The workmen’s societies originated for the most part in a common want, felt by persons of small means, unable to accumulate any considerable store of savings to provide against destitution in the event of disablement by disease or accident.  At the beginning of life, persons earning their bread by daily labour are able to save money with difficulty.  Unavoidable expenses absorb their limited means and press heavily on their income.  When unable to work, any little store they may have accumulated is soon spent, and if they have a family to maintain, there is then no choice before them but destitution, begging, or recourse to the poor-rates.  In their desire to avoid either of these alternatives, they have contrived the expedient of the benefit society.  By combining and putting a large number of small contributions together, they have found it practicable thus to provide a fund sufficiently large to meet their ordinary requirements during sickness.

The means by which this is accomplished are very simple.  Each member contributes to a common fund at the rate of from fourpence to sixpence a week, and out of this fund the stipulated allowance is paid.  Most benefit societies have also a Widows’ and Orphans’ Fund, raised in like manner, out of which a sum is paid to the survivors of members at their death.  It will be obvious that such organizations, however faulty they may be in detail, cannot fail to exercise a beneficial influence upon society at large.  The fact that one of such associations, the Manchester Unity of Odd Fellows, numbers about half a million of members; possesses a funded capital amounting to L3,706,366; and distributes in sick relief and payments of sums at death above L300,000 a year, illustrates in a striking light their beneficial action upon the classes for whom and by whom they have been established.  By their means, working men are enabled to secure the results of economy at a comparatively small cost.  For, mutual assurance is economy in its most economical form; and merely presents another illustration of that power of co-operation which is working out such extraordinary results in all departments of society, and is in fact but another name for Civilization.

Many persons object to Friendly Societies because they are conducted at public-houses; because many of them are got up by the keepers of public-houses in order to obtain custom from the members; and because, in their fortnightly meetings to pay their subscriptions, they acquire the pernicious habit of drinking, and thus waste quite as much as they save.  The Friendly Societies doubtless rely very much on the social element.  The public-house is everybody’s house.  The members can there meet together, talk together, and drink together.  It is extremely probable that had they trusted solely to the sense of duty—­the duty of insuring against sickness—­and merely required the members to pay their weekly contributions to a collector, very few societies of the kind would have remained in existence.  In a large number of cases, there is practically no choice between the society that meets at a public-house, and none at all.