Excerpt from An Account of an Investigation of the Sickness and Mortality Experience of the I. O. O. F. Manchester Unity: During the Five Years 1893-1897The Manchester Unity of Oddfellows began to take form and acquire cohesion in the early years of the lgth century. Odd fellows' lodges had existed from early times - times so remote that all traces of their formation have been lost. Offshoots from, or founded in imitation of, lodges of Freemasons - the first efforts of those primitive Oddfellows' lodges - were of a purely mutual benevolent character.Out of the funds which naturally accumulated from the small weekly contribution called for in these early days, our benevolent predecessors, in the largeness of their hearts, promised (and paid for a time) benefits in sickness and at death out of all proportion to the sums demanded as subscriptions. It had not dawned on them that liability to sickness increased with advancing years, or that the money paid in sickness benefits to the older members was only drawn from the contributions of the younger ones. So long as there was a balance on the right side of the capital account at the end of each year, the growth of liability beyond the growth of capital was not realised.The development of the insurance principles, which are now the distinguishing features of the work of the Unity, was a gradual process, though the necessity of securing permanence for the. Opera tions of the lodges by substituting a scientific for a haphazard system became manifest to the more thoughtful members of the Society before the last century had run through half its course. It was in 1844 that the first steps were taken to obtain the information which would enable the Order to erect some landmarks on the road leading to financial soundness. So strongly was the action of the Directors resented, that in 1845 lodges comprising some members were suspended and subsequently expelled from the Society, in consequence of their refusal to comply with what has since been admitted to be a most salutary requirement, while probably as many more withdrew rather than submit to what they deemed an unwarrantable interference with their independence.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.