Atlanta, Ga., nearest competi-
tor.)
Section 7. William Blake, Fox Lake, Wis.,
winner. (Howard Caddy, Nashwauk, Minn.,
nearest competitor.)
ON the morning that the results of the
contest were released for publication,
the New York press contained a harrow-
ing story of the trampling to death of six
little children by other children in a panic-
stricken rush down a narrow wooden
stairway to escape from a moving picture
theatre into which smoke from a furnace
fire had penetrated. There was no fire.
There was no need for the panic. The
trampled kiddies and the many injured
other children were victims of a lack of
preparedness on their own part for emer-
gencies of that kind. One sturdy scout
patrol leader, had he been present, in all
probability could have stopped that panic.
Had half a dozen of the boys who were
there been scouts, they might have saved
every life and prevented every injury.
Fire prevention and what to do in case
of fire are among the most practical sub-
jects in the education of youth. Scouting
will impress itself upon public conscious-
ness in proportion as scouts are trained
along these lines of civic responsibility.
But popular favor is entirely a secon-
dary consideration. It is the boy in his
progress toward manhood who is entitled
to the Boy Scout program in its entirety.
in its logical order by either
semaphore or Morse code to
the camp, where dinner is to
be served. Each party that
has the entire counter-sign and
is able to signal it into the
camp is allowed to come into
camp at once and is used to
strengthen the guard line
around the camp. Any party
which fails to collect the en-
tire counter-sign or is unable
to signal it after having gotten
it is put to the bother of find-
ing its way into camp by the
expedient of running the guard
line. Its arrival is not com-
plete until all members get in.
If each patrol is given a
name which includes its start-
ing time as 9:00, 9:05, 9:10,
9:15, it is possible without
very much bother to deter-
mine which patrol makes the
best time on the trail and to
award a prize of an extra cake
to the winner. This puts a
premium upon the ability to
pick up the message and to
signal it in, because no patrol
can be counted as in camp
until all of its members are
within the guard line (and a
guard line made up of scouts
who have come in through the
open door will work mighty
hard to keep out the "en-
emy"!) This will furnish a
The scouts who took part in the contest
acquitted themselves well. Could your
scouts have done so? The question is a
practical one. Are you checking up your
work by the progress of your scouts in
the whole scout program? Are you find-
ing for them through cooperation of your
municipal authorities and heads of pub-
lic organizations opportunities to learn by
doing the things that will prepare them
for citizenship?
The National Board of Fire Under-
writers has been greatly impressed by the
showing made by scouts in this contest.
That organization in turn has called atten-
tion in a striking way to a form of civic
service open to every scout wherever he
may be. Scout leaders will profit by this
contest if they present the facts to their
scouts and act upon the timely hint which
the contest gives. Extracts from some
of the winning essays are good stuff to>
hand out to patrol leaders and to the
troop meeting, and for that purpose are
given space here.
THE prevention of fires means the
elimination of causes that start fires.
All fires are small fires at first. When
they are small, all fires may be easily put
out. Every fire due to carelessness is a
crime and most fires are crimes. . . .
One important feature of fire prevention
is a system of regular inspection of back
yards and alleyways. . . . There is as
much credit in preventing fires as there is
in extinguishing them. (From essay by
Lewis Adam Vincent, Oakland, Califor-
nia, winner of the National and Section
8 Prises.)
STATISTICS show that a large propor-
tion of our fires originate in the care-
less use of matches, particularly of the
" strike anywhere" variety. . . . Camp-
fires and bonfires are to blame for numer-
ous fires, and are alike as far as the cause,
heedlessness, is concerned. Educational
measures, reinforced by legislation mak-
ing every man responsible for his actions
in handling fire, would do much to alle-
viate danger of this kind. (From essay
by Henry F. Howe, Cohasset, Mass., win-
ner of the gold medal for Geographical
Section 1.)
big experience if it is done
as well as outlined. It was
tried four years ago in Grand
Rapids, Mich. Five hundred
and seventy boys went on the
hike, and it was an unqualified
success. Following this big
thrill one or two good story
tellers, who confine themselves
to American historical heroes,
in an afternoon camp fire will
make a big day, out of doors.
EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE
REPORT
Extra copies of THE SCOUT
EXECUTIVE containing a report
of the 1920 conference at Bear
Mountain are available at 30
cents each.
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 8, Number 18, November 25, 1920, periodical, November 25, 1920; New York, New York. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth283188/m1/6/: accessed April 27, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.