1 See, for example, McClellan, B. Edward Moral Education in America: Schools and the Shaping of Character From Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 46–47.Google Scholar

2 The standard work on the YMCA continues to be Charles Howard Hopkins, History of the YMCA in North America (New York: Association Press, 1951). For an excellent analysis of the work among boys in general, see Macleod, David Building Character in the American Boy: The Boy Scouts, YMCA, and Their Forerunners, 1870–1920 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). Macleod's work, however, includes few references to the Hi-Y. The Hi-Y has also been neglected by many historians of the high school extracurriculum, but see Meyer, Harold A Handbook of Extracurricular Activities in the High School (New York: A.S. Barnes and Company, 1926), 373–377 and Charles Foster, Extracurricular Activities in the High School (Richmond: Johnson Publishing Company, 1925), 37–40 for helpful information.Google Scholar

3 I borrow chiefly from Robert Church and Michael Sedlak who defined conservative and liberal progressivism as the two central reform impulses of the early twentieth century. Conservative progressives, according to these authors, were characterized by a desire for social efficiency, predictability, managed expertise, and a willingness to impose values on the general public. Liberal progressives, on the other hand, prized participatory democracy, joint deliberation, and a brand of social justice that would ensure the maintenance of these values. See Church, Robert and Sedlak, Michael, Education in the United States: An Interpretive History (New York: Free Press, 1976), 255–260. Here I part company with Paula Fass who, in her wonderful treatment of youth in the 1920s, labels two competing ideological forces as “traditional” and “progressive.” Early Hi-Y leaders shared many of the qualities of Fass's traditionalists: a pessimism about youth, a desire to stem the winds of change, and a longing for adult-controlled expertise in providing explicit moral direction for young people. However, to label this group “traditional” would be to deny the movement's emphasis on efficiency and its orientation towards the present and future rather than the past. While conservatives were concerned with maintaining a moral heritage, they were far more concerned with the inculcation of virtues and trait actions necessary to ensure social stability in the modern world. See Fass, Paula The Damned and the Beautiful: American Youth in the 1920s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

4 For arguments noting the lack of influence of social meliorists, see Kliebard, Herbert The Struggle for the American Curriculum (New York: Routledge, 1987), 199; Tyack, David Lowe, Robert, and Hansot, Elizabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times: The Great Depression and Recent Years (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 57–72.Google Scholar

5 For information on such controversies, see such resources as Fraser, James W. Between Church and State (New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 1999); Nord, Warren A. Religion and American Education: Rethinking a National Dilemma (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Jorgenson, Lloyd The State and the Non-Public School, 1825–1925 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1987).Google Scholar

6 See “History of the Hi-Y,” (October 1939), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (hereafter cited as Kautz YMCA Archives). See also “Founders’ Conference: Fiftieth Anniversary of Chapman Hi-Y Club” (October 20–22, 1939), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives; Robinson, Edgar M. The Early Years: The Beginnings of Work With Boys in the Young Men's Christian Association (New York: Association Press, 1950), 98–110.Google Scholar

7 Porter received a master's degree from Oxford University in 1910. He was in charge of high school work until 1915. He went on to assume leadership in the intercollegiate YMCA movement (1915–1934) and to become headmaster of Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts.Google Scholar

8 Porter, David R. The Work of the Young Men's Christian Association Among High School Boys (New York: Association Press, 1910), 11.Google Scholar

9 Boyhood delinquency was, of course, a familiar theme of this era. As David Nasaw has pointed out, the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, which had listed only thirteen articles on boyhood juvenile delinquency in the last decade of the nineteenth century, included over two hundred such citations in this field between 1900 and 1910. See Nasaw, David Schooled To Order: A Social History of Public Schooling in the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 90.Google Scholar

10 Porter, The Work, 13–14. YMCA leader John R. Mott would make a similar pronouncement in his short book Boyhood the Greatest Asset of Any Nation (New York: Association Press, 1924), 4–9.Google Scholar

11 Porter, et. al., “Report of the Commission on the Relation of the Association to High School Boys to the Thirty-Fifth Conference of the Association of Employed Officers of the Young Men's Christian Associations of North America” (Omaha, Nebraska: YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, 1909), pp. 2–3, Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

12 In 1911, there were fewer than one million students enrolled in high schools in the United States. By 1920, this number swelled to 4,740,580. By 1930, close to 60 percent of all high-school age youth were attending school. See “Biennial Survey of Education, 1928–1930, Vol. 2,” U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1931, no. 20.Google Scholar

13 Porter, The Work, 5.Google Scholar

14 Baldwin, Bird “The Boy of High School Age: The Moral and Religious Development of the Adolescent Boy,“ Religious Education 8 (1913): 23. A professor of education at Swarthmore College, Baldwin maintained that most Sunday schools retained only about five percent of the male 15-20-year-olds that had entered the system under the age of twelve, a clear indication of inefficiency in the work with boys. In a 1923 study conducted in Indiana, researchers found that, while twelve-year-olds made up approximately 10 percent of all Sunday school students, sixteen-year olds comprised only 4 percent and eighteen-year-olds only 2 percent of this population. See Walter Athearn, et. al. The Religious Education of Protestants in an American Commonwealth (New York: Doran, 1923), 289.Google Scholar

15 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, The Mission of the Young Men's Christian Association to High School Boys (New York: The Association, 1912), 3–5. See also Porter, “Report of Commission,” 15–16.Google Scholar

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17 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, The Mission, 1. Some states were indeed changing their understanding of the Bible as a sectarian text. For state constitutional revisions and changing understandings of sectarian religious teaching in the public schools in this era, see Boles, Donald E. The Bible, Religion, and the Public Schools (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1965), 108–154.Google Scholar

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19 Ibid., 4–5.Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 10–11.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., 9.Google Scholar

22 Ibid., 8.Google Scholar

23 On these themes, see especially Lears, T.J. Jackson No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1981).Google Scholar

24 For an excellent recent treatment of these themes, see Putney, Clifford Muscular Christianity: Manhood and Sports in Protestant America, 1880–1920 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001). On the economic issues involved in this transformation, see especially Gail Bederman, “‘The Women Have Had Charge of the Church Work Long Enough:’” The Men and Religion Forward Movement of 1911–1912 and the Masculinization of Middle-Class Protestantism,” American Quarterly 41, no. 3 (September 1989): 432–465 and Rotundo, E. Anthony American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: BasicBooks, 1993), 248–251. For important primary source descriptions of this crisis, see especially Carl Case, The Masculine in Religion (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publishing Society, 1906), George Fiske, Boy Life and Self-Government (New York: Association Press, 1912), and Forbush, William B. The Boy Problem (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1907). For more general perspectives, see Dubbert, Joe L. “Progressivism and the Masculinity Crisis,” in The American Man, ed. Pleck, Elizabeth H. and Pleck, Joseph H. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980); Mangan, J.A. and Walvin, James, eds., Manliness and Morality: Middle Class Masculinity in Britain and America, 1800–1940 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987); Arnaldo Testi, “The Gender of Reform Politics: Theodore Roosevelt and the Culture of Masculinity,” The Journal of American History 81, no. 4 (March 1995): 1509–1533; Kimmel, Michael Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, 1996).Google Scholar

25 By 1920, female teachers made up about 80 percent of the pre-collegiate teaching force. On the theme of the feminization of education, see Macleod, Building Character, 46; G. Stanley Hall, “Feminization in School and Home,” World's Work 16 (1908): 10239; Earl Barnes, “The Feminizing of Culture,” Atlantic Monthly 109 (June 1912): 775.Google Scholar

26 See, for example, Fiske, Boy Life and Self-Government.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 19. For a similar rationale, see also Porter, The Work, 10–11.Google Scholar

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29 Other states with large Hi-Y followings included California (191 clubs; 50 percent of schools housing clubs), Tennessee (154 clubs; 50 percent of schools housing clubs), and Connecticut (69 clubs; 75 percent of schools housing clubs). See “Hi-Y Clubs,” Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives. It must be kept in mind that this is still a small percentage of the total high school population of this time. While it is difficult to trace percentages in individual schools, the total Hi-Y student population in 1910 was approximately .2 percent of the total high school student population. By 1925, it was approximately 2 percent of the school population, while by 1939 it had declined again to about .2 percent. For student population statistics, see Angus, David and Mirel, Jeffrey, The Failed Promise of the American High School (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999), 203.Google Scholar

30 The eastern region boasted the highest percentage of schools housing Hi-Y clubs (32 percent) when the statistics were compiled in 1930. Saturation in the other regions was as follows: pacific (30 percent), western (27 percent), southern (25 percent), and central (25 percent). See “Hi-Y Clubs,” Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

31 YMCA Association of Boys’ Work Secretaries, “Report of the Commission on the Standardization of (Hi-Y) High School Clubs” (February 1919), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives. Porter also established a monthly bulletin called Agenda for leaders of the high school clubs, and edited a periodical entitled American Youth. See Hopkins, History of the YMCA, 467.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 2–3. The task of describing the meaning of these four domains fell upon Edwin Hoffman, a YMCA secretary in New York with a reputation for his unflinching support of the four-fold program. In his 1919 work, The High Calling, Hoffman articulated the vision of each area of living in terms of a series of lessons for boys. See Hoffman, Edwin The High Calling (New York: Association Press, 1919).Google Scholar

33 Porter, The Work, 24. Club meetings were typically held in local YMCA buildings rather than schools. Leaders noted that they did not want to mar the good relationships with school leaders by demanding the use of school facilities.Google Scholar

34 Porter, The Work, 24. See also The Texas State Young Men's Christian Associations, “Manual: Texas Hi-Y Clubs” (Dallas: Texas State Boys’ Work Committee, 1922), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives. Boards of trustees for these clubs, later called advisory councils, generally consisted of a city or country YMCA secretary, a principal or teachers from the school, and Christian laymen from the community. See McKown, Harry C. Extracurricular Activities (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1927), 487–488.Google Scholar

35 Porter noted that, “No boy should be included merely because he is a good athlete unless he has already a positive moral influence.” Porter, The Work, 23–24.Google Scholar

36 See Chambers, William S. “About Hi-Y Clubs,“ Association Boys’ Work Journal 1, no. 6 (November 1, 1928): 6–7.Google Scholar

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39 “Ibid., 22–23.Google Scholar

40 Robinson, Arthur G. “The Inner Circle of the High School Movement,“ American Youth (March 1909): 183.Google Scholar

41 Ibid. Robinson suggested that a maximum of 10–12 students would be recruited for this group in a particular school. Porter warned clubs to be careful of spiritual pride as well. He noted that they should banish all vestiges of the holier-than-thou sentiment and avoid exclusivity and selfishness. He actually suggested that the identity of inner circle members be kept secret. See Porter, The Work, 37–41.Google Scholar

42 Gregg, A.J. a leader in the Hi-Y movement in the 1920s, noted that ritual had been adopted in large part because of “the entrance of fraternal orders into the field of work with boys.” See Gregg, A.J. “How Rituals May Be Used to Develop Character in Boys,“ Christian Citizenship 4, no. 5 (January 1925): 1.Google Scholar

43 Adams, “Hi-Y Ceremonials“ (1918), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

44 Harrisburg Boys’ Work Committee, “Initiation and Induction Ceremony for New Members: Tech Hi-Y Club of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania” (1921), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

45 “Cincinnati Hi-Y Ritual” (1920), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

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51 See, for example, Dadisman, John “Method of Procedure in Washington,“ Agenda: The High School Movement of the Young Men's Christian Association 1 (October 1909): 11–12.Google Scholar

52 Jenks, Jeremiah Life Questions of High School Boys (New York: Young Men's Christian Association Press, 1908).Google Scholar

53 Tallman, Bruce W. Life Problems and Bible Study Discussions for Hi-Y Clubs (Minneapolis: Y.M.C.A., 1921), 11.Google Scholar

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55 Ibid, 3.Google Scholar

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57 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, “Clean Life Campaigns Among High School Boys,” American Youth 6 (March 1917): 3.Google Scholar

58 Cotton, Arthur N. “High School Work Results“ (New York: YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, 1919), 5.Google Scholar

59 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, “Clean Life Campaigns,” 3.Google Scholar

60 Cotton, “High School Work Results,“ 5. The Hi-Y clubs of Detroit offered a “little brown jug” to the team with the best sportsmanship in the city.Google Scholar

61 “A Suggested Policy for Work in Allegheny High School Boys’ Branch - Young Men's Christian Association” (1919), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

62 “Oklahoma Standardized Hi-Y Program, 1921—1922” (Oklahoma City: The State Young Men's Christian Association, 1921), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

63 See, for example, Foster, Extracurricular Activities, 38.Google Scholar

64 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, “Clean Life Campaigns,” 3.Google Scholar

65 Atkinson, Harold “The Hi-Y in Mississippi,“ The School Review 30 (November 1922): 704–705.Google Scholar

66 “Cotton, “Hi-Y Newsletter” (1920), 2. Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

67 Ibid., 3–4.Google Scholar

68 At the same time, college YMCA chapters were producing collegiate handbooks containing similar information. See Hopkins, History of the YMCA, 284.Google Scholar

69 “Report of the Discussion Group on Service Projects,” 4.Google Scholar

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71 Ibid., 9.Google Scholar

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74 See, for example, “Vocational Tests” (1920), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

75 “Find Yourself Campaigns” (1921), Hi-Y Box 3, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

76 Jackson, Glen “Youth for America: The Hi-Y Club and Patriotism,“ in Hi-Y Leadership Training Program (New York: Association Press, 1921), 12.Google Scholar

77 “Rating Sheet - Standardized Hi-Y Clubs” (1921–1922), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

78 The Texas State Young Men's Christian Associations, “Manual: Texas Hi-Y Clubs,” 5–6.Google Scholar

79 Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 89.Google Scholar

80 The athletic and military emphases here are closely linked to the broader cultural desire for authentic experience in a culture of weightless “banality.” See Lears, No Place of Grace, particularly chapters 1, 3, and 4.Google Scholar

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82 On the themes of specialization and unification in the comprehensive high school, see Joel Spring, Education and the Rise of the Corporate State (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 108–125. The 1918 Cardinal Principles report also gave conscious attention to these themes. Noting that specialization could be achieved through differentiated curricula, guidance, adaptation of teaching methods and content to individual students, and flexible organization and administration, the report also urges the “unifying function” through course studies in “social studies and the mother tongue, with its literature” and student social mingling and participation in common activities “in which they should have a large measure of responsibility.” The report also mentions school assemblies, group activities, and loyalty to the school as important forces for unification. Report cited in Raubinger, Frederick M. Rowe, Harold G. Piper, Donald L. West, Charles K. The Development of Secondary Education (London: Macmillan Company, 1969), 102–130. For the original report, see “Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education,” Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 35. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1918. For a recent re-interpretation of this report that highlights some of these factors, see Wraga, William G. “A Progressive Legacy Squandered: the Cardinal Principles Report Reconsidered,“ History of Education Quarterly 41:4 (Winter 2001): 494–519.Google Scholar

83 “The Thirty-Seventh Annual Older Boys’ Conference, Lowell, Massachusetts, Official Program” (December 3–5, 1926), p. 18, Boys’ Work Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

84 “Hi-Y Marches On: Three Decades with Detroit High School Boys” (1940), p. 6, Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

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86 Hopkins, History of the YMCA, 502–504.Google Scholar

87 For good descriptions of issues related to youth in the 1920s, see Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, Frederick Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1931).Google Scholar

88 “Hi-Y at the Crossroads” (1928), p. 1, Hi-Y Box 3, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

89 Wiley, Wirt History of YMCA-Church Relations in the United States (New York: Association Press, 1944), 154.Google Scholar

90 YMCA leaders pointed particularly to the Character Education Inquiry, a series of studies conducted by Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May under the auspices of Teachers College, Columbia University and John Rockefeller's Institute of Social and Religious Research. The 1,782-page summary of research, completed in 1929, recorded a number of significant findings, but the most important for “Y” leaders was that related to the failure of traditional character building methods. Hartshorne, Hugh and May, Mark A. Studies in the Nature of Character: Studies in Deceit (Vol. 1) (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928); Hartshorne, Hugh and May, Mark A. Studies in the Nature of Character: Studies in Service and Self-Control (Vol. 2) (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1929); Hartshorne, Hugh May, Mark A. and Shuttleworth, Frank K. Studies in the Nature of Character: Studies in the Organization of Character (Vol. 3) (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930).Google Scholar

91 McKown, Extracurricular Activities, 490.Google Scholar

92 Bacon, Francis Leonard “Estimating the Values in Hi-Y Work from the Viewpoint of a School Man,“ Two States (April 1927): 1–2.Google Scholar

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95 See Davis, Mary Dabney “Weekday Religious Instruction,“ United States Office of Education Pamphlet no. 36 (1933): 23; Keesecker, Ward “Laws Relating to the Releasing of Pupils from Public Schools for Religious Instruction,” United States Office of Education Pamphlet no. 39 (1933); Davis, Mary Dabney “Weekday Classes in Religious Education Conducted on Released School Time for Public School Pupils,” United States Office of Education Bulletin no. 3 (1941): 25; See also Gorham, Donald “A Study of the Status of Weekday Church Schools in the United States” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1935), 18.Google Scholar

96 As historian Wirt Wiley has suggested, within the confines of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy then at its peak, the YMCA resisted the cultural alienation of the fundamentalists in favor of a relevant modernism. This, at times, brought them into conflict with the churches. See Wiley, History of YMCA-Church Relations, 121–124.Google Scholar

97 Fischer, Harold “Professionalism and the YMCA,“ Association Boys’ Work Journal 3, no. 4 (May 1930): 5.Google Scholar

98 On the Religious Education Association, see Schmidt, Stephen A History of the Religious Education Association (Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press, 1983).Google Scholar

99 “For helpful descriptions on these theological alterations in the context of liberal Protestant thought, see Hopkins, Charles Howard The Rise of the Social Gospel in American Protestantism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), Hutchison, William R. The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976), Marsden, George Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), Dorrien, Gary Soul in Society: The Making and Renewal of Social Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995).Google Scholar

100 As Clifford Putney has argued, the YMCA leadership in the 1920s clearly chose to side with religious modernism, self-consciously distancing themselves from fundamentalist Christian rhetoric. See Clifford Putney, “Character Building in the YMCA, 1880–1930,” Mid-America 73:1 (January 1991): 66–67.Google Scholar

101 Expanding commerce, the growth of political democracy, and the renewed interest in the child in education led Dewey to optimistically declare that “political, domestic, and industrial institutions have become in fact an organized Kingdom of God on earth, making for the welfare of the individual and the unity of the whole.” The democratic community of shared experience, he noted, was leading individuals and societies towards “the spiritual unification of humanity, the realization of the brotherhood of man, all that Christ called the Kingdom of God.” See Dewey, John Reconstruction in Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1920), 98–100.Google Scholar

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103 At the behest of leaders in the college movement as early as 1919, the YMCA even adopted the radical “social creed” of the liberal churches as its overarching purpose statement. Emblematic of the changes which had been occurring in the student chapters since 1910, the creed included such principles as the subordination of the profit motive to the cooperative spirit, social planning and control of the credit and monetary systems for the common good, safeguarding of all workers against harmful conditions of labor, the right of employees to organize for collective bargaining and social action, the repudiation of war, and the building up of a cooperative world order. See Hopkins, History of the YMCA, 532–533.Google Scholar

104 This point is quite nicely expressed by Dewey when he suggests that, “The extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity.” Dewey, Democracy and Education, 87.Google Scholar

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106 Ibid.Google Scholar

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111 Eaton, E.E. “Have We Lost Our Way?“ Association Boys’ Work Journal 1, no. 6 (November 1, 1928): 15. In that same issue, another commented that those who lived under this democratic premise seemed no more “free” than others. Many, in fact, seemed similarly cynical, self-absorbed, and intolerant of opposing points of view. Thus, for some, personal example seemed to belie the “freeing” process of democratic inquiry. See “Does the Democratic Process Release?” (8).Google Scholar

112 Lieberman, Joshua “Program and Educational Method,“ Association Boys’ Work Journal 4, no. 5 (May 1932): 10.Google Scholar

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118 Ibid, 5–7. The authors also noted that continued use of ritual might cause friction with the lodges and other fraternal organizations for men because of the duplication of rituals (6). In 1936, 38 percent of the clubs nationally still performed rituals and “rough-house initiation.” See “Resource Material, Series B Discussions, Group no. III. Who Shall Be a Member of the Hi-Y?” (1936), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

119 Lee, “Wither Bound,“ 11. See also Religious Work Department, Young Men's Christian Association, “Christian Character Building With Boys and Young Men” (1924), pp. 85–88, Boys’ Work Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

120 YMCA Boys’ Work Committee, “The Challenge” (1932), pp. 2, 17, Boys’ Work Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

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145 “Spade Work for the Hi-Y Congress,” National Hi-Y Ways (April 1936): 1–6.Google Scholar

146 “Case Studies for use with Hi-Y Groups,” National Hi-Y Ways (December 1934): 1–2.Google Scholar

147 On these themes in the schools, see Jonathan Zimmerman, Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 55–80. One difference within the Hi-Y context was the degree of attention given to racial issues. Zimmerman notes that economics was superceding race and ethnicity in this era's text book controversies. For the Hi-Y, both issues received about equal attention. Importantly, such themes had also captured the college YMCA movement. For a description of this shift, see Clarence Shedd, Two Centuries of Student Christian Movements (New York: Association Press, 1934), 375–422.Google Scholar

148 Zimmerman, Whose America? 66-67. Zimmerman notes that by 1941, more than five million students had probably used one of Rugg's texts. See also Tyack, David Lowe, Robert and Hansot, Elizabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times, 65–66.Google Scholar

149 “How Democratic is Your Hi-Y?” (1932), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

150 Ibid. See also “Check List For Democratic Practice” (1932), Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives.Google Scholar

151 For a discussion of the failure of social reconstructionists to change schools in the 1930s, see Tyack, David Lowe, Robert, and Hansot, Elizabeth, Public Schools in Hard Times; Kliebard, The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 199.Google Scholar

152 Lee, C.E. “Boys’ Work and Social Reconstruction,“ Association Boys’ Work Journal 6: 5 (May 1933): 13.Google Scholar

153 Ibid.Google Scholar

154 Fass, The Damned and the Beautiful, 374–375.Google Scholar

155 On the drivers’ education theme, see, for example, “Learn the Skills of the Road,” National Hi-Y Ways (February 1935): 1–2.Google Scholar

156 Church and Sedlak, Education in the United States, 255–260.Google Scholar

157 “Perfecting Personality: An Outline of Lectures by Dr. Louis Norris for Hi-Y Periods” (1939), pp. 1–3, Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives; “For a Better Hi-Y Club: Official Report of the YMCA of Pittsburgh's Hi-Y Officers Training School,” Camp Laurel Ridge (May 24–26, 1940), pp. 1–11, Hi-Y Box 2, Kautz YMCA Archives. On the “custodial” practices of high schools in retaining youth at this time, see especially Angus and Mirel, The Failed Promise, 57–99.Google Scholar

158 Hopkins, History of the YMCA, 722.Google Scholar

159 Corwin, George “Proposal for a Nation-Wide Program to Help Make Democracy Effective in High Schools and Communities Through the Agency of the Hi-Y Movement“ (1939), Hi-Y Box 1, Kautz YMCA Archives. Corwin worked with U.S. Superintendent of Education J. W. Studebaker on this project.Google Scholar