The American Boy Scouts (ABS), officially American Boy Scout then United States Boy Scouts, officially United States Boy Scout, was an early American Scouting organization formed by William Randolph Hearst in 1910, following on from the formation of the Scouting movement by Robert Baden-Powell between 1903 and 1907. Near the end of its existence, the organizations also used the names: American Cadets and the U.S. Junior Military Forces.
The ABS was the rival of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) similar to the situation in the United Kingdom with Baden Powell's Boy Scouts and the British Boys Scouts who did not like the militarism of early British Scouting. For the most part there were only minor differences between the ABS and BSA despite BSA's charges that the ABS was drilling Scouts with rifles and Scouts were soliciting funds in uniforms.
Famous quotes containing the words american, boy and/or scouts:
“Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Who’s a boy gonna talk to if not his mother?”
—Donald E. Westlake (b. 1933)
“The medieval town, with frieze
Of boy scouts from Nagoya?”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)