¿MOOSEHEART MAGAZINE
Conversations With Six Hundred Thousand
THE COMFORTS OF FRATERNITY
a brother member is qualified for almost any good thing.
With the orders, however, exactly as with the. labor unions, it is a very dangerous thing to throw the weight of the society into one political scale or the other. If a lodge or an order strongly backs a Republican as such the Democratic members are likely to drop out. It is just like carrying the church into an order. One of the great benefits of all the large orders is that they break right across other combinations and membership, the Catholic, the Hebrew, the Baptist, the Christian Scientist, are all good Moose at the same time.
BREADTH
Here comes in one of the advantages of a large and widely distributed order. It gives a man the advantage of acquaintance, friendship and common work with those whom he otherwise would never meet. If it is a good thing to bring men <;£ the same kind together it is equally desirable for a man to have contact with many kinds of men. Nothing is more nar־rowing than to associate only with men of the same political party, or church or trade all one’s life. The order cuts a cross section through American society, makes men acquainted with each other throughout the Union. The Civil War would never have taken place in 1861 if the great national orders had then existed as now in numerous northern and southern lodges.
Nowadays the world needs not only sectional but international friendliness and understanding. While it would be hard to form an international union among men of distant countries and various languages the Moose Order has proven that it is not difficult to come into closer understanding with our brethren across the Canadian boundary, 50,000 of whom put on the Canadian uniform and stood side by side with the Yankees in the fearful drive against the Hindenburg line. The work of the Moose Commission in France during the war shows the possibility of extending the influence of an order beyond the seas.
AMERICANIZATION
One of the most direct and positive advantages of the right kind of an Order is that it is doing a significant part of that great task of Americanization which absorbs so much of the efforts of the year 1919. The Moose Order asks no man whete he was born, but what he is, what he can do, whet he is doing. As the public helps to mold the children of foreign birth who come within its influence, so the order helps to transform the foreigner into ail American citizen who knows what his adopted country is worth to him. We do not all stop to think what an advantage and distinction it is to be an American citizen. Only about one seventeenth of the human race are entitled to that privilege which some of them do not appear to appreciate. Membership in a good order is the best possible method of making a man feel that he is an American to his finger tips and that his children shall be American after him.
PUBLIC SERVICE
What can a fraternity do to build up the country in which we live ? Individual members have of course their own public duties, a great number of them as legislators and public servants. Our Supreme Dictator, for instance, at this moment is head of one of the most important and largest cities of the Union. It is a great thing to be the chief magistrate both of Baltimore and the Moose Order.
Of course the orders give powerful aid to keeping the republic going. They have property, they have traditions, they have an institution which they wish to keep afloat, therefore they are a conservative force. They wish to grow to attract members to do something worth while, therefore they have to be liberal. The careful financial methods of well managed orders like the Moose are a standing lesson to every lodge of the principles of good business. The carrying on of a fraternity enterprise such as Mooseheart with its annual account of stewardship to the order, represented through its Convention, is a standing lesson in the combination of efficiency and responsibility with democracy. Above all, the great oi'ders throughout the country ought to be, as some of them are, motive forces in the education of the American people. They ought to bring to bear a concentrated force of intelligent and patriotic teaching and schooling. That is a big subject which shall be treated by itself hereafter.
By PROFESSOR ALBERT BUSHNELL HART Harvard University-------Mooseheart Governor
does not notice the flight of time, a great order is a great thing; but what most concerns the people of America is not only to have friends but to have fellow workers. An English novelist describes a club which was particularly desirable because no one was admitted who did anything to support himself. In the United States it is. considered against a man if he is content to live on the interest of his money or the bounty of his relatives without contributing something to the community.
Exactly the same principle applies to the American fraternities. Some of them which are given up to enjoyment make on the public mind the impression of being of no account. It is not many years ago that the annual convention of a nationr.l order—obviously not the Moose—was held in Denver and an excursion was made to one of the mining canons of the neighborhood in a special car. But, as one of the natives put it, “they brought their own saloon with them.” The orders that affect public sentiment and help to build up the nation are those that have a sense not only of a good time but of common duty. Men hang together not simply because they like each other but because they have something to do together. You look on the man that played next to you on the football team and on your bunkie “over there” and your partner in business, as the best fellow ever, not only because he is a good fellow but because you have worked together.
That is one of the secrets of the Moose Order. Like other orders it aids the unfortunate, it looks after the sick, it buries the dead. But beyond that the men of the Moose are united in the Order’s profession of carrying on MOOSEHEART. Those who saw the convention in the Theodore Roosevelt Assembly Hall last June when it was pledging money and support for its beloved institution, and when the splendid gift of the Philadelphia Lodge was publicly announced, understand the importance of giving a great order something to do, something specific, something large, something that arouses the soul with thought of others’ needs and care, something׳ outside the lodge room.
POLITICS
What about the relation of orders to public affairs ? A hundred years ago a powerful fraternity in the United States went under a cloud from which it did not emerge for years because of the public belief that the members were using the order to push them in state and national politics. The lesson will never be forgotten that if an order endorses a candidate it thereby invites members of other orders or of no orders to vote against him. On the other hand, there is no resisting the willingness of members of an order to believe that
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A Letter, From His Honor THE MAYOR
Mayor’s Office
Toledo, Ohio, Aug. 1st, 1919.
Mr. James J. Davis,
2117 Farmers Bank Building,
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Dear Brother Davis :
It is my privilege on behalf of the City of Toledo to tender to you personally, and through you the various officers and delegates who attended the recent Convention of the Loyal Order of Moose at MOOSEHEART, the thanks of our citizens in unanimously naming this city as the place for holding the 1921 National Constitutional Convention.
Since my visit to MOOSEHEART last March, T looked forward with much pleasure to being present at the June convention, but unfortunately stress of public bus'ness made that imoossible. Brothers Rafter and Quinlivan of the Toledo Lodge have told me of the work of the Convention, and I have also read the Moose Bulletin and the Toledo Moose Magazine, all of which make me regret exceedingly my enforced absence from the Convention.
The Convention’s outpouring for the House of God was inspiring; yet when we consider the aim־, and purposes of the Loyal Order of Moose and MOOSEHEART it is really only an expression of the sincere faith in MOOSEHEART’S future, and I take this opportunity of adding my own contribution of $50.00, regretting that I cannot do more.
I want to do all I can to make the 1921 Convention a banner gathering. My term of office as Mayor expires the last of this year, but I am a candidate for re-election and in the event of success I shall certainly exert every effort in the Convention’s behalf. It is due the Loyal Order of Moose and the City of Toledo.
With kindest regards and best wishes for your personal welfai־e and that of the Order,
Sincerely,
CORNELL SCHREIBER,
Mayor.
FRATER—that means brother: see the fourth page of the Latin gramm״r. Fraternity — brotherhood, of course; but can you say always that “brothers in their little nests agree?” Fraternalism—one of the great forces in the modern world, as it was in the ancient. If this were an historical essay instead of a conversation we might hold fox-th on the Roman sodales, on the Greek mysteries, the Assembly Hall of one of . which can still be seen in ruins at Eleusis. The American Indians were vei*y fond of mystic brotherhoods whose initiation was confirmed by blood and the candidates were sometimes really killed by the hardships of the process.
This month we will talk not of the g-lories of Moosedom, nor the brilliancy of the Order, nor the success of MOOSEHEART. Bigness, activity, accomnlishment, these are familiar. The echoes of the enthusiastic Convention are still rolling through the land. It is time to go back to first principles and inquire what it is that leads men and women to gather together in the great fraternities of our time. They are no accidents, they have sprung up because human nature demands these associations. The society, the fellowship, the order that most nearly fits these expressions of human nature, is the order that will bulk largest and live longest.
PROTECTION
First of all, fraternities are a protection to their members; not simply in the way of physical aid in time of danger though the orders expect peace and protection from the government of the land. There have been times when secret orders and vigilant committees have undertaken to keep the peace when governments failed. When those who stood for the public welfare had to have behind them the unknown strength of the right minded. The trade unions which are a special form of fraternity make it their business to stand up for their members and each other in their relations with other bodies of men and with the public. Not so the great fraternities, except by the indirect method of insisting on quality and justice.
SOCIAL ADVANTAGES
Most men choose their fraternity on social grounds. A good fellow wants to be among a set of good fellows. He likes to meet old friends and to make new friends. Everybody who has lived much in the world knows how great is the pleasure of association with men of kindred interests. You meet them on the trains, you sit with them on hotel piazzas; but the friends whom one enjoys most and from whom one gets most are the lifelongers. A man always carries a special friendliness for the boy who tied his clothes into hard knots while he was in swimming. In the same way, there is a pie;, ure in meeting the same man week by week or mon„. by month in the lodge room and year by year in the convention. You see that liking for the old gang among the alumnae of colleges, among the old hands in the factory or on the railroad.
This is not merely a pleasure, it is life. Tenderloin beefsteak and terrapin and frozen pudding and strawberry shortcake, automobile spins and motor boat races, big houses and Havana cigars and “fifteen dollars in one’s inside pocket”,—these are all good things, provided there is someone with whom you can share them. Schools and books and lectures and Mooseheart magazines are all very well in their way, but the real education comes from meeting the other fellow. Fraternities increase the opportunities and strengthen the ties of that intercourse of man with man which perhaps is the best thing in life.
The right kind of a fraternity not only broadens life, it deepens. The fraternity is the place to learn that two and two may perhaps make four, but four and four make sixteen. Shakespeare talks of “hosts of friends” as being the reward of the successful man. The fraternity brings those hosts to each other. One of the excellent things about the Loyal Order of Moose is the great spread of the Order. In any one of 1,600 places the new coming Moose may settle down among friends whom he has never seen before but are already made. If the lodge is not chummy and does not welcome the newcomer, if there is not a real warm hearti-i ess, it is on the road to lose its charter.
DOING SOMETHING
Simply on these grounds of enlivening life and filling the year so full of good fellowship that one