Thanks Trev...
As I was saying, James E. West was very much opposed to the exclusion of black boys in his vision of Scouting. Although he was a part of a segregated America in the 1910's, he was rather visionary about the whole thing. Of the big players (Seton, Beard, BP)West was the most progressive. With regard to Seton, he issued a diatribe to West in regard to his opposition to "gum chewing" and how it was a horrid habit among black Americans and his oppostion to "the gum trust" advertising in Boys' Life Magazine.
Beard, on the other hand, was brought up with a Progressive mind