Monday, March 25, 2013

The decline of franternal organizations

Masonic Temple in Casper, Wyoming.  This pre World War One building remains one of the most substantial in downtown Casper.

Recently there was some discussion on a history focused list I'm on, sparked by the Company of Military Historians flyer I recently posted.  The CMH used to be an organization which you had to be invited into, in order to join, and that sort of exclusivity doesn't sit well with everyone.  This is no longer true of the CMH, which now has open enrollment, but the discussion went from that to the topic of fraternal organizations.

I'm not sure if the CMH could properly be considered a fraternal organization, but it was one that not everyone could walk into, which was part of the attraction of it, and I suppose part of the detraction.  In its case, it sought to make sure that people had a recognized interest in history, so it isn't quite the same as a lot of the other fraternal organizations that a person might normally think of.  And there were quite a few of them at that.

Up until perhaps the 1960s, belonging to some sort of fraternal club was a huge deal for men.  Indeed this was so much the case that it was made fun of in some popular media.  The Honeymooners, for example, featured a lodge that the two main male characters belonged to, called the "Raccoons.". The cartoon Flintstones, which was simply a cartoon variant of The Honeymooners, even did.  Lampooning a fraternal organization was a stock joke in those days.

The Masons, the Elks, the Rotary Club, the Lions, the Moose, the Odd Fellows, and the Eagles all had lodges here.  Some of these organizations are very old, some not so old, but they all were popular enough that they all had their own buildings.  Some of them were powers in their own right.

The Elks Club in Casper.  This club appears to still be going strong.  BOPE stands for, I believe Benevolent and Protective Order of the Elks.  Just behind it, to the right, is the old building for the Knights of Columbus.  There KofC still exists in Casper, but that building, which was once used by them and which had a club bar within it no longer is used by the Knights.

Many men, I suspect, belonged to more than one such organization at the time, and of course a few still do, but not like they once did.  I couldn't truthfully claim that all established men in a town belonged to at least one club, but it might be a safe bet that most men in business, and many who were not, belonged to at least one.  Some, as noted, were real powers unto themselves.  I've been told, for example, that the Masons were so powerful at one time that not belonging was a hindrance to a man in business. This was particularly a problem for Catholics, which are not allowed by their faith to join secret societies, which the Masons qualify as being.

The Masons, in fact, were so significant of organization that the inclusion of Masons in the dedication of public buildings was the norm prior to World War Two.   People would probably be shocked by that today, but it was routine at the time.  For example, the Federal Courthouse in Casper Wyoming was dedicated in a ceremony in which the Masons were included.  The Colorado Capitol also was.  Masonic Lodges, i.e., buildings themselves, exist in almost every town in Wyoming, and in many cases they are amongst the towns most substantial structures, showing that the lodges had the desire and financial ability to have them constructed. The Masonic Lodge in Casper, for example, is depicted above, and is one of the town's most substantial structures.  Even much smaller towns such as Riverton, however, had pretty substantially constructed Masonic lodges.

The Odd Fellows Building in Casper.  IOOF stands for the International Order of Odd Fellows, I think. The building marks the dates 1894 to 1950, so presumably the Odd Fellows had been in Casper since 1894 at the time this building was built.  I have never met a member of this organization, and I do not believe they meet here any longer.  I don't know if they still exist, for that matter.
In addition to these fraternal organizations, near fraternal organizations existed in the form of blue collar trade associations.  This would probably surprise modern residents of Wyoming today, but even I can recall some of these organizations existing when I was younger.  At least one labor union in  Casper retains a building, although I don't know much about it, but clubs like the Building & Trades Club are gone. The BT Club, by the time I was in high school, had degenerated into a rough bar, but in its earlier form it had been a club for men in the construction industry.  The clubs functioned under a special exemption to the state's liquor laws, after the repeal of Prohibition, which allowed them to stay open after hours, which initially reflected their fraternal nature, but which ultimately came to be a way around closing time.

The decline in fraternal club membership has been so pronounced that there's been real changes in some of these organizations, and others have just disappeared.  Many of the old lodges and clubs hang on to this day, but in much diminished forms and with aging memberships, while others have managed to hang on.  As noted above, the Elks Club seems to be doing fine.  The Rotary Club is one that I'm not terribly familiar with, but I've known a lot of people who have been Rotarians, so presumably it too is doing fine.  Some seem to have changed their focus a bit.  I know quite a few Knights of Columbus, for example, but the organization seems to have lost some of reason d'etre with the local decline of the Masons, and in the process it has refocused itself towards other goals and therefore seems to be doing fine.  It no longer has a club with a bar like it once did, but that wouldn't seem consistent with its present character.

Knights of Columbus relief poster from World War One.

Using the Masons as example again, the lodge buildings themselves (called temples) provide evidence of the change.  The Masonic Lodge in Casper does exist, and it might be quite busy, but the temple itself is quite near my office and there seems to be very little activity that occurs there.  It might be perfectly unfair to attempt to draw a conclusion from that, but it's pretty quiet looking anyhow.  The Masonic temple in Riverton is an older stone building downtown and is now offices.  I've been in it years ago to take a deposition, as a lawyer at that time rented one of the floors.  The Shriners, a branch of the Masons, still keep on keeping on, but I frankly do not know a good deal about them.  Their presence in the annual Central Wyoming Fair and Rodeo Parade has not diminished over the years, so presumably they're doing well.

The Knights of Columbus, with a changed focus to some degree, also no longer occupy their building in Casper. That building was located across the street from the old St. Anthony's School and convent, and on the same block as the Elks.  It appeared to be a much newer structure however, so I'm not sure how old it really is.  My guess is that the building dated from the 1950s, however.  At any rate, according to people I know very well, it once hosted some rollicking St. Patrick's Day parties and, I am told, it was once a place where members could go on a Friday evening for fellowship and a few drinks.  The Knights still exist, and still offer fellowship to their members, but the days of a club are over and indeed probably not really consistent with the present nature of the entity.

So why the change?  It's probably not a real mystery, but it is a real change.  When the organizations were all very strong, there was no television, no radio, and certainly no Internet.  In the evenings, when men returned home from work, and we are to a very large degree speaking of men, there were things to do, some of which were in the category of drudgery, but more often than not the evening brought dinner and then that was it.  That left men with free time, but free time that was afforded with fewer distractions than modern life offers, or perhaps even inflicts.  So, basically, a lot of men had the choice of staying in their homes or apartments in the evening or, going somewhere and hanging out with like minded friends.  By the same token, any number of local institutions and activities likewise benefited from this situation, although harnessed to less altruistic purposes. For example, a small club exists outside of Casper that was called The Roundup Club, a sort of agricultural lodge, that was a type of fraternal organization but, in contrast the same social instincts in the remote Natrona County town of Powder River were filled for decades by The Tumble Inn, a bar and restaurant which, for locals, was darned near like a lodge.



It'd be easy to ignore this change and dismiss it as simply a byproduct of the times, but it isn't without its impact.  Almost every fraternal organization has a dedicated public purpose.  Some of the organizations remain fiercely dedicated to their particular charitable focus.  I couldn't begin to list which each may be, but some of the more famous examples are the  Shriner's dedication to burn hospitals.  Locally, the Rotary Club maintains the Casper Mountain Braille Trail, a long existing way of connecting the blind with nature.  Many such other examples exist.  In almost all of them, should membership decline to a critical point, the charitable purpose of the club would likewise almost certainly be impaired. 

The other negative aspect of their decline, however, is that it probably simply isn't a good thing for people to be hanging around the house by themselves too much.  When that occurs, people's contact with the world begins to be limited to themselves or the very like minded.  For that reason, the Internet, frequently cited as a means of broadening knowledge, probably doesn't.  A feature of almost all of the fraternal organizations listed above is that they tended to bring together those of some diversity.  It wouldn't be true that they were absolutely representative of the diversity of their communities.  After all, early very early on some were discriminatory in nature.  Even now, however, it wouldn't be the case that every person could join any one.  A Catholic, for example, would still be self excluded from the Masons and you have to be a Catholic, of course, to be in the Knights of Columbus.  But it is the case that a lawyer is likely to be seated next to a tradesman at the Elks.  With the decline in this sort of activity, the diversity of society is cheated a bit, and people begin to take counsel more and more of their own views and fears.

3 comments:

Rich said...

Somewhere I read that fraternal organizations have declined because of the growth of government into every aspect of our lives.

Fraternal organizations traditionally had the role of helping members that lost their jobs, were injured on the job, had excessive medical bills, had their house burn down, provided for widows and children of members, etc.

But, as government became larger and more controlling (along with the influence of corporations, insurance companies, and banks) the fraternal organizations were slowly dismantled because they couldn't compete with the government.

Fraternal organizations also had an active role in political debate at both the lodges and in public which also helped shape the face of government. The way I understand it, a lodge would tend to support a candidate that reflected their ideals about a local community working to help community members. After the lodges started fading away, political candidates would start to reflect the ideals of corporation, bankers, and big government advocates.

The interesting question is whether the lodges went away because people preferred the big government solutions, or did a bigger government slowly force the lodges out of existence?

Pat, Marcus & Alexis said...

The insurance like aspects of fraternal organizations is a topic that hadn't even occurred to me, but it did definitely exist. To what extent that was a motivating factor to join I don't know, but for some it might have been one. If we expend the definition of the organizations out to include things that were trade organizations, like farmers organizations, and perhaps even include unions, it would have been. Indeed, the history of fraternal organizations, unions, etc. can all fit into a general social organization history.

But I'm not sure that the decline of those organizations can be tied to private business and government taking over part of the insurance type role because the time line and history of it wouldn't really quite work out very well. Fraternal organizations remained strong into the 1950s. Insurance companies, some of which had been founded by organizations (and some of which still own some carriers) were up and running by that time and had already taken over that role. The first movements towards wider governmental participation in social services (very broadly defined) had come in during the late 1890s, during industrialization, when large scale manufacturing made the former master servant relationship less functional for many laborers.

Indeed, on that, it's interesting to note that the first Workers Compensation law of any type was German, with Germany experiencing the second wave of the industrial revolution in the mid 19th Century. That type of Workers Compensation is the type that Wyoming adopted over a century ago, making us somewhat unique, but also showing that the problems associated with industrial accidents had overcome the ability of the prior system to deal with it.

The Progressives proposed quite a few items along these general lines, but it wasn't until the Great Depression that the government entered many of these areas when the prior system could simply no longer handle it with the huge level of unemployment. But it was really World War Two, oddly enough, that created our current insurance system, as the government froze wages as a hedge against the inflationary forces of labor shortages, but it did not think to freeze benefits. Health insurance was one such benefit and soon heavy industry was offering as part of the employment package. That ultimately spread to nearly the entire economy, although that system has been stressed for some time.

This omits the impacts of Unions, which really is a different story, but the high water mark of unions was really the 1950s, with many of their goals being reflected in the law. Unions have receded since then, and this is probably undoubtedly due to their success.

Overall, however, fraternal organizations were still strong after they no longer needed to act as informal insurance carriers.

On politics, that's a really complicated story but one related element that I didn't deal much with in my post is that belonging to a fraternal organization could have a significant impact on a person's business, and not just simply in the meeting function that we might think of. For that reason, some organizations had to reform, or were required to, as they were all male in membership and effectively excluded women from certain types of business success at some levels. The exclusionary, therefore, rather than inclusionary, aspect of some fraternal organizations was a problem and, I suspect, might also explain their decline, as the exclusion of women from such fields is wholly unacceptable today, whereas it would not have been regarded at one time. Indeed, some (but certainly not all) fraternal organizations could be quite biased in who they allowed membership to.

Pat, Marcus & Alexis said...

This morning on my way into work I was listening to a radio interview of a woman who had been studying racial inequality in employment. Something she noted reminded me of this post.

Basically, what she found in her research, and what had surprised her, was that post the 1960s, racial inequality in hiring had very little to do with actual racism, but everything to do with informal connections. That is, people tend to look out for and hire their friends and family. I'm sure that's true. The impact of that could, and does, impact racial inequality in the work place, no doubt, as people who occupy certain types of positions will, innocently enough, look out for friends and family.

To the extent that's related to this post, it's because the lodges, etc., formed part of that network at one time. That's no longer nearly as true as it had once been, however.