All this means the making of an intelligent, alert, responsible citizenry, dedicated to being helpful to all people at all times, to keep themselves physically strong, mentally awake, morally straight, to do their duty to God and country.
THE PIONEER SCOUT.
In order that boys who live in remote country districts may enjoy the benefits of the scout training, even though it is not possible for them to join a regular troop, the Pioneer Division of the Boy Scouts of America has been established. Pioneer Scouts follow the same program as other scouts do, taking their tests from a specially appointed local examiner, usually a teacher, pastor, or employer. On January 31, 1920, there were 758 active Pioneer Scouts on record at national headquarters. Much interest has been manifested in this branch of scouting, which has been found to fill a real need among country boys. The State agricultural departments and colleges have given generous aid and indorsement, as have also the Grange, Antituberculosis League, and other local institutions. The United States Department of Agriculture is also lending its hearty support and indorsement to this branch of scout work. The Secretary of Agriculture, the Hon. E. T. Meredith, says: "The Boy Scout program fits in with the work of the rural school, the rural church, the agricultural boys' club, and other rural welfare organizations. They should go hand in hand."
SCOUTING AND AMERICANIZATION.
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.