The original Boy Scouts Handbook standardized American scouting and emphasized the virtues and qualifications for scouting, delineating what the American Boy Scouts declared was needed to be a "well-developed, well-informed boy." The book includes information on:
"In these pages and throughout our organization we have made it obligatory upon our scouts that they cultivate courage, loyalty, patriotism, brotherliness, self-control courtesy, kindness to animals, usefulness, cheerfulness, cleanliness, thrift purity, and honor, no one can doubt that with such training added to his native gifts, the American boy will bin the near future, as a man, bean efficient leader in the paths of civilization and peace."--From the Preface