But fraternal orders (which also included women’s organizations) were an enormous social force among American working people in the first half of the 20th Century—nearly as significant as labor unions. Also known as mutual aid societies, their defining features were “an autonomous system of lodges, a democratic form of internal government, a ritual, and the provision of mutual aid for members and their families.”(2) Fraternal orders were astonishingly diverse, self-selecting their members by geography, ethnicity, religion, or, like the Odd Fellows, nearly no criteria at all except “good character.” When the movement peaked in the early 1930s, fraternal orders had as many as thirty five million members. The biggest order, the Masons, claimed over twelve percent of all white American adults as initiates, as well as a fair—if segregated—percentage of black males.
The orders provided a powerful demonstration that mutual aid could serve as an alternative method for organizing a complex modern society. And at least in embryo, they had the potential to supplant the government-run social-services system that evolved during the New Deal (and is now under attack from the right ) with a decentralized, democratically run model that tied local mutual aid societies together in loose, cooperative national confederations. Undoubtedly, few lodge brothers or sisters ever thought of themselves as social revolutionaries. But their project made them fellow travelers of a sort, unwittingly providing a rebuke to free-market theorists who asserted that only an economic model built around corporate competition—not cooperation—could adequately provide for its members’ needs.
The basic purpose of the orders was to enable working people to pool their financial resources to supply each other with essentials that the state and the capitalists would not, including life insurance, pensions, cradle-to-grave medical care, and homes and schools for destitute family members. Members paid dues, usually modest, to support these services, which sometimes included their own hospitals, clinics, orphanages, and schools. And unlike private employers, the orders fought hard and usually succeeded in keeping their promises to their members even when times were bad.
