No. 11.

NOTICE.

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SOCIETIES AND SOCIETIES.

In country districts and not a few of the larger towns, the work of a friendly society, like our own or the Odd Fellows, is often hindered by what are called Industrial Societies. These institutions have their office in London, Manchester, or Liverpool. Throughout the country a large staff of agents is maintained, whose zeal in getting members is whetted by the secural of a large percentage of contributions in the form of commission. These agents receive contributions and pay benefits. They account for their transactions to the central office, where the management is vested in a secretary and board of managers, virtually selfappointed, or, at any rate, chosen by a very small proportion of contributors to the society. These officials in their turn absorb another portion of the contributions, so that in the end a very large share of the receipts disappears as expenses of management. In order more successfully to compete with the true friendly society, some of these institutions make their agencies into branches, hire rooms where the contributors come together from time to time and meet the agent, and even go so far as to have a sort of ritual and an elaborate certificate. In short, the externals are so accurately copied, that only close examination discloses the important particulars in which they differ from a true friendly society.

Now it must not be assumed that we meditate an attack upon the agents or officials of these institutions. Their occupation is perfectly legitimate. Were it not

for their pertinacious endeavours many thousand people would make no provision whatever against sickness and death. Their work is trying, and deserves ample remuneration; and, there is this further to be said to their credit-they have had the sense to see that unity is strength, for centralization of their funds has been their best recommendation. As to the large diversion of money to management purposes, the contributors have small ground of complaint; for, if they must be worried into provident habits, if they will put out their business to be done for them, if they prefer to leave the responsibilities of management to a few, then they ought to pay. Indeed, it would be more honest and straightforward were some of the so-called members of true friendly societies to transfer their favours to such institutions. They would then pay liberally for attention to their business, instead of-as they now do-pretending to save outlay by bearing their share of management, yet really shuffling the whole on to the shoulders of half-a-dozen willing and earnest brethren.

We take exception to such institutions when they assume the name and put on the garb of friendly societies. They are nothing of the kind. The institutions are simply so many savings banks, where money is placed to secure an income under certain special conditions. It is true that many branches of friendly societies are nothing else, but that is entirely due to the apathy and indifference of the members. Such members only copy other folks, who, having inherited civil and religious liberty at the cost of ancestral blood, coolly risk its perpetuity when its defence is apparently in the way of personal ease or personal aggrandisement. The advantages of a friendly society were not obtained through prison, rack, and stake, yet in their development many a bright man has given his leisure and mental energy. What are these advantages? There is the object which brings the members together-help for the sick and distressed by co-operation. This excites mutual interest, mutual care, mutual oversight. It involves the selection of brethren with a faculty for finance and the conduct of business. Practical training follows, whilst a conscious common responsibility quickens the perception and whets the interest of the whole fraternity. Members are not irrevocably excluded for arrears that the society may profit by the lapses. Class distinctions lose their contemptible sway

under the influence of intercourse for a good object. The personal capacity of many an unobtrusive man finds scope for development. The primary object of mutual help thus necessitates the formation of a training school, where method economises energy, and in the course of time fits the members for public positions. When, as in the case of the Sons of Temperance, the object of mutual help in sickness and adversity is enhanced by the promotion of teetotalism among the membership, the profit of association increases a hundred-fold. Locally, then, there is no comparison between the advantages direct and collateral of a living friendly society and the agency of an industrial institution.

If we carry the comparison into a wider field the divergence only becomes the more striking. Let the local society bud out and plant branches in neighbouring villages and towns. As the branches increase it is found impossible to bring all the members together. Recourse is then had to representation. Members qualified by service in local branches are constituted a central authority, whose executive action is still in the hands of the local members through a system of preliminary local discussion, frequent reports, and elections. Where this system is rigorously followed mutual confidence is created, and on this basis steps are easily taken to secure the only advantage peculiar to industrial institutions-common funds for sick and funeral benefits-and the consequent impossibility of any branch failing for want of funds. All these things involve further development of local advantages, the bringing together of the inhabitants of an extended area, fuller scope for individual capacity, and the disappearance of local prejudices-sometimes more disastrous in their operation than even caste itself. In comparison with districts fairly worked on these lines, as in our own Grand Divisions, industrial institutions are out of the race. Their superintendents of agents are poor substitutes for district parliaments where brother meets brother, and counsel is added to counsel, to the personal profit of individual members and the general good of the society.

If the comparison be pushed further, and these district parliaments again by service qualify a few of their members to constitute a central assembly for the country, to lay down general principles of action for the whole membership, it would be simple tautology again to enumerate the advantages, educational and otherwise, which accrue to the body. Service opens the way from one grade to another, and as was said in the French army that the private soldier carried a marshal's baton in his knapsack-so here the humblest member has a voice in all matters of business, and the same opportunity of gaining the chief official positions. Industrial institutions are again out of the race. rule they only offer the pretence of a substitute for our own National Division, or the A. M. C. of the Odd Fellows, or the High Court of Foresters. They have nothing corresponding to our intercourse with the United States, Canada, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, their certificate of membership possessing as little value as an introduction to a friendly circle there as it has in our own country.

As a

Superficial critics in high-class magazines often ignore the advantages here set forth, and give priority to industrial institutions on the grounds, (a) their funds are centralized, (b) their management expenses are less than friendly societies. The first ground of objection applies with little force now to the Sons of Temperance,

as almost all the Grand Divisions are centralizing their funds. As to the second it is simply an illusion. Take away the expenses of meeting places to give members a voice in the disposition of affairs, and the other costs which arise from the effort to make this feature run through a society's business, which, as we have shewn, is of immeasurable advantage to the nation, and the other expenses are simply infinitesimal. Of course the old spirit which kept up the price of bread, limited the means of education, and hampered newspaper enterprise by vexatious duties, will disparage the outcome of co-operation and magnify the outlay. No thinking person will be thus led astray, for it must be manifest that the voluntary sacrifice of leisure and energy which the conduct of these societies involves, sweetens the life of the nation, and saves it from universal idolatry of self. This is a complete set-off to supposed heavy management expenses. As a rule, in the aggregate these rarely equal those of industrial societies, and if they do, the return is adequate.

There is consequently scarcely one particular in which an industrial institution has claims superior to those of a friendly society, and only want of thought on the part of our members can ever beguile them into giving second place to such an organization as we have to offer to the public.

THE CHURCH AND THE DRINK TRADE.

Canon

Canon Basil Wilberforce, in a long letter addressed to the Archbishop of Canterbury, has drawn attention to the large number of public-houses, in London and elsewhere, built upon Church land. As a good Churchman and a consistent advocate of the temperance movement, he is shocked at what he relates. He thinks it intolerable that the Church, the sworn opponent of evil and corruption in every shape, should be found thus identifying itself with the most crying evil of the day. Church land is under the control of church officials. The archbishops and bishops are ex officio members of the commission which manages it. It is with their sanction, therefore, that these public-houses have been built and licensed, and that they are now busy carrying on their degrading traffic. Wilberforce feels deeply the inconsistency which this involves. He has a strong case, and he states it strongly. He quotes an article in a temperance paper to the effect that the archbishops and bishops in their corporate capacity are, perhaps, the largest owners of public-house property in the country. Indeed," continues this document," so well is this fact known among the working classes, that frequently in the Western-road from Hyde Park-corner, through Knightsbridge, they are in the habit of pointing, as typical of the establishment, to a Church of England on the right-hand side of the way, near Albertgate, having a gin palace on each side of it, built up side by side in a row, the place of worship and the ginshops being all Church property. It is stated-and I believe it would be found a fact that the Bishop of London when he leaves his house in St. James's-square and rides to his palace at Fulham, passes on his road more than 100 public-houses built on land belonging to the Church.' Canon Wilberforce cites the cases of the "Royal Oak " at Bayswater, on the estate of the Bishop of London, and the "Hero of Waterloo," near the terminus of the South-Western Railway, on the estate of the Archbishop of Canterbury, both flourishing places of business. Worse than all, it is asserted that "when the lease of a public-house in the possession of the Church Commissioners falls in it is valued by a professional gentleman, employed on property of this kind, to know if its rental can be increased." The canon

is deeply moved by these enormities. He cannot bear that the revenues of the Church should be drawn from so unholy a source, and that its spiritual rulers should be found lending themselves to a great national crime. "Lead us not into temptation," is the daily prayer of these functionaries, for themselves and for other people. Their practical counsel upon it is to multiply the sources of temptation to which their fellow-countrymen are exposed. The course is profitable, no