Fraternity (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 14, No. 3, Ed. 1 Monday, March 1, 1915 Page: 1 of 8
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'OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE ORDER'
Volume XIV
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FORT WORTH, TEXAS, MARCH, 1915
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ii
Number 3
PREMIUMS PAID PROMPTLY PROCURED PAST PARTICIPANTS $805,608.70
DO FRATERNAL ORDERS
STRENGTHEN AND BENEFIT
THE HOME LIFE OF
MEMBERS?
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by Dr. Emma E. Bower.
"Home is not just four straight walls
Or the roof which bends above us,
Homeis where the sunlight falls
Home is where there's one to love us."
So sings one of our Michigan poets
of the word which lexicographers have
taken up much space in the dictionaries
to define but whose true meaning is
written in special characters upon every
human heart.
I am to talk upon the subject of
whether home life is strengthened and
benefited by membership in fraternal
orders, but it seems to me that the
form of my subject might be changed
with advantage and instead of asking as
a query, "do fraternal orders strengthen
and benefit the home life of members"
we may safely state as a fact that fra-
ternal orders cannot help strengthening
and benefiting the home life of their
members. *
The core of home life is or should be,
unity, permanency and whatever makes
for the solidarity of the home; the rea-
son for the existence of fraternal orders
is the preservation of that element of
the home. How then can they help
being of mutual benefit?
Fraternal orders are for the express
purpose of securing to the man or woman
belonging to them the existence of the
external phase of the home, when the
wage-earner of that home shall have
passed beyond the barrier which we mis-
takenly call death, but which is the gate-
way only to that larger life beyond our
moral ken. If theya re fulfilling their
mission and their growth it would seem
to indicate that they have a reason for
their existence and they must be
strengthening the home life of their
members largely, because fraternal or-
ders are made up of home makers, are
composed of the mass of the great com-
mon people whom Father Abraham
Lincoln thought "God must specially
love, He made so many of them."
If they are not strengthening they
must be weakening thte life of their
members and in that case they are
doomed to extinction. We know that
"a chain is no stronger than its weakest
link" and the power of the chain that
binds together the membership of the
great fraternal orders lies in the unity of
the home.
What is home life? Is it not the di-
versity of the interests which go to make
up that life? Is it not the coming to-
gether of the members at the close of
day to share their common joys and
sorrows? The calling in of the children
from their work or play? The sending
of them out in the morning light to
their tasks in the great world which is
made up of countless homes? Is not
home life entirely dependent for its
being upon the outside life of its mem-
bers? How much life is there in any-
thing which never gets outside the nar-
row circumference of its own little orbit,
be it home, or state, or nation, or peo-
ple? Man was not made to live alone,
either as a nindividual or a community,
and wherever he has tried to in any
sense, he has not helped on the world's
work. He cannot live, to himself alone,
as each unit is only a part of the great
whole.
And so in the true home life there
must be a diversity of interests which
will make the coming together of the
family to the home circle, a gathering
of forces that will aid each member in
the battle of life. But what have fra-
ternal orders you ask, to do with the
strengthening of this great factor, the
home in the world's work.
Only this—that they are a safe, ra-
tional and happy medium for the con-
servation of the home interest, whether
it be in their capacity of insurance com-
panies, or in their place in the social
life of the community, or both together.
Let us take, as an example of what
membership in a fraternal order might
be in home life. The case of o typical,
middle-class home composed principally
of wage-earning members, a father and
mother and four children, two of whom
are self-supporting and two who are in
school preparing for their life work,
carrying each an insurance for the bene-
fit of the other, or the children. Does
it weaken or strengthen the home life,
think you, that those parents feel the
security that comes only with the
knowledge that they have done what
they could to guard against certain des-
titution for their loved ones, should they
be called from the activities of life be-
fore the family is all provided for?
Is itor is it not a strengthening in-
fluence to feel that one wijl not be a
pauper when he or she lays down the
burden of life; that his or her family
will not be dependent upon the charity
of strangers for their daily bread; will
not have to bear in addition to the loss
of the father or mother, the sting of
extremest poverty?
We are told in these modern days
that "thoughts are things"; if so how
tangible a part in the uplift of the home
does the thought of membership in a
fraternal order hold, when the parents
think of their duty to those dependent
upon them and how far they have dis-
charged that duty. But to go on with
our illustration ofthe family life under
discussion. Suppose that each of the
other wage-earning members of the
household also belong to a fraternal
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Schmidt, Henry C. Fraternity (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 14, No. 3, Ed. 1 Monday, March 1, 1915, newspaper, March 1, 1915; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth233208/m1/1/?rotate=270: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.