After its 1912 founding, the Girl Scouts of the United States (as it was then known) had amassed almost 70,000 members by 1920. This 1921 New York Times Magazine article profiled the surging organization, which would more than triple its membership that decade to 200,000+ members by 1930.

“Camping” to the girls has meant a canoe and a proposal. To man it has meant getting off from the woman and roughing it with his fishing tackle or his gun.

…

Now the Girl Scout program throws tradition into the discard, for it operates on the theory that a girl can practice woodcraft as well as a man can — can build a fire and construct an incinerator, can pitch a tent and police up barracks, do the Australian crawl and climb a mountain. This new feminist movement is rapidly infringing on man’s preserves.

The article makes no mention of Girl Scout cookies, which began in 1917 with a troop in in Muskogee, Oklahoma, though it’s unclear how widespread that was by 1921. It was the next year, 1922, when their official magazine American Girl (not to be confused with the unrelated current magazine of the same name) published their first cookie recipe.

Today, the Girl Scouts of the USA counts 1.7 million members.

From Flapper to Girl Scout

Published: Sunday, October 23, 1921