Figure 1.--Here we see an American Cub in the short pants uniform. The photograph was not nate, but looks go have been taken in the 1940s. Notice that he wears a long sleeve shirt. The boy also wears blue kneesocks with yellow stripes.

Knickers were replaced with short and long pants in the 1940s. I think the initial change was to shorts. At first shorts were worn with long-sleeve shirts. The shorts do not seem to have been not popular with the boys. Thus shorts and longs were made optional. Shorts essentially became an optional summer uniform. I'm not ure when the short sleeves were introduced to go along with the shorts pants. Most Cubs chose to wear long pants even during the summer. Some Scouts wore shorts, but Cubs wore shorts much less than did the Scouts. This was just the opposite of the general pattern in other countries where the older boys were more likely to wear long pants. I am not positive why Cubs commonly wore long pants in America while the older Scouts mifgt wear long pants. I think this was because Scouts attended summer camps which required shorts as the standard uniform. Cubs did not attend these camps. We see some Cubs wearing the short pants uniform in the 1940s and early 50s, but we then rarely see them. Many American boys at the time did not wear short pants and thus did not want to wear shorts for Cub Scouts. We notice Cubs wearing shorts more commonly in the 1990s.