As Benjamin Jordan observes, historians of gender frequently portray white American masculinity around 1900 as an identity in crisis, threatened by urban, corporate modernity and female advancement. White males felt driven to demonstrate manliness to others – and themselves. Some compensated by dreaming of aggressive, physical virility. They sought to recapture primal energies stifled by effete urban lifestyles and, among boys, by mothers and women teachers. Alongside the omnipresent Theodore Roosevelt, Boy Scouting sometimes figures as evidence of this tendency. Yet despite the purported hand-wringing, white middle- and gentry-class males maintained hegemony long into the future. How come? Jordan's examination of the purposes of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) offers a powerful corrective – most directly to hyperventilating mischaracterization of American Scouting, but with implications for conventional academic wisdom concerning historical trends in masculinity. In Jordan's telling, the BSA guided boys smoothly toward adaptation to the changing economy and continued social leadership.
Jordan finds parallels in British and imperial Scouting, but more often emphasizes differences. From 1911 onward, the BSA built a hierarchical corporate structure, under a centralizing bureaucrat, James West, and an executive board increasingly composed of corporate executives. Scouting's English founder, Robert Baden-Powell, grumbled occasionally but kept hands off. Central to Jordan's argument is extended analysis of how West and colleagues modified Baden-Powell's program, primarily the Scout oath and laws, to inculcate values suited to modern business and instill in Boy Scouts a confident sense of superior citizenship. To suit American denial of class differences, the BSA excised Baden-Powell's strident insistence on loyalty to employers. The laws and oath are brief, though, forcing Jordan to read much into them. Thus he glosses the law that a Scout is cheerful: “Cheerful work required self-control and internal motivation to complete standardized tasks, instead of relying on external discipline and reward” (51). This leaves BSA goals uncertain; “standardized tasks” and repeated references to Henry Ford's and Frederick Taylor's methods as epitomizing modern work suggest training for routinized subservience inconsistent with the BSA's middle-class appeal.
Ideological by design, Jordan's interpretation rests on BSA statements of principle and intention. He attributes the failures of rival youth programs primarily to their inculcation of values inappropriate for modern middle-class manhood rather than weak organization or unappealing activities. He includes many reports of Scouts’ individual good deeds and group service that demonstrated active citizenship, such as selling war bonds, forming honor guards, and providing flood relief. These displayed the BSA's professed values, won hearty public approval, and presented Scouts as future leaders. Activities that actually occupied more time receive less attention: during meetings, hikes, and camps Scouts worked at requirements to advance to First Class Scout and then earn merit badges. Consistent with Progressive Era values, BSA conservation training focussed on preserving useful elements in nature. Outdoor life was not romantic adventure; camp schedules centered on passing advancement tests.
Assessing the success of programs intended to inculcate values is difficult, and doubly so for historians. That said, Jordan perhaps overstrains, quoting long testimonials from important outsiders, Scout officials, 1920s surveys of active Scouts and leaders, and a few lifelong enthusiasts’ memoirs. These attest that boys voiced appropriate values and that Scouting impressed opinion makers. They bypass the question of how much Scouting's success reflected selective recruitment and retention. Nor can such sources compare long-term Scouts with the many boys who participated only briefly or never joined. Though impressive, BSA statistics on aggregate membership somewhat overstate Scouting's impact, because turnover was rapid. Since most American Scouts were ages twelve through fourteen, an emphasis on training future leading citizens may undervalue Scouting's appeal to parents as a safe haven that offered wholesome, adult-controlled recreation in a troop sponsored by a trusted church, school, or service club and among boys similar to their own.
Though hampered by expensive uniforms and programmatic rigidity, the BSA sought to broaden its base and thereby, Jordan concludes, rendered Scouting's version of modern American manhood more inclusive. Excellent chapters examine each outreach effort. Refusal to change values, program, and troop organization doomed standard Scouting to fail with farm boys. The BSA absorbed the rural Lone Scouts but quickly lost them. On the other hand, while remaining disproportionately middle-class, the BSA successfully courted working-class European immigrants. Scout policies fostered inclusion of all faiths, and the BSA pledged neutrality in labor disputes. Jordan carefully details hesitant outreach to African Americans. Although occasional northern locations had African American Scouts before 1924, BSA speakers and publications routinely used popular racist imagery that caricatured black boys as naively humorous, lazy, feckless, and untrustworthy – mere “foils” to white Scout virtues. Yet in the late 1920s philanthropic grants funded experimentation with limited numbers of segregated southern troops. White officials were touchy about black youths wearing the uniform, white councils retained control, and black Scoutmasters (unlike white) underwent mandatory training. Still, African American community leaders responded with cautious enthusiasm, hoping to strengthen their boys’ claim to full citizenship. However limited and paternalistic, these steps toward greater inclusiveness may augur well, Jordan suggests, for today's BSA.
Historians interested in gender, youth, American values, and concepts of citizenship, and, of course, Scouting, have much to learn from Jordan's book.
