Club (social organization)

“ The writer is a member of two clubs that are stimulating and helpful to the primary social settlement—the family—and believes that a moderate use of the club, like that of any good thing, is desirable. But when the club is ubiquitous and disproportionately valued, so that men, women, and adult children "recognize themselves more by their badges," and care more for ties of ribbon than ties of blood, then the club is inimical to home life. ”

“ To afford to its members the means of social intercourse, mutual helpfulness, mental and moral improvement, industrial welfare, and rational recreation. The Club shall not identify itself with any political, social, or theological party. ”

“ The good that these clubs have already accomplished is a sure indication of the great benefits that will come to each member if he remains loyal to his organization and does all within his power to promote the interests of the whole. I have attended meetings of many of these clubs, upon many occasions, and I know whereof I speak when I say that "in union there is strength." Is there any better place to discuss the subject of supply and demand, the subject of prices, the merits of plants and cut flowers, than a florists' club? ”

“ In some cases the associations thus formed, pro tempore, did not outlast the occasion, while in others the taste for social pleasures, or the accidental meeting of congenial tempers, led 78to the establishment of a permanent club, the members of which grew naturally among a warm-hearted people to take an interest in each other’s welfare. ”

“ His son may be very undesirable, or his son may sell the house to some one whom the club is not willing to admit to membership. But Tuxedo society, instead of becoming, as might have been expected, a very narrow clique, seems to be singularly broad minded and tolerant. The difficulty of preserving the character of the place and keeping a large society together as, in all its essentials, a club, is very much less than might be expected. The place is extremely interesting to any observer of American social life. The club regulates everything. ”

“ Whatever is vital is social. This is why a club when it comes to understand its own powers and sources of life, wishes for the companionship, the sympathy, the fellowship, the shaking hands with other clubs. It is said that corporations have no soul: clubs have souls, and they call loudly for the enlargement of club sympathies, the discussion of knotty club questions, the affirmation by others of what have become club convictions, and mutual congratulations on club successes. ”

“ In the first place, it should contain two or three well-known men to act as figureheads, their names being a guarantee for the social standing of the club. In the second, one or two members ought to be thoroughly conversant with business matters, and well fitted to deal with the details of club finance. And, lastly, a certain proportion of its members ought to be men well in touch with the life of the club, and therefore thoroughly acquainted with its needs. ”

“ Other topics besides farming are occasionally studied but the business of the club is economic promotion of the well-being of the community. Incidentally, it has furnished a social center for the countryside. ”

“ Although no club for purely social purposes has been organized, each club has more or less social life connected with the regular club work. Through the efforts of the clubs fine lecturers, musicians and dramatic readers have been brought to the state and exhibits have been held and floral displays made ”

“ The modern club is simply a more refined substitute for the old-fashioned tavern, and is on the whole an advance in morals as well as manners. In our large cities a man in a certain social coterie belongs to a club, if he can afford it, as a means of contact with his fellows, and to have various conveniences which he cannot so economically obtain at home. ”

“ Besides these more formal organizations there are a number of department clubs, the Deutsche Verein, the Alliance Francaise, the Philosophy Club, the Economics Club, and informal groups such as the old Rhymesters' Club, which flourished in the late nineties, the Scribblers' which seems to have taken its place and enlarged its scope, the Social Study Circle, the little Socialist Club, and others through which the students express their intellectual and social interests. ”

“ For a long time Jerry and I have had the idea of forming a club. We talked of it last year, after Christmas, and again after we gave the operetta. But you know what a hard year we had over basketball, and then so many of us became sick that somehow the club idea was 41 put away and forgotten. But now, as Jerry says, ‘the time has come.’ What we’d like to do is to form a club from a certain number of girls in the senior class. It mustn’t be just a social affair but one devoted to the purpose of looking out for anyone that needs our help. ”

“ Equally high in the social scale but done quite differently is the Club Introduction. It is done by a club man who, for the life of him, can't remember the names of either of the two club men whom he is introducing, and who each, for the life of him, can't think of the name of the man they are being introduced by. ”

“ Such a club indicates the possibilities of the institution, however; and many organizations of women are working with crude material through absurd phases toward accomplishment as happy.
In small communities where the opportunities are infrequent for theater, for social diversion of various kinds, the woman’s club is of the greatest help. It serves at once to focus and distribute all the better social and intellectual interests of the neighborhood. It may be a means of lifting a whole community to a livelier and more interesting social and intellectual level. ”

“ Within the last ten years clubs have become as plentiful as hotels nearly. And the enterprising City gentleman who fits up a big house with a dining and reading and smoking and morning and billiard room, and advertises the inauguration of the Pantheon Club, 'for the benefit of those gentlemen who are unable to enter the older clubs owing to their overcrowded condition,' requires names for his committee. ”

“ Given sincerity, and that vague but essential quality called personality, in the leaders, we do not care very much what the programme of a club may be. I have never known a club leader possessing these qualifications who did not get out of the experience as much as it was possible to give, if not more. An interest in basic social problems develops naturally out of the club relationship. Housing conditions, immigration, unemployment, minimum wage, political control, labor unions, are no longer remote and academic. ”

“ In the great majority of instances, the social club adopts some form of recreation—debating, music, chess, whist, football, tennis, cycling—the practice of which gives point and definition to the activities of members and secures secondary advantages. ”

“ Bright and ambitious girls will come to these down-town clubs to eat lunch and rest at noon, to study all sorts of subjects and listen to lectures, when they might hesitate a long time before joining a club identified with their own neighborhood, where they would be judged not solely on their own merits and the unconscious social standing afforded by good clothes, but by other surroundings which are not nearly up to these. ”

“ It is managed entirely by the members of the Department. There is no caste line or snobbery in the institution, and for the first time the people in the different bureaus are becoming acquainted with each other, and enjoy the opportunities of club life. The idea should be extended. We should have in the city of Washington a great service club, covering a block of land, containing fifteen or twenty thousand members, in which for a trifle per month we could get all of the advantages of the finest social and athletic club that New York contains. ”

“ Your clubs certainly nourish sociality greatly; those little tables, with one sulky man before one sulky chop—those hurried nods between acquaintances—that, monopoly of newspapers and easy chairs—all exhibit to perfection the cementing faculties of a club. ”

“ In most large modern clubs quite a number of members are totally unknown to their fellows, and there is no reason why a member should speak to anyone at all unless he wishes to do so. The majority of the larger modern clubs are in reality merely comfortable caravanserais—hotels receiving a certain number of selected visitors who recognize no social obligations within the club walls except such as regulate ordinary civilized behaviour. ”

“ The most usual form that the club activities assume is that of literary work of some kind, either as a gathering of literary women, or simply a gathering of women for some particular form of literary study. They usually give club banquets and club luncheons, but rarely attain to the dignity of a café. ”

“ Of late years, however, a less severe tone has prevailed amongst its members, many of whom are distinguished men.
144Sixty years ago the fact of club membership implied some social position or distinction on the part of the individual. White’s, Brooks’s, Boodle’s, Arthur’s, and a few other establishments, constituted really exclusive clubland, and to be elected to them was a matter of no little difficulty. A man of obscure birth, or one unknown to the committee, would have been sure of being blackballed. ”

“ Pictures of the Social Life of the Metropolis during the last two centuries are by no means rare. We possess them in Diaries, Memoirs, and Correspondence, in almost countless volumes, that sparkle with humour and gaiety, alternating with more serious phases,—political or otherwise,—according to the colour and complexion, and body of the time. Of such pictures the most attractive are Clubs. ”

“ They are also quite as difficult to be elected to as any of the exclusive clubs in the cities—more so if anything, because they are open to the family and friends of every member, whereas in a man's club in a city his membership gives the privilege of the club to no one but himself personally. ”

“ From time to time various matters of local interest are taken up and discussed by the club, and considerable talent in debate has been developed in unexpected places. Occasionally the various neighborhood clubs get together for a day of sports and recreation. ”

“ And if the traveler have magic sesame, the clubs of the old town may open to him, clubs with spotless integrity and matchless service, all the way from the stately Somerset and the Algonquin through to the democratic City Club—with its more than four thousand enthusiastic members. ”

“ The Tory patrician belonged to White’s; the Whig politician of old family was a member of Brooks’s; the country gentleman put his name down at Boodle’s or Arthur’s; the distinguished lawyer, divine, or man of letters, became a member of the Athenæum; and the soldier, who was a field officer, of the United Service. The membership of such clubs constituted an exclusive circle.
A club was a place in which men wrote letters and met their friends. ”

“ There is no difficulty in starting a club; any group of women who are interested in the same things may form themselves into a simple organization. But the great question will surely arise: What shall we study? And here club members are certain to divide into three distinct classes. ”

“ There has never been an opportunity for community work like that offered to-day, offered especially to those women who have been made capable by their training in their own little study clubs to cope with questions of hygiene, of tenement house wrongs and immigrants' problems; they have the widest scope for their energies. If they are wise, they will accept the opportunity of using the woman's club and make it a center of social service. ”

“ Such are our countless clubs and societies formed frankly for recreation, or for mutual improvement, and for all kinds of ostensible purposes which serve merely as excuses or reasons for the existence of the club. ”

“ Blake. "At our work most of us men meet different people, we see new faces and new things, but the women stay at home, wash, sew, cook, care for [94] the children, and never know when the day is done unless they look at the clock—then they're not always sure."
"There ain't any use tryin' to argue with you," replied Sam. "What are they goin' to do at this club that'll give 'em a change?"
"Well," said Mr. Blake, "I understand that they're going to give a play, study art, science, and so forth, and give social affairs that will bring the people together in a way that will benefit us all." ”

“ The names may stand on the lists, the faces are absent, and one must wander through half a dozen clubs to really meet the aggregation of thinkers and workers of the grade who gathered in the snug corners of the Century's old club house in East Fifteenth Street when we were young fellows, and my father secured us cards for an occasional monthly meeting as the greatest favour he could do us. ”

“ For the success of a Club you need a number of men perfectly incapable of all life save such as the Club supplies; who repair to the Club, not alone to dine and smoke and sup, and read their paper, but to interchange thought in that blended half-confidence that the Club imparts ”

“ The social features of some of the book clubs are, however, reduced to the occasions of the annual meetings and dinners. The "Club-Room Question," in one of these organizations having a membership of five hundred, distributed in one hundred and sixty-seven cities and towns in this country and abroad, was recently reported upon by the Council as follows:—
The question of providing and maintaining club rooms and establishing a suitable library for the Society has been more or less discussed since its incorporation. ”