Mr. James E. West, Chief Scout Executive, makes the following statement
in his tenth annual report rendered to the National Council, Boy Scouts
of America:
The tremendous value of the Boy Scout movement in
the Americanization problems of this country has
been recognized by the division of citizenship
training, Bureau of Naturalization, Department of
Labor, from whom was received a request that Boy
Scouts distribute letters and cards among aliens
in the interest of the educational work of the
division of citizenship training. A study of the
indorsements of the movement by national leaders
(selected from the many received) will reveal
similar recognition in such quarters. Many leaders
in the organization, from coast to coast, have
long recognized that the Boy Scouts of America
enjoy a high privilege as well as a high
responsibility in truly democratizing the boyhood
of this country.
The foreign-born boy and the son of foreign-born
parents sit side by side with native-born boys (as
they should) in our schools. They mingle in their
play and in their homes. They are one boyhood. But
it is a boyhood of marvelously diverse racial
characteristics and tendencies. Moreover, this
boyhood is the future manhood of America. And the
boy inside each individual in this 8,000,000 or so
of American youth instinctively responds to the
Boy Scout program. As America is the melting pot
of the nations, even so scouting is the melting
pot of the boys of the nations.
Fortunately, the program needs no modifications or
special manipulation to "Americanize" its
followers. It is inherently an Americanizing
program. In Manhattan's crowded East Side, since
1912, when the first scout troop was founded
there, thousands of boys have taken the Scout Oath
and Law and followed its principles and lived its
out-of-door life. To-day there are 25 troops in
New York City, numbering 800 boys. Every
scoutmaster and assistant scoutmaster in the
district is an ex-scout. These troops have a
splendid record of war-service work, and it has
been declared of them that they were the greatest
single agency in operation rightly to interpret
the war to their foreign-born neighbors.
The aggressive introduction of scouting into all
our industrial sections, the enlistment of the men
of those sections (who are eligible) as local
council members, troop committeemen, scoutmasters,
the fullest possible round of scouting activities
for the men and the boys in this country who do
not yet know America, but aspire to be her sons,
will help to solve all our industrial problems and
preserve our national ideals and institutions.