After convincing the staff that he could continue his chores (stoking the furnace and caring for chickens) he entered public school at the fifth grade.

West was a Mason, a member of the Knights of Pythias and the Sunday school superintendent for the Mount Pleasant Congregational Church.

He later served as secretary of the National Child Rescue League, responsible for placing orphaned children into homes.

West was then the secretary of the White House Conference on Dependent Children, pushing for reforms in the management of orphanages.

Ernest Bicknell of the American Red Cross wrote to Luther Gulick, president of the Playground Association of America and recommended West for the position.

The new BSA office on 5th Avenue opened in January 1911 with West at the helm and the movement began to grow at a rapid pace.

West was instrumental in expanding the third part of the Scout Oath: To help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.

Labor unions protested over wording in the original Official Handbook that had been copied from the British Scouting for Boys that was perceived as anti-union — this had already been removed from the first edition.

Thus, much of the American South as well as many major northern communities had segregated programs with "colored troops" until the late 1940s, with some councils not fully desegregated until 1974.

Since the BSA had early and enduring ties with the YMCA, a firmly Protestant organization, the Roman Catholic Church initially forbade their boys to join.

The National Executive Board did not re-elect Seton as Chief Scout in 1915, and he soon stopped publishing in Boys' Life.

[9] Competition from another organization, the American Boy Scouts, caused West to seek a federal charter for the BSA, granted on June 15, 1916.

He refused to allow the BSA supply group to sell the Remington rifle endorsed by the ABS and de-emphasized the Marksmanship merit badge.

In 1914, Colonel Leonard Wood resigned from the board after a pacifistic article was published in Boys' Life that he considered to be "almost treasonable".

After Theodore Roosevelt admonished West, he toned down the rhetoric and later began to issue the Marksmanship merit badge again.

By 1930, West claimed to have stopped 435 groups from unauthorized use of "Scouting"; both as part of an organizational name and in the use of commercial products.

In 1911, West worked with Luther Gulick when the Camp Fire Girls were established and always considered them to be the sister program of the BSA.

In 1993, the BSA created the James E. West Fellowship Award for individuals who contribute $1,000 or more in cash or securities to their local council endowment trust fund.