Fraternal Orders Research Articles

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

The Suppression Hypothesis Reconsidered: Competition Between Blacks and White Immigrants in the Retail Trade in Large Northern Cities, 1910-1930

Introduction The development of entrepreneurship in retail trade in large northern cities during early 20th century was viewed by many leaders as essential to economic progress of blacks as group. If retail entrepreneurs could monopolize local trade in communities that were created in these cities by first wave of Black Migration to North (circa 1915-1930), then, it was believed, number of benefits would follow: These entrepreneurs would expand their businesses, hire additional employees, and, over long run, sustain network of black-owned wholesaling and manufacturing enterprises that could provide foundation for economy, that is, a cooperative arrangement of industries and services within Negro group such that group tends to be closed economic circle largely independent of surrounding white world (Du Bois 1907: 179, quoted in Waldinger and Aldrich 1990: 59). The basis of this belief was doctrine of double-duty dollar, which was popularized by church and press in urban North in 1920s and 1930s. This doctrine, which was evidently based on concept of multiplier effect in economic theory (Pearce 1986: 288), argued that money spent in retail stores owned by blacks would circulate within community and, in so doing, generate greater employment and incomes for blacks, locally and nationally (Drake and Cayton 1962: 430-431; see also Light 1972: 119, citing Harris 1936; Myrdal 1944). Accordingly, in wake of Great Migration, support for entrepreneurship in retail trade was vigorously encouraged in northern cities by churches, newspapers, and voluntary organizations, such as lodges and fraternal orders. This support often took form of buy black campaigns. These campaigns originated in urban North (Frazier 1957: 166) and emphasized the duty of to trade with Negroes and promised to blacks ultimate 'racial' salvation through their loyal patronage of black-owned retail stores (Drake and Cayton 1962: 430; see also Ofari 1970: 52). Sometimes support for entrepreneurship took form of attempts to promote cooperative ventures among those entrepreneurs who sought to become retail merchants. These attempts were motivated by belief that in retail trade would be achieved through efficiencies gained by pooling of resources, coordination of business practices, such as advertising, and standardization of goods and equipment. The Colored Merchants Association, founded in New York City by Albon Holsey in 1929 under auspices of late Booker T. Washington's National Negro Business League, was an example of such collective venture (Light 1972: 125, citing Harris 1936). In spite of these efforts, though, entrepreneurs struggled to establish themselves in retail trade in urban North. They faced numerous obstacles, including racial bias in lending and in extension of credit, exclusion from main commercial districts, restricted access to business training, and denial of both property rights and police protection (Boyd 2001: 242, citing Bates 1973; Butler 1991; Harmon 1929; Harris 1936; Higgs 1977; Myrdal 1944). Furthermore, by some accounts, they were also hampered by limited opportunities to gain experience in buying and selling (Frazier 1949: 411), dearth of entrepreneurial success symbols (Foley 1966: 572), and absence of socio-cultural heritage that included rotating credit associations that could generate financial capital for business startups (Light 1972: 22). As consequence of these and other difficulties, blacks were greatly underrepresented in retail trade. For example, in 60 large northern cities in 1930, number of retail merchants was, on average, 81 percent less than what would be expected on basis of representation of blacks in these cities' workforces (Boyd 2003a: 451). …

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

Ordre de la Resemblance: ett bidrag till Nordenflychtforskningen

This article treats an episode in the life and work of one of the most prominent Swedish female poets of the eighteenth century, Hedvig Charlotta Nordenflycht (1718-1763). Based upon a letter to one of her friends, earlier research has speculated on whether Nordenflycht established a fraternal order. New archival evidence suggests that this indeed seems likely. In the collections of the Swedish Order of Freemasons a manuscript has resurfaced after a 150-year hibernation, outlining ‘Grund och Reglor til Ordre de la Resemblance' (Foundations and rules for the order of resemblance). This document, dated 15 October 1747, is introduced by a poem, ‘Förstånds och Hjertas ädlaste syssla' (The most noble activity of reason and the heart), treating the moral perfectibility of man, the search for the light of truth, and hailing friendship as a secret force of attraction, an invisible magnetic power causing ‘resemblance' between humans. Developed out of these motifs, twelve subsequent paragraphs elaborate the ideology and organization of the order, resembling other forms of organized sociability of the time. Whoever drew up these rules and regulations must have been familiar with similar forms of fraternal orders during the period as well as the idea of female participation. A shared codex of moral behavior, a motto, an emblem, and organizational principles for membership and association were codified. In 1753 Nordenflycht joined an outspokenly literary order, the Order of the Edification of Thought (Tankebyggarorden), and it appears likely that either the experience or the mere concept of the ‘Ordre de la Resemblance' facilitated Nordenflycht's membership. This concept, if it was realized, might have advanced the creation of a horizontal network-style community intended to participate in male spheres of dominance. The ‘Ordre' can be interpreted as an extended textual praxis in which a text was performed in social interplay beyond its textual qualities. Interpreted from the perspective of theories of performance, the ‘Ordre' reflects a development towards the renegotiation, redefinition, and reform of manners during the time catalyzed by organized associational life and ritual performance.

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

Reviewed by: Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia Brian P. Luskey Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia. By Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. Pp. vii, 181.) This book, a social and cultural history of the Freemasons, Oddfel-lows, and Sons of Temperance in late-antebellum Virginia, builds upon the work of Jonathan Daniel Wells and Frank Byrne to add crucial detail to our emerging portrait of the middle class in the nineteenth-century South. Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch argues that merchants, artisans, and professionals in towns and cities increasingly joined fraternal organizations between 1840 and 1860 to combat the effects of economic changes that threatened their access to social advancement and to proclaim their civic virtue in political debates with elite men who sought to sustain the correlation between property-holding and citizenship. Directly confronting the rural slaveholding planters’ code of honor and the impulsive violence of the poor, members of fraternal orders found opportunities in their secret rituals and public ceremonies to cultivate a standard of masculinity. That standard emphasized “self-discipline, moral character, and success at work,” and fostered “civic brotherhood” among white men that transcended class distinctions (5). Pflugrad-Jackisch employs different historical methods and sources to support her analysis. A social historian, she makes good use of lodge rosters to determine that commercial and manufacturing men outnumbered farmers in fraternal orders, and that the majority of members owned at least a few slaves. A cultural historian, she listens carefully to the voices of Virginians who professed their faith in the equality of white men and the ways in which their fraternities enshrined those ideals. Brotherhood was absolutely essential, these men thought, as urbanization and industrialization in Virginia jeopardized the bonds of community and friendship that had often been the foundation for trust in the marketplace. Fraternal organizations created stable commercial networks in which brothers forged reputations for integrity and helped to ensure each other’s economic safety and success. The “moral character” of these institutions had political implications argued the men who made them. Widening economic inequalities meant the nation was descending into social disorder and self-interested “licentiousness,” and Masons, Oddfellows, and Sons of Temperance saw themselves as defenders of the virtuous Republic (72). They steadfastly excluded black men from membership to maintain the racial hierarchy that supposedly ensured the citizenship rights of all white men. They also shouldered charitable responsibilities and advocated [End Page 124] educational access for white youth, in the process casting aspersions upon the benevolent efforts of white women and effectively safeguarding the masculine privileges of citizenship. Of course, the existence of alternative definitions of manhood in Virginia did not diminish the social and political power of planters. Nor did it lessen the cultural sway that honor and violence continued to have in the South. And indeed, while fraternal orders stipulated that members refrain from partisanship in the lodge, Virginia fraternity members cut ties with and fought against their northern counterparts during the Civil War to protect their “independent status as heads of their households and protectors of social dependents” (121). As Stephanie McCurry has argued, appeals to the social and cultural value of mastery had the power to unite white southern men around common purposes. And yet Pflugrad-Jackisch’s book helps us to see the rich complexity of the cultural debate about manhood in antebellum Virginia, and how it helped to mitigate conflict among white men, even as it also bolstered their power over southern society. Brian P. Luskey West Virginia University Copyright © 2011 West Virginia University Press

Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia (review)

Reviewed by: Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia Kevin Butterfield (bio) Brothers of a Vow: Secret Fraternal Orders and the Transformation of White Male Culture in Antebellum Virginia. By Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch. (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2010. Pp. 181. Cloth, $39.95.) Brothers of a Vow is a tightly written and thought-provoking book about the men who became Odd Fellows, Freemasons, and Sons of Temperance in antebellum Virginia. In five short chapters, Ami Pflugrad-Jackisch manages—by means of thorough research, incisive engagement with the latest scholarship, and persuasive explanations of causes and effects—to make the case that fraternal organizations allowed working- and middle-class men to come together and to assert a wholly new kind of masculine respectability and white male civic brotherhood. She argues, persuasively, that the language of brotherly love and male equality so ubiquitous in the fraternal orders held great appeal for men seeking to navigate the uncertainties of a society increasingly divided by economic interest and party allegiance. Moral integrity, not economic success or social prominence, was the marker of a worthy member. And that standard for membership allowed men in Virginia, whether propertied slaveholders or not, to construct and to lay claim to a new standard of southern white manhood and male independence. Pflugrad-Jackisch rests much of her argument on Amy Greenberg's description of two distinct and competing varieties of masculinity in antebellum America: martial manhood, with its emphasis on honor and violence; and restrained manhood, with a market-friendly stress on trustworthiness, temperance, and self-discipline.1 Brothers of a Vow reveals how fraternity and ritual could serve as means to embrace the latter while minimizing class divisions that were painfully present in the cities of Virginia. Indeed, the elaborate rituals themselves played an important role here. Pflugrad-Jackisch rightly contends that the fraternal signs and symbols allowed men to distinguish those of good character from the unworthy. A member's attention to the increasingly complex and lengthy rituals of [End Page 534] the Masons, Odd Fellows, and the relatively new Sons of Temperance were "part of a larger performance that indicated the quality of his character and reinforced the 'familial' bonds of the lodge" (61). Adherence to tightly scripted behavior within the lodge could evince a man's self-discipline out of doors. And the ability to keep those rituals secret could prove his reliability. The content of antebellum rituals in Brothers of a Vow, however, is given relatively short shrift. Rituals were useful as "an effective means of policing white male conduct" (75), but Pflugrad-Jackisch does not ascribe to them much larger significance. This is at times a real strength to her study: She is able to see through the regalia, pomp, and secrecy to locate a desire among mid-nineteenth-century Virginia men to find a medium through which they could cultivate white male solidarity and help manage the stresses of an increasingly market-driven society. But the men themselves gave the letter and spirit of the rituals more significance than does the author, and on one occasion her emphasis leads her astray. When she notes that an aspiring Mason was rejected for having only one leg, "presumably because it interfered with his ability to support himself" (80), she misses an opportunity to explore ways in which the content of the ritual had real meaning, not just utility, for the participants. For the actual reason the man was rejected dates back to the beginnings of modern Freemasonry in England (and lingers to this day in many Masonic jurisdictions), specifically, the prohibition on any applicant who did not "have his right Limbs as a Man ought to have."2 The reason was ideational rather than practical, having to do with the ideal image of a man and with his ability to perform the requisite motions of initiation and recognition. Attempts to understand what drew men to the lodge should give more weight to the rites and rules that they set out for themselves. There is much more in this short volume, for the joiners in Brothers of a Vow were doing something besides simply...

Brotherhood, Business, and White Male Respectability

This article examines the dramatic growth and popularity of secret fraternal organizations such as the Freemasons, the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, and the Sons of Temperance in Virginia just before the Civil War. Young Virginians who came of age during the antebellum era lived through a time of tremendous economic, cultural, and political upheaval. The spread of a market economy into the cities and towns of the Old Dominion promoted a cultural ethos that rewarded individual ambition, altered long-standing social relationships, and aggravated class tensions between working-class white men and new middle-class businessmen, merchants, and professionals. In a state increasingly pulled between the demands of the growing market and the long-established tradition of unfree labour, secret fraternal orders, played a special role in assuaging class tensions between white working and middle-class men. As the market economy grew and expanded these two groups of men had many reasons to be at odds with each outside of the lodge room. Instead, they chose to join lodges that stressed brotherly love and fraternal bonds. Ultimately, based on these ideals, secret fraternal orders created a civic brotherhood among white men in Virginia that softened class distinctions and carved out a non-political pathway to civic authority for white men.

The Ancient and Honorable Court of Dover: Mock Trials, Fraternal Orders, and Solemn Foolery in Nineteenth-Century New York State

The Ancient and Honorable Court of Dover: Mock Trials, Fraternal Orders, and Solemn Foolery in Nineteenth-Century New York State

<i>Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale Richard Newhauser Chaucer and the Culture of Dissent: The Lollard Context and Subtext of the Parson's Tale. By Frances McCormack. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007. Pp. 252. $65. Over the past few decades, the reinvigorated study of Lollard groups and their writings has added a great deal to our knowledge of the cultural context of literary production in late-medieval England. In ways not foreseen by earlier scholarship, the Wycliffite and anti-Wycliffite environment of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries has seemed in recent years almost to establish the critical limits of religious and political inquiry into Middle English literature produced in this period. Yet this discussion has also tended to occlude the realm of reform Christianity as a legitimate expression of orthodoxy in late-medieval England, no matter how critical it was of the institutional church, for orthodoxy regularly admits reform even as it delegitimizes revolution. Chaucer, of course, has been a familiar figure in this reassessment of Lollard influence, and the Parson and his tale have been essential elements in the discussion of Chaucer's religious-political sympathies, among other reasons because of the Host's characterization of the Parson in the Epilogue to The Man of Law's Tale as a "Lollere" (The Canterbury Tales, II.1173, 1177). Still, Chaucer has in general continued to be understood as an author who fits comfortably within orthodox positions supporting reforms among the clergy and the fraternal orders. Not so, however, in Frances McCormack's view, whose book under review here claims that "Chaucer may well have been a Lollard" (p. 15) and that "he intended his audience to search for Lollard motifs" in his characterization of the Parson and in the Parson's tale (p. 20). Though these claims are not ultimately proven, her book remains a vigorous expression of the controversial view that Chaucer had Wycliffite sympathies. How McCormack understands these sympathies is dealt with in detail in chapter 1, with predictable references to studies of Chaucer's relationships with the circle of "Lollard Knights," but also with an appreciation for the wide spectrum of possibilities in Lollard beliefs. Chaucer's well-known masking of his personal convictions, the way in which he seems to disappear behind his narratorial personae, is asserted here as a consciously political decision: in the late decades of the fourteenth century, he would not have been so foolhardy as to openly advocate heterodox positions in his presentation of the Parson and the Parson's tale (p. 38), no matter how much he might have been calling "for a subversive reading of this Tale" (p. 74). In McCormack's reasoning, then, the major clues to Chaucer's religious-political leanings are to be found in the undertones and signals in the verbal structure of the characterization of the Parson and his tale. In this way, much of her book is devoted to analyses of the vocabulary and translations involved in these parts of The Canterbury Tales. The analysis of the Parson's undertones of Lollard language in chapter 2 uses critical tools developed by Anne Hudson, Helen Barr, and others to characterize [End Page 132] the Wycliffite vocabulary as composed of "essentializing terms," "reverse discourse," and other marked features. Yet, such terms as "weye" (pp. 58–61), "ordre" (pp. 61–64), and "noumbrid" (p. 63), for example, seem so generally applied in all registers in English as to be relatively unremarkable as linguistic features of a sect vocabulary. Indeed, when they are seen in their contexts in the quotations McCormack provides here and compared to the Parson's tale, what stands out often is the disparity between their partisan uses in recognized Lollard texts and their employment by the Parson. Drawing on material from Andrew Cole in chapter 3, McCormack analyzes the translations in the Parson's tale, asserting that while its Scriptural renderings are not always particularly close to the wording of the early or late Wycliffite versions of the Bible, Chaucer still probably used the Wycliffite texts as a "crib" for his rendering of Vulgate passages. She sees in the many selections...

Report Links Disparities With Demographics

Report Links Disparities With Demographics

Duty to the Race: African American Fraternal Orders and the Legal Defense of the Right to Organize

In 1904, leaders of three major white fraternal orders launched a nationally coordinated legislative and legal campaign to force their black counterparts out of existence, a struggle that spread to at least 29 states and culminated in victories for the African American groups before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1912 and 1929. The organizational structures of the black orders, usually consisting of a tripartite system of local, state, and national lodges, were critical in this successful defense of the legal right to form and operate fraternal organizations. These structures enabled fraternal members and leaders to turn local disputes into national ones, devise strategies based on the interplay of different levels of government, and sustain a discourse that facilitated internal mobilization and minimized external opposition. While most scholarship on resistance to Jim Crow has focused on local activism, the defense mounted by these orders facilitated the development of sophisticated, nationwide networks binding together local fraternal leaders and African American lawyers. These networks became a critical venue for the development of oppositional traditions, organizational infrastructures, and leadership ties that kept resistance alive under Jim Crow and laid the building blocks for future political and civil rights–related work. In particular, these fraternal lawyers, a number of whom went on to work for the NAACP, honed skills in these trials that were also central to the NAACP's legal strategy, especially in learning to tailor cases to achieve federal hearings.

“What a Mighty Power We Can Be”

This article shows that the rituals of fraternal organizations were more than mere theatrics; that is, that they served as expressions and enactments of important ideas about individual and collective identity, gender, equality, and collective action. Responding to gaps in past work on this subject, we examine variation in master narratives and modes of ritual enactment, comparing male and female and white and African American groups from the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The fraternal orders examined used elements of one of three ideal-typical ritual models to initiate their members: these models are referred to here as proprietorship, helpmateship, and pilgrimage. Following Clawson 1989, we find that men's groups of both races used ritual models focusing on autonomy and incorporation into hierarchy. Women's groups de-emphasized connections between members and focused instead on “traditional” Victorian norms and roles for women. African American groups—and particularly those without white counterparts—emphasized the equality of members as well as the importance of collective efforts for social improvement. We discuss the complex ways ideas about race and gender were articulated within civic organizations at the turn of the century and how these findings contribute to our understanding of the relationship between culture and collective action.

Duty to the Race

In 1904, leaders of three major white fraternal orders launched a nationally coordinated legislative and legal campaign to force their black counterparts out of existence, a struggle that spread to atleast 29 states and culminated in victories for the African American groups before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1912 and 1929. The organizational structures of the black orders, usually consisting of a tripartite system of local, state, and national lodges, were critical in this successful defense of the legal right to form and operate fraternal organizations. These structures enabled fraternal members and leaders to turn local disputes into national ones, devise strategies based on the interplay of different levels of government, and sustain a discourse that facilitated internal mobilization and minimized external opposition. While most scholarship on resistance to Jim Crow has focused on local activism, the defense mounted by these orders facilitated the development of sophisticated, nationwide networks binding together local fraternal leaders and African American lawyers. These networks became a critical venue for the development of oppositional traditions, organizational infrastructures, and leadership ties that kept resistance alive under Jim Crow and laid the building blocks for future political and civil rights-related work. In particular, these fraternal lawyers, a number of whom went on to work for the NAACP, honed skills in these trials that were also central to the NAACP’s legal strategy, especially in learning to tailor cases to achieve federal hearings.

The King Arthur Myth in Modern American Literature by Andrew E. Mathis (review)

104A RTH U RI AN A Hartmann as a 'model and standard' (x) for later poets such as Wolfram and Gottfried, some of the recurring features of Hartmann's narrative works (e.g. the bipartite structure), and what is known about Hartmann's life. Each of the translated works (or group of works in the case of the lyrics) is preceded by a brief introduction. Given that they cover a lot of ground in a short space, and bearing in mind the intended general audience, these short introductions generally do a good job of preparing readers for Hartmann's works (though one might quibble with the vagueness ofthe manner in which 'courtly love' is invoked in the introductions to Hartmann's Lament and lyrics, or wish that the introduction ofthe lyrics had set forth in clearer terms that Hartmann's 'poems' were in fact musical performances, something that might be worth emphasizing for the general audience at which this translation is directed). A short, seven-page bibliography of critical literature, editions, and translations is included at the end of the volume. Frank Tobin has translated the Lament, Hartmann's lyric poetry, and Poor Heinrich, Kim Vivian Erec and Gregorius, and Richard H. Lawson Iwein, though they make clear in their joint introduction that they wish the whole book to be seen as a collaborative effort (xiii). On their approach to translation, the collaborators write: 'We have endeavored to capture some of the flavor of the medieval way of viewing and expressing things without resorting to obsolete and antiquated formulations foreign to our intended audience' (xiii). The result ofthis approach is a very readable rendering of the verse narratives and lyric poetry that has succeeded admirably in capturing the spirit of Hartmann's elegant Middle High German verses. will hasty University of Florida ANDRF.W E. MATHis, The KingArthurMyth in Modern American Literature. Jefferson, NC, and London: McFarland & Co., 2002. Pp. 158. isbn: 0-7864-1171-6. $32. The scope of this study is much narrower than the reference to Modern American Literature in the title would suggest. Not only does it exclude drama and poetry in favor ofprose fiction, but even within this form the choice is highly selective. For a start, it dismisses what can be found in 'the realm of the science fiction and fantasy aisle at the local bookstore,' deeming that they lie outside 'the American literary tradition' (5). It does, however, devote five pages to Hal Foster's Arthurian comic strip Prince Valiant, and six to American National Socialist leader William Dudley Pelley, whom it acknowledges to be 'a marginal figure in the history of literature, film, and politics' (77). It has no interest in historical fiction, but the detective fiction ofRaymond Chandler merits a whole chapter. Some novels in a contemporary setting are examined, but not Bernard Malamud's The Natural, while Walker Percys Lanceht and John Updike's Brazilzre discussed only during a briefdigression on the figure of the Black Knight. Mathis is not concerned with form, however. Rather he explores 'two streams' (5) in modern American fiction: the use of Arthurian myth 'to critique or address historical or contemporaneous events and figures,' which is 'part ofthe general trend of medievalism seen in the formation of fraternal orders among working people in REVIEWS105 the late nineteenth century' (2); and 'a more aesthetic tradition' (4) that discovers how unsuitable are the ideals of an earlier age for contemporary society. It is this dual focus that determines his choice of texts. As a result, he ignores novels placed in an Arthurian setting, unless they comment upon clearly recognizable contemporary figures and events, as does Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Although he discusses the fiction ofJohn Steinbeck at length, he is less interested in The Acts ofKing Arthur than he is in his other novels, which are placed in a contemporary setting. In these, and in the fiction ofRaymond Chandler, John Gardner, and Donald Barthelme, he finds evidence that the ideals ofArthur's court are unsuited to modern American society. This approach has merit, and it reminds Arthurian scholars of contemporary events that may have influenced the authors, e.g., Matthew Arnold's...

The Wages of Sickness: The Politics of Health Insurance in Progressive America (review)

Chapter 1 of the American health insurance saga is the American Association for Labor Legislation's campaign during the second decade of the twentieth century. Charity societies, fraternal orders, dispensaries, company physicians, workmen's compensation laws, commercial "industrial insurance" (individual burial policies sold door-to-door), and the earlier social insurance schemes of certain European nations are the contextual antecedents, if not actual precedents, of this initial American venture toward compulsory health insurance. Since the story of the AALL campaign has been so well told by Ronald Numbers (Almost Persuaded: American Physicians and Compulsory Health Insurance, 1912-1920, 1978), the first question one must ask of any retelling is, What does it add?

The Sherlock Holmes of Societies

References Bullock, Steven C. 1996. Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730–1840. Chapel Hill and London: Univ. of North Carolina Press. Carnes, Mark. 1989. Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. Clawson, Mary Ann. 1989. Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender, and Fraternalism. Princeton, N. J.: Princeton Univ. Press. Duncan, Malcolm C. 1974. Duncan ’s Masonic Ritual and Monitor, rev. ed., Part I. Chicago: Charles T. Powner Co. Jacob, Margaret C. 1991. Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe. Oxford and New York: Oxford Univ. Press. Kertzer, David I. 1988. Ritual, Politics and Power. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press. Rotundo, Anthony. 1993. American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era. New York: Basic. Thomas, Keith. 1988 [1971]. Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England. London: Penguin. World Almanac and Book of Facts 1995. 1994. Mahwah, N. J.

To Advance the “Practice of Thrift and Economy”: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890–1920

April 01 1999 To Advance the “Practice of Thrift and Economy”: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890–1920 David T. Beito David T. Beito Assistant Professor of History, University of Alabama. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information David T. Beito Assistant Professor of History, University of Alabama. Online ISSN: 1530-9169 Print ISSN: 0022-1953 © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History1999 The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (1999) 29 (4): 585–612. https://doi.org/10.1162/002219599551822 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation David T. Beito; To Advance the “Practice of Thrift and Economy”: Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890–1920. The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 1999; 29 (4): 585–612. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/002219599551822 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThe Journal of Interdisciplinary History Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the editors of The Journal of Interdisciplinary History1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

African-Americans and Social Work:

The history of social welfare can provide important insights into current policy and practice. Although a disproporionate number of social work clients are minorities, including African-Americans, little comprehensive information has been compiled on the development of social services for this population. This paper presents an overview of social welfare services available to African-Americans in the Antebellum period of the Progressove Era. African-American inspired organizations, white philanthropy, public agencies, and inter-racial efforts are discussed in the context of major political and social developments in these eras. Organizations discussed include: Freedman's Aid Societies, African-American mutual aid and benevolent societies, fraternal orders, the Freedman's Bureau, the Women's Club movement, settlement houses, Charity Organization Societies, and the National Urban League.

"The Insatiable Maw of Bureaucracy": Antistatism and Education Reform in the 1920s

Like most other people, political historians are attracted to winners. Thus, they have focused on successful candidates and on enacted legislation. But battles waged and lost are just as revealing of political, social, and cultural context as those waged and won. A case in point is the attempt in the 1920s to establish federal department of education. The struggle over the department of education illuminates important components of the political climate of that decade, including the persistence of Progressive reform efforts and the importance of ethnic and religious conflict. The focus here, however, will be on examining the successful opposition to the department as means of analyzing the pervasive antistate sentiment in the 1920s, which not only hampered reform during that decade but also deepened an already potent tradition of hostility to federal power. Largely forgotten now, the proposed education department aroused debate so heated that the New York Times described it as a controversial discussion that spreads in an accelerating wave over the whole country, until every village is lined up pro or con.1 On the pro side stood the National Education Association (NEA), which proposed the bill in 1918 as comprehensive reform measure. Also lined up in support of the measure were fraternal orders, such as the Masons, who viewed it as vehicle for promoting one-hundred-percent Americanism. Their efforts indicate the continuation into the 1920s of the Progressive Era faith in state solutions, but they also reveal the complexity of motives shaping that faith. The fight against the education bill united such unlikely allies as the Catholic church, states' rights politicians, former Progressives, and the elitist, conservative Sentinels of the Republic in shared rhetoric of hostility to an expanding federal, bureaucratic presence. By revealing the diverse sources of antistate thought, the opposition to the bill indicates that the antistate tradition has not been inherited solely from the nineteenth-century mainstream American political tradition of federalism, states' rights, localism, and laissez-faire. Although these attitudes were

Sibling Relationships in Adulthood: Contact Patterns and Motivations

context of relationship quality variables (emotional closeness, sibling responsibility expectations, and conflict), and individual and family characteristics (sibling age differences, number of siblings, geographic proximity, sex of respondent, sex composition of sibling pair, and whether the respondent has coresident children). Through a two-stage systematic sampling procedure of telephone and mail surveys, a sample of 313 adults aged 25 years or older with living siblings was obtained from a southwest Virginia urban area. The proportion of variance explained by the predictors were significant and substantial for each criterion (dependent variable R2 s of. 65, .37, and .69). Emotional closeness, sibling responsibility expectations, and geographic proximity were most important in explaining dimensions of sibling interaction. These reflect the significance of internal states, cultural expectations and family norms, and practical opportunities for interaction, in matters concerning aspects of the sibling relationship. The sibling role potentially has the longest duration of any human relationship (Cicirelli, 1980b). Over 80% of American children grow up in a family that includes siblings (Mussen, Conger, and Kagan, 1974), and in late adulthood 79% have living siblings (Harris and Associates, 1975). There are cultural expectations that the sibling relationship should be more emotionally close, meaningful, and enduring than other interpersonal associations, as evidenced by denoting a close friend as like a or like a sister. In religious organizations, fraternal orders, or the military, the titles brother or sister connote solidarity and equality (Pollak, 1967). Liebow (1967) documented that impoverished urban blacks, lacking family ties, construct such associations by going for brothers as an attempt to create more stable, dependable relationships. Despite the prevalence of the sibling role in adulthood, and the expectations that sibling relationships be especially stable and emotionally close, the family relationships of siblings in adulthood have received little research attention. Research on family relationships across adulthood typically focuses upon the marital or parent-child pair and much less so upon the role that other kin may play in adult development. Most research on siblings has dealt with childhood or later life. For several decades, social and behavioral scientists have lamented the lack of research on adult sibling relationships (Cicirelli, 1980b; Goetting, 1986; Irish, 1965; Schvaneveldt and Ihinger, 1979; Streib and Beck, 1980). In conDepartment of Family and Human Development, Utah State University, UMC 29, Logan, UT 84322-2905.