New Mexico state record. (Santa Fe, N.M.) 1914-19??, 1916-12-22
THE BOY SCOUTS

SSU@ " SOOSVS
The Boy Scouts of the Capital City who
have been distributing Christmas trees for the
past few days are making themselves a USE
full factor in the life of the city and gaining
experience which will be of untold value to
them in future years.
In this city the boys are particularly for
tunate in having in Mr.. Council a leader who
understands both the boys and their needs and
who devotes an endless amount of time and
patience to their training. !
And right at this time our attention is
called to the solution of one of the most diff
ficult little questions with which mankind has
had to contend. The Boy Scout movement
and similar organizations have done what re-
form schools, corporal punishment and all the
stern parents in the world could never do.
The Boy Scout organization has taken the
youngster and studied him. 1t has found that
imprcssionable of Gods creatures. Right at
the time of life when he is budding into man
hood and growing into the dreamy adolescent
stage, the tendencies which are inherent in
the race are turned in the right direction.
This period, say the psychologists, COR
responds to a certain period in the develop
ment of the race when ronanticism and the
love of adventure stood uppermost in the
minds of men. And on the theory that the
individual in his shorter span of life %retraces
the history of the race, they have decided to
use this adventure period for the purpose of
lettering the youngerster.
Instead of permitting him to run in
gangs and burrow into the earth and after
the fashion of Tom Sawyer and every
other healthy kid who ever lived, make
heroes of all the bad men in the world, and
live a thousand different parts from pirate
chief to everyday highwaynan, during the
course of his wild play, they have taken that
pentup energy and started it off in the right
direction.
And the doubters are finding that boys
really take to good ideas faster and better than
to the bad ones. And they are finding that
in the kids who promised to become young
bandits and to fill our penal institutions al
most before they reached manhood, were
bad merely because they were not given the
proper chances 10 permit the passage of their
active little brains and hands.
The Boy Scouts organizations in this
section of the country are doing wonders.
Travel to any of the camps and watch these
youngsters drill. Find what they can do in
the line of woodcraft and the hundred other
useful things which every good Scout must
learn.
You will be surprised. The only COM
plant is that some mar did not find it out
before. No boy who ever lived was "Bad".
Given the right influences and the chance he
will develop as you never dreamed. At last
the world is coming to understand its future
men. And remember this-These who are get
ING "N 'ohcl' 81 uHS dlSclplnarV training
are going to be better men than their fathers
ever could have been. The Bow Scout orpa-
nizations, the Y. M. G. A., the games of
football, baseball and in fact every healthy
sport which awakens in his young brain the
desire to excel is worth a whole lot to this
world.
State Senator Fl. B. Holt, of Las Cruces
is the first man in the state whose hat has