We Now Have Five Hundred and Seventy-Six Children at Mooseheart
MOOSEHEART, ILLINOIS, MARCH, 1919
Supreme Officers of the Order who had a fine understanding of Mooseheart’s value, was a member of that Lodge. He went to work on these cases, searching for surviving relatives with means, in an honest endeavor to solve the problem and save Mooseheart as much as possible. He found good homes for sixteen of these families and only found it necessary to call upon Mooseheart to. take two children. This is the line of procedure we must follow if Mooseheart is to be able to meet the great demand imposed upon it.
A CLEAN SLATE.
Lodge. The bond premium is neglected, or there is a balance for this, that or the other merchandise item, or a per capita tax fine is not paid, or an audit is legally charged against the Lodge and the Lodge neglects to send a warrant for the sum. This results in a condition by which the accounts between the Subordinate Lodge and the Supreme Secretary’s office are off balance.
This is not as it should be:	The law outlines a
plan by which exact justice may be determined. After the Supreme Secretary bills your Lodge for a sum of money and insists upon its payment, and your Lodge does not believe that it should pay the amount, it should appeal to the General Dictator and the Supreme Secretary will certainly be very happy to abide by the finding of that official. If in turn, the General Dictator sustains the Supreme Secretary in his position and the Lodge is still dissatisfied, it has an appeal to the Forum and again the Supreme Secretary will be happy to abide by the finding of that body. There are sufficient elements to insure complete justice. If so, why not pay the bills? With these thoughts in mind, the Supreme Secretary has announced that he will insist that Subordinate Lodge accounts with the Supreme Lodge be put in balance before delegates from such Lodges are admitted to the next Supreme Convention. Why not clean the slate now? There is ample time between February and June for the questions that are at issue to be thrashed out by the General Dictator and the Supreme Forum and the Past Dictator bearing credentials from your Lodge will not have to be subjected to the embarrassment of standing out in the anti-boom while these officials pass upon his belated appeal.
The Supreme Secretary suggests these matters be brought to an issue now and fully satisfied in ample time. His disposition is to do nothing other than the just and proper thing, but he has a distinct feeling that a Fraternal Institution which does business of six or seven million dollars a year should recognize the importance of clean business methods.
THE RED BOX AGAIN.
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notes, in which the list of delinquents were run. Nothing which was ever printed in the Magazine has caused so much excitement as this simple statement. So many Brothers have written in to know why they are no longer good Moose, that it has kept the Supreme Secretary and General Dictator’s office forces busy answering them.
This month the list is bigger than it ever has been in the past and bigger than it likely will ever be again. This condition is brought about from the fact that for the first time in the history of the Order, the Supreme Secretary is insisting upon full compliance with the law in the time of filing reports. The Magazine this month bears the numbers of all Lodges delinquent for December 31st reports on the 6th day of February, except that through the natural delays of assembling and printing the Magazine, more time is naturally given and those reports which are, only delayed for a few days are scratched from the list.
The delinquent list for December 31st was made on the close of business on February 5th. On that night the Dictator and Secretary of each Lodge so
THE 31ST ANNUAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, LOYAL ОШЕН OF MOOSE. WILL BE HELD THE WEEK OF JUNE 22, 1919. AT MOOSEHEART.
EP־ BE SURE TO BKAB SBESIAI, ARTICHE ON W FOUR, THIS ISSUE.
Lodges. Are you real sure that you do not want to take full advantage of it?
Another misunderstanding should be corrected. The law does not presume that every man who fails to pay his dues by midnight of the 15th day ' of the first month of the quarter is to be bulletined. The notice to delinquents on the 16th day of the first month of the quarter is sent by the Lodge on an official form known as “notification or arrearage.” The Supreme Lodge wants the Subordinate Lodge to send that notice and work, its membership committees and do everything else it can do between the 15th day of January and the first day of February to get the boys paid up, but then when all local effort has failed, the Supreme Lodge wants one last final chance to convince the Brother that he makes a mistake in losing his place in this fraternity.
DO NOT GET EXCITED.
IN OUR enthusiasm about Mooseheart and its service to the dependent children of the Order we are some of us prone to move too fast when a death occurs among the members of our Lodge. If you will stop and think about it a minute you will realize Mooseheart will never be big enough to take all of the children whose fathers or mothers die.
We heard of a case the other day where one of the members of the Order died. His wife had relatives and reached a conclusion as to a future home for herself and her children. She was satisfied in her own mind in this regard and was, therefore, hurt when told by the members of the Moose that she was not allowed to maintain her own home with her children, but that she and her children would have to go to Mooseheart, because the deceased was a member of the Order. In fact, in this particular case the widow suffered considerable mental anguish at the thought that her husband before his death had obligated her to a course which she did not desire.
If a Brother in the Lodge dies, do not get excited. Mooseheart has well developed machinery for meeting these situations. If the family left by the Brother is quite destitute, write in and say so, but do not try to obligate Mooseheart to take a widow or the children until Mooseheart has had an opportunity to study the situation. Many times it is possible to find for the children good homes with relatives. This is saving the precious beds of Mooseheart for those not so happily situated.
Every child accepted into Mooseheart means an obligation amounting, on the average, to about three thousand dollars. The money which our members pay is not so easily made by them, that a penny dare be wasted. If you will stop to realize that the acceptance of a child by Mooseheart is the equivalent of spending the annual Mooseheart contribution of three thousand members of this fraternity, you will realize that everything should be done to meet the problem of the dependent children at home.
In the influenza epidemic in one of our Lodges seventeen fathers died leaving children in dependent circumstances. It chanced! that one of the
Mooseheart Magazine
Voi. V.	MARCH, 1919	No. 3
Entered as Second-Class Matter January 26, 1916, at the Post Office at Mooseheart, Illinois, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Sec. 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 8, 1918. Issued monthly from its office of publication at Mooseheart, 111., by the Supreme Lodge of the World, Loyal Order of Moose.
Edited and managed for the Supreme Lodge of the World, Loyal Order of Moose, by its Committee on Public Information.
John W. Ford________________________________________Chairman
Rodney H. Brandon___________________________:-------Secretary
Subscription________________________________ 50c per Annum.
Advertising Rates on Application Copyrighted, 1919 by Rodney H. Brandon
Getting After The Delinquents
UCKED away back in Section 134 of the General Laws, there is a provision that any member who does not pay his dues by the first day of February shall get a reminder of the fact from the Supreme Lodge. This law has not been rigidly enforced in the past, but the present General Dictator and Supreme Secretary have a feeling that the Past Dictators who voted to put that law there are entitled to have it given a fair trial and that if they did not want it enforced, they would not have put it there in the first place. Accordingly, it is being enforced this quarter.
The letter which the Supreme Lodge sends to the member should not be a “dun.” We believe that the letter which is being used could not be so characterized. The letter should endeavor to reconvince the member of the value of the service which he is buying and should, we take it, also impress him with the fact that we want him to stay with us because of his comradship. A great many Secretaries have written in to the General Dictator since the notice that this law would be rigidly enforced went out, and have argued that it makes their members unhappy when they get such_ reminders. Is there, after all, any reason for this ?
If you had been paying for a life insurance policy for several years and the Company failed to send you a notice of renewal, or they only sent you one such notice and you failed to pay because it slipped you, would you not feel badly if they did not do a reasonable amount of reminding so that you would have a good fair and square chance to decide that you wanted to drop the policy?
After you have been paying into Mooseheart for four or five years or even for a less time, a dollar a year, so that you have two or three_ or maybe four or five dollars of your good money invested in the assets of that institution so that you have come to look upon it as one of the protections of your children, wouldn’t you feel badly if the men you had put in control of this work would not give you a fair and square reminder of what you were losing by ceasing to pay?
Mooseheart is worth, today, over two million dollars. On the average, the members of the Moose have four dollars each invested in it. That is a small sum compared to its insuring value to each parent in the Moose. Can we send you too many notices? Can we do too much to impress our Brother with his need of our service?
So far as the cost of the bulletining is concerned, it is done by the Supreme Lodge for two cents a member. Anybody knows that a letter enclosing a four page folder of Mooseheart views cannot be mailed, postage included!, for two cents. This effort to keep the delinquents paid up is a part of the service that the Supreme Lodge renders to the
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