Government Destruction of Social Conscience

Port Matilda, Pennsylvania is a small town like so many other small towns across the country.  In it is Port Matilda Lodge #733, Independent Order of Odd Fellows.  The lodge was started in 1888.  In the 1980s, the lodge moved from its original building to smaller space and the building was converted to lower income housing by one of the members who purchased the structure.  Last year, the owner told me that there were several boxes of old records and papers in a crawl space and I took on the task of researching them.  In the process I learned quite a bit about the town's history, the lodge's history, the order's history and unexpectedly about the destruction of the social conscience by government activity.

Prior to the Great Depression, Odd Fellowship was the world's largest fraternal organization.  In Centre County, Pennsylvania there was a lodge in almost every town.  Port Matilda's lodge was the 733rd lodge in the State and when it was formed in 1888, it was less than four miles away from the next closest lodge.  In those days, the town was not yet a borough but just a village with a population roughly half of what it is today.  Yet the lodge of that period contained around 80 members - pretty much the entire male population over age 16.  That continued to be the case up into WWII.

It is easy to think that in the days before television and even before radio shows, that people may join organizations simply to have something to do.  A look at the minutes books of the lodge quickly dispel that hypothesis.  Only about a dozen or so members would show up at a regular meeting.  Why then did nearly every eligible person belong to the Lodge if they did not go for fellowship, entertainment or activity?  The simple answer: benefits.

In the days before government got into the welfare racket, societies like the Odd Fellows provided unemployment pay, sick pay, disability pay, elderly assistance and death benefits to widows and children.  People would join and pay their dues more as a community insurance program than anything else.  The lodge would pay out benefits from its treasury as needed and the members would volunteer their time or trade skills to those in need.  Every town had something of the kind, many were Odd Fellows but other organizations filled a similar role in other places.

The system was very effective.  Someone seeking sick benefits would be seen by a doctor who belonged to the Lodge and who could ascertain whether the person was indeed really in need of assistance.  Someone seeking unemployment benefits would have a community of people also assisting him in finding a new job.  An elderly person would not just get some money to help pay bills, but also get help maintaining the house, getting groceries and all manner of other needs.  The widow and/or children of a deceased member not only got the funeral costs covered, but would get help from all the members in filling their needs and making sure they were as well cared for as if the member were still living to do it himself.  Members who traveled remained covered for illness or injury and were paid by the nearest lodge which would get reimbursed by the member's home lodge.

These were the benefits and almost everyone would join to both receive and provide them.  As a beneficial society, it could also be considered a pseudo-socialistic society.  Participation was voluntary and abusing the system would mean expulsion and being cut off from any future benefits and likely also result in being a local pariah.  As a result, fraud was rare and members rarely sought nor needed the benefits.

When the Great Depression hit, most members found the money to keep their dues paid.  As things got worse, more and more members were forced to draw unemployment benefits, but the money was there from years of prudent saving by the lodge.  While the Great Depression did kill almost all the business in Port Matilda, the people there did not suffer much from it.  Those who were members of the lodge, which included most of the families, were taken care of by the benefits and the help of other members.  One of the members owned a grocery store and extended unlimited credit to anyone unable to pay for the duration of the Depression which ruined him financially, but kept everyone fed.  The hardest test of the private beneficial system had come and it had proven up to the task.

The post-war years were a boom to fraternal societies.  The largest numbers of members ever recorded in this country came from that immediate post-war period.  The societies that had taken care of their families through their fathers when they were younger became magnets for the next generation of men.  But then, something happened.

As the temporary programs of the Great Depression became permanent and were expanded, the need for unemployment, disability and sick benefits from a private organization became less necessary.  Members began to drop out and few people joined.  While other more social fraternal organizations continued to go strong, beneficial ones like the Odd Fellows started to struggle.  Lodges began to close and consolidate.  The services they provided have almost entirely faded away.

Some would argue that this is a good thing.  Unemployment, disability, retirement and sick benefits from the government are more universal.  Rather than collecting dues from members, the government collects taxes from everyone, making the government system better funded.  These things may be true, but also true is what the government systems don't provide.

Those who collect government benefits are more likely to be stigmatized by society than helped by it.  They are more likely to become trapped in dependence than helped out of it.  They receive the necessities of life, but not the dignity of it.  Where the old system of beneficial societies provided community support in addition to financial support, the government system provides only financial support.  Where the old system was run locally by people who could know your needs, the government system is run remotely by people who treat you based on some budget formula.  Where the old system was almost impossible to defraud, the government system is riddled with it.

Once government began to do for the people the things they used to and ought to do for themselves, the people stopped doing them or caring about them.  Rather than have concern for everyone in the community, people today have concern mainly for themselves and leave the needs of others up to the government.  Here and there, as in Port Matilda, some old traditions remain.  The Odd Fellows still exists there, one of only three lodges left in the entire county.  It no longer provides any set benefits beyond a death benefit to cover funeral expenses.  Yet its members help one another and those in need in the community through volunteering their time and skills.  It is a shadow of what it once was, but at least in this one small town there is still a part of the society that seeks to help those in need rather than complain about them.

Things are worse for poor people in Port Matilda today than they were for poor people here during the Depression.  Yes, the government provides the necessities of life, but nothing more.  Where then the community under the umbrella of the lodge worked together to help those worst off, today only a handful do that work while the majority simply say it isn't their problem because they paid their taxes and those needy people already got a hand out.

It is a sad side effect of government intervention that people are 'freed' of the need to be charitable and become more self-centered.  Because government takes care of those in need, people can turn a blind eye to the problems of their neighbors.  Gone are the days when people looked out for each other because they knew that some day they may need someone to look out for them.  Government will do it.  So they believe.  And when the government benefits aren't enough to keep the mortgage paid or get the car fixed or cover the cost of moving to where a good job may be found, what then?  There is nothing more to draw upon.  Where the old beneficial societies could offer more help beyond the allotted stipend, government offers nothing more than its pay-out.

People are starting to find out, in this deep recession, that government assistance isn't enough to keep them in their homes or keep their families from suffering.  Unlike those who lived in Port Matilda during the Great Depression, there is no community network to fall back upon.  Today you lose your house if you lose your job because unemployment benefits won't keep the bills paid.  While people may say that it is a bad thing and say that government should do something, they don't do anything much themselves.  Even when they see government failing, they still remain well trained to look only to government for the solution.

Government, with the best of intentions, unwittingly destroyed the social conscience of America.  By doing for others what they did and should do for themselves, it undermined the sense of community and killed off nearly all the private support structures people could go to when hard times returned.  Now those hard times are back and government has shown it is unprepared for all the responsibility it took for itself and there is little else left for those who are suffering to look to for help.

Unfortunately, we will probably not learn from this lesson any more than we learned from the lesson of hurricane Katrina.  We will not see the obvious.  We will not see that government cannot be counted upon to effectively and quickly deal with socio-economic disasters.  Instead, we will likely seek to make government even larger and its programs even more expansive and impersonal.  Then when the next crisis comes and we are once again let down by even this even bigger government, the cry will again be for more of the same.  Our social conscience is so far gone that we only see one solution: more government.  We no longer see ourselves.