Today, the Boy Scouts Centennial Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin remembers their incorporation in America on February 8, 1910.
The New Age Magazine of August 1916 provided an early view into the organization of the Boy Scouts:
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The Boy Scout Movement
Every man has been a boy some time during his life. In fact, some always remain boys. Like Peter Pan they never grow up.
Having followed the business of being a boy, ardently and enthusiastically, the grown man recalls with undying pleasure his adventures afield, when every tree hid an Indian, and every old barn was an enchanted palace, where a beautiful princess was held captive by a caitiff knight.
Boys love Nature and all her varying moods. They love to tramp through woods, wade streams, and climb trees, hunting and searching for birds and animals. They take instinctively to woodcraft.
It is an inheritance from ancient times, when man lived by hunting and fishing, and tracked his enemy through the pathless forests.
City boys, deprived of all knowledge of Mother Nature, form gangs under some bold and enterprising young leader, and vent their woodcraft proclivities in destructive forms—mutilating property, bullying other boys not affiliated with the gang, making the life of the “cop” perfectly miserable by persisting in playing ball in the streets, thereby breaking windows and terrorizing women and children, etc.
The gang spirit is the most natural one in the world, but there are gangs and gangs. To organize the gang and turn its attention to useful and beneficial purposes is the great desideratum.
This was a difficult thing to do when ye editor was young, but the problem has been solved today in a most effectual manner.
It is to the fertile imagination of an English soldier, Gen. Sir Baden-Powell, that we owe the solution of the riddle of how best to organize boys. Gen. Baden-Powell inaugurated the Boy Scout Movement in England, and from that country it spread to America, France, Germany, everywhere.
As James E. West, Chief Scout Executive Officer of the United States, says: “The Boy Scouts of America are the American branch of a world-wide movement designed to engross the interest and engage the surplus energy of boys over 12 years of age. It aims to develop the power of initiative and resourcefulness, to ensure good citizenship, to offset disadvantages caused by the presence of civilization, to further a love for outdoor life, and, through it, health, strength, happiness, and practical education.”
The Boy Scouts of America were incorporated under the laws of the District of Columbia, February 8, 1910. The administration is in the hands of a National Council working through an Executive Board. The President of the United States is Honorary President of the Council. The headquarters of the Order is in New York City.
There are about 200,000 Boy Scouts in the United States, directly in charge of whom are 7,000 Scoutmasters, who have received commissions from National Headquarters. The Scoutmasters are men who have voluntarily gathered groups of boys known as troops, and called after the towns or sections in which they have been organized.
Each troop meets in a church, Sunday school, Y. M. C. A., boys’ club, schoolhouse, or private home. Boys are instructed in all manner of woodcraft and useful things, such as first aid to the injured, etc.
They take an oath to be true to God and country and assist people in distress. There is nothing sectarian about the organization, however, although particular religious denominations may form troops of their own affiliated with the national body.
The “hikes” or country outings of the troops are indeed a joy to the average boy. Camp fires are built, stories are told, and the boy imagination stirred to its profoundest depths.
The Boy Scouts have rendered effective aid on many public occasions, and are much in demand by civic authorities to keep order when processions are held, acting as guides to strangers, serving as special guards at the Municipal Christmas Trees, helping to distribute Christmas and Thanksgiving baskets to the poor, reporting infringements of regulations regarding the blanketing of horses in severe weather, helping the State Game Commissions to feed the birds which suffer for lack of food in winter, cooperating to fight forest fires, assisting in rescuing the drowning at bathing beaches, etc. Their activities are legion, and all for the good of the community.
The Boy Scout Movement is attracting the attention of educators. The following universities give special training courses for Scoutmasters or for men who are planning to take up Scout work: Columbia University, Chicago University, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota, Cornell University, Boston University and Harvard University.
The Fleet School at Flat Rock, North Carolina, “has made the Scout program the basis of discipline and recreation. Every boy at school is enrolled as a Scout, and gives a certain amount of time each day to Scout work.”
The National Organization publishes two papers—Scouting, for Scoutmasters; and Boy’s Life, for Scouts, which have a combined circulation of 80,000. The Boy Scout Movement has come to stay, for its usefulness to society has been thoroughly demonstrated.
England, France and Germany have found this wonderful boy organization of great value in time of war. The youthful Scouts, acting as a sort of Lilliputian home guard, serve as watchers, signalers, telegraphers, hospital orderlies, etc., etc.
It all comes from organization along scientific lines. The boy is father to the man. The things he learns as a Scout help to mold his character, and make him a better citizen when he grows up and takes his place in the world.
The movement is not confined solely to boys, but has been extended to girls. We have the Camp-Fire Girls, etc., organized along somewhat similar lines, but laying stress on the activities peculiar to the sex.
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The Boy Scouts Centennial Commemorative Silver Dollar Coin shows with an image of an early scouting poster.
