Tag: Mutual Benefit Societies
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Black IOOF history
This is even more interesting than the white IOOF. Black lodges started in NYC in 1843, twenty years after the white lodges. From the Official History of the Grand United Order of Odd Fellows, published 1893. I’m including an unusually long quote because it’s powerful and important history. = = = = = START QUOTE:…
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IOOF history
After spending some time at the Odd Fellows retirement home in Eureka Lake, Polistra decided to seek out a lodge. She found a typical one in La Cygne** near the southeast corner of the state. Like most lodges it was in a downtown storefront. The building looks like it originally housed a bank. A grocery…
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Union power
I’ve discussed the rise and fall of shortwave often. Shortwave is an abandoned territory ripe for reclaiming, and Mutual Benefit Societies are another abandoned territory that deserves reclaiming. This little item rings both bells at once. In 1933 shortwave was growing but not well explored or understood yet. A 1933 issue of a Gernsback radio…
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It’s all about reciprocity
The key to success for a Mutual Benefit Society is a proper mix of real business and social enjoyment. Starting in the 1920s, the purely commercial insurance firms absorbed and destroyed the MBS movement, leaving only the social side. Without the BENEFIT part it’s just a drinking club. Odd Fellows preserved some of the real…
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When metrology mattered
Reading about the IOOF led to this, but it’s not really related to the IOOF. One article in an Odd Fellows journal around 1920 mentioned Roger Babson as an economist who was in sync with the principles of Mutual Benefit Societies. I looked up Babson and found one of his books, which starts oddly enough…
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Got what they wanted
Well, the media and Wall Street got what they wanted. Now they can have fun for four years, and the empire can decay even faster for four years. I hope and pray that harsher rulers and nastier media and more destructive billionaires will speed up the growth of effective alternatives and bottom-up organizations like Mutual…
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More from IOOF in the 1920s
Continuing from previous item. The annual report of the Wisconsin state IOOF for 1921 proves that the organization was truly an insurance provider and a mutual company, along with its social functions. Note the payments of sickness benefits and life insurance. The income was well beyond the payouts, and the lodge maintained a large investment…
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Where Harding got his purpose
Eureka Lake started me reading about the Odd Fellows. They have maintained their original functions pretty well for 200 years. They work for peace, tolerance, mercy, and fellowship. A 1920 magazine from the Virginia state lodges shows how their steady purpose responded to Wilson’s brutality and unceasing propaganda. This attitude may have been widespread at…
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Mutual is NOT dead.
While researching IOOF for Eureka Lake I realized that the IOOF is NOT dead yet. It hasn’t devolved into a drinking club or sold out to commercial insurance firms like most other societies. It still runs modern retirement homes in at least three states, and has active lodges and new members in many cities. Trinity…
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Eureka Lake
In 1966 I was exploring the Manhattan area. Southwest of town I found a huge brick building with a nice porch, fronting a peaceful little lake. The building looked like a hotel. On a nearby corner was a little country general store. Checking maps, I found that the building was the Oddfellows nursing home, and…
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Bankruptcy is the solution.
Denyse comments on the latest evidence that “science” has totally abandoned science for politics. SciAm outright endorsed Harris instead of Trump, AFTER FIRMLY SUPPORTING WHAT TRUMP ACTUALLY DID IN 2020. This is the exact opposite of the “independent” activists, who worked hard to oppose WHAT TRUMP ACTUALLY DID, and now are universally working FOR Trump.…
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Will we learn?
Crowdstrike’s failure is part of a series this year. Companies that “offer” globalized services take down their customers when they fail in a very slight way. Similar outfits “serving” real estate and car dealers failed earlier this year. None of these companies are necessary. Before such companies developed, some industries had their own private networks;…
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When spells break
Thinking about broken spells and busted myths today. When spells break, weird shit happens. We’ve had a lot of broken spells in the last 30 Bush years. 9/11 broke the spell of “terrorism” and Wilsonian “democracy” imperialism. 2008 broke the spell of honest banking. 2020 broke the spell of “public health” as a healing profession…
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Extending again
In previous item: Every real experience has non-verbal cultural factors that can’t be acquired through books or Google. This meshes with my assertion that secrecy is the default. Secrecy in this form is not enforced by government rules and censors; it arises from the natural barrier around the culture and experience of a group. The…
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He gets the big point
Most of the time, both “sides” in each hot-button Machiavellian divider are missing the main point. The anti-bitcoiners are right about some details but miss the BIG point that every transaction on the web is perfectly global, perfectly centralized, and perfectly public. Here’s one anti who grasps the biggest point of all. He’s citing a…
Polistra's Mill 