Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 6.djvu/665

 FRATERNAL BENEFICIARY SOCIETIES 651

for benefits, except, perhaps, to relief, widows' and orphans', and similar charity funds. "Honorary" and "invited" members are commonly exempt from financial obligations to the society.

The weakest spot of the fraternal beneficiary system is found in its protective features. Not that there are no fraternal societies whose systems of benefits are not thoroughly reliable, for there are such ; but rather that there are so many of them that persist- ently and consciously ignore those fundamental and elementary principles without which anything in the nature of insurance can never endure. So often has this been done that the whole frater- nal system of benefits has fallen into disrepute among many thinking people, and will require radical reforms and heroic work on the part of its friends to dispel the cloud which has been hanging over it. A brilliant Frenchman has said that people will not learn from experience unless this experience is repeated on a large scale through successive generations. The history of benefit systems of fraternal societies lends support to the generali- zation of the Frenchman. It would be neither agreeable nor very profitable to rehearse the many tales of disaster connected with the history of fraternal societies. However, it is worth our while to take a brief survey of the plans which are at present pursued by many of them in operating their benefit departments.

A speaker before the National Fraternal Congress, in 1899, presented the following statistics, illustrating the many different rates charged by different societies for the same amount of pro- tection at the same age :

At age 30: $0.25, .35, .37)4, 44, 45, 46, .50, .55, .56, .60, .62, .64, .65, .69, .70, .80, .82, .84, .85, .90, .92, i. oo, 1.04, 1. 10, i.i i, 1.14, 1.16, 1.19, i. 21,

1.22, 1.40.

At age 50: $0.65, .75, .80, .85, .90, i. oo, i.io, 1.16, 1.20, 1.25, 1.33, 1.38, 140, 1.42, 145, 1.50, 1.53, 1.55, 1.58, 1.60, 1.65, 1.72, 1.78, i. 80, 1.85, 1.86, 1.90, 1.96, 2.00, 2.07, 2.08, 2.15, 2.35, 245, 2.52, 2.56, 2.86, 2.90, 3.00, 3.30, 3-8o.

These figures tell their own story. The speaker also found that there were twenty-one orders charging less at age fifty than another order charges for age thirty. When large numbers of men are considered, health experiences are as certain, although not as definite, as the laws of natural science, and any system of