been by the Ancient Order of United Workmen, totals for which have not been obtained. It is doubtful, however, whether the Workmen had more new business in 1898 than the Modern Woodmen of America, with two-thirds as large a membership, the latter reporting an increase in the amount of insurance written," of death certificates issued, aggregating nearly $32,500,000, or about 5 per cent. of its total of deathbenefit certificates outstanding on December 31, 1898. The next largest increase was by the Woodmen of the World, $6,000,000. This society is the sixth largest of its kind, and its gain in the amount of death certificates issued in 1898 was nearly 4 per cent. of its certificates outstanding. The next largest gain was $4,400,000, by the Knights of the Maccabees, less than 3 per cent. of the total amount of death certificates. Relatively the largest increase, however, is that by the Ladies of the Maccabees of the World, a society which probably had few in excess of 30,000 members a year ago, but which issued $7,000,000 worth of death certificates in 1898 in excess of the like total in 1897, a gain of fully 25 per cent. over the total on December 31,

1897.

The total increase in the amount of certificates of the Modern Woodmen of America in force on December 31, 1898, as compared with one year before, shows a gain of $120,000,000, other conspicuous increases being as follows: Woodmen of the World, nearly $34,000,000; Independent Order of Foresters, nearly $24,000,000; Knights of the Maccabees, $19,000,000; the Modern Brotherhood of America, more than $9,000,000; Home Forum Benefit Order, a like

sum;

Tribe of Ben Hur, $5,000,000; Catholic Knights of Columbus and the Endowment Rank of the Knights of Pythias, each about $4,500,000; New England Order of Protection, $3,800,000; the Fraternal Union of America and the Canadian Order of Foresters, each about $3,500,000; and a signal tribute to the energy and enterprise of women's mutual assessment beneficiary societies-Ladies of the Maccabees of the World, $11,500,000.

Of the 41 societies in the list from which these data are taken (organizations having each a total face value of certificates in force of $10,000,000 or more), three-fourths of them report increases in the expenses of management during 1898, a natural result, one which follows inevitably upon an increase in membership. The only gains of this character which call for particular notice are in the instance of the Fraternal Union of America, where the expense doubled within a year; the Free Sons of Israel, where it more than trebled; the Independent Order of Foresters,

where the gain was more than 45 per cent.; the Brotherhood of America, where the expense of management in 1898 was three times that of the year before the Royal Arcanum, with an increase of nearly one-fifth; and, last, but literally not least, an augmented disbursement for cost of management on the part of the Modern Woodmen of America of about 39 per cent. The enormously rapid growth in membership will account for a large proportion of this. The increase in the annual cost of management of the Woodmen of the World is, however, only a little more than 6 per cent.

This suggests a calculation of the expenses of management per capita. Among the six organizations the annual expenses of management of each of which were $100,000 or more in 1897, the lowest rate per capita was in the Royal Arcanum, 62 cents; the next lowest the Modern Woodmen of America, 87 cents; after which came the Knights of the Maccabees, the annual outlay for management of which was 94 cents per capita ; for the Knights of Honor, $1.23; and for the Independent Order of Foresters, which owns a magnificent building in Toronto and is presided over, at a large salary, by Oronhyatekha, M. D., the per-capita cost of management two years ago was, as appears, $1.56, or $195,650 expense for management with a total membership (1897) of about 125.000. The average cost of management per capita in 27 leading fraternities analyzed was about $1.65 in 1897, compared with a percapita cost of $1.48 about fifteen years before, when those societies averaged about three years of age.

66

In 30 societies the records of which are analyzed in the Cyclopædia of Fraternities," the rate of mortality during the third year of existence of each averaged 4.10 per 1,000, while during the fiscal year 1897 (an average of from fifteen to eighteen years afterward) the deathrate was 9.5 per 1,000.

It is of particular interest, in connection with the foregoing statement, to note that the average cost of $1,000 insurance, or benefits, in 28 of these societies in the third year of their existence was $5.04, while from fifteen to eighteen years later, in 1897, the average cost was $9.22 per $1,000 insurance. In these exhibits one finds the death-rate more than doubled and the cost of insurance per $1.000 almost doubled within the average period named, notwithstanding the increase in membership during that time. This may perhaps form the basis of the movement which has shown itself favoring fraternal orders providing for reserve funds, in which they practically follow old-line life insurance companies.

The rapid growth of membership in fraternal

The

orders since 1870 has attracted attention and brought out severe criticism from State examiners and from representatives of old-line life companies. This has not been uniformly the case, for the fraternal or coöperative society has also found defenders among the class referred to. most serious criticism is based on the lack of legislative provision for governing their incorporation and organization and for providing proper State supervision. The writer is aware that State supervision of the fraternal orders has met with violent opposition. But notwithstand

ing the existence of bonded treasurers, even in an organization in which only one assessment may be kept on hand with which to meet a death benefit, yet inasmuch as that one assessment may amount to a great many thousands of dollars and that legal reserves are now beginning to be provided, the institution becomes more than ever of a fiduciary character, and as it is generally managed by a very few officials, a requirement that the State Banking or the Insurance Department should supervise it would seem to be only in the line of reasonable precaution and propriety.

The Independent Order of Foresters, one of the more prosperous of these societies, finds no difficulty in meeting the requirements of the Canadian and British laws governing such bodies, and would probably be willing to meet like requirements on this side of the line. A similar argument should hold true with respect to all the fraternal orders.

As has been repeatedly pointed out in recent years, a successful old-line life insurance company for that matter, any successful insurance company-must present three features: First, it must have an attractive plan; second, the payments of premiums must be so arranged as not to increase from year to year, which has not been the experience of assessment insurance societies, fraternal and otherwise, after having passed the period of youth; third, the contract between the insured and insurer should be of such a nature as to be convertible and possess a surrender value--that is, the insured must have the privilege of retiring at almost any time with something more than the recollection that he had been insured while he had kept up the payment of premiums.

The mere statement of the foregoing shows clearly some of the broadest differences between the fraternal order and the old-line insurance method. It may be granted, for sake of argument, that the old-line insurance companies and the fraternal orders both have attractive plans. It is easily within the power of the old-line companies to arrange the payments of premiums so that they will not increase from year to year,

and this they have done. The experience in such companies is that lapses of policies decrease very rapidly after four years, while in the fraternal orders it has been shown that lapses tend to increase in time, in part because of changed circumstances of the insured or dissatisfaction on some personal ground, but more often because of increasing rates of assessments. The question, then, arises, What does the assessment insurance company possess which offsets this unfavorable feature?

The open assessment company-that is, the mere business arrangement between a certain number of thousand people to assess themselves to pay death benefits-often has little to offer, because interest in the organization may hang solely upon its ability to keep down the rate of assessments and to meet its obligations promptly. Not so with fraternal orders, which are veritable social centers, secret fraternities and sisterhoods, and about which hang the elements of permanence and strength over and above all question of life insurance. A secret bond of brotherhood, with all that the words imply, which in addition thereto proposes to confer certain benefits upon surviving relatives of deceased members, may with safety call upon its members for sacrifices to meet the obligations it has assumed, in many instances where the demand is such as would immediately disrupt an ordinary open mutual assessment society. Here, then, is the steel wire referred to which runs through the rope of brotherhood insurance, which has held and promises to maintain fraternal orders in spite of the d.ficulties attending an effort to solve the problem of mutual insurance.

Does any one for a moment suppose that a purely business association of, we will say, 40,000 men who have combined to assess themselves, for instance, on an average $2 apiece at the death of a member for the purpose of paying insurance to surviving relatives, would be able to hold itself together if, on finding the system faulty, a few representatives appointed with power promulgated a plan by which all its assessments were promptly doubled? In all probability hardly more than one or two such open assessment companies could, under such circumstances, prevent sudden disintegration. Yet that is exactly what the Royal Arcanum, one of the best and most prominent fraternal orders, has succeeded in doing within the past year. In no other society of this sort is the character of the membership higher, socially or otherwise, or has the spirit of fraternity and brotherly love been more strongly developed. No other leading fraternal order which has had to radically reorganize its plan of assessment and most of

them have had to do it-has succeeded in accomplishing it with so little friction and so immaterial a loss of membership as has the Royal Arcanum.

A prominent official of the Equitable Life Assurance Society said in his address before the National Insurance Convention at Milwaukee on September 14, 1898: "It is quite possible for

a fraternal society to combine death-loss assessments with other elements of their constitution in so small a proportion that the dissatisfaction over assessments is counterbalanced by the cohesive power of the other features of the society." He adds that "those fraternal orders which furnish something desirable in addition to insurance fraternity, a club, and social reunions -may struggle along with even a moderately imperfect system of assessments and so accomplish their purposes in some degree.

Here, then, we find, working side by side, two great influences for the amelioration of the condition of the human family. Each is striving to add to the sum total of human happiness by providing for the surviving relatives of members of fraternal orders or of policy holders in regular life insurance companies. The claim of the more argumentative members of some of the former organizations has been that the cost of insurance in the old-line companies is proportionately too high, and for proof a finger is pointed to the enormous surpluses which have been rolled up by the New York, the Equitable, and the Mutual Life. In the meanwhile each type of insurance society, the coöperative and that which really is not the fraternal order and the old-line company has been improving, strengthening, and developing its system. Probably neither claims to have reached perfection, although there is much to be said in favor of a policy in an old-line life company of high standing because of the security and permanence of the contract.

But true it is that without the fraternal order and its cooperative system of insurance, thousands upon thousands, in the event of their own deaths, would be unable to protect those nearest and dearest to them.

Here it is that the fraternal order is seen to be doing an enormous work for good and for happiness which the old-line companies have not been and are not able to perform. The mere statement that there were nearly 2,600,000 members of fraternal orders on December 31, 1898, compared with 2,166,274 policies in force in old

line life companies reported to the New York State Insurance Department, will give some idea of the relative social importance of the two systems. On the date named there was about $5,700,000,000 worth of old-line life insurance in force in the United States, compared with $3,400,000,000 worth of benefit certificates in force issued by fraternal orders. It only remains to be added, to show clearly the point of view of the friends of coöperative life insurance, that the total expense of management of life insurance companies in 1898 was $71,898,501, while the corresponding item with reference to fraternal orders was $3,580,380. Thus we find two-thirds of the life insurance business of the country in the hands of about 46 old-line life companies and about one-third conducted on a cooperative basis by fewer than 200 fraternal orders. With one-third of the business the fraternal orders are carrying on their work of providing benefits for surviving relatives of deceased members at one-twentieth of the expense for cost of management reported by the old-line companies, a little less than 5 per cent. as much. This they have been doing with varying success, considerably more than less, for a quarter of a century, and the movement has always been one of progress. That they will so continue, that the system will be still further perfected, and that they will remain the source of life insurance or death benefits at a low cost per capita and per $1,000 of insurance, there is no possibility of doubt.

one

As a cooperative movement their success has fairly run away from the efforts at coöperative production and distribution. Were it not for the extraordinarily large number of fraternal orders which have appeared during the past eight or nine years, one might hope for consolidation rather than multiplication; but, as some has said, the desire for medals, brass buttons, gold lace, and for office and power continues as strong with some people as it does with others. Thus we frequently observe that when a fraternal order becomes large and powerful and develops rival candidates for office, a new order is promptly started, with high sounding titles, another ritual, with more grips and passwords and a ceremony of initiation which betrays the handiwork of those who have belonged to some of the older orders or who have delved deep into the descriptions of some of the so-called ancient mysteries.

THE

HE army-beef imbroglio surely served one good purpose. It focused public attention upon the vital necessity of pure food and stimulated legislation prohibiting and controlling adul teration and sophistication. Within a few weeks pure-food laws were passed by the Legislatures of Illinois, Washington, Indiana, California, and South Dakota, and in other States special laws of a narrow scope-such as the New York measures prohibiting the adulteration of fruit juices and compelling the honest branding of renovated butter-were placed on the statute-books. And in all of these States where new laws are in force, as well as in several of the others where sim. ilar laws have been existent for some time, the indications are that the respective measures will be vigorously enforced, regardless of the consequences to any class of manufacturers or distributors.

The surprising extent to which our commonest foods and drinks are adulterated and counterfeit. ed, and the crying necessity for both State and national legislation which will control and check the evil, have been well proved by the results of the senatorial investigation which was made in Chicago last spring. Before the Senate committee, appointed just prior to the adjournment of Congress and headed by Senator Mason, several prominent chemists, food manufacturers, and others gave testimony. Dr. Wiley, who has been chief chemist of the Agricultural Depart ment at Washington for many years, asserted that nearly every kind of food upon the market is, to a greater or lesser extent, adulterated, misbranded, or otherwise rendered harmful or fraudulent. More Vermont maple sugar is made every year in Davenport, Iowa, from cheap yellow sugar flavored with vegetable extracts than can be produced from all the maple trees in the whole State of Vermont! Currant jelly is manufactured from the cores and parings of apples utilized after they have been evaporated; glucose, sugar, a vegetable acid, and some coloring and flavoring matter complete the delicacy! Nearly all of the "pure olive oil" imported to this country is cotton-seed oil made in the Southern States, sent abroad, and there refined and returned to us as the pure product of the Mediterranean olive!

Dr. Wiley, Professor Mitchell, of the Wisconsin Dairy and Food Commission, and others told how the public purse is defrauded and the public

health damaged by butter from which the milk fats have been taken and vegetable and animal fats added; how coffee has often been found to consist mainly of molasses and flour molded into berries; how fully 70 per cent. of beer is made without malt; how the color of tea leaves, of pickles, and of certain vegetables and canned goods is made with copper salts and the like; how condensed milk is made from milk which has been skimmed and effectually ridden of nearly all of its nutritious material; how spices are not spices; how sardines are not sardines; how fifteen-year-old whisky can be made in fifteen minutes; and how communion wine is usually nothing but a weak solution of salicylic acid flavored with unfermented grape juice. 'Tis a wise man who knows what he eats and drinks in this day of scientific resource and economic progress!

Later on in the Chicago investigation it was declared by several witnesses, who were for the most part chemists of experience in the analysis of food products, that "antiseptics and preservatives of various kinds are used indiscriminately to defraud and to deceive," and that these are nearly always harmful and sometimes positively dangerous. Butchers use preserving fluids on choice scraps of meat which they lay aside for transformation into the delicacy known as "Hamburger steak." Milk and butter are preserved with freezine," which is nothing more than a solution of formaldehyde. Fruits and fruit products are preserved with salicylic acid; ba con, sausage, and other animal products with

boric acid.

It was disclosed also that this country had long been a " dumping-ground" for all sorts of adulterated and inferior food products sent here from abroad. Manufacturers in Germany, Brazil, and other countries are continually sending to the United States foodstuffs which they are forbidden by law to sell in their own countries. The popular brand of German coffee known as "Black Jack," for instance, is nothing more than a mixture of dead and green berries wholly unfit for consumption.

The annual report of the Connecticut agricultural experiment station tallies well with and corroborates this testimony. Of 63 samples of fruit jelly examined during the past year, 43 were found adulterated and spurious; of 49

samples of jams and marmalades examined, 46 were found adulterated and spurious; 11 out of 45 samples of coffee were mixed with roasted peas, chicory, wheat, and other foreign substances; sausages and oysters were found to be preserved with boric acid; and of 574 samples of spices examined during the last three years, 41 per cent. were adulterated, admixed, or spurious.

Why this surprising prevalence of adulterated and counterfeited foods in the United States? Simply because the law imposes no restrictions, or at least none worthy of mention. With the exception of regulations concerning the quality of flour, butter, and cheese, the United States statutes contain nothing to prevent the unrestricted admixture of all sorts of foreign ingredients in the foods which are our daily nourish. ment; and previous to last spring there had been effective State laws in only a few instances. Massachusetts, Ohio, and Michigan, possibly also Connecticut and Wisconsin, have done what they could to prevent the evil, but nothing of any moment has been done elsewhere. Pure food and drug laws, more or less broad in scope, are on the statute-books of perhaps fifteen States, but, except in the several States mentioned above, these laws have either not been properly enforced or else they have not been sufficiently drastic in character. This neglect of the public health has enabled manufacturers of foods and drinks to go to almost unlimited lengths in the adulteration and cheapening of their products, regardless alike of the public purse and the public health. Their greed has had no check; their dishonesty has received no punishment. They have flourished and grown fat at the expense of the people who have consumed their inferior, counterfeited, and harmful products. This is no indifferent matter: it is further reaching in its effects than a cursory thought indicates. Reflection must convince any thoughtful man that the prevalent consump tion of inferior and harmful foods by a people must result in the physical and moral deterioration of that people.

If

If any foodstuff is sold under deceit in England the manufacturer or the dealer, as the case may be, is promptly fined upon conviction. the product is sold by the dealer in the original package, or is bought and sold by him under the manufacturer's written declaration of purity, the manufacturer is regarded as the sinner; other. wise the dealer himself is considered the culprit. There is no arbitrary standard of purity to which any product must conform; every product must be what it pretends to be; if it is sold as "pure olive oil" it must be pure olive oil; if it masquerades as butter it must be butter. Every

product must be of the nature, substance, and quality" indicated by its label or asked for, di rectly or impliedly, by the purchaser. To make this law effective every township and borough has its public analyst," who examines suspected samples of foodstuffs submitted to him, and who, I believe, has power voluntarily to secure samples from time to time, subject them to analysis, and cause the prosecution of manufacturer or dealer when the law has been found violated; and the testimony of this public an alyst is alone sufficient to convict the defendant.

What is the result? The adulteration and misbranding of foodstuffs in England is insig nificant compared with the extent of the evil in the United States. Of 211 samples of foods recently examined in Halifax Borough, 7 were found to be adulterated; of 152 samples recently examined in Bristol, 11 were found adulterated; of 35 samples recently examined in Hertfordshire, 2 were found adulterated. All of these samples were under suspicion; all of them were suspected of adulteration before they were examined. The percentage of adulteration was therefore greater than it would have been had the products been selected indiscriminately, whether under suspicion or not. But of these 398 samples of suspected products, only 30 (or 13 per cent.) were found fraudulent. Compare this 13 per cent. of adulteration found in suspected foodstuffs in England with the 45 per cent. of adulteration found in Connecticut in foods which, though of the kind most often adulterated, were indiscriminately gathered for examination! And the Connecticut results are representative of the results which have followed examinations made in other States. The great disparity in these figures proves beyond a reasonable doubt that adulterated foodstuffs are many times more numerous in this country than in England, a condition for which, very clearly, we may thank our almost entire lack of legislation and prosecution.

It is true that the greater part of the overwhelming amount of adulteration practiced in this country is not deleterious to health, but a very considerable portion of it such, for instance, as the indiscriminate use of antiseptics like formaldehyde and salicylic acid-is deleteri ous, as clinical experiment has demonstrated and as several of the eminent chemists testified before the senatorial committee. For the same reason that salicylic acid is useful in the preservation of food it is harmful in the digestion of food. In either case it prevents the breaking down or transformation of food into other substances, and digestion is this and nothing more. Salicylic acid hinders and prevents fermentation; it completely arrests the conversion of starch into