The Boy Scouts of America was founded.
Founded on the British example, which was spreading like wildfire, Chicago publisher William D. Boyce brought the organization to the United States. It grew at an enormous rate early on, and was a real powerhouse for much of the pre 1960s era, bringing in a youth movement based on the outdoors and muscular Christianity.
The organization, looking back, began to to take a hit into the 1960s, which was perhaps inevitable. Grounded strictly in manly virtues, the 1960s introduced a growing feminization in western males, something that the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory notes to be a reoccurring phenomenon. At the same time, the protestant churches began their decline, although it was not obvious at the time, and muscular Christianity declined with them. The organization attempted to adapt, but the trend was pretty set in.
Today the damaged organization still includes 1,000,000 youth, of which 176,000 are unfortunately female. 130,000,000 mostly male Americans have participated in its programs since 1910, including me, albeit only briefly, and not including my father or grandfather, although one of my cousins was an Eagle Scout.
There's a lot on this website about the BSA, which is probably odd for a website run by somebody whose has a thin association with them at best. But they were a major movement in American, and indeed Western, culture, and their demise is also telling.
Related threads:
Boy Scouts no more.
Youth organizations. Their Rise and (near) Fall, or is that a myth? And, did you join?
Blog Mirror: What Scouting Has Lost
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