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A DILEMMA IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY GIRL SCOUTING 

LAUREEN TEDESCO 
In the late teens and early 1920s, when the Girl Scouts Incorporated were 

sending field workers across the nation to train troop leaders and establish the 
growing organization's reputation, girls and Boy Scouts of America 
Scoutmasters tackled the problem of Girl Scout training in their own way: the 
Scoutmasters, independently or at the request of local girls, taught the girls 
the basics of Boy Scout training and then wrote to national Girl Scout 
headquarters for help. The letters often expressed urgency on the part of the 
girls who had asked the letter-writers to get Girl Scout materials for them. 
One letter asks, "Would you kindly reply by return mail as the girls want to 
get their uniforms as soon as they pass their test" (Whitehead 22 Nov. 1920). 
A Birmingham, Alabama, Scoutmaster justified his involvement as "a duty 
that I owe these girls," who had recruited his help (Edmy 27 Nov. 1921). The 
father of a Boy Scout in Davenport, Iowa, reported to Boy Scout headquarters 
that eighteen girls had called at his home to ask him to find out whether Girl 
Scouts existed in this country 
(the letter was forwarded to the Girl Scouts) (Andrews 14 Oct. 1918). A 
Largo, Florida, Scoutmaster addressing Girl Scout staff members as "Dear 
Co-Workers" reported that local girls wanted "some organization similar to 
the Boy Scouts of America" (Roberts 19 Nov. 1921). Some of these men 
volunteered to lead Girl Scout troops themselves (See, for example, Parkins 
10 Mar. 1922). Others asked for help in finding a woman leader who could 
build on the foundation they had laid. 

These Boy Scout workers' perception that the separately run Boy Scout 
and Girl Scout institutions were doing essentially the same work mirrored a 
popular perception that persists today. The Scoutmasters' willingness to give 
girls the apparently universal "basics" of Scouting highlights a central 
question about the founding of the Girl Scouts: How much was founder 
Juliette Low seeking to offer girls the same program, broadening the scope of 
activities available to girls and women, and how much were she and early Girl 
Scout officials softening or "feminizing" the core Scouting material?1 The 
men who wrote to Girl Scout headquarters either missed the gendered 
adaptations that Low had made and that British Boy Scout founder Robert 
Baden-Powell had earlier built into the Girl Guide program, or they 
understood the shared (masculine) heritage of the girls' and boys' programs. 
To some degree, the adults who sponsored Girl Scout troops, allowed their 
daughters to join them, and provided the infrastructure needed for camping 
and service projects saw the common Scouting tenets and activities as 
transcending gender differences, or as relevant to girls 



 

THE LOST MANHOOD OF THE AMERICAN GIRL TEDESCO 

as well as to boys. And the girls' eagerness to get their uniforms underscores 
the appeal and novelty of the military-inspired features of the program in the 
World War I era. While at the national level, the separately run Boy Scouts of 
America emphasized its distinctly masculine identity and sought distance 
from the Girl Scouts Inc., the girls' organization often highlighted the 
similarities between the two programs, pursuing parallel activities and health 
training for girls. 

Girl Scouting before the 1930s drew on both feminine gender codes and 
masculine symbolism, its gendered status complicated by the organization's 
borrowings from the Boy Scouts, Low's deliberate re-appropriation of Boy 
Scout forms and symbols, and the mixture of male and female iconography 
used in the first four handbooks.2 Girl Scout handbooks appropriated the 
figures of the pioneer and the soldier, offered girls male examples from the 
frontier era and the Great War, and chose as their exemplary women those 
who excelled in nontraditional endeavors, though emphasizing the 
homemaking skills of the most famous, Louisa May Alcott. In this essay, I 
examine the masculine heritage of the Girl Scouts, as well as the program's 
seemingly genderless emphasis on exercise and public safety, in the 1920 
Girl Scout handbook, Scouting for Girls, the organization's longest and most 
military instruction manual. The handbook's army analogies were particularly 
attractive during and just after the Great War, when American girls and 
women had turned out for war work in record numbers.3 The military models 
offered to girls and adult women-at a time when they could not join the 
armed forces enabled an imagined identity that was strong, capable, and 
rewarded. The program's relatively new outdoor activities for girls-camping, 
hiking, and military drill-passed muster with adults because they met a 
perceived need for health and outdoor exercise in the nation's future mothers. 
The pioneer-life aspects of the Girl Scouts' camping, nature study, and 
woodcraft skills assuaged fears that technology would rob young Americans 
of resourcefulness. At the same time that it allowed girls to play with hatchets 
and send coded messages with signal flags, Scouting for Girls trained girls in 
efficient "modern" ways of handling the historically feminine provinces of 
home, sick relatives, and children. Girls learned traditional morality, such as 
an emphasis on sexual purity, in more up-to-date packaging. 

Before the Girl Scouts began in the United States in 1912-13 (first as 
Girl Guides and a year later rechristened as Girl Scouts), British girls had 
appropriated the activities described in Baden-Powell's 1908 Scouting for 
Boys (Mitchell 119). Girls' public appearance at Baden-Powell's Crystal 
Palace inspection of the Boy Scouts, however, spurred Baden-Powell to 
develop a tamer girls' program, the Girl Guides, to entice girls away from 
Boy Scouting. Still, Scouting-style activities for girls got some 

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endorsement from adults on both sides of the Atlantic, and even Baden-
Powell's more "womanly" program, developed with his sister Agnes, allowed 
girls to follow tracks across the moors, practice signaling, and bandage 
imagined victims of severe injuries. One British Girls' Reader editor praised 
scouting as "'a wholly fresh phase of woman's activity,' for 'healthy, open-air, 
adventure-loving young women, who go about their work of tracking, 
spying, signaling and what-not with a zeal and intelligence that may well set 
an example to their male confreres'" (qtd. in Mitchell 122). 

On this side of the Atlantic as well, fresh-air adventure for girls received 
hearty adult approval, via "woodcraft" organizations such as the Camp Fire 
Girls (1912), the Girl Scouts, and the YWCA's Girl Reserves (1918). 
Outdoor adventures akin to scouting appeared in American girls' series 
fiction of the 1910s, with Outdoor Girls, Pioneer Girls, Wide-Awake Girls, 
Red Cross Girls and a host of heroines with their own series taking overnight 
trips, rescuing accident victims, and hiking outdoors. The unofficial Camp 
Fire Girl and Girl Scout series by various authors further capitalized on the 
contemporary climate for girls' outdoor activities, also apparent in Lina and 
Adelia Beard's, On the Trail: An Outdoor Book for Girls (1915). Sally 
Mitchell places the scouting phenomenon in Britain in a chapter of The New 
Girl, devoted to "Being a Boy," exploring turn-of-the (twentieth)-century 
girls' adoption of male personae. 

The Girl Scouts-like the slightly tamer Girl Guides-used the foundation 
of Baden-Powell's initial Scouting program for boys, with its models of 
organization, awards, and moral pledges as well as its "scouting" or 
wilderness survival training. The feminine overlay included extensive 
homemaking training, moralistic injunctions to do only those things that 
could comfortably be exposed to group scrutiny, and an emphasis on 
childcare and female health. Girl Scouts earned more home-making badges 
than outdoor ones and had to demonstrate childcare, nursing, and personal 
health skills to achieve the highest rank, First Class. Still, Girl Scouts wore 
khaki uniforms visually echoing the Boy Scouts', could earn military inspired 
lifesaving medals, learned the signaling codes used by the Army and Navy, 
and marched in patriotic parades during the Great War. Recommended 
reading for Girl Scouts and their officers included the Boy Scout and 
Scoutmaster handbooks (1920, 540, 544-45).4 

The Girl Scout organization benefited from a growing public belief that 
boys and girls should have similar recreational opportunities. Although the 
Boy Scouts' chief executive campaigned against the Girl Scout name for 
seven years through letters and social pressure for the girls' group to become 
Camp Fire Girls or Girl Guides, his workers in the field sometimes missed 
the message that Girl Scouting must differ from Boy Scouting for the boys' 
program to remain "manly." The instructional texts emphasized 

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the "womanly" character of Girl Scout training, but Girl Scout officials 
politely, but steadily, resisted Boy Scout Executive James E. West's pressure 
to change the name,5 expressing in internal communications their 
commitment to offering equal experiences to girls. Their belief in separate 
spheres-in a woman's domain of influence through good home and social 
management-seems at times incongruously balanced with their insistence that 
girls be offered some of the same experiences as boys. The incongruity can 
perhaps be explained by the conservative character-training program that 
Scouting activities for both boys and girls framed. The underlying program 
sought to restrain precocious sexuality and instill ardent patriotism and civic 
service. As Mary Rothschild and Georgeanne Scheiner note, in the 1920s 
"Girl Scouting saw itself as a conscious promoter of 'up-to-date womanhood' 
but also as a bulwark against flappers and American moral decline" (317). 
Girl Scout organizers sought to preserve the sexual mores and domestic focus 
of traditional womanhood, with a modern recognition of career opportunities 
and voting powers. They also, however, offered novel experiences to pre-
teen and adolescent girls, experiences that included trying on the 
independence and self-reliance expressed in the group-sanctioned uniforms. 

The mature expression of early Girl Scouting's dual impulses towards 
appropriately feminine training for girls and gender parity appears in the 
1920 Girl Scout handbook, Scouting for Girls. Prepared during World War I, 
drawing from the nation's experiences at war, Scouting for Girls reflects 
shifting expectations of what girls "can do to help their country," as the title 
of the earlier handbook puts it. The 1920 handbook outlines ways to give 
social and government service, includes pictures of the military-style 
insignia and life-saving medals a girl could earn, and depicts Girl Scout 
camps with tent-lined streets laid out in military-camp formation and a 
bugle-accompanied flag-raising at dawn. The instructional and motivational 
text challenges girl readers to develop the physical stamina necessary to 
climb a high mountain and draws analogies between soldiers in the Great 
War and Girl Scouts saving lives. Its 558 pages contain articles by experts on 
home nursing, nature study, and outdoor living, attempting to transmit to the 
10 to 18-year-old Girl Scout the knowledge and experience needed to earn 
badges on citizenship, pioneering, star gazing, and telegraphy, as well as the 
more traditionally feminine child nursing, cooking, and gardening. In 
addition to group badges for Scout Aide, Woodcraft Scout, Scout Neighbor, 
and Land Scout, all of them including components of health or homemaking, 
there are instructions for military drill, with variations in the types of 
marching steps and orders to give so that the groups of Girl Scouts will pivot 
and file off in columns. These activities are presented as means to discipline 
and impressive displays for the public. 

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No subsequent Girl Scout handbook has held so much information, 
expected so much of the reader, or supplemented so thoroughly the 
traditional expectations of girls with physical challenges and the tools for 
outdoor exploration. Written at the time of a peculiar conjunction of 
Progressive-era interest in social welfare through play and a war-expanded 
need for everyone's help, Scouting for Girls spoke to the 10 to 18-yearold girl 
as a capable, efficient being who could prepare herself to have the only cool 
head in an emergency. Its admonitions to her appealed to her desire to make 
large contributions to society, presenting personal hygiene, safety 
knowledge, and physical fitness as preparations for hero(in)ism. This 
instruction manual was the organization's first to develop technical pictures 
of girls saving the drowning and using semaphore flags, instruction which, in 
the two earlier books, 1913 and its revision in 1916, used drawings of Boy 
Scouts (1913, 24) or soldiers (1916, 77) for signaling and of boys for 
lifesaving (1913, 92-93; 1916, 122-23).6 The 1920 handbook represents the 
organization's increasing adaptations to its audience of girls, but it also 
displays the Girl Scouts' continued appropriation of the uniform color, 
insignia, and opportunities of the unaffiliated Boy Scouts of America. Low 
and her first national secretary wanted to use the Boy Scout emblem, the 
fleur-de-lis, as the Girl Scout symbol, but Chief Scout Executive James West 
politely objected, suggesting instead the trefoil, or three-leafed clover, that 
Baden-Powell had assigned to the British girls' program (West, letter to 
Johnston, 9 July 1913).7 The Boy Scouts of America at the national level 
jealously guarded its uniform, name, and insignia with patents, trademarks, 
and legal action against imitators (Macleod 156-57). The organizational 
similarities, the breadth of the handbook, and the image of Girl Scouts as 
near-adults lasted only as long as this handbook was in effect: the 1927 
revision of Scouting for Girls cut the length by 94 pages and removed many 
of the analogies to soldiers. By the time of the minor 1929 revision of the 
handbook, the uniform color had become grey-green, the handbook itself 
featured a green rather than a khaki cover, and troop "officers" (Lieutenant 
and Captain) had become "leaders" (Girl Scouts of the USA, Highlights 10). 
In their early incarnations, though, the captain, lieutenant, optional second 
lieutenant--a girl 16 or older--and corporal, or assistant patrol leader, 
represented the military values of authority and obedience. 

The pseudo-military appearance of the khaki-clad Girl Scouts and their 
khaki-clad handbook were a passing phenomenon, a reflection of an 
unparalleled moment in women's and girls' history. At a time when women 
did not serve in the U.S. armed forces, the program's inclusion of drill and 
military uniforms opened an imaginary portal to a realm of ritual and 
service from which women were excluded. General public acceptance of 

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the military features of the program suggests that its values outweighed 
American conceptions of gender norms. 

The Girl Scout program, like the analogous one for boys, used pledges 
and laws-a series of statements about the positive character traits of all 
members-as the repeated, spoken affirmations that accompanied the girls' 
ceremonies and weekly meetings. These laws asserted the honor, loyalty, 
helpfulness, friendliness, courtesy, obedience, cheerfulness, and thrift of the 
Girl Scout, as well as her kindness to animals and her physical and moral 
cleanliness. Initial entrance as a "tenderfoot" required memorizing the Girl 
Scout motto, slogan, laws, and promise, and leaders were to incorporate 
these statements of faith into their regular activities. In consequence, 
seemingly values-neutral Girl Scout pastimes carried the ideals of the 
national organization. The motto and slogan, "Be Prepared" and "Do a Good 
Turn Daily," conveyed an ethic of service, as did the promise, "On My 
Honor, I will Try: / To do my duty to God and my Country. / To help other 
people at all times. / To obey the Scout Laws" (1920 [xii]). Service in the 
promise is religious, patriotic, and social. It is left to the individual to 
determine what counts as service to God, country, and others, and when one 
is doing one's best. However, the rest of the handbook, and, one presumes, 
troop leaders' instruction, gives a context to the kinds of preparation and 
service that "count" in the Girl Scout ethos. 

The badge and rank ceremonies prescribed in the handbook echo 
military rites and underscore the ideology of the program. For example, the 
presiding Girl Scout official tells First Class candidates, "'You should 
thoroughly understand by now the meaning of duty to God and Country, the 
privilege of helpfulness to others, and the seriousness of the Scout Laws'" 
(50). The First Class Girl Scout promises to pay back "in generous service" 
the effort that many people contributed to her achievement of First Class 
(51). When a Girl Scout meets the requirements for Scouting's highest 
award, the Golden Eaglet--now obsolete--the Girl Scout official emphasizes 
to the Golden Eaglet "'that you understand now even better than the average 
Girl Scout that your great principles of duty to God and Country, 
helpfulness to others, and obedience to the Scout Laws, are lessons that no 
Scout can fully learn as long as she lives'" (53). This understanding stems 
from the Girl Scout "training." 

Recurring themes in the handbook clarify the focus of Girl Scout 
preparedness: Girl Scout training can prevent accidents or rescue people 
involved in them; Girl Scout activities such as camping and hiking ensure 
girls' physical health; and members of the organization learn efficient 
methods of housecleaning and childcare. The handbook represents 
membership in the Girl Scouts as strategic preparation for womanhood in 
the twentieth century. It calls for a return to the broad-scale usefulness of 
pioneers, but wants girls to combine old-style resourcefulness with the 

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new household efficiency and civic action expected of twentieth-century 
women. The woman of tomorrow, while doing some of the same activities 
as the woman of yesterday, has a new self-confidence and pride of 
accomplishment: The Girl Scout makes bandages and clothes, bathes babies, 
or gets meals "quick[l]y and cheerfully," and takes pride in her badges and 
"the sense of independence that comes from all this skill with her hands" 
(35). First Aid gives the Girl Scout "a real glow of pleasure to feel that... she 
may be able to save a life some day," and invalid cooking and nursing "may 
make her a valuable asset in case of any great disaster or epidemic" (35). Girl 
Scouts did, in fact, help during the flu epidemic of 1918. 

I am emphasizing in this article the adventurous and nontraditional 
aspects of the 1920 Girl Scout handbook, but the adventurous sections of the 
handbook are interspersed with more routine expectations of girls. The 
grandly named Scout Aide designation, for example, goes to girls who earn a 
group of badges in home economics, child care, First Aid, home nursing, 
public health, and personal health. The text seeks to establish the primacy of 
these skill sets: 

This badge will probably be regarded by the outside world 
as the most important decoration the Girl Scouts can win, 
and all Scouts who will try for it should realize that those 
who wear it will represent the organization in a very 
special sense and will be eager to prove their practical 
knowledge and ability in the important subjects it stands 
for. (105) 

Household economics, the "Scout Aide" section of the handbook asserts, is 
"the great general business and profession of women" (105). The text 
optimistically expects Girl Scouts and voting women to wield power over 
home and health issues: "Practical knowledge of Personal Health, Public 
Health and Child Care will add to the efficiency and happiness of this nation, 
and the women of today have a better chance to control these things than 
ever before" (105). The organization's domestic feminism, and its emphasis 
on intelligently handled home management, place it firmly within the home 
economics movement.8 

At the same time, the text challenges the reader to prepare herself 
physically and mentally for whatever circumstances might require. The 
preparation primarily involves safety knowledge, first-aid training, and 
physical fitness, as well as developing keen observation skills and visual 
judgment of distances, heights, and bulk measurements. The motivational 
text calls the attitude of being a giver rather than a taker "the spirit that 
makes the older Scout into a fine, useful, dependable woman, who does 

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so much good in her community that she becomes naturally one of its 
leading citizens, on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone is proud. 
It may end in the saving of a life, or in some great, heroic deed for one's 
country" (6). While the latter phrase sounds like war service, the reader is 
reminded that life-saving and grand patriotic acts are simply "bigger 
expressions of the same feeling that makes the smallest Tenderfoot try to do 
at least one good turn a day" (6; emphasis in original). Even so, lifesaving is 
one of the goals of Girl Scout preparation enumerated in Section II, 
"Principles of the Girl Scouts." The Girl Scouts is also preparing for "the big 
duties" (presumably marriage and children) and training her body to be "the 
fine machine it was meant to be" (3). Personal health and vigor, home 
efficiency, and emergency preparedness are the stated goals of Girl 
Scouting. Community service is also a version of "do a good turn daily" (3). 
As the text explains: 

This is the spirit that makes the older Scout into a fine, 
useful, dependable woman, who does so much good in her 
community that she becomes naturally one of its leading 
citizens on whom everyone relies, and of whom everyone 
is proud. It may end in the saving of a life, or in some 
great, heroic deed for one's country. (6). 

The hope of performing a grand act is continually dangled before the Girl 
Scout, but she is also trained for the mundane daily tasks that are more likely 
to be her lot. 

The Scout: A Pioneer Ideal for the Twentieth Century 

The handbook's central metaphor for the girl is the scout, the (male) 
handyman of the frontier. The passages on scouts and their hardiness refer to 
an idealized pre-technological era when men and women could fend for 
themselves. These passages' references to the resourcefulness of earlier 
Americans offer a key to the cross-gendering of the model for the young girl. 
Worries about the rising generation's self-sufficiency trump concerns about 
appropriately gendered behavior. Section IV, "Who Are the Scouts?" 
invokes the tougher pre-machine-age past: Although "[o]ur pioneer 
grandmothers might have been frightened by the sight of one of our big 
touring cars, for instance, or puzzled as to how to send a telegram, ... they 
knew an immense number of practical things that have been entirely left out 
of town-bred lives, and for pluck and resourcefulness in a tight place it is to 
be doubted if we could equal them today" (17). The text decries the laziness 
and helplessness bred by the attitude embedded in the Kodak advertising 
slogan "You push a button and we do the rest" (17). 

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On the frontier, "there was no button to press, as we all know, and nobody to 
'do the rest': everybody had to know a little about everything and be able to 
do that little pretty quickly, as safety and even life might depend on it" (17; 
emphasis in original). The anxiety that technology is edging out practical 
knowledge reflects the same concern that fueled John Dewey's educational 
philosophy. 

While Scouting for Girls offers several young girls as examples of grit 
and determination on the frontier, its foundational models of the self reliant 
person are male, "the old 'Scouts,' of whom Natty Bumpo, in Cooper's 
famous old Indian tales is the great example" (17). The frontier scouts 

were explorers, hunters, campers, builders, fighters, 
settlers, and in an emergency, nurses and doctors 
combined. They could cook, they could sew, they could 
make and sail a canoe, they could support themselves 
indefinitely in the trackless woods, they knew all the 
animals and plants for miles around, they could guide 
themselves by the sun and stars, and finally, they were 
husky and hard as nails and always in the best of health 
and condition. (18) 

This romanticized image of the Scout--living, incidentally, without women's 
contributions--is the central metaphor of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouting and 
appears "whole" in the 1920 Girl Scout handbook. The 1927 edition 
regenders the passage, making it refer to "our pioneer grandmothers" (14) 
rather than to men. Because the American program echoed the "Scout" name 
in the second year of its version of "Girl Guiding," the 1920 passage on male 
"Scouts" presents the same standards for girls. While one might view Girl 
Scouting as "softer" than Boy Scouting, the 1920 text enables a self-vision 
for Girl Scouts that relies on further male examples, the scout as policeman, 
and the cowboy. The scouts "had to act as rough and ready police (for there 
were no men in brass buttons in the woods!) and be ready to support the 
right, and deal out justice, just as our 'cow-boys' of later ranch days had to 
prevent horse stealing" (18). 

The handbook makes its transition from "scouts" to Girl Scouts via 
examples of nineteenth-century "brave, handy girls, who were certainly 
Scouts if ever there were any" (21). These girls include the Quebecoise 
Magdeleine de Verchères, who fended off an Indian attack with the help of 
her younger brothers for eight days (21), pioneer and future suffrage leader 
Anna Howard Shaw (25-26), and wilderness guide Sacajawea (21-22). The 
Girl Scouts could also gain inspiration from the handbook's 

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accounts of Russian girls assisting in the Russian Revolution by delivering 
state secrets for revolutionary leaders (30). Seemingly endorsing the 
revolution, the text recommends similar readiness on the part of American 
Girl Scouts: "All we have to do is to fix Scout habits in our hearts and hands, 
and then when our Country calls us, we shall be as ready as the little Russian 
Scouts were" (31). In the same way that folklorist Jay Mechling yearned for 
life-saving opportunities as a young Boy Scout (36), Girl Scouts could hope 
for opportunities for bravery or helpfulness during a war: "Instances like 
these are very exceptional; they could not occur to one in ten thousand of us; 
but we stay-at-homes can always remind ourselves that it was the obedience, 
the quickness, and the skill learned in quiet, every-day Scouting that made 
these few rise to the opportunity when it came" (31). 

Camping and the Twentieth-Century Girl 

The handbook emphasizes camping and hiking as the means to health 
and as preparation for patriotic service. The aspects of camping highlighted 
in this handbook are those that recover a supposedly lost connection to 
nature and those that build stamina. As the section on "Girl Scout Camping" 
puts it, "A Girl Scout likes to hike and camp. She learns to know the stars 
and becomes acquainted with the plants and animals about her. She gains 
independence from her ability to help herself, and health and strength from 
exercise in the sunshine and fresh air" (313). 

Camping's development of self-reliance is particularly touted in the 
passages excerpted from the writings of Baden-Powell and his wife Olave. A 
Girl Guide handbook passage entitled "How Camping Teaches the Guide 
Law" tells of a man going naked into the American woods to learn to supply 
all of his needs-including clothing-for himself: 

In this way, he lived for over a month in the wild, and 
came out in the end very much better in health and spirits 
and with a great experience of life. For he had learned to 
shift entirely for himself and to be independent of the 
different things we get in civilization to keep us going in 
comfort. (Robert and Olave Baden-Powell, qtd. in 1920, 
36). 

The Baden-Powells use this story to explain the frequent camping in the Boy 
Scouts and Girl Guides: '''[I]n camp life we learn to do without so many 
things which while we are in houses we think are necessary, and find that we 
can do for ourselves many things where we used to think ourselves helpless'" 
(Baden-Powells, qtd. in 1920, 36). The passage hints 

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at Robert Baden-Powell's anxiety about "softness," or race degeneration, an 
anxiety that fueled the eugenics movement that sought to breed a genetically 
superior generation.9 

It wasn't only the British Baden-Powell who sought to recover lost 
reserves of physical and moral strength. The relatively new sport of leisure 
camping via Girl Scouting resonated with early twentieth-century Americans 
seeking simplicity and a connection to the past. Horace Kephart, whose 
Camping and Woodcraft manual is liberally excerpted in the "Camping for 
Girl Scouts" section of Scouting for Girls, specialized in wilderness survival. 
Kephart moved to a remote mountainous region of western North Carolina 
after a nervous breakdown, a crisis in his marriage, and the loss of his job as 
a library director, seeking to "realize the past in the present" (Ellison 352). 
His 1906 Camping and Woodcraft, drawing on his backwoods experiences, 
"became in time the standard work in its field" (352-53). Kephart's attempts 
to recover his equilibrium through outdoor life are akin to the 1920 
handbook's laments over a fading pioneer heritage and its admonitions to the 
reader to learn to shift for herself outdoors without mechanical aids other 
than a compass. Kephart's inclusion in the Girl Scout manual suggests--as 
does the handbook's reference list of camping manuals aimed at girls as well 
as boys10--that camping for girls was becoming an accepted part of American 
culture as city dwellers increasingly retreated to nature, even if they didn't 
stay there. 

The girl camper gets to perform novel duties and carry dangerous 
equipment. The camping group is advised to carry a hatchet (341), and the 
wood scout, the youngest girl in the eight-member Girl Scout patrol, "carries 
a spade, pick axe and cutting axe" (326). The "handy scout" oversees all 
tools and makes furniture and bridges, as well as being "field engineer, 
carpenter, ... the general maker, mender, patcher, splicer and tinker," 
repairing tents and clothing as well (326). The "lighter" "has care of the 
lamps, lanterns, candles, matches, oils, and all 'leaky' stuff' and "must keep 
the camp well illuminated" (326). She also is responsible for sending 
telegraphs and solving electrical problems. The camping experience 
simultaneously offers new responsibilities and the fun of playing with 
dangerous things. Since girls had not typically gone on hunting trips, these 
experiences were newer for them than for Boy Scouts. Also, the instructions 
expect independence of the girls, with no males and no adults other than the 
captain and lieutenant on hand. 

Drawing on male-authored texts, the camping material emphasizes 
physical toughness. For example, the "Camping for Girl Scouts" section 
opens with Walt Whitman's poem "The Open Road": "Henceforth I whimper 
no more, postpone no more, need nothing, / Strong and content, I travel the 
open road..." (313). Like the Kipling poem "The Red Gods" that appears in 
the mountain-climbing section, the Whitman poem 

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celebrates physical vigor and knowledge of outdoor lore. While "The Red 
Gods" features unnamed male protagonists, the Girl Scout material advises 
girls to adapt themselves to the demands of camping. Clothing choices also 
come into play: "When living out of doors, one may make shift for shelter, or 
even go hungry for a space, but there is no substitute for comfortable 
clothing that is safe to use if one would keep well" (317). Instead of wearing 
skirts, which dangerously limit hikers' range of motion, the Girl Scout should 
wear "knickerbockers or bloomers" (314). The Girl Scout is advised how to 
care for her feet so she can endure hikes: she is to change her socks daily, 
never wearing damp ones, and to wear sensible shoes (315) because "no 
army is stronger than its feet" (316). 

To cover ground more quickly in the country, the Girl Scouts are to use 
the Scout's pace of alternating a fixed number of steps running and the same 
number of steps walking. They are to commit to the Girl Scout training to 
learn some simple camping rules and build strength and outdoor know-how 
by hiking, missing their hikes for only "the worst weather"; even "Soft rain 
or snowstorms are very pleasant to hike in" (314). 

Apart from this advice to hike in light rain or snow, the camping 
instructions enable Girl Scout officials to present health advice in an 
adventure context. For example, the Girl-Scout-sponsored text suggests, 
"Keep the feet straight when walking. If a Girl Scout notices the tracks of an 
Indian, the first hikers in this country, she will find them invariably straight 
forward" (316). This advice to girls on posture uses a presumably male 
Indian as its model and follows up the point with a military reference: 
"Scientists have invariably agreed that the dancing school habit of turning 
out toes is one of the causes of flat feet, which disqualified so many men for 
army service" (316). 

Mountain-climbing represents the crowning achievement of the 
accomplished Girl Scout camper and hiker. In a section entitled "Mountain 
Climbing" by Eloise Roorbach, we learn that 

Mountain Climbing is the final test of a Girl Scout's 
perseverance in following a trail, in endurance, courage 
and woodcraftmanship. . . . No Girl Scout's education is 
complete until she has seen mountain peaks like waves of 
the sea flashing with snow white foam, piercing the blue 
sky as far as the eye can reach; clouds forming below her 
feet; breathed rare air found only in high places drunk 
from the pure source of rivers, and heard the mighty roar 
of waterfalls. A climb to a high mountain top is an 
experience that will enrich and influence the entire after 
life of whoever has had the hardihood and wisdom to 
accomplish it. (367) 

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As elsewhere in the handbook, this text challenges the Girl Scout to develop 
the needed strength and endurance for the task. Before tackling "this last test 
of scouting," one should "be in perfect physical trim, be able to sleep on the 
ground, have learned to live simply" (367). The author's own mountain-
climbing trip to the new Roosevelt National Park there "found her in better 
physical trim, vigor, strength, and with keenness of vision and joy of life 
increased daily" (370). The considerable space the handbook devotes to 
practical instruction in outdoor recreation demonstrates the social 
acceptability of these vigorous sports for women. 

Being Prepared for Emergencies 

Throughout the handbook, safety, particularly related to new 
technologies, arises as a concern. The Girl Scout is to learn safety measures 
on her own account and must be prepared to rescue the drowning, provide 
artificial respiration, and put out fires or give First Aid. Readying herself for 
these practical needs establishes the girl's Scout identity: "If the Scout with 
the badge keeps her head and shows herself steady, reliable and willing, 
when called upon to help in illness or emergencies, she proves herself a true 
Scout who is living up to the Scout motto of 'BE PREPARED'" (217). 
Baden-Powell suggests that the well-trained Girl Guide (or Scout) can avoid 
the hysteria and revulsion that some people exhibit in an emergency: '''When 
you see an accident in the street or people injured in an air raid, the sight of 
the torn limbs, the blood, the broken bones, and the sound of the groans and 
sobbing all make you feel sick and horrified and anxious to get away from it-
if you're not a Girl Guide. But that is cowardice: your business as a Guide is 
to steel yourself to face it and to help the poor victim'" (Baden-Powell, qtd. 
in 1920, 29). 

While they appeal to the reader's self-importance and thirst for 
adventure, the Girl Scout writers are serious about the safety information 
and about a sense of modernity that is curiously nostalgic in its model of 
womanhood. The Girl Scouts, in fact, with other youth organizations, 
became an important conduit of safety knowledge. 

Among the rather routine safety advice in the handbook are admonitions 
to pay attention to one's surroundings on the street and to avoid strange dogs. 
The Girl Scout is also to prevent fires at home by keeping cloth, paper, and 
fabrics away from flames and keep stairs and hallways clear, and redressing 
"innumerable other careless things which will occur to you" (166). The 
modernization of America, with its burgeoning cities, produced the need for 
advice about using public transportation: "In getting off [street]cars you 
should face in the direction in which the car is going. A simple rule is to get 
off by holding a rod with 

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the left hand and putting the right foot down first. This brings you facing the 
front of the car and prevents your being swept off your feet by the 
momentum of the car" (165). Readers also get information on preventing and 
treating electric shock (198-99), preventing and extinguishing fires fueled by 
kerosene, gasoline, or benzene (202), and avoiding natural gas fires (202). 

If there is a fire in the building, the Girl Scout is to "[k]eep cool, in order 
to remember what to do, and do it quickly" (200). She is given not only 
knowledge but authority: "Turn in a fire at once. Send someone else if 
possible who may not know what to do to the fire" (200). The Girl Scout, 
presumably, will know because of the handbook she has studied. She is, 
though, to follow the instructions of the firefighters when they come because 
"they know exactly what to do" (201). She should "Keep the doors and 
windows closed if possible to prevent draughts from fanning the flames to 
fiercer effort" (201). If she must enter a burning building she should "leave 
some responsible person guarding the door, in order that it may not be left 
open by some one in excitement and the flames fanned beyond control" 
(201). The child or teen is apparently making the decisions about who is 
responsible. Whether real situations ever worked out this way, girls in the 
text are presented as potential rescuers and people in charge. 

The Girl Scout handbook simultaneously gives children additional rules 
to follow and admits them into a world of adult knowledge and superiority 
that many children covet. The rescue charge is empowering and genderless. 
The child learns what to do for a rather thorough list of accidents. She is to 
"give the most help and relief immediately, before expert help can arrive, and 
to have the victim in the best condition possible for the doctor when he 
comes, in order that he may not have to undo whatever has been done before 
he can begin to give the patient relief from his suffering" (166). The text 
details the now-familiar First Aid procedures, such as keeping the crowd 
back, loosening the patient's clothing, turning the head so the patient won't 
choke on his or her vomit, and arranging to move the person by fireman's lift, 
a seat of four arms and hands, or an improvised stretcher (167-69). The Girl 
Scout learns to deal with heat exhaustion, choking, and dislocations and 
fractures (17678), and she learns to make a range of bandage types and 
determine which body part each bandage works best for. The current 
saturation of Red Cross teaching makes these concepts familiar to us; the idea 
of children and teens providing such care was radical in the World War I era 
and the 1920s. The rescue material presumes a fit, capable girl reader, or 
encourages her to become that, and the technical instructions take the girl 
reader seriously. 

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Monitoring the Young Girl's Health 

In addition to caring for the health of the people around her, the Girl 
Scout was to monitor and safeguard her own health. The health messages in 
Scouting for Girls represent a core value that I believe made Girl Scouting's 
less traditional activities for girls acceptable to parents and volunteers. The 
text recommends outside play to give the body the air, heat, and sunlight it 
needs (263), and suggests when in a day to drink six glasses of water. To 
earn the "Health Winner" badge required for the Scout Aide designation, 
girls had to fill in a health chart to track their growth and ensure that they had 
daily bowel movements, twice-weekly baths, and daily exercise, outdoor 
work, and play (271). The girl was to compare her height and weight to a 
national standard for her age, and if she were underweight, she could follow 
the advice in the manual (269-70). Although one might argue that the girls 
are being protected as potential mothers of the nation, Girl Scouting's 
approach to health is the same as Boy Scouting's and offers the same 
remedies: outdoor exercise, active games, and self-monitoring. A 1924 
school health textbook by physician Woods Hutchinson offers the same 
advice of cultivating play for health, suggesting that girls read the Boy Scout 
handbook as well as joining girls' groups (156). 

The text recommends that girls practice daily setting-up exercises--a 
series of stretches (65). The girl reader is introduced to the setting-up 
exercises as a way of "oiling and testing" the machine of the body (273). If 
one neglects this, "the machinery gets rusty and clogged, or the instrument 
gets out of tune and makes horrid noises" (273). The text suggests a morning 
tune-up "before you put on your clothes" and at night to "rest the tired parts 
and exercise the parts that have not been used, so you can even things up" 
(273). Setting-up exercises, like much else in Girl Scouting, have a military 
origin. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the "setting-up drill" or 
"setting-up exercise" as "a course of gymnastic exercises used to give an 
erect carriage"; its first entry, A Military System of Gymnastic Exercises 
(1862) by Archibald Maclaren, refers to "The setting up and position drill of 
recruits." 

Another military-derived drill, marching maneuvers, had health benefits 
and helped captains to handle troops "in an orderly and dignified manner" 
(84). Drill, used in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries for boys' 
physical fitness classes, offered adult instructors control. The 13 pages 
devoted to "Girl Scout Drill" praise drill formations as ways to give "an erect 
carriage, alert habit of obedience, and ability to think or act quickly" (84). 
Tenderfoots learn to stand at attention, mark time, march, and do half-step, 
side step, and back step, all in quick time or double time (88). They learn to 
march by flank, move to the rear, and change step. The more complex 
Second-Class Drill includes "oblique march," in which 

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Girl Scouts march at an angle in two facing columns, and turning on fixed 
and moving pivots (94). The even harder First-Class Drill includes 
diminishing the front of a column of squads. At the weekly meetings, while 
lined up for drill, the Girl Scouts underwent military inspection. The Captain 
checked the girls "for posture, and for personal appearance, which should be 
neat and clean in every particular, and uniform, which should be correct as 
to style, length, placing of insignia, etc." (56). Traditional expectations of 
good grooming and posture for girls thus assumed the novelty of soldierly 
training. 

Conclusion 

Girl Scouting of the early twentieth century provided a blend of 
separate-spheres thinking with attempts to offer girls the same outdoor 
opportunities available to boys. The organization was committed from its 
founding to instructing the girls in the details of traditional domesticity, but 
Low and other leaders insisted on procuring for girls the hiking and camping 
experiences, exercise, and military-style uniforms that Boy Scouts enjoyed, 
albeit in an altered fashion. The women who re-made the Girl Scout program 
from Boy Scout and Girl Guide models found ways to combine boys' 
pursuits with those more traditionally offered to girls. In doing so, they 
created a uniquely twentieth-century venture that has twenty-first-century 
resonances. Whatever their gains outside the home, most American women 
still have responsibility for work within the home, and the Girl Scouts 
continue to offer a girls-only program that addresses questions of gender-
equity as well as providing some training in domestic tasks. As historian 
Leslie Paris has said of girls' summer camps, Girl Scouting's "capacity for 
allowing girls to reinvent themselves was an important part of [its] power 
and appeal" (49). The 1920 handbook allowed girls to reinvent themselves as 
"male"--capable, independent, leaders--while at the same time fitting into the 
culture in which they were raised and meeting the expectations of their 
families and peers. Today, when Girl Scouting focuses on addressing 
problems commonly facing girls and seeks to expand girls' opportunities in 
math, the sciences, and technology, the anachronistic lessons in signaling and 
knot-tying still address those early fears that technology would replace 
American's ability to fend for themselves. The Scouting game cloaked 
traditional messages for children's and girls' behavior, but it also opened 
some new imaginative possibilities. 

NOTES 

       1 Charles E. Strickland praises Low's perseverance in overcoming her "Southern belle" 
upbringing to create new roles, noting her private championship 

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of women's suffrage though the organization remained silent on the matter before 1920. Mary 
Aickin Rothschild argues that Girl Scout officials promoted domestic feminism, deliberately 
widening girls' opportunities within the context of marriage expectations and an updated version 
of the well-prepared homemaker (115). Sherrie A. Inness, on the other hand, sees the program's 
active aspects as promoting a "fleeting sense of agency" masking its conservative agenda of 
pointing girls toward marriage and motherhood that terminate careers (234). Julia Kirk 
Blackwelder contends that the Girl Scouts in the teens and twenties taught girls to expect a 
career as well as marriage and children, noting that middle-class girls--Scouting's largest 
audience--could afford that novel expectation (86). 

2 Katie Kent briefly notes the contradictory impulses in the Girl Scout organization of "an 
emphasis on patriotism, duty, religiosity, and purity" and "the establishment of a social sphere 
for women in which they could wield power, assume male military titles, aid in national defense, 
and participate in physical activities formerly denied them" (353). 

3 For an account of women's organized efforts during the Great War, see William J. Breen, 
chapters seven to eight. 

4 The 1920 handbook urges Captains and Lieutenants to read the leaders' handbooks of 
what it dubs allied organizations, the Boy Scouts, Girl Guides, YWCA Girl Reserves, and Girls' 
Clubs of the National League of Women Workers (545), which show that despite differing 
terminology, "our ultimate aim and our broad general principles are precisely the same" (544). 

5 See Rothschild's "To Scout or to Guide?" for a discussion of West's opposition to the Girl 
Scout name and the to-him overly boyish nature of the girls' scouting activities. 

6 For ease of reference, I cite the handbooks by their publication years rather than their 
authors' names. The three different authors and two different titles of the four manuals cited 
make the usual reference by author or author and brief title difficult for the reader to follow. The 
1913 handbook, How Girls Can Help Their Country, lists Savannah naturalist W. J. Hoxie as its 
author, though anecdotal evidence suggests that Juliette Low revised the Girl Guide material that 
formed its core (see Schultz and Lawrence 320). The 1916 handbook of the same title lists Low 
as the copyright holder, but the title page names only Robert and Agnes Baden-Powell, as the 
authors of the text adapted for the American book. The 1920 handbook, Scouting for Girls, 
names "Girl Scouts" as its author and "Girl Scouts Inc." as its publisher, as does the significantly 
abridged 1927 handbook of the same title. 

7 The Girl Scouts did, in fact, adopt the shamrock, or trefoil, as their insignia. 
8 Rima D. Apple and Joanne Pas set link Girl Scouting and high school home 

economics classes in an illuminating way to examine girls' socialization into domesticity. 
9 Michael Rosenthal examines at length Baden-Powell's and the British government's 

worries about the deterioration of the British "race" in Chapter 5 

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of The Character Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement. 
10 The recommended camping books include Camping and Hiking, Campward Ho!, The 

Boy Camp Manual, The Camp Fire Girls' Vacation Book, and Camp Kits and Camp Life as well 
as Wilderness Homes. The range of this list and the inclusion of other organizations' resources 
as well as works on the playground movement indicate that Girl Scout officials saw themselves 
as participating in a broader recreational movement whose proponents had similar aims. 

WORKS CITED 
 
 
Andrews, Howard R. Letter to Colier [Colin] H. Livingstone. 15 Oct. 1918. "Boy 

Scouts of America—Controversy; Comments—Local Scouts; Alabama-
Wisconsin." File box. Girl Scout Archives. National Historic Preservation 
Center. Girl Scouts of the USA, New York. 

Apple, Rima D., and Joanne Passet. "Learning to Be a Woman: Lessons from 
 Girl Scouting and Home Economics, 1920-1970." Defining Print Culture 
 for Youth: The Cultural Work of Children s Literature. Ed. Anne Lundin and 
 . Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited, 2003. 139-54. 
Beard, Lina, and Adelia Beard. On the Trail: An Outdoor Bookfor Girls. New 
 York: Scribner's, 1915. 
Blackwelder, Julia Kirk. Now Hiring: The Feminization of Work in the United 
 States, 1900-1995. College Station: Texas A&M UP, 1997. 
Breen, William J. Uncle Sam at Home: Civilian Mobilization, Wartime Federalism, 
 and the Council of National Defense, 1917-1919. Contributions in American 
 Studies 70. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1984. 
Edmy, J. B. Letter to Girl Scout National Headquarters. 27 Nov. 1921. Typescript 

copy. "Boy Scouts of America—Controversy; Comments--Local Scouts: 
Alabama-Wisconsin." File box. Girl Scout Archives. National Historic 
Preservation Center. Girl Scouts of the USA, New York. 

Ellison, George. "Kephart, Horace Sowers." Dictionary of North Carolina 
Biography. Vol. 3, H-K. Ed. William S. Powell. Chapel Hill: U of North 
Carolina P, 1988. 352-53. 

Girl Scouts Inc. Scouting for Girls: Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts. New 
 York: Girl Scouts Inc., 1920. 
_______. Girl Scouts Inc. Scouting for Girls: Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts. 
 Abridged ed. New York: Girl Scouts Inc., 1927. 
Hoxie, W. J. How Girls Can Help Their Country. 1913. Facsim. ed. New York: 
 Girl Scouts of the U.S.A., 1972. 
Hutchinson, Woods. Building Strong Bodies. The Woods Hutchinson Health 
 Series. Boston: Houghton-Riverside, 1924. 
Inness, Sherrie A. "Girl Scouts, Camp Fire Girls, and Woodcraft Girls: The Ideology 

of Girls' Scouting Novels, 1910-1935." Continuities in Popular Culture: The 
Present in the Past and the Past in the Present and Future. Ed. Ray B. Browne 
and Ronald J. Ambrosetti. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State U Popular P, 
1993. 229-40. 

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Kent, Katie. "Girl Scouts." Oxford Companion to Women’s Writing. Ed. Cathy N. 
Davidson and Linda Wagner-Martin. New York: Oxford UP, 1995. 352-53. 

Parkins, J. H. Letter to Sybil M. Gordon. 10 Mar. 1922. Typescript copy. "Boy 
Scouts of America--Controversy; Comments--Local Scouts: Alabama-
Wisconsin." File box. Girl Scout Archives. National Historic Preservation 
Center. Girl Scouts of the USA, New York. 

Roberts, G. C. Letter to Girl Scout Headquarters. 19 Nov. 1921. Typescript copy. 
"Boy Scouts of America--Controversy; Comments--Local Scouts: Alabama-
Wisconsin." File box. Girl Scout Archives. National Historic Preservation 
Center. Girl Scouts of the USA, New York. 

Rothschild, Mary Aickin. "To Scout or To Guide? The Girl Scout-Boy Scout 
 Controversy, 1912-1941." Frontiers 6.3 (1981): 115-21. 
Rothschild, Mary, and Georgeanne Scheiner. "Girl Scouts." Girlhood in America: 
 An Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Ed. Miriam Forman-Brunell. Santa Barbara, CA: 
 ABC-Clio, 2001. 316-20. 
Schultz, Glady Denny, and Daisy Gordon Lawrence. Lady from Savannah: The 
 Life of Juliette Low. 1958. New York: Girl Scouts of the USA, 1988. 
Strickland, Charles E. "Juliette Low, the Girl Scouts, and the Role of American 
 Women." Woman’s Being, Woman’s Place: Female Identity and Vocation in 
 American History. Ed. Mary Kelley. Boston: Hall, 1979.252-64. 
Whitehead, George. Letter to Mary C. Clendenin, 22 Nov. 1920. "Boy Scouts of 

America--Controversy; Comments--Local Scouts: Alabama-Wisconsin." File 
box. Girl Scout Archives. National Historic Preservation Center. Girl Scouts of 
the USA, New York. 

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