[Buster Brown]. Is it fun to be a Boy Scout? Is it fun to be? It's the greatest thing in the world. I'll say it is / R.F. Outcault.

Twelve-frame comic strip shows Buster Brown and his dog Tige, inspired by the sight of a group of Boy Scouts drilling with rifles and flags. He and Tige sign up with a recruiter, who gives him a list of laws, in particular a command to "Always respect your elders." That night he is awakened by a man in a false beard carrying a pistol, who tells Buster to show him where the valuables are kept. In line with his resolution to respect elders, Buster shows him the safe. Later his horrified mother informs him that the man was a burgler. Buster reflects that after all, "Soldiers are not kind to their elders". The strip concludes with a long "resolution" in which Buster resolves to do what he can to show his devotion to his country. Outcault originated the Buster Brown strip in the New York Herald in 1902, but in 1905, he was lured away by William Randolph Hearst and moved the strip to the New York American. The Boy Scouts in this sequence are probably members of one of the rival more militaristic groups of Boy Scouts that flourished briefly in the second decade of the twentieth century.

Copyright 1917 by Newspaper Feature Service, Inc. "Great Britain rights reserved."
Outcault, 176.
Forms part of: Art Wood Collection of Caricature and Cartoon (Library of Congress).
Unprocessed in DLC/PP-2001:055-4; SD Row 38, cabinet 8, drawer 3.
Source: Macleod, Building character in the American boy, p. 147, 157 ljr