The Girl Scouts: A Training School for Womanhood

The following work is a short essay written by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin. In it, she discusses her admiration of the Girl Scouts. Wiggin was an American educator, author and composer. She wrote children's stories, most notably the classic children's novel Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and composed collections of children's songs. She started the first free kindergarten in San Francisco, and with her sister, she also established a training school for kindergarten teachers. Wiggin devoted her adult life to the welfare of children in an era when children were commonly thought of as cheap labor.