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Mutual Aid, State Welfare, and Organized Charity: Fraternal Societies and the “Deserving” and “Undeserving” Poor, 1900–1930

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 October 2011

David T. Beito
David T. Beito
Affiliation:
George Mason University
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Extract

Few terms have recurred so often in the work of American social welfare historians as “deserving” (or worthy) and “undeserving” (unworthy). These concepts, of course, describe criteria employed by private and government agencies to determine eligibility for social welfare assistance. A special object of concern in the literature has been their use, in particular misuse, by charity organizations and welfare agencies during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 5 , Issue 4 , October 1993 , pp. 419 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA. 1993

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References

Notes

1. Katz, Michael B., “The History of an Impudent Poor Woman in New York City from 1918 to 1923,” in Mandler, Peter, ed., The Uses of Charity: The Poor in the Nineteenth-Century Metropolis (Philadelphia, 1990), 240Google Scholar; idem, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York, 1986), 291Google Scholar; and idem, The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York, 1989), 179–80, 184, 239.Google Scholar

2. Patterson, James T., America's Struggle Against Poverty.1900–1980 (Cambridge, 1981), 20–25Google Scholar; and Gordon, Linda, ed., Women, the State, and Welfare (Madison, Wis.,1990), 25–26.Google Scholar Also, see Altschuler, Glenn C., Race, Ethnicity, and Class in American Social Thought, 1865–1919 (Arlington Heights, Ill., 1982), 80–82.Google Scholar

3. Katz, “The History of an Impudent Poor Woman,” 240–41.

4. For an excellent survey of the comparative social-welfare roles played by the private and governmental sectors before and during the depression, see Weaver, Carolyn L., The Crisis in Social Security: Economic and Political Origins (Durham, N.C., 1982), 20–64.Google Scholar In addition, see U.S. Department of Labor, Children's Bureau, Mother's Aid, 1931 (Washington, D.C., 1933), 8Google Scholar, 17; and Report of the President's Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States, vol. 2 (New York, 1933), 1195.Google Scholar On the importance of mutual aid during this period, Edward T. Devine, a leading charity organizer, wrote the following: “We who are engaged in relief work … are apt to get very distorted impressions about the importance, in the social economy, of the funds which we are distributing or of the social schemes which were are promoting. … [I]f there were no resources in times of exceptional distress except the provision which people would voluntarily make on their own account and the informal neighborly help which people would give to one another … most of the misfortunes would still be provided for, and that very probably, the death rate, the sickness rate, the orphan rate, and the rate of physical and nervous exhaustion might be very little, if any higher, than at the present time.” (Devine, Edward T., “Pensions for Mothers,” The Survey 29 (5 July 1913): 458–59.)Google Scholar

5. The estimates for fraternal society membership are from Recent Social Trends, 935.The population statistics for Americans over twenty are in U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C., 1975), 15–20. Fraternal insurance societies accounted for about 10 million of this membership, while secret societies made up the rest.Google Scholar

The figures in Recent Social Trends work well as rough-and-ready estimates of fraternal membership. Some words of caution, however. By failing to compensate for those individuals who joined more than one organization, these figures overestimate fraternal membership. On the other hand, the underestimate membership by not including the membership of numerous societies (many of them operated by blacks and immigrants) and local relief societies organized on neighborhood and occupational levels. While relief societies dispensed mutual aid, they lacked the fraternal attributes of lodge and ritual. For more on relief societies, see Henderson, Charles Richmond, Industrial Insurance in the United States (Chicago, 1908), 63–83.Google Scholar

6. Cohen, Lizabeth, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York, 1990), 62Google Scholar, 64; and Meier, August, Negro Thought in America, 1880–1915: Racial Ideologies in the Age of Booker T. Washington (Ann Arbor, 1963), 130.Google Scholar

On the frequency of working-class membership in native white fraternal orders, such as the Odd Fellows, Knights of Pythias, and Ancient Order of United Workmen, see Clawson, Mary Ann, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fratemalism (Princeton,1989), 87–110.Google Scholar Clawson found that these workers were predominantly skilled and semiskilled.

The available evidence indicates far more modest backgrounds for the members of societies associated with blacks, latinos, and the new immigrants. See, for example, Weisser, Michael R., A Brotherhood of Memory: Jewish Landsmanshaftn in the New World (New York, 1985), 245Google Scholar; Weigle, Marta, Brothers of Light, Brothers of Blood: The Penitentes of the Southwest (Albuquerque, 1976), 96Google Scholar; Taylor, Paul S., Mexican Labor in the United States, vol. 1 (New York, 1970), 63Google Scholar, 185; Stolarik, M. Mark, “A Place for Everyone: Slovak Fraternal-Benefit Societies,” in Cummings, Scott, ed., Self-Help in Urban America: Patterns of Minority Business Enterprise (Port Washington, N.Y., 1980), 132.Google Scholar

At the Immigration Research Center in Minneapolis, I located membership lists (which included addresses) and/or application forms (which included occupation) of three prominent Eastern European societies in the United States: the First Catholic Slovak Union (FCSU), the Slovenian National Benefit Society (SNBS), and the Polish National Alliance (PNA). My findings demonstrate substantial representation from unskilled workers in these societies. Taking a random sample from application forms covering 48 members the Cleveland lodges of the First Catholic Slovak Union (FCSU) between 1908 and 1912, I found that 29 (60.4 percent) were laborers. The members of the Chicago lodges did not differ greatly in their occupational backgrounds. Cleveland, Applications for Membership, Boxes 1, 3, 4, 26, 44, 52, 54, 55, 58, 61, 64 (Immigration Research Center, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis). For more on the FCSU, see Stolarik, “A Place for Everyone,” 133–34.

In my survey of both the PNA and SNBS, I compared intact membership lists with Chicago city directories. Of 28 PNA members (Council 23, 1914–18) who could be identified, eight (28.5 percent) were unskilled, 8 were semiskilled and skilled, and 8 were proprietors. The 42 members of the SNBS (Chicago Lodge # 1, 1901–10) included 15 (42 percent) unskilled workers, 12 (34.2 percent) semiskilled and skilled workers, and 4 (11.4 percent) proprietors. (Polish National Alliance, Minutes of Council 23, Chicago, 1914– 18, P1269); and Slovenian National Benefit Society, Box 13, Folder 74, Lodge #1, Chicago, Membership Payment Book, 1904–10). For more on the PNA and SNBS, see Frank Renkiewicz, “The Profits of Nonprofit Capitalism: Polish Fraternalism in the United States,” in Cummings, Self-Help in Urban America, 170–71.

Among the many good introductory sources to the history of black fraternal societies are DuBois, W.E.B., Economic Cooperation Among Negro Americans (Atlanta, 1907), 92–128Google Scholar, Odum, Howard W., Social and Mental Traits of the Negro: Research into the Conditions of the Negro Race in Southern Towns (New York, 1910), 98–149Google Scholar; Stuart, M. S.An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes (New York, 1940), 11–34Google Scholar; Trotter, Joe William, Jr., Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia (Urbana, Ill., 1990), 198–213Google Scholar; and Rachleff, Peter J., Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865–1890 (Philadelphia, 1984), 24–33.Google Scholar

7. There is a growing literature emphasizing the interaction between fraternal societies and the middle class, including Carnes, Mark C., Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (New Haven, 1989)Google Scholar; Dumenil, Lynn, Freemasonry and American Culture, 1880–1930 (Princeton, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Doyle, Don Harrison, The Social Order of a Frontier Community:Jacksonville, Illinois, 1825–70 (Urbana, Ill., 1974)Google Scholar; and Thelen, David, Paths of Resistance:Tradition and Dignity in Industrializing Missouri (New York, 1986).Google Scholar

8. Wilson, Charles B., The Official Manual and History of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows in America (Philadelphia, 1894), 11–17Google Scholar; and Work, Monroe N., Negro Year Boole:Annual Encyclopedia of the Negro (1916–1917), 397.Google Scholar

9. Wilson, Odd Fellows in America, 20, 153–56, 158; and Work, Negro Year Book, 397.

10. Muraskin, William A., Middle-Class Blacks in a White Society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975), 89–97.Google Scholar

The black version of the Knights of Pythias, with 250,000 members in 1917, was the second largest fraternal organization among blacks. Work, Negro Year Book, 397.

In 1922, the overwhelming majority of blacks in the Knights of Pythias lodge in Ansonia, Connecticut, were unskilled. Of the 51 lodge members who could be identified, 20 were laborers and 17 were (probably unskilled) brass and foundry workers. To obtain these figures, I compared a complete membership list of the lodge, which also listed addresses, with city directories. Knights of Pythias of North America, Eighth Biennial Report of S.W. Green, Supreme Chancellor (Nashville, 1923), 95–97Google Scholar; and Ansonia, Derby, Shelton, and Seymour Directory (1922) and (1923). A useful description of black workers in the Ansonia area can be found in Brass Workers History Project, Brass Valley: The Story of Working People's Lives and Struggles in an American Industrial Region (Philadelphia, 1982), 79, 93–101.Google Scholar

11. Application Forms, St. Paul Lodge, Household of Ruth, Box 21 (Schomburg Center, New York Public Library). U.S. Bureau of Census, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870–1920, by Joseph A. Hill (Washington, D.C., 1929), 78, 76. Cited in Goodwin, Joanne L, “An American Experiment in Paid Motherhood: The Implementation of Mothers Pensions in Early Twentieth-Century Chicago,” Gender and History 4 (Autumn 1992): 330.Google Scholar

12. The authors of the canvas defined economic clubs as “insurance societies, labor unions, building associations, or some form of organization for economic advantage.” The borders of the nineteenth assembly district were 69th Street in the north, 60th Street in the south, the Hudson River in the west, and Ninth Avenue in the east. The Federation of Churches and Christian Workers in New York City, Second Sociological Canvass (1897), 95Google Scholar; and Chapin, Robert Coit, The Standard of Living Among Worlcingmen's Families in New York City (New York, 1909), 208.Google Scholar

13. Constitution, By-Laws and Members' Financial Book of the Sojouma Household of Ruth (c. 1910), 7–13, Box 21 (Schomburg Center, New York Public Library).

14. Ibid., 14–15, 23–24.

15. Minute Book of Sojourna Lodge, Household of Ruth, Box 10, 17 April 1914 to 21 July 1916. Lodges no doubt engaged in many acts of “charity” that had not been authorized by the membership. In her autobiography, Zora Neale Hurston recalled that a friend, who happened to be a treasurer of the local Daughter Elks, advanced her much-needed funds during the depression to mail a manuscript. The money had been “borrowed” from the lodge treasury. Hurston, Zora Neale, Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography (Urbana, Ill., 1984), 210.Google Scholar

16. Minute Book, 21 May 1915; 17 March 1916; and 21 April 1916.

17. Minute Book, 17 April 1914; 21 April 1916; and Constitution, By-Laws and Members' Financial Book, 11.

18. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks, 46, 67, 84.

19. The Excelsior Lodge of the black Odd Fellows in New York City barred from membership any “person living in adultery … convicted by a jury of his country, or guilty of theft or fraud.” Grand United Order of Odd Fellows of the City of New York, Constitution, By-Laws and Rules of Order of Excelsior Lodge (c. 1907), 16 (Schomburg Center). The Emmanuel Lodge of the black Knights of Pythias, also in New York City, required members to believe in a “Supreme Being” and possess “a good character, a trade or profession, or some visible way of acquiring an honest and respectable livelihood.” Knights of Pythias of New York City, By-Laws of the Emmanuel Lodge (1924), 7 (Schomburg Center).

The Independent Order of St. Luke, which grew to a membership of one hundred thousand, also admitted women and men on the same terms. The order ran a savings bank that depended heavily on the deposits of washerwomen and other domestic help. Elsa Barkley Brown, “Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the Independent Order of Saint Luke,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 14 (1989): 616, 620.Google Scholar

20. Grand Fountain, United Order of True Reformers, 1619– J907, From Slavery to Bankers (Richmond, 1907)Google Scholar; Minutes of the Grand Temple and Tabernacle of the Georgia Jurisdiction of the International Order of Twelve Knights and Daughters ofTabor (1913), 21; and Burrell, W. P. and Johnson, D. E., Twenty-Five Years History of the Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers, 1881–1905 (Westport, Conn., 1970), 506.Google Scholar

21. Gordon, Linda, “Black and White Visions of Welfare: Women's Welfare Activism, 1890–1945,” Journal of American History 78 (September 1991): 565CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 586–87. For a highly nuanced discussion of the moral values of the very poor, see Gordon's, Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence, Boston, 1880–1960 (New York, 1988).Google Scholar

The question of whether black societies strictly enforced their moral restrictions, while important, should not detract from the significant fact that so many bothered to adopt them in the first place. Even the mere existence of a “paper rule” can tell much about the attitudes of those who approved it.

22. Annual Report of the Workmen's Circle and Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Convention (1906), 20–23.

23. Goren, Arthur A., New York Jews and the Quest for Community: The Kehillah Expertrnent, 1908–1922 (New York, 1970), 191; and The Call of Youth 3 (July 1935), 7; Workmen's Circle, Annual Report (1909), 10; and National Executive Committee, Workmen's Circle, Minutes, February 1928 (YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York).Google Scholar

24. The Call of Youth 2 (June 1934); and Hurwitz, Maximilian, The Workmen's Circle: Its History, Ideals, Organization, and Institutions (New York, 1936), 184–86.Google Scholar The Workmen's Circle also owned cemeteries so as to more effectively provide free burial services. Goren, Arthur A., “Traditional Institutions Transplanted: The Hevra Kadisha in Europe and in America,” in Rischin, Moses, ed., The Jews of North America (Detroit, 1987), 73–74.Google Scholar

25. National Executive Committee, Minutes, May 1926 and December 1927.

26. Ibid., August 1928, June 1932, and December 1932; and The Call of Youth 1 (May 1933).

27. National Executive Committee, Minutes, June 1926, September 1926, October 1926, December 1926, February 1928, and November 1928.

28. Walker, Thomas J. E., Pluralistic Fraternity: The History of the International Worker's Order (New York, 1991), 142Google Scholar; Stolarik, “A Place for Everyone,” in Cummings, Self-Help in Urban America, 138; JosephStipanovich, “Collective Economic Activity Among Serb, Croat, and Slovene Immigrants in the United States,” in Cummings, Self-Help in Urban America, 168–69; Galey, Margaret E., “Ethnicity, Fraternalism, Social and Mental Health,” Ethnicity 4 (March 1977): 42–43Google Scholar; Weigle, Brothers of Light, 202; and Coolidge, Mary Roberts, Chinese Immigration (New York, 1969), 403–4.Google Scholar

29. Basye, Walter, History and Operation of Fraternal Insurance (Rochester, N.Y., 1919), 20.Google Scholar According to Terence O'Donnell, the “esprit de corps of a fraternal benficiary society is one of its most valuable assets, and is far out of proportion to the ‘good will’ a purely commercial company can claim.” O'Donnell, , History of Life Insurance in Its Formative Years (Chicago, 1936), 631.Google Scholar

30. History and Manual of the Colored Knights of Pythias (Nashville, 1917), 448–49; and Hurwitz, The Workman's Circle, 178. “In the most ethnic cultures,” Cohen notes, “there was a deep distrust of public assistance.… Often the people of European countries that had state assistance, such as Italy, regarded dependence upon public charity rather than poverty itself as the disgrace.… To spare themselves the shame of watching their compatriots appeal to American institutions, ethnic groups found their own solutions.” Cohen, Making a New Deal, 57.Google Scholar

31. The Jewish Communal Register of New York City (1917–18), 732.