| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 88.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890–1967. By David T. Beito. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. xvi, 320 pp. Cloth, $55.00, ISBN 0-8078-2531-X. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 0-8078-4841-7.)

Despite the growing number of scholarly studies of American fraternalism, a comic image of these societies remains indelible—Ralph Kramden in the ridiculous cap of the Brotherhood of Raccoons in TV's The Honeymooners. This is unfortunate, as David T. Beito ably demonstrates in his useful study of the mutual aid benefits offered by fraternal orders in the half century before Social Security and other programs of the New Deal created the basis for an American welfare state. Beito reminds us that more Americans, particularly adult white males (working class and new immigrant as well as old) but also African Americans (in separate lodges) and women (in auxiliaries), belonged to fraternal societies during these years than to any other voluntary association in the United States, with the possible exception of churches. . . .

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