working with boys—some in one way and some in another. Ernest Thompson-Seton, the naturalist, worked with boys along the lines of woodcraft and Indian life. Dan Beard, the illustrator and well-known author of boys’ books, simultaneously was working with boys along the lines of pioneering, handicraft and out-door life. Byron W. Forbush, Ph. D., was also dealing with boys along the lines of hero worship and in imitation of the knightly life that centered around the Round Table of King Arthur. In the Young Men’s Christian Association, Edgar M. Robinson was standing for the four-fold development of the boy and for the boy’s education for the duties of life and citizenship. Thomas Chew, the President of the Federated Boys’ Clubs and the Superintendent of the Fall River Boys’ Club, was working with a large number of boys along social and moral lines. Besides these, a whole host of others in the social settlements and playgrounds were touching the lives of boys for the purpose of making better men. The idea that underlay the work of all of these men was the same, but they differed widely in the conception of the idea and the method of its application.
Lieutenant-General Sir Robert S. S. Baden-Powell, K. C. B., stirred by the sight of forty-six per cent of all the boys in England growing up without adequate knowledge of any useful occupation, made a study of all the methods for helping boys already in the field, and connected them together by an appeal to boys for service to the community.
The General, in an address at a banquet tendered to him in New York, said:
"You have made a little mistake, Mr. Seton, in your remarks to the effect that I am the Father of this idea of Scouting for boys. I may say that you are the Father of it, or that Dan Beard is the Father. There are many Fathers. I am only one of the Uncles, I might say. . . . The scheme became known at home. Then it was that I looked about to see what was being done in the United States, and I cribbed from them right and left, putting things as I found them into the book."
The Boy Scout idea, then, originated in America, and it is most fitting and appropriate that we Americans should be its most enthusiastic supporters, since this country of ours is not merely its birthplace, but is the country above all others in which it should grow the fastest and do the most good.
