Scouting, Volume 62, Number 8, November-December 1974 Page: 10
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conference to conserve children?"
The result was the First White House
Conference on the Care of Dependent
Children — with West as organizer
and secretary. A delegate said, "The
conference had no money and no
staff. Jimmy did all the work." Com-
mandeering a desk in the Government
Printing Office, he got out a transcript
of the proceedings in one week.
Roosevelt wrote him, "But for you
there would have been no confer-
ence."
Obviously this fireball was on the
rise. He sent out 2,000 announcements
that he was joining a big law firm —
but never hung his hat there. In the in-
terim he'd been offered a tryout as
executive officer of the newly-or-
ganized Boy Scout movement. He
started in 1911 at $25 a week (though
he'd asked $5000 a year). He stayed 32
years.
As Chief Scout Executive, West was
brusque and forceful. He had to be. He
led a band of strong-minded men who
seldom saw eye to eye. Most were out-
doorsmen who scorned him as a desk-
bound bureaucrat. One of them once
handed him a firebow and tinder, invit-
ing him to start a fire on which they
would cook their meal. No challenge
daunted the "Chief." He had never
used a fire-making set, and crouching
on his lame leg was painful, but he
threw aside his cane and went to
work. "It was a momentous occasion
in my life," he wrote later. "I did it, be-
lieve it or not, without a hitch and
without undue delay."
The BSA needed an authoritative
handbook in a hurry. West got experts
to whip up chapters on their special-
ties, then rushed to Frank Doubleday
and told the startled publisher he
needed 5,000 printed proofs in two
weeks, for mailing to educators. Dou-
bleday consulted foremen who ex-
plained why typesetting would take
three months. West stormed. The
printers finally snapped, "If you think
it can be done, show us how!"
"Give me a key to the plant," West
said.
He recruited volunteer Scouters for
night shifts to supplement Double-
day's day crew. He moved his own of-
fice there and worked virtually around
the clock. In 11 days he had his 5,000
proofs in the mail, and was on the
phone to educators asking their com-
ments. Six weeks later Scouts all over
the nation were using the new hand-
book.
The organization's popularity and
prestige boomed. West came under
pressure from educators, who urged
that Scout troops should be controlled
by school boards and led by teachers
and social workers; from the Ku Klux
Klan and military groups, which want-
ed to sponsor troops for indoctrina-
tion; from William Randolph Hearst
the newspaper publisher, who subsi-
dized a rival Boy Scout movement;
from labor unions, which feared that
Scouts would be strikebreakers; from
state governors, who proffered tax
money to pay Scoutmasters and thus
build their patronage machines. West
successfully resisted them all. And if
they dared question his authority, he
barked, "I am the Boy Scouts of Amer-
ica!"
But at times he would turn aside a
challenge with a strategically evasive
response. When Negroes in the South
began to form Scout troops, a delega-
tion warned him: "If a black boy gets
to be a Scout in our city, we'll burn
every Scout suit and handbook." West
kept his staff quietly extending Scout-
ing among blacks. Some field
organizers got threats, but nothing
worse. No uniforms were burned.
In 1925 a new president of the BSA
asked him, "What are Scouting's three
greatest needs? Please give me a list
tomorrow." West wrote: "1. training;
2. more training; 3. yet more training."
West founded a training school for
Scout executives, pushed local coun-
cils to train Scoutmasters and even
brought in a few critics of the move-
ment to take charge of nationwide
training programs. Among these were
Fred C. Mills of the American Red
Cross, who led tough new courses in
safety skills, first aid and camp leader-
ship; and a young man who told West
that American troops were inferior to
those in his homeland, Denmark. After
a probing discussion West hired the
brash Dane, William Hillcourt, to write
a handbook for patrol leaders and
later a handbook for Scoutmasters as
well as a monthly Green Bar Bill page
in Boys' Life. Mills and Hillcourt
stayed on the staff until their retire-
ment and are still active as writers and
trainers.
By 1926, at 50, West was silver-
haired and his face was sharply lined.
He could look as benign as St. Nick or
as fierce as a bulldog. His original
two-room headquarters had grown to
two floors of a Park Avenue skyscrap-
er, with an office staff of 300. Like
most big bosses in those days, West
ran his organization imperiously.
Ensconced at a mammoth elevated
desk as if it were a lookout post, he
surveyed all the glass-walled cubicles
on that floor. No smoking was al-
lowed, nor could any man be seen in
shirtsleeves. Each afternoon he toured
the office straightening window
blinds, questioning employees, per-
haps sweeping a desk clean with his
cane if it looked cluttered. He made
sure that office girls working late had
an escort home, and made frequent
telephone inquiries about those who
were ill.
"If he could cow you, he would,"
says one old-timer who knew him.
"But he respected those who stood up
to him. Once I went into his office by
appointment, and he just kept reading
his mail. After I'd stood there a minute,
I said, Til come back when it's con-
venient for you to see me.' He put the
mail down and gave me his full atten-
tion."
If displeased by a mishap in a local
council, West would phone long dis-
tance and vent his displeasure to the
Scout executive. Once he called to be-
rate Walter MacPeek because Elsie
Robinson, a syndicated columnist,
wrote a flippant piece about a Scout
publicity stunt she saw in his town.
"What happened, MacPeek?
Couldn't you control her?" West
shouted.
MacPeek, a mild man, lost his calm.
"Of all the difficult things I try to do in
this job, controlling newswomen must
be about the most difficult," he said.
"Well, I see what you mean," West
said. "You're right. Thank you."
West seldom fired anyone, and few
ever quit. Some who started as teen-
age typists or office boys stayed on for
decades. An office manager quit in a
huff because someone was promoted
over him. Years later West heard that
the man never found another job, and
was in a dollar-a-day flophouse. West
arranged for him to receive $50 each
month for the rest of his life.
In that era there were no pensions
for employees of the movement. Dur-
ing the depression of the 1930's some
retired Scout workers died broke, and
men still in harness often gave back
part of their salaries to keep office
girls paid. An alarming number of
Scout offices closed. West privately
feared the movement might die, but he
raged at anyone who voiced doubt.
Once a brash (continued on page 41)
10
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Boy Scouts of America. Scouting, Volume 62, Number 8, November-December 1974, periodical, November 1974; New Brunswick, New Jersey. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth353626/m1/10/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Boy Scouts of America National Scouting Museum.