THE BUILDER MAY 1917

THE FAITH THAT IS IN THEM---A FRATERNAL FORUM

Edited by BRO. GEO. E. FRAZER, President, The Board of Stewards

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Henry R. Evans, District of Columbia. 
Harold A. Kingsbury, Connecticut. 
Dr. Wm. F. Kuhn, Missouri.
Dr. John Lewin McLeish, Ohio.
Joseph W. Norwood, Kentucky.
Francis W. Shepardson, Illinois.
Silas H. Shepherd, Wiaconsin. 
Oliver D. Street, Alabama. 
S. W. Williams, Tennessee.

Contributions to this Monthly Department of Personal Opinion are
invited from each writer who has contributed one or more articles
to THE BUILDER. Subjects for discussion are selected as being
alive in the administration of Masonry today. Discussions of
politics, religious creeds or personal prejudices are avoided, the
purpose of the Department being to afford a vehicle for comparing
the personal opinions of leading Masonic students. The
contributing editors assume responsibility only for what each
writes over his own signature. Comment from our Members on the
subjects discussed here will be welcomed in the Correspondence
column.

QUESTION NO. 1--
Shall Masonic Lodges encourage the formation of local Masonic
social clubs and the establishment of Masonic club rooms dedicated
to amusements and social meetings?

A Positive "No."

No. The stated and special communications the Lodge should meet
all such demands. We need more brains and less mediocrity in
candidates. Let us have less of the eternal grind in the ritual,
but more study and investigation, less formality in the lodge room
but more fellowship.
Wm. F. Kuhn, Missouri.


Personal Experience.

The National Federation of Masonic Clubs I think has done a great
work in creating more social interest. I was instrumental in
founding one club in Lexington that now has more than 1,000
members and is the only one in Kentucky that belongs to the
National Federation.

Also most lodges in Louisville where social clubs are attached,
have made wonderful improvement in social intercourse. We need
this department of Masonic of life almost more than any other, as
of course, in the  lodges there is little time to give to anything
save conference of degrees.
J. W. Norwood, Ky.


More Especially in a Smaller City or Town.

I believe that the maintenance of a Masonic club in connection
with a Masonic lodge a most desirable thing, more especially in a
smaller city or town where such opportunities may be limited. The
spirit of comradeship which is thus developed and the opportunity
which the club rooms afford for social meetings to which the wives
and friends of Masons may be invited, is particularly appealing to
me. I think such club rooms may be wisely conducted without the
slightest suspicion of any advertising motive which might be
counted directly antagonistic to all the principles of the
fraternity.
Francis W. Shepardson, Ill.

Yes. Masonry Must Grow as the World Grows.

My answer to your question regarding the formation of Masonic
Social Clubs is emphatically Yes. If Masonry is to fill a position
in the life of the World such that it is to be worth the while of
any man to devote even the least iota of his time and interest to
the support of Masonry then Masonry must grow as the World grows.
Year by year and decade by decade, as civilization has advanced,
the World has come to place a higher and yet higher value on clean
social intercourse. Masonry owes it to the World and to itself to
recognize and to promote this trend of public feeling. It is a
trend that should be encouraged. An organization that does not
fill a real world-need--that does not give of its best for the
uplift of the World-- is useless, decaying, and a thing that
should be eradicated to make a place for some worthwhile
organization. A great need of the World today is better
opportunities for the exchange of ideas--better opportunities for
you to find out the other fellow's point of view and for him to
find out your point of view, in order that each may see what is
bad in the ideas of the other and what is good, and then mutually
eliminate the bad and join forces to promote the good. The corner
grocery with its cracker barrel and its redhot stove that formerly
formed the rallying place for the men of the community is being
eliminated. Something must take its place. Masonry has the
organization. Let it do the work ! But few men will deliberately
meet for the sole purpose of discussing everyday affairs--there
must be a "drawing card." Let that card be the billiard table, the
bowling alley, the card table, and the reading room--the
interchange of ideas will come of itself. On "lodge night" in many
a lodge the "lobby lodge" marshalls more members than does the
lodge room lodge. Why? Because-thousands of Masons are starving
for that sociability on which their lodges barely lift the veil.
Masonry does not canvass for applicants. But if the institution is
to survive it must add members. There very recently came to my
attention the case of a fine chap, practically a total stranger in
the city in which he had come to work some few months before. He
decided to join either the Masons or the Odd Fellows in order (1)
to identify himself with the right life of the community and (2)
to put himself under good influences. So far as he could judge the
two organizations were, apparently, one as good as the other in
connection with the two points stated. He also wanted sociability-
-a place to spend his evenings and to "get acquainted." The Odd
Fellows had a Club, open every night and providing social
opportunities and, on weekday nights, billiards, pool and cards.
The Masons did not. He joined the Odd Fellows. Think it over!
Yours fraternally,
Harold A. Kingsbury, Conn.

* * *

Draw the Ties that Bind Two Million Men.

Masonry is one of the most important factors in the homogeny of
our country. Nearly one-fiftieth of the entire population of the
United States are members of the Order. This great Army of nearly
2,000,000 men are bound together by the most solemn ties for the
development of ALL the people along lines that make for STRENGTH--
-morally, physically and spiritually--each brother working
according to his opportunity and ability. Social organizations
within our Lodges can but draw the ties that bind us, one to
another, tighter and make it easier for us to see just where we
can be of use to our brother-man. Here would be the benefit--
closer association in the various paths of life; more intimate
knowledge, not only of each other's virtues, but of each other's
faults; and a better chance to know where a proper application of
some one or more of the "Five Points of Fellowship" can be
beneficially applied. Care must be taken, of course, "Not to turn
the hours of refreshment into intemperance and excess"--hence it
might be well to make the Jr. W. an Ex Officio Officer of the
proposed Club.

Conducted along the proper and healthy lines that are taught
within the Lodge, such organizations ought to make for broader and
nobler ideals in life. We cannot get into too close touch with our
brethren; we cannot, without benefitting ourselves, aid them in
the hours of pleasure, recreation, and pain; we cannot fail in
good works when, through more intimate association, we learn to
know each other's virtues, as well as faults--then we are better
armed for the battle of Life --better PREPARED; and PREPAREDNESS
is the note of the Hour.

"Man is a social being and was not designed to pass his life in
solitude with all his thoughts concentrated upon himself; hence,
in the social capacity, men should endeavor, by kind and friendly
acts, to promote the happiness of one another."

This excerpt from the E. A. Charge in the Tennessee Craftsman, it
seems to me, is most appropriate --and points the way. Fraternally
yours,
S. W. Williams, Tennessee.

* * *
Favors the Club Under Lodge Control.

There is an all-too-increasing tendency nowadays among the
craftsmen to forget that Masonry is a serious institution. More
and more a lighter note has crept into the lodgeroom, and in the
conferring of "the fourth degree" making its appeal through
post-prandial platitudes, the real business of the lodge in seeing
that its newly-made brethren are duly and truly prepared, is often
overlooked. Many a brother comes to lodge only when he reads upon
his announcement the, to him, welcome news, "The stewards will
serve refreshments." In the larger lodges of the urban communities
there is ordinarily quite enough of the social side of Masonic
life rendering unnecessary any subsidiary lodge organization. In
smaller or suburban communities, where a Lodge through purchase of
property, the erection of a temple, or other contingencies has
incurred an indebtedness a subsidiary social organization or club
can help materially in devising entertainments and other means of
lesgening lodge obligations.

For the average city one large central Masonic Club should meet
every need, this too mainly for the accommodation and headquarters
of visiting brethren.

In any event, the executive control of any organization attached
to any particular lodge should be vested in the Master and other
officers of that lodge, to assure the fact that the parasitic
attachment should not eventually absorb the body upon which it had
fastened. To interest the younger brethren, and afford a chance
for social intercourse with the wives and sisters and daughters of
Masons a Masonic club makes its appeal.

Always to my mind however with the restriction of absolute control
by officers of the older and main body. The Lodge always comes
first to the true Mason. 
Jno. Lewin McLeish, Ohio.

* * *

Club Rooms, But Not a Club for the Few.

As a means of promoting sociability, and consequently of its
members finding congenial recreational pursuits, Freemasonry has
been, in the past, a passive rather than an active agent. As a
personal opinion I do not believe the Lodge should advocate the
formation of local social clubs or establish Masonic club rooms
for a particular part of the membership of the Lodge. As a. Lodge
its interests are concerned in every member alike; each has the
same things in common. Any attempt to bring a certain form of
recreation or amusement under the protection of the Lodge might be
quite consistently construed as favoritism.

We are reminded of a "Lodge Bulletin" which reads more like the
baseball section of the "sporting extra" than a publication
authorized and paid for by a Masonic Lodge.

There are innumerable ways in which the Lodge can promote the
social life of its members which will be of benefit to all. Why
try to promote a club which will be of benefit but to few?

If the Lodge desires to have "club rooms" let them be for all the
members and have them equipped with adequate facilities to provide
for a quite diversified t taste. The Lodge itself should have
control and not delegate it to a "club."

These opinions are expressed with the most earnest desire that
they be not construed as minimizing the value of the development
of the social nature, of which I am an earnest advocate, but with
the wish that the Fraternity strengthen its fraternal nature and
carefully guard against anything which would tend to bring diverse
interests within the portals of the Lodge. 
Silas H. Shepherd, Wis.

* * *
Is the "Club Habit" Wholesome?

This is an important question and one whose importance is growing
each day. It is my opinion that they should not. I believe the
"club life" or the "club habit" on the whole not productive of
wholesome results. A club styling itself Masonic and yet not
subject to the absolute control of some regular Masonic body is
liable to bring a reproach and discredit upon the Craft for which
the latter is in no wise to blame and which it is powerless to
prevent. If Masons desire to form clubs whose membership is
restricted to members of the Craft very well, but do not allow
them to appropriate the name Mason or any derivative thereof and
do not give them offlcial endorsement. If then loafing and
idleness and absentation from home and gambling and drinking grow
up in such clubs, as they have so often done and are so likely to
do, no blame or responsibility can attach to the fraternity.
Suitable amusements and recreations can and should be occasionally
provided by the lodge for its members and their families, but no
separate organization for this purpose is necessary. Every lodge
that is financially able and is so situated that it can should
have a library supplied with good Masonic books and literature and
an attractive, comfortable reading room, and every encouragement
should be given the brethren to make full use of them. All the
necessary "club life" can be obtained elsewhere. That the "Masonic
Club" is pregnant with dangers must be obvious to all thinking
Masons.
O. D. Street, Alabama.


Where the Function of the Lodge Ends.

Masonry is a system of fraternalism in moral principles. Masonry
teaches truth and exemplifies its meaning by organized rituals. It
is the function of Masonry to educate its members to the highest
possible standards of moral truth so that each member may
contribute his share to the progress of civilization in his own
day and generation. To this end it is proper that Masons should
build and furnish temples in all beauty that Masonic truth may be
taught efflciently. To this end it is proper that Masons should
read Masonic literature and attend Masonic lectures, study clubs,
schools of instruction, and governing conventions.

It is the province of Masonry to exemplify morality and truth. It
is the privilege and duty of the individual Mason to carry this
truth into all the phases of his life. The good Mason is a good
family man, a good business man and a good citizen. So should he
also be a good church man or a good club man, if he finds his
place in these activities. There is a definite place for the Mason
in politics, but the thought of a Masonic political party is
abhorrent. There is a place for the Mason in the church of his
choice, but there is no place in Masonry for the Masonic Church.
What I have learned in Masonry has led me to place a high value on
family protection such as is afforded by life insurance, but I,
for one, have not the slightest intention of patronizing a
"Masonic life insurance company." And I do not expect any Masonic
lodge to serve me either as a commercial association or as a
social club.

It is the right of Masons, as individuals, to organize social
clubs and to restrict membership in such clubs as they see fit.
The Masons comprising the membership of, say, The Craft Club, have
the same right to refuse membership in their club to a brother
Master Mason as members of the Knights Templar have to refuse
membership in their Commandery to a Brother Mason.
Geo. E. Frazer, Illinois.

