This article ties in with one I reposted from The Epoch Times, but I will simply link the Times piece here. I highly recommend reading both pieces and considering them closely. We have lost a great many things over the previous century…
…we ought to look into getting some of those things back, and soon. You never know. We might need them more than we think.
From Mutual Aid to Welfare State: How Fraternal Societies Fought Poverty and Taught Character
July 27, 2000
David Beito
Senior Associate Fellow
Mutual aid was one of the cornerstones of social welfare in the United States until the early 20th century. The fraternal society was a leading example. The statistical record of fraternalism was impressive. A conservative estimate is that one-third of adult American males belonged to lodges in 1910. A fraternal analogue existed for virtually every major service of the modern welfare state including orphanages, hospitals, job exchanges, homes for the elderly, and scholarship programs.
But societies also gave benefits that were much less quantifiable. By joining a lodge, an initiate adopted, at least implicitly, a set of survival values.
Societies dedicated themselves to the advancement of mutualism, self-reliance, business training, thrift, leadership skills, self-government, self-control, and good moral character. These values, which can fit under the rubric of social capital, reflected a kind of fraternal consensus that cut across such seemingly intractable divisions as race, sex, and income.
The record of five societies that thrived at or near the turn of the century illustrates the many variants of this system. Each had a distinct membership base. Two of the societies, the Independent Order of Saint Luke and the United Order of True Reformers, were all-black. Both had been founded by ex-slaves after the Civil War and specialized initially in sickness and burial insurance. The other societies had entirely white memberships. The Loyal Order of Moose was an exclusively male society that emphasized sickness and burial benefits. It became best known during the 20th century for its orphanage, Mooseheart, near Aurora, Illinois. The Security Benefit Association (originally the Knights and Ladies of Security) followed in a similar tradition but broke from the mainstream by allowing men and women to join on equal terms. During the 1910s and the 1920s, the Knights and Ladies of Security established a hospital, a home for the elderly, and an orphanage all in a single location near Topeka. The Ladies of the Maccabees was an all-white, all-female society. It provided such health benefits as surgical care. It is worth noting that the women who belonged to these societies, regarded themselves as members of fraternal rather than sororal societies. For them, fraternity, much like liberty and equality, was the common heritage of both men and women. To this end, an official of the Ladies of the Maccabees asserted that “Fraternity in these modern days has been wrested from its original significance and has come to mean a sisterhood, as well as a brotherhood, in the human family.”
A Song of Joy by Caroline Furlong 
Interesting that the author chose not to mention the Knights of Columbus, which originally was organized by Father Michael McGivney as a mutual aid society for the Catholic working class families of New Haven, CT. In those days, of course, if the breadwinner of the family suffered death or serious injury at work, which was unpleasantly common in the heavy industries of the day, the family would be in serious economic distress almost immediately. The Knights used pooled community resources to give aid and comfort to such families. The Order converted into a charitable aid society with a commercial life insurance economic base as the events described in the Heritage piece occurred, and the growing Nanny State began to eat away at subsidiarity with regard to social welfare issues.
Of course, once that field was taken over, the Leviathan kept on consuming every institution it could get its hands on. But that, as an author might say, is another story. ;))
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:nods: I would guess that, since the K of C are still extant, he likely chose to focus on those organizations that were destroyed. It was easier to make his point that way than to include one that adapted and survived the Nanny State’s encroachment. Additionally, I’m sure there were other Catholic societies that *didn’t* follow the K of C and were devoured as well, but he didn’t mention them either. It’s definitely a subject that needs more study than it has had up to this point.
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Knights of Columbus may not have a particularly high profile. We do the sort of thing you discussed – but – I suspect it’s ‘just the sort of thing they do’. Which I’ll take as good news.
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Great point.
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