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Published under the supervision of the Editorial Board
Representing the National Council

OF THE

BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

200 FIFTH AVENUE

NEW YORK CITY

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To the Scout Executives of the country and others interested in the welfare of boys and their training in practical citizenship:

The Manual for Scout Executives represents the combined experience of our most successful and earnest leaders, covering over ten years of Scouting all over the country. In giving it to the field the Editorial Board hopes and believes that the book will be of real value and help to solve some of the many common problems which beset scout workers everywhere.

The Scout Executive's biggest task is to bring his community and its Boy Scouts into the closest relations of sympathy and co-operation and for this reason the present volume has been written from the angle of community leadership as its title implies.

Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to Dr. H. W. Hurt, former Scout Executive of Chicago, for his splendid work for the Editorial Department in assembling and editing the contents of the Manual and to all the scout leaders throughout the field who have made such generous contribution of time and thought and made available for our use the invaluable records of their own experience in community Scouting.

With the best of wishes and sincere hope that COMMUNITY BOY LEADERSHIP may be of real help to one and all concerned, we make it yours to adapt to your use in the service of boyhood.

(Signed)

WILLIAM D. MURRAY
FRANK PRESBREY

DR. HENRY VAN DYKE,

(Editorial Board).

CHAPTER I

WHAT AWAITS THE EXECUTIVE'S

Foreword

LEADERSHIP

The Scout movement is a program of characterbuilding, citizenship-developing, leisure-time activities. for boys.

It is educational as well as recreational. It is vocationally purposeful. Its tasks are within a lad's reach and its progress at once challenges him though going at his own rate of speed. It is concerned with a lad's health and it prepares him to be resourceful in the out-of-doors. It trains the lad to accept responsibility not only for the assigned task but for the unexpected emergency. It brings the spirit of the Good Turn.

Its service and success are largely due to its recognition that lofty adult ideals can be tied to boy-interests only through a high type of adult Companionship with boys while doing things which appeal to boys. It is a national program of activities for local use, run by local men for the benefit of local boys. This companionship is given and largely supervised by volunteer leaders. Of the 110,000 adult Scout workers in the U. S. less than 500 are paid workers and these only to help the volunteers better serve the boy.

Nationally, as a movement, scouting is as democratic in structure as it is democratic in action in the local community, where it knows no distinction of creed or class or race in its service to all boys. The "National Council", which under Federal Charter (with an annual report and accounting to Congress) is the controlling body of the movement, is largely made up of representatives from the Local Councils themselves, plus certain members whom these have elected. Nationally, Scouting then is the summation of its local units-fundamentally democratic.

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