27. I swore off smokin cigerets.
28. I turned in my wages to my mother.
29. I cleaned up the alley back of the house.
30. I helped a little girl pick up a bag of potatoes when the bag busted and made another kid quit laffing at her.
31. I went for a can of beer for Mrs. Schwartzberger.
It is evident that the last good turn was performed by a slum boy who had recently joined the troop.
It requires no student of psychology to recognize the different developments of moral concepts shown in these replies. Some betray the first signs of the dawning of moral consciousness, while others show a keen appreciation of altruistic ideals, the result of ennobling home influence and proper training.
The performance of the daily good turn develops the faculty for the formulation of ideals. A new relationship to duty is thus fixed and the boy’s moral nature is builded, slowly but surely, until one can visualize the completed character of the future. Of all this, the boy himself is wholly unconscious.
The boy knows little, if anything, of the principles or purposes of the Boy Scouts before he becomes a member. For that matter, the average parent has made no great effort to inform himself on the objects, scope and workings of the organization, as too frequently he assumes it to be a method devised for his son’s amusement, which will relieve the parent of the duty of personal supervision while the boy is so occupied. He regards it as a species of boy entertainment, wholly disassociated from its educational and ethical import.
The youth knows only two things about Boy Scouts, which he has learned from observation—that they wear uniforms and go on hikes. Both of these make a powerful appeal to his imagination and interest. The uniform and the parade satisfy the spectacular and dramatic needs of his nature and the hikes gratify his savage and atavistic tendencies which prompt him to seek the wilds and live temporarily as did his remote ancestor—the primeval man. He joins the organization to satisfy these primitive desires and thus effects a return to the simple life, which furnishes, to the city youth especially, an antidote for the injury wrought by our increasingly complex civilization and hurried methods of living.