From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State

“[A] useful study.” — Journal of American History

“The most comprehensive work to date on American fraternal societies.” — Journal of Southern History

“A constellation of fascinating stories about the fraternal societies of ordinary Americans. . . . Beito’s excellent study sheds light on an important yet neglected part of the social past. . . . It has insights especially for sociologists interested in social movements, voluntary organizations, social work, empowerment, and American social history.” — American Journal of Sociology

“[Beito] convincingly argues that fraternal organizations embodied values that appealed to a broad range of Americans across lines of race, class, gender, and ethnicity.” — American Historical Review

“A wonderful book. . . . Beito ends by noting, 'The opportunities for further scholarship are almost endless.' If readers are lucky, he is hard at work exploring them.” — Harvard Business History Review

“Beito has obviously done a great deal of extensive, primary research, opening a new way to examine the history of fraternal organizations.” — CHOICE

“In his fascinating [book] . . . Beito tells the remarkable story of fraternal organizations — all those Masons, Moose, Oddfellows, Woodmen, and so forth — as mutual benefit societies that enabled vast numbers of Americans to safeguard their families without the stigma of charity or the snare of long-term dependence. . . . [He also] has captured one of the most important ways lodges [lifted] people up, which was to give them a shield against destitution and dependency — a shield of their own making and control.” — ##The Washington Monthly#

“Beito’s history is fascinating and instructive in itself, but it is also well-presented, mercifully free of the jargon and trendy obsessions that make most academic social history such a chore to read.” — Wall Street Journal

“David Beito’s new book is an original, highly readable contribution to at least two lively scholarly debates — one on the evolution of social welfare provision and the second on the history of civic associations and social capital. His masterful and provocative account of the history of fraternalism embodies lessons of interest to anyone concerned about the vitality of community solidarity in contemporary America.” — Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University

“From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State speaks not only to concerns held by historians from a variety of subfields but also addresses a number of key debates at the forefront of contemporary public discourse.” — Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University