Shaping the rise of brotherhood: Social, political, and economic contexts and the “Golden Age of Fraternalism”

Abstract

This study seeks to investigate how social, political, and economic factors shaped demand for membership in three major federated fraternal orders in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the Independent Order of Odd Fellows, the Knights of Pythias, and the Improved Order of Red Men. Methods: Error-correction, time-series-cross-sectional models are estimated using state-level data, with the first differences in total membership, new initiations, and suspensions serving as dependent variables. Results: We find evidence that railroads, urbanization, immigration, bank panics, and presidential election years all had significant effects on membership; those effects, however, varied by fraternal order. Conclusion:The demand for American fraternalism was affected by civil society, politics, and the economy in ways that scholars have not previously studied.