"This group was formed by a small coteries of men who were opposed to immigrants coming to the United States. The men met in a grocery store in Philadelphia on July 8, 1845, to form the organization called Union of Workers. The name was soon changed to Order of United American Mechanics (OUAM). Its objectives were to be a patriotic, social, fraternal and benevolent order, composed of native white male citizens, who would purchase goods only from white businessmen, help native Americans[1] find employment, protect the public school system[2] aid widows and orphans of deceased members and defend its members from harmful economic competition by immigrants. The order's formation was an outgrowth of the American Nativist movement, which opposed the German, Irish and Roman Catholic immigration of the early 1840s. One primary reason for opposing the "foreigners", which led to the OUAM being founded, was that many Americans resented immigrants ("greenhorns") being hired by businesses for lower wages.
According to Albert C Stevens in his Encyclopedia of Fraternities (1907) the OUAM organizational meeting took place on July 4[3] 1845, with an audience of about sixty individuals. A majority left which they heard the the new group would be a secret society. A handful remained. Some of the key organizers were Freemasons. The name "Mechanics" was chosen because the group saw itself as a secret fraternity of operative[4] mechanics and tradesmen; however, its membership never was composed entirely of mechanics and tradesmen.
The ritual of the OUAM very much bore the influence of Freemasonry, apparently because some of its founders were Masons. In the tradition of Masonry, the ritual was secret, with required vows of secrecy. The emblem included the Masonic square and compass, along with the arm of labor wielding a hammer and the American flag.
The anti-immigration feelings of the OUAM were not confined to this organization in the fraternal arena. For in 1853 the OUAM organized the Junior Order of United American Mechanics (JOUAM). As a juvenile group, it was to train youths who would later join the OUAM. By 1885 the junior order had become an independent adult group, employing the same objectives and symbols as its parent society. The OUAM also formed auxiliary organizations[5]: the Daughters of Liberty and the Daughters of America. The latter group was really an affiliate of the JOUAM
In time, the OUAM changed its posture from a Nativist fraternal group to a fraternal society dispensing life insurance. It even changed its name by dropping the word "Order" and simply called itself United American Mechanics. Today the society is part of the Junior Order of United American Mechanics, the society organized in 1853[6].
A few footnotes and glosses:
[1] "native Americans" doesn't mean "Native Americans" in this context, as you know.
[2] "Protect the public school system" in this context means "from Catholic influence".
[3] Lots of societies revised their birth dates to July 4, for obvious reasons; actually it was July 8, as noted above.
[4] This is a term of art from Freemasonry. "Operative" masons are those who cut stones; "speculative" masons follow the rituals of Freemasonry.
[5] "Auxiliary" organisation - ie, one for women relatives of members, women not being allowed to join OUAM. I'll try to do a few writeups of ladies' auxiliaries in coming weeks.
[6] Presumably the OUAM became part of the JOUAM rather than vice versa for financial reasons relating to their respective life assurance funds.
OUAM are a funny bunch - you can see how there are elements of proto-socialism, the co-operative movement and Fascism there, all mixed up in the American cultural and political environment of the 19th century. If Europe had avoided the First World War, you can sort of see how the Nationalsozialistiche Deutsche Abeiterpartei might have ended up as an insolvent life assurance fund, merged into the Hitler Youth(actually this would be unlikely because the German state were early to recognise the need for state pensions, but perhaps the really interesting scenario for alternate history buffs is what the OUAM might have turned into if things went differently in America).
I really do think, by the way, that I have an explanation for the development of the "paranoid style in American politics" which has an Ockhamist advantage over Hofstadters. Remember that societies like this were absolutely ubiquitous in the USA during a formative period in its history. If one is, oneself, given to meeting up in the back rooms of grocery shops to try and stitch up a few deals to the economic benefit of those present at the expense of those absent, how much of a stretch is it to believe that similar stitch-ups are being carried out on a grander scale, in more salubrious surroundings, by the members of more exclusive societies?
Next week I'll bite the bullet and type in a few hundred words on the Order of Red Men, a fraternal benefit organisation which did, actually, end up controlling large parts of the lives of millions of people. I bet at least a few people in comments will guess how ...
Were some of the ubiquitous "ladies' groups" that still exist today -- Daughters of the American Revolution, United Daughters of the Confederacy, Daughters of the Republic of Texas -- auxiliaries or "in the spirit of" organisations? The most significant seem to have formed in the same rough time period (1890s) but that was also contemporaneous with the NAWSA, and that was the decade of Susan B. Anthony.
ReplyDeleteAs far as I can tell, none of those groups were ladies' auxiliaries of anything so I think you're right.
ReplyDeleteThe trail in the last para, by the way, is a reference to the fact that one of the offshoot drinking societies of the Order of Red Men was the Tammany Society, the New York base of which was the eponymous Hall.
Can't have been all *that* ubiquitous if every time one was proposed 3/4 of the audience walked out.
ReplyDeleteThis was in the early days; by the 1920s, 50% of white adult males in some states were members of at least one fraternal organisation. (Also note that the subtext here is most likely that the majority of people at the original meeting were Catholics).
ReplyDeleteSo I suppose the obvious question is this: Catholics also needed life assurance, mutual assistance and so on; were there also Catholic secret societies, or did they handle it differently?
ReplyDeleteYes there were Catholic fraternal and benefit societies, in spades (I'll write about a few forthcoming). The issue was that oaths of secrecy were (and AFAIAA still are) forbidden by the Catholic church for some reasons to do with confession. After a while (and because of the sheer power of the secret society craze), they got round this by allowing, eg, the Knights of Columbus to make "affirmations" which weren't technically oaths, and to explicitly have a cut-out for confession.
ReplyDeleteBasically of course, the root of this was in the historically antagonistic relationship between the Church and Freemasons, Carbonari etc in Europe. The KoC were the church's attempt to create an approved Masonic organisation.
they got round thisThat's basically what they do.
ReplyDelete(also to note that by about 1900, a lot of Catholics had started simply disobeying the Church's strictures and joining societies like the Odd Fellows, Red Men, Knights of Pythias etc, although less so the actual Freemasons)
ReplyDeleteInteresting that the American left-footers have the Knights of Columbus, the Irish have the Knights of St Columbanus, and the British have the Knights of St Columba. They're not related, as far as I can tell, though they have an umbrella organisation; the 'Knights' back home was basically a social club for anyone with an Irish last name who wanted to hear a fiddle and a banjo of an evening. (Nigeria's version is apparently the 'Knights of St Malumba', which tickles me somewhat.)
ReplyDeleteThe masons are
Is it too much of a drift to wonder about the interactions between the quasi-Masonic societies and some of the more wacked-out stuff that seems to crop up in the 1890s-1900s: Theosophy, OTRC, etc?
Scheduled for some future date. Basically all of these things trace a lot of their rituals back to Freemasonry and many of them started off as Masonic offshoots.
ReplyDeleteI'm trying to remember without Googling - which of the Crusading orders has basically ended up as a way for aristocratic Catholics to hob-nob? It's the ones from Malta, but I'm completely drawing a blank on which ones they were. Which is embarrassing.
ReplyDeleteKnights Hospitallers, these days knowns as the Knights of Malta.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3531729.ece
"What's the name of those Knights? You know, the ones from Malta?"
ReplyDelete"The Knights of Malta?"
"Yeah, them."
The three great orders of Crusading chivalry were the Hospitallers, who ended up in Bodrum, then in Rhodes, then in Malta, then as the above-mentioned hobnobbery; the Teutonic Knights, who got distracted into campaigning against the pagans of Lithuania and the Orthodox of Russia (see Aleksandr Nevsky); and the Templars, who got heavily into international finance before being, in an example which resonates very strongly today, burned at the stake.
Came to me, of course, as soon as I posted that, but thanks for the link.
ReplyDeletethe Teutonic Knights, who got distracted into campaigning against the pagans of Lithuania and the Orthodox of Russia (see Aleksandr Nevsky)Lovely bunch of lads. You can view the current habit of stag dos going to Estonia for a weekend of drinking, whoring and firing Kalashnikovs as the modern equivalent of their Reysen. Except these days, massacring every peasant in sight is generally frowned upon.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Masonic spinoffs, have you covered the mormons yet?
ReplyDelete