FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6521, 26 June 1899, Page 1

FRIENDLY SOCIETIES.

REPORT OF THE REGISTRAR. FFimmi Our Correspondent.] . WELLINGTON, June 25. The twenty-secoud annual report of the Registrar of Friendly. Societies is of an exhaustive statistical, nature! The number of registrations during 1898 was twenty-one, distributed thus '.—Manchester Unity Oddfellows, ten lodges j Foresters, five courts ; Druids, two lodges ; Rechabites, one tent ; Isolated Friendly Society, two societies, and one Working Men's Club. On Dec. 31, 1897, the number of. lodges, whose : returns are tabulated, was 388, and of central bodies 34, with a total 'membership of 32,670. The total assets amounted to £637,011, invested at an average rate of 5.6 per cent. The Registrar remarks as follows, on the question of rates 'of contribution:—"Although New Zealand experience, so far as it was available, waslasVyear utilised for the calculation 1 of a table of rates ; of contribution, the compilation of facts opwhich" to establish a sound-, -system -of. -friendly society finance must be continued, not only in ordei' to complete ! the - experience, " bufe also because some of the conditions affecting it may in the course of time undergo an appreciable change.- 'Many years iigo an official warning was given;, of a. previously unsuspected danger to the finances of friendly societies in New Zealand. The exceptionally light mortality of the colony was generally thought to justify the assumption of a correspondingly, favourable sickness rate. It was, however, pointed out that; on the contrary, the probable effect of greater longevity would-be to rincrease the :average life" sickness per member, and that a loss would .bo more likely to accrue than a gain to societies as the net result of the dissimilar ex- Iperience.-. UhfOrtunaely, the expectation of a relatively light sickness has not been generally realised."., , ' ; .-