Beetle, Ax & Wedge

"Oh! the agony of the hot tears that blister his fevered cheeks as he nightly kisses the parched lips and looks upon the famine-pinched faces of his children, as they go supperless to their bed of straw! Who can tell the anguish of his heart when the wife of his bosom bends over him with her pale, earnest face, and, as she wipes the fever-drops from his brow, with the sublime energy of woman's endurance, whispers resignation, hope! . . . How different would be the condition of such a person, if, in the days of his health and strength he had become a member of our Noble Order!"

Whether for such extravagant reasons as this one, from The Odd Fellows' Text-Book and Manual of 1876, or merely to foil their loneliness and feed their egos, men since the dawn of history have banded together in secret societies. Modern Free-Masons believe their order "coeval with the creation of the world by the Almighty." Plato recorded the scandalous revels of secret orders in ancient Greece. Africa has its Egbo, eastern Australia its hoary lodges where the initiation begins by knocking out the candidate's front teeth. Nowhere have secret societies flourished more luxuriantly than in the U. S. During the Revolution everyone of importance from George Washington to Lafayette belonged to them. Some subsequent samples: Daughters of the Prairie of the Benevolent Protective Herd of Buffaloes of the World, Get There America Benefit Association, Prudent Patricians of Pompeii of the U. S. of America, Grand United Order of Galilean Fishermen, Grand Fountain of the United Order of True Reformers.

All such U. S. societies are divided in two types--social fraternal orders and insurance fraternal orders. In the former classification, meeting largely as clubs with an interest in good works, are the Elks, Masons, Odd Fellows, Eagles, Shriners, Moose, Knights of Pythias. In the latter group, whose main purpose is social security through insurance, are the Ancient Order of United Workmen, Royal Arcanum, Maccabees, Independent Order of Foresters, and, largest of all, the Modern Woodmen of America who last week gathered in convention in Chicago.

In 1883 one Joseph Cullen Root of Lyons, Iowa, tired of his State-restricted fraternal insurance society, the V.A.S. (Vera Amicitia Sempiterna Est or "True Friendship is Eternal") of which he was Chief Rector, started a similar one which would know no bounds. He had fun preparing a ritual but was stumped for a name for his new order. Then in church one Sunday he heard a minister use the simile of woodmen clearing away the forest near their homes for safety's sake. Promptly Founder Root chose the name Modern Woodmen of America. Local lodges were called Camps, members Neighbors. A beetle, ax and wedge were chosen as symbols. Original membership: 21.

Insurance societies at that time generally worked on the assessment basis: when a member died, every fellow member of the local lodge contributed a dollar. Under such a system the Modern Woodmen's first benefit was paid in 1884 upon the death of Neighbor Abraham Mayer of Davenport, Iowa, from "indiscretion in eating confectionary, ice cream, etc. . . ." To his wife went $698.58.

In 1889 the Modern Woodmen had their first and only crisis. After a scandal started when $3,000 was paid to a fake claimant, Founder Root was deposed, formed the rival order of Woodmen of the World, which now has assets of $116,000,000, insurance in force of over $415,000,000. Modern Woodmen dwarfs its younger rival, however. Today it has 10,000 lodges in 46 States and four Canadian provinces. Only Missouri and Massachusetts spurn it. Membership has been as high as 1,182,756, is now about 500,000. More than $545,000,000 has been paid to beneficiaries of deceased members, some $25,000,000 to living members. Insurance now in force is $631,802,225. About 90% of this has been switched from the assessment type to the legal reserve basis of the old-line insurance companies.

Largely attended by oldsters, last week's Modern Woodmen convention at Chicago's Stevens Hotel was a colorless affair where little was done but review finances, re-elect the man who has headed the order since 1903--Adolphus Robert Talbot. Big-featured President Talbot is a 78-year-old lawyer who was once the partner of William Jennings Bryan. A strait-laced Methodist, he does not smoke, drink, chew or play cards. Having fathered two daughters and a son, he lives with his wife in Lincoln, Neb., likes to putter with flowers. His chief boast: neither the Modern Woodmen or any other top-flight U. S. fraternal insurance society has ever failed.

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