Benjamin René Jordan - Modern Manhood and the Boy Scouts of America

Modern Manhood and the Boy Scouts of America

Benjamin Ren Jordan

The University of North Carolina Press Chapel Hill

2016 The University of North Carolina Press
All rights reserved
Set in Espinosa Nova and Alegreya Sans by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of America

The University of North Carolina Press has been a member of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.

Cover illustrations Front: Boy Scout at the White House, Washington, D.C. (1925); courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-H234-A-9609). Back: Parade of 1,500 Boy Scouts in Washington, D.C., at start of Forest Protection Week (1924); courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division (LC-H234-A-8218).

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jordan, Benjamin Ren, author.
Modern manhood and the Boy Scouts of America : citizenship, race, and the environment, 19101930 / Benjamin Ren Jordan.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4696-2765-6 (pbk : alk. paper)ISBN 978-1-4696-2766-3 (ebook) 1. Boy Scouts of AmericaHistory. 2. MasculinityUnited StatesHistory. I. Title.
HS3313.J67 2016
369.43019dc23
2015033879

Portions of chapter 4 were published as Conservation of Boyhood: Boy Scoutings Modest Manliness and Natural Resource Conservation, 19101930. Environmental History (Oct. 2010): 61242. Used by permission.

I.1 Typewriter vs. Ax, Scout Executive, February 1926

1.1 Local Council Forms, Scout Executive, November 1920

2.1 The Organization Ladder of Loyalty, William Hurt, Community Boy Leadership (1922)

2.2 Ingersoll Radiolite Watch Advertisement, BSA, Handbook for Boys (1919)

2.3 Frank Rigney, Honorable Success, Business (merit badge pamphlet) (1928)

3.1 Scouts Fighting a Forest Fire, American Review of Reviews, December 1916

3.2 Coolidge with Boy Scouts (1926)

4.1 Frank Rigney, Every Step Means Progress, Boys Life, February 1917

4.2 Studying Nature at First Hand, 1919 BSA Annual Report to Congress

4.3 Frank Rigney, The Boy Scout Trail to Citizenship, Scouting, November 1925

4.4 Try yo bes ter borrer it, Boys Life, August 1922

4.5 James Wilder, Drill F, Pine Tree Patrol (pamphlet) (1918)

5.1 A Little Comfort for the Old Man, 1915 BSA Annual Report to Congress

5.2 Cosmopolitan Boy Scout Troops, San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1922

6.1 Norman Rockwell, The Tough, the Orderly, the Farmer, Boys Life, October 1915

7.1 Robertson Crusoe Jones, Boys Life, August 1921

7.2 African American Scoutmaster training course, Scout Executive, September 1927

Considering and articulating the people, places, and experiences that supported the development of this book has been a surprising and meaningful exercise. Growing up in a Jordan family that valued and helped other people enjoy and be able to access books formed the foundation for my love of reading and learning. With my mother, Donna, as a public school reading teacher and my father, Ren, as a public librarian, my siblings and I embraced books as an essential and joyful part of everyday life. Seth and Matt have maintained the familys official link to university and public libraries, but it is a rare occasion to speak with Chad or my sisters, Carol and Jill, without someone bringing up the latest book he or she has read or is trying to find. The constant presence of books in my childhood, combined with the love and support of my large family, contributed greatly to the desire to add my own book to the library shelf and the lifelong journey of knowledge and perspective that it represents.

College and early work experiences and friendships have been key influences on my intellectual path toward this book. Bard College drew me as an undergraduate with its elegant and accurate slogan, A Place to Think. Its liberal arts distribution requirements and a first and fascinating college history class on the Age of Exploration with Professor Fernando Gonzalez de Leon shifted my allegiance from science to the endlessly fascinating realm of history. The role modeling of my adviser, Mark Lytle, and thesis committee members Genady Shkliarevsky and James Chace helped me realize that I wanted to spend my life teaching people about their past and other cultures. Bard friendships with Rami Cohen, Liz Weiner, Billy Yeskel, Bucky Purdom, and Roger Scotland prompted me to see the college setting and professorial role as ideal means to achieve those goals. In terms of my interest in adolescent and environmental education, years of counseling at Camp Marymount in Fairview, Tennessee, with the inspiring leadership of my brother Matt and friends Brian and Kevin Wyatt, Peter and Beau Smith, Mike Lewis, Frankie Harris, Pat McKenzie, and Pat Shelton first led me to analyze the different ways in which Americans have shaped the character and civic development of young people through the outdoors. Our year of working with James Linkogle, Mike and Amina King, and residential students from over thirty countries at the American International School at Salzburg, Austria, helped me reflect on and critically study the culture in which I was raised. Superb graduate faculty at the University of California, San Diego, including Danny Vickers, Michael Bernstein, Yen Espiritu, Frank Biess, and Rebecca Klatch, broadened my understanding of and approach to history. I especially want to thank my co-advisers, Becky Nicolaides and Rachel Klein, and gender history mentor Rebecca Plant for their wisdom, diligence, and patience as I learned how to think like and be an academic historian. Fellow students Lauren Cole, David Miller, Volker Janssen, Nicholas Rosenthal, Andrew Strathman, Matt Johnson, and Sarah Sanders made the rigors of graduate study invigorating and memorable.

Regarding the period during which I was researching and developing this particular manuscript, Steven Price and the rest of the staff at the extensive Boy Scouts of America National Archive and Museum in Texas; librarians at the nearby Irving Public Library and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Christian Brothers University Inter-Library Loan specialist Melissa Verble; and archivists at the Library of Congress and National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, D.C., deserve special praise. I appreciated the encouragement of mentors like Jeff Bowman during my first year of teaching at Kenyon College and Melissa Wilcox in my year as the Johnston Visiting Professor of Gender Studies and Environmental Humanities at Whitman College. The friendship of Christian Brothers University History and Political Science Department colleagues Neal Palmer, Karl Leib, and Marius Carriere; collaboration with fellow Living Learning Community contributors Tracie Burke, Jeff Gross, Jos Davila, James Allen, Alton Wade, Tim Doyle, and Wilson Phillips; and support of leaders such as Paul Haught and Frank Buscher have made the last six years of teaching in Memphis a rewarding and enjoyable endeavor. Students in my history and interdisciplinary courses have pushed me to better synthesize environmental, gender, and youth dynamics in Americas past. Co-panelists and audiences at the American Society for Environmental History and the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth conferences provoked important questions and insights about my research. Noell Wilson, Tammy Proctor, and Ren and Harriet Jordan have spent many hours reading drafts of this manuscript and offering invaluable critiques and suggestions about both its historical context and my writing style and clarity. The editorial team at the University of North Carolina Press, led by Mark Simpson-Vos, and the sage wisdom and thorough feedback of two anonymous readers greatly sharpened and contextualized my original manuscript. Copyeditor Jamie Thaman, proofreader Barbara Johnson, indexer Robert Swanson, and a timely Professional Development Grant from Christian Brothers Universitys School of the Arts were immensely helpful in the books final stages of production. Last but certainly not least, the gracious and enduring support of my wife, Heather; her family members Ken, Nancy, and Adam Cross; and my wonderful children, Jack, Caroline, and Jules, inspired me to finish this manuscript process and share what I have learned with fellow historians and students of interdisciplinary studies, the general public, and Scoutings devoted legions.