THE ODDFELLOWS AND THEIR FUNDS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In last week's Spectator you repeat, without qualifica- tion, the statement that the Manchester Unity of Oddfellows possesses capital amounting to 214,767,329. The statement is misleading. It implies, and is so commonly understood, that the Oddfellcrws have a central fund amounting to that sum,. from which sick-pay and other allowances to members are drawn. There is no such fund. The sum named is the aggregate of the surpluses of thousands of lodges, each of which stands on its own bottom, and for which the Unity is. in no way financially responsible, though grants are of ten made to distressed and insolvent lodges. The very fact that there are many insolvent lodges in the Unity, and indeed in most of the old Friendly Societies, us is offioially admitted every year,. shows that there is no general reserve -fund amounting to millions of pounds. With such funds there could be no insolvency. I do not write from the slightest feeling of antagonism to the old Friendly Societies—quite the oontrary- but these. statements about their "enormous funds" need correction. If the old Friendly Societies would only place themselves upon a sound financial basis by having a rigid valuation of all their lodges and starting afresh on the lines of the Holloway Societies described by a correspondent in the Spectator some time ago, they need have no fear of Govern- ment schemes of national insurance. Give every member of a Friendly Society a savings-bank account in his Society, belonging absolutely to himself, and grant him sick-pay on the Holloway system, and you at once enable him to practise -thrift on the soundest and most profitable lines. The Odd- fellow and the Forester practise thrift in so far as they exercise self-denial in making some preparation fora rainy day, but they do not practise thrift in the right way. They never get any adequate return from their savings.—I am, Sir, Sze.,
W. S.
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