FRIENDLY SOCIETIES’ ASSOCIATION.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 2025, 20 August 1880, Page 3

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES’ ASSOCIATION.

The adjourned meeting of delegates appointed to establish an amalgamated friendly societies’ association for Canterbury was held last evening in the Foresters* Hall, Mr T, Kent in the chair. As a continuation of the movement inaugurated with, apparently, such hopeful promise for the future, the gathering was of a melancholy character on the whole, and as to its details, painfully distracting; inasmuch as no one present seemed to be possessed of a very definite idea of what they had to do, or if they entertained a thought on the subject at all, the mode of carrying it into effect was equally beyond their ken. One of the Druid Lodges and two of the American Order of Oddfellows only gave an unqualified assent to the Constitution as framed by the committee and approved of by tho general meeting of delegates. Tho other Lodges, from which letters were received, either rejecting the proposal in toto or objecting to the draft of the Constitution as it stood. Thus, as the chairman stated, it did not appear very clearly what status tho meeting had, and it is not too much to say that those present at cnee became enveloped in a dense fog, from which they did not emerge during the remainder of the evening. Several motions were proposed and rejected, among them one by Mr Hurst, seconded by Mr Nathan, to tho effect that at the present time it is undesirable to form a society of the kind in Canterbury, and that the meeting adjourn sine die. This was rejected, as also was an amendment thereon that an adjournment be taken for three months. Eventually another motion passed that they adjourn for two months. But hero again a difficulty arose, namely, that of the expense, &0., those gentlemen who deemed it useless to proceed under present circumstances declining to bo made responsible for further liability, whilst the secretary declined to continue in office since his Lodge was opposed to the movement, and the chairman expressed himself in similar terms. Having arrived at this unsatisfactory conclusion, the meeting adjourned.