Benefit or Friendly Societies. 137 



butions than are required to secure their own [)roportion of be- 

 nefit, on account of being obhged to support the original sur- 

 viving members, who, when they were young, perhaps never 

 either gave to others half the present allowances, or paid much 

 above half the annual contributions. Their best and youngest 

 members will then perceive that they have gone upon erro- 

 neous calculations, and will desert them, the inevitable conse- 

 quences of which must be, a still greater deficiency in their an- 

 nual income, and a more rapid desertion and decline, until a 

 total bankruptcy and dissolution take place. 



But the accumulation of capital which necessarily occurs in 

 societies for a number of years at the commencement, has also 

 led into the very erroneous opinion, that as the capital increases, 

 so ought also the terms of admission in the same proportion even 

 for young members ; while the fact is, that as the funds increase, 

 so also do the first members increase in years and infirmities ; 

 and though members enter subsequently to a larger capital than 

 the first members did, they at the same time enter among a lar- 

 ger class of aged and infirm people ; who, from their payments 

 being now inadequate to defray their allowances, must them- 

 selves either require all the capital that they had accumulated in 

 early life, or be supported from the surplus contributions of the 

 young members. The usual practice, therefore^ of raising the 

 rates of entry-money, and otherwise limiting the terms of admis- 

 sion, when a society has been some time established, and has ac- 

 cumulated a capital, is doing a manifest injury to «/omw^ entrants, 

 who can never derive any benefit from that capital. 



So much with regard to the errors in the sickness department, 

 but the same erroneous system of management is still more ob- 

 vious in that for funerals, or sums payable at death. 



A member entering at 40 years of age, becomes entitled to the 

 same allowance at death, as if he had entered twenty years before, 

 while the society has been deprived of just so many years' con- 

 tributions. It has been asserted, however, that a man at 40 is 

 likely to continue as long healthy as one at 20, and, therefore, 

 that a society runs just as much risk with the one as with the other. 

 That such is not the case will be afterwards made apparent ; but 

 although this were to hold true with regard to sickness, still the 

 case is different with regard to death. An entrant at 40 is then 

 alive, and no possible claim could have been previously made for 



