The Scouting Movement

Scouting started in the mind of the founder, Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, who took a group of boys to the first Boy Scout camp on Brownsea Island off the English coast in 1907. After that camp, the next big step for Baden-Powell was the writing of a handbook for boys and a booklet for Scoutmasters. The handbook called Scouting for Boys, was published in five parts in 1908, and later that year in book form. It was an instant success.

Within a few months there were tens of thousands of Boy Scouts in Great Britain. They were guided by Scouting for Boys an a new weekly magazine, The Scout. Baden-Powell formed what was to become the British Boy Scouts Association.

With the publication of Scouting for Boys in 1908, troops began forming at several locations in the United States, many in YMCAs, but there was no formal structure or organization for them.

The official birthday for the Boy Scouts of America is February 8, 1910. It was incorporated on that date by William D. Boyce, a Chicago publisher, who happened upon Scouting in 1909 while passing through London. When lost in a thick fog, he was approached by a boy who offered to help him. To Boyce's astonishment, the boy would not accept a tip because he said it was a Good Turn, and a Scout could not accept pay for such an act. Boyce went to British Scouting headquarters to find out what kind of program would have such an effect upon a city boy. When he sailed for home, he had a trunk full of Scouting literature, insignia, and uniforms.

Boyce willingly joined the common effort when he found others also trying to start a Scouting movement. Among them were two men whose influence on Scouting is felt to this day.

Ernest Thompson Seton, world famous as a naturalist, author, illustrator, and lecturer on wildlife and the wilderness, was also the head of the Tribe of the Woodcraft Indians, a loose organization of boys who wrote to him after reading his nature books.

Seton was chairman of the committee on organization and the first Chief Scout of the BSA. He also was the primary author of the first edition of the handbook for Boys, published in 1911.

Daniel Carter Beard, another leader of the existing boys' organization, was a writer and illustrator of hundreds of magazine articles on outdoor life. His boys' organization was called the society of the Sons of Daniel Boone. It stressed the lore and pioneering spirit of such great American scouts  and outdoorsmen as Boone, Kit Carson, Davy Crockett, and John James Audubon.

With Seton, Beard merged hid own boys' organization into the young Boy Scout Movement. He became one of the three national Scout Commissioners, a member of the National Executive Board, and chairman of the National Court of Honor. Until his death at 91, beard was a familiar figure at any big Boy Scout event, unmistakable in the frontier garb he wore.

Late in 1910, when a small group of national leaders was struggling with the problems of a new organization, they brought into Scouting a man whose impact upon the movement was to be no less than that of Seton and Beard.

His name was James E. West--a man as opposite to Beard and Seton as could be imagined. An attorney, he was then making a name for himself in youth work. From having spent his childhood in an orphanage, West knew firsthand some of the problems of the young. He was crippled throughout his life by a tubercular hip. Yet these handicaps had not prevented him from working his way through high school, college, and law school.

The founders talked West into taking the job of "executive secretary" of the BSA for 6 months, beginning January 1911. The 6 months lasted 32 years: West finally retired as Chief Scout Executive in 1943.

Seton and Beard had brought to Scouting the magic of the campfire and love of the outdoors. West brought limitless vision and administrative talent.

With the national organization beginning to take shape in 1911, national leaders turned their attention to local and regional organization, and to such vital matters as the Scout Oath and Law, rank requirements, and badges.

In the Scout Oath, the British version was closely followed, but the phrase "to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight" was added.

Baden-Powell's Scout Law contained nine points. they were adopted by the BSA with minor variations, and three were added: Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

As in England, Scouting swept the country as soon as boys heard about it. Even in 1911 there were 5,000 troops in the United States. There were a mere 14 merit badge subjects the, and 30 Scouts managed to earn a total of 83 among them that year.

-taken form the SCOUTMASTER HANDBOOK, 1990 printing