FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 868, 14 July 1910, Page 4

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

A "PERNICIOUS SCHEME." According to tho annual report of the Registrar of Friendly Societies, the furnishing of the annual returns of receipts and expenditure, sickness and mortality, by secretaries of societies and branches is not so prompt as it should be, particularly wlien it is considered that a Ice is paid to secretaries for their trouble. The latitude allowed in. the past is apparently not appreciated, and it will probably require, an application of the penalising powers of tne Act to bring about a change tor the better. The report proceeds: "In my 1908 report I referred to the adoption by certain friendly societies of the special levy or assessment system of providing for deatii benefits. The Parliamentary Committee that investigated tho proposed legislation of that year adduced much valuable information on this subject, ami the evidence of the actuary of the Department made it abundantly clear that no such haphazard method of providing for life assurance or death benefits can guarantee any security, and that a scale of contributions graduated according to ago on the lines adopted by all New Zealand friendly societies for insuring their usual benefits alfords the only satisfactory means of meeting their liabilities. The introduction of this pernicious scheme for offering large death benefits without adequate provision is probably the most dangerous attack yet made on the stability and good standing of the societies, and should it spread throughout these valuable organisations the friendly society movement in this country will most certainly receive a serious set-back, and bring nothing but disappointment to numbers of persons who have bscn induced to join the scheme. Whatever may bo said to the contrary, tho systems that have been adopted in New Zealand are on the same fallacious basis as similar schemes that have been and are now working such havoc among fraternal societies in America, and any difference in detail that may exist is to the disadvantage of the New Zealand system."