They furnish inferior security for investments. As _mutual
insurance societies_, they are irresponsible, and more liable to
corruption, _just because they are secret_. Do they make "reports" to
the public or the Legislature? Do they make any adequate "report" to
the mass even of their own members? Millions and millions are known to
have gone into the treasury of a single one of these organizations. No
dividends are declared, no expenditures published. _Where_ is the
money? Were it not safer to invest the same amount in companies where
every proceeding is open to public eye and public judgment? Would you
not, then, be safer? If so, _it will not pay_ to join these orders.
IS IT OBLIGATORY?
_First. Charity_ has no need of them. They are not truly charitable
institutions. "Mutual insurance societies" they may be, though of an
inferior sort, as we have seen; but that does not elevate them into
_charitable_ institutions. To bestow on your widow and orphans, your
sickness, and funeral some pittance, or the whole of what you paid
during health and life, is not _benevolence_.
But, further, it is well to ask, in determining how greatly _charity_
depends on them, how broadly they go forth among the poor outside
their membership. During the anti-masonic excitement of 1826-1830 some
two thousand lodges suspended. The resultant suffering was less,
perhaps, than what would follow the suspension of a single soup
association, any winter, in some city.
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