The Boy Scouts of America and the Making of Modern Masculinity, 1910-1930

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO “A Modest Manliness”: The Boy Scouts of America and the Making of Modern Masculinity, 1910-1930 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Benjamin René Jordan Committee in charge: Professor Rachel Klein, Chair Professor Becky Nicolaides, Co-Chair Professor Frank Biess Professor Yen Le Espiritu Professor Rebecca Plant 2009 Copyright Benjamin René Jordan, 2009 All rights reserved. The Dissertation of Benjamin René Jordan is approved, and it is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: Co-Chair Chair University of California, San Diego 2009 iii DEDICATION I wish to express my gratitude to the fine faculty at the University of California San Diego and its History Department. I particularly want to thank my co-advisors, Rachel Klein and Becky Nicolaides, for their patience and excellent feedback concerning my research project and writing. Fellow graduate students such as Lauren Cole, David Miller, Volker Janssen, Andy Strathman, Sarah Sanders, and Matt Johnson made the difficult task of being a graduate history student into an enjoyable affair. Steven Price, Archivist at the Boy Scouts of America’s National Scouting Museum and Archive, was exceedingly helpful and courteous during my five months of research. He and the rest of the staff went well out of their way to make my research time pleasant and productive. The archivists and staff at the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, Honolulu Boy Scout Council Office, University of Tennessee Knoxville Library, and Public Library of Irving Texas also offered invaluable assistance in my research. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my wife Heather. I would not have made it through graduate school classes or the dissertation process without her endless support and help. She has bravely endured repeated moving, job-changing, long hours raising our children, and uncertainty regarding the future. I can never fully repay her, Jack, and Caroline for their patience while Daddy was busy researching and teaching at “work house.” I also wish to thank my siblings and parents for their love and support throughout my life and university education, as well as Heather’s parents Ken and Nancy for graciously sharing their home with us while I wrote this dissertation. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………………… iii Dedication………………………………………………………………………….. iv Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….. v List of Abbreviations………………………………………………………………. vi List of Figures……………………………………………………………………… vii Vita………………………………………………………………………………… ix Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. x Introduction - Modern America and the BSA’s balanced manliness……………… 1 Chapter One - The origins and organizational development of the……………….. 20 Boy Scouts of America Chapter Two - “A modest manliness”: The Boy Scout laws……………………… 71 Chapter Three - “Conservation of Boyhood”: Natural resource conservation……. 130 and male character Chapter Four - African-American and Native American Scouting……………….. 170 Chapter Five - The “underprivileged majority”: Rich, poor, urban immigrant,…... 221 and rural Scouting Chapter Six - Secretaries and straphangers: Women in the BSA and the………… 283 Girl Scout controversy Epilogue - Scouting into the Great Depression……………………………………. 327 Endnotes…………………………………………………………………………… 336 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………. 393 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AFL American Federation of Labor BSA Boy Scouts of America CFG Camp Fire Girls ECR Executive Conference Reports of the Boy Scouts of America GSA Girl Scouts of America IRS Inter-Racial Service of the Boy Scouts of America KKK Klu Klux Klan LSA Lone Scouts of America LSRM Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial foundation NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People PNA Polish National Alliance PSA Polish Scouts of America WASP white Anglo-Saxon protestant YMCA Young Men’s Christian Association vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure I.1: New York Times (May 9, 1926): RP1.…………………. …………….. 1 Figure 1.1: The Scout Executive (Feb. 1926): 15…………………………………. 45 Figure 2.1: Scouting (April 1922): 8……………………………………………… 90 Figure 2.2: Community Boy Leadership (1922), 352…………………………….. 92 Figure 2.3: Handbook for Boys (1919), 475……………………………………… 96 Figure 2.4: “On My Honor”: 70 Years of Scouting in York , 37…………………. 101 Figure 2.5: “Robertson Crusoe Jones” sketch, Boys’ Life (Aug. 1921): 27……… 110 Figure 2.6: Business merit badge pamphlet (BSA, 1928): cover………………… 112 Figure 2.7: “Good Troop Records Make for Progress,” Scouting (Oct. 1928): 7... 115 Figure 2.8: 1913 BSA Annual Report, 25………………………………………... 121 Figure 2.9: H.S. Wainwright painting, Boys’ Life (April 1922): 2………………. 125 Figure 3.1: A Handbook of Woodcraft, Scouting and Lifecraft (1910), 63……… 136 Figure 3.2: “Our Friends, the Trees in Camp,” Scouting (May 1921): 8………… 139 Figure 3.3: Weekly Bulletin of Boy Scout Activities (Jul. 1, 1925)………………. 141 Figure 3.4: Scouting (May 1, 1918): 13…………………………………………. 155 Figure 3.5: Scouting (Aug. 1, 1918): 16…………………………………………. 155 Figure 3.6: New York Times (June 15, 1924): X11……………………………… 158 Figure 3.7: Conservation merit badge pamphlet (1920): cover…………………. 163 Figure 3.8: 1925 BSA Annual Report, 46-47……………………………………. 163 Figure 4.1: Boys’ Life (Nov. 13, 1919): 26; and 1919 BSA Annual Report, 61… 176 Figure 4.2: Boys’ Life (Feb. 1922): 22…………………………………………... 210 Figure 4.3: “Indian Bonnet For Governor,” Boys’ Life (Oct. 1926): 23………… 212 vii Figure 5.1: 1915 BSA Annual Report, 113………………………………………. 254 Figure 5.2: Norman Rockwell sketch, Boys’ Life (Oct. 1915): 20……………….. 260 Figure 5.3: Frank Rigney sketch, New York Times (Aug. 9, 1925): XX13………. 270 Figure 6.1: Saint Nicholas (Feb. 1923): 387……………………………………… 283 Figure 6.2: 1917 BSA Annual Report, 127………………………………………. 289 Figure 6.3: Handbook for Scoutmasters (1922), 211…………………………….. 295 Figure 6.4: The Washington Post (Jan. 29, 1911): MC7…………………………. 298 Figure 6.5: 250 Million Scouts , 129e…………………………………………….. 301 Figure 6.6: New York Times (Oct. 23, 1921): 39…………………………………. 319 viii VITA 1995 B.A., History, Bard College 2001-2003 Teaching Assistant, Department of History, University of California, San Diego 2003 M.A., History, University of California, San Diego 2007-2008 Visiting Instructor of History, Kenyon College 2008-2009 Johnston Visiting Professor of Gender Studies and Environmental Humanities, Whitman College 2009 Ph.D., History, University of California, San Diego PUBLICATIONS “Savages and the ‘SHE PERIOD’: The Boy Scouts of America’s Younger and Older Boy Problems,” in Tammy Proctor and Nelson Block, eds., Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s 1st Century (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009). Review of Domesticating the West: The Re-creation of the Nineteenth-Century American Middle Class , by Brenda K. Jackson. Journal of San Diego History 54.2 (Spring 2008). Encyclopedia entry, “Scoutism,” in Peter Stearns, ed., Encyclopedia of the Modern World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). Encyclopedia entry, “Boy and Girl Scout Environmental Ideology,” in Kathleen Brosnan, ed., Encyclopedia of American Environmental History , (New York: Facts on File, forthcoming). FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Modern United States History Professors Rachel Klein and Becky Nicolaides Studies in Gender and Sexuality History Professor Rebecca Plant Studies in Modern German History Professor Frank Biess ix ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “A Modest Manliness”: The Boy Scouts of America and the Making of Modern Masculinity, 1910-1930 by Benjamin René Jordan Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, San Diego, 2009 Professor Rachel Klein, Chair Professor Becky Nicolaides, Co-Chair This dissertation examines an enormously influential organization that gave shape to normative American assumptions about the relationship between gender, race, citizenship, and the environment in the early twentieth century. The Boy Scouts of America [BSA] garnered a broad range of popular and government support for promising to teach a universal model of character and leading citizenship to all boys. However, many officials doubted that non-white, working class immigrant, and rural boys were capable of such training. Administrators justified allowing local councils to discriminate against “undesirable” groups as permitting “self-determination” in local matters. x This research revises one of the central tenets of Progressive Era gender history. A number of works incorrectly use Scouting as the key proof for a flawed argument that native-born white, middle class men’s ideal of manhood shifted to a virile self-reliance that idealized “primitive” non-white races. Virile primitivism, however much it may have shaped men’s fantasies, was of little practical use in an urban-industrial society. The BSA actually garnered support from across the socio-economic spectrum for its articulation of a new vision of balanced, “modest manliness.” Scout manliness hedged pioneer-like virility with Victorian self-control and the expert management, scientific efficiency, and hierarchical loyalty that native-born white, middle class men needed to adapt to the corporate industrial workforce and to reinforce their dominant position in an urbanizing social hierarchy. Girls and non-white boys worked to overcome their obstacles to participation in Scouting. Environmental historians studying the early twentieth century

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