4. May 1910
THE MEN OF TO-MORROW
by HARVEY LEIGH SMITH, Director of Boys' Work.
Using the Bedford branch of The Brooklyn Daily Eagle as the center of a circle with a two-mile radius, a statistical study reveals the fact that there are living within this circle 80.000 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 years. As there are 8.000.000 boys in America of these ages, we realize, that 1 per cent of them live right in the heart of Brooklyn.
Enough boys become of voting age each four years to hold the balance of power in a Presidential election. It is vital, therefore, that those who have at heart an interest in the future welfare of the country shall do what they can to raise the standard of morals and education among these boys who are to be “the men of to-morrow.”
There are a large number of organizations in Greater New York interested in promoting good citizenship among older boys – boys clubs, both inside and outside of the churches; settlement leaders, boys departments of Young Men's Christian associations and of Young Men'đ Hebrew and of Catholic associations.
Especial attention will be paid here to the various movements that tend to develop in the boys a lasting interest in life in the open. “Back to Nature” is a motto that means perhaps more to the growing boyhood than to any other class in the community.
The two distinguished men who arrive on the Mauretania to-morrow noon will undoubtedky do a great deal toward arousing a great interest among the boys of America in a most healthful and fascinating interest in everything that pertains to out-of-doors life. One of these men, W. B. Wakefield, honorable secretary, boys department Young Men's Christian Association, England, is also standing back of the huge organization known as the Boy Scouts. In England, Scatland, Germany and Australia this Boy Scout movement has spread with great rapidity, until already three hundred thousand boys are said to be enrolled and at work. Mr. Wakefield is accompanied by Charles Heald, tje national boys secretary of the Y.M.C.A., and they will tour America in the interests of the movement, opening their American trip in the Borough of Brooklyn Thursday afternoon.
VVVVVVV Charles Ernest Heald (⁕ asi 1871 – † po 1948, Anglie)
Narozen ve Windermere
Z Liverpoolu. Příjezd do New Yorku 6.5.1910
Bydliště Chislehurst, Anglie. ženatý.
Pokračoval pak do Kanady
Poslední zmínka ve volebních seznamech roku 1948 v Bexley, Kent 1948
Od roku 1957 volební právo Mildred C Heald pro roce 1960 se pravděpodobně provdala
The place of boyhood in the nations of the world : being the report of the second world conference of Y.M.C.A. workers among boys, held at Pörtschach am Zee, Austria, 30th May to 10th June, 1923 ^^^^^^
They will be the guests of the Brooklyn associations and a committee composed of chairmen of the boys department committees will show them some of the practical gymnasium work in the Eastern District and Bedford Branch gymnasiums during the afternoon. Mr. Post will show them the borough in his automobile in between these visits. John T. Barry and Charles L. Morse are arranging a complimentary dinner at the Union League Club, and at 8 o'clock in the evening they will be tendered a great public reception at the large men's building of the Bedford Branch Young Men's Christian Association, at the corner of Bedford avenue and Monroe street.
Ten thousand complimentary tickets for this affair are in circulation and they can be secured at any of the six branches of the Brooklyn Young Men's Christian Association. Big Brothers, teachers of boys classes in day and Sunday schools, settlement workers and people of like interests will be present in large numbers, and there is every reason to expect that as a result of the addresses of the evening there will be a large number of Seton Indian and Boy Scout clubs formed.
Ernest Thompson-Seton, author of “Wild Animals I Have Known,” “The Birch-Bark Roll of the Outdoor Life,” “Two Little Savages,” and other fascinating works, has consented to appear on the platform and speak at length on the subject “The Woodcraft Indians.”
Indian Play to Be Presented.
As a compliment to Mr. Seton the four tribes of Seton Indians will repeat their play, entitled “The Rescue of Winona.” This three-act pantomime was first given in the Bedford auditorium last Saturday night, and it was such a success that a committee of representative men insisted on its repetition on this occasion. When Lieutenant General Sir R. S. S. Baden-Powell, K.C.B., issued his handbook for instruction in good citizenship, entitled “Scouting for Boys,” he secured much valuable help from the works of Mr. Seton and his English lectures, and for this reason the Boys Scout movement in America will be closely allied with the already established Seton Indian plan for development of the virile, manly character so essential to American citizenship.
Twenty of the leading associations in America are now planning to demonstrate the possibilities of the Indian form of government for the “gang,” by going to the Adirondacks this summer under the personal direction of Mr. Thompson-Seton. Each association will pick out six reliable boys over 15 years of age and one competent volunteer leader, Harry Potter, Herbert Wichelns, Charles Glessing and Roger Wensley of the Bedford Indian Fraternity are scheduled to represented the association in this camp.
"Harry Potter" "Herbert Wichelns" "Charles Glessing" "Roger Wensley" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Wichelns
These boys, three of whom are medicine men of their respective tribes, are now engaged in building their large tepee. Special instruction in how to cook and in campcraft and woodcraft will fit the Brooklyn boys to occupy an important place in the Seton nation.
By the selection of these leading high school students to attend this camp, Bedford is thus training leaders who another year can conduct a camp solely in the interests of the Church and Non-Church Boys clubs of Brooklyn.
The Indian Idea and the Gang.
The Indian scheme of organizations should not be confused with “playing Indian” by the average small boy. There is something more far-reaching and scientific behind the plan than simply the temporary reaching of the boy for the day.
Just as boys enter their teens they begin to form natural groups or gangs. This tendency seems to correspond in the individual to the tribal stage of life in the race. The predatory instincts are manifested in a variety of ways. Gulick tells of a gang of boys, average age 13, who built a hut in the woods. After school hours they would assemble there, build a fire, sit around it, roast potatoes and tell stories. They would shoot arrows at trees and at targets; go on a war dance and rehearse the tactics of the Indians. One of the gang, having a father who did not understand boy nature, had an argument with him and he ran away from home. He traveled fifty miles on a freight train, begged food by the wayside and finally went to live with a gang of tramps. When a tramp finally took him home to his people this lad joined his old comrades and was at once their acknowledged hero. His experiences comanded the utmost admiration of the gang and he was their leader.
Brooklyn is full of parents who are intelligent enough to understand their boys when they are under twelve years of age, but after, when the boy reaches the “savage stage,” they have no more comprehension how to manage him than if there had never been a boy in the world before. They fail to realize that the time has come when the boy's natural instinct almost drives him to the woods. He wants to hunt and fish. He longs to sleep out of doors all night, rob the pantry and hide the loot of food and afterward eat it, dirt and all, in the glorious freedom of the forest.
They do not sympathize with the idea that he simply must be a member of a gang, and if there are no orchards to rob he may find a similar occupation for city boys where his instinct can be utilized in even more harmful ways. Mr. Jones, the father of Willie, lets Mrs. Jones have her own sweet way with the little savage. He is kept in nice clothes and she tries to make a “lady” of him. He may survive the operation and become a mollycoddle, but she must not be surprised if there comes a decided outbreak and Willie runs away in sheer self defense.
Our New York gangs of older toughs, which furnish so many recruits for the criminal classes, are developed by this treatment, because the boy's environment does not give him the opportunity of passing from the predatory stage to following legitimate interest in athletics and other forms of virile life.
The City Boy as a Savage
How can the lively city boy, living in a modern flat of four rooms and a bath, hope to live the life of a savage and thus have a right to went those emotions which, if bottled up, will ultimately cause an explosion?
Parents with red blood in their veins will have a chance to learn the answer to this question if they will go to hear Thompson-Seton on Thursday night. If all attend the lecture and the Indian Play and see the stereopticon pictures of camp life, then should the standing room sign be out early and the Police Department will have their hands full with the crowd that can not get in.
Boy Scouts and Indians.
What a Worker Among Boys From Australia Thinks of the Present Movement.
That the “Indian – Boy Scout – Woodcraftsmen” movement, as told above, is spreading rapidly over continents is evidenced by the situation of to-day. England is the center of this new idea for boys, for Lieutenant General Sir Baden-Powell founded the Boy Scouts there a shor time ago, and enrolled in the membership of the organization tens of thousands of enthusiastic boys and young men who had yearned vainy for such an institution. Australia took up the idea, with the result that from a handful of loyal spirits at Melbourne the number of scouts over the country grew to 20.000 in a single year. To supply this seeming great need for America came Ernest Thompson-Seton, who gathered about him boys and called them “Woodcraft Indians.”[1]
A prediction that this movement is to be universally popular would amount to a truism. Ever since Indians started scalping pioneer settlers, and Cooper wrote of the Mohicans, and Custer made his last stand before savage tribes, the American boy has felt the call of the wild, the influence of field and forest and stream, and has longed to be a true Indian brave, with all that the title implies. Every boy who has reached mental and physical responsibility has imagined himself a savage with tomahawk, bow and arrows, a hunter after wild beasts, an inmate of a cozy wigwam far out in the wild wastes of nowhere, in places where the peaceful pale face has never trod. Or he has thought himself a tall, willowy Indian youth, full of the spirit of springtime. Mayhap he has pictured himself a warrior cut off from the rest of the tribe, chanting over silent hilltops and along unfamiliar footpaths the signal of distress, “Yo-ho-e-e-e, yo-ho-e-e-e, yo-ho-e-e-e-chee.”
An apostle of the Boy Scout brigade in far-away Australia came to this country about a year ago to study the movement as it had progressed here, and to take back with him ideas that he thought would be of value to his young friends there. To prove that he was a good “scout” he wored part of his way over on streamers. This young man is Roy M. V. Brasted of Adelaide, Australia, assistant to Harvey Leigh Smith in the boy's work of the Bedford Branch of the Y.M.C.A.
Mr. Brasted has been carrying a group of High School students to the Brooklyn Disciplinary Training School during the past winter for the purpose of conducting the religious work there on Sunday mornings, and he reports that great good has been accomplished. He is planning sports for the boys of the Institution during the summer months. Into his Boys Club at the Bedford Presbyterian Church he is considering the advisability of bringing the Boy Scout influence as a means of arousing dormant interest. He expressed the hope that the Indians fraternity which Mr. Smith has planned to introduce in Brooklyn would soon have a large membership and predicted great success for it. He spoke glowingly of the progress of the Boy Scout work in own country.
“In the Indian fraternity,“ stated Mr. Brasted, “the boy is taken in hand just before he eaters his teens. He is living over again the history of the race, and passing through the savage tribal period.”
“He owes his alleglance to te tribe or gang. The boys are divided into tribe of from eight to twelwe members. The members of each tribe are given an opportunity for the expression of their inherent savage instincts. This is designed to satisfy the individual craving for primitive experiences and the pursuits of one's ancestors. The thirst for adventure, the dezire to camp out, hunt and fish, the opportunity for tribal contests, the instinctive love of animals, the desire to live close to nature and the tendency to worship heroes is taken into account in planning the activities of the tribes.”
“In order that each boy may have an opportunity for good all around development, a series of tests has been arranged, which gives the individual boy a chance to develop courage, self-control, endurance, loyalty, self-sacrifice, and many other characteristics.”
“The idea of being an Indian, of donning Indian dress, appeals to the boy, and in this way we give aid in these critical years and forestall savage instincts of later life.“
- ↑ Na Setonovy Indiány upozornily australské deníky již r. 1905 a vyvolaly větší pozornost, než v Anglii.
