The troop I was in as a boy (254 Chattanooga, TN) strongly encouraged boys to have a full uniform shirt, trousers or shorts, baseball cap, and red and black neckerchief. I never owned the shorts, wearing trousers all the time. We always wore the uniform when traveling to or from a trip and every morning at summer camp (with one exception, explained below).
No scout was required to own a uniform, but if you wore one you wore the whole thing, except that we sometimes left out the neckerchies or allowed boys to wear a camp neckerchief instead of the troop one.
The uniform taught boys to