Voluntary association

“ Unions composed of a voluntary membership, like all other voluntary groups, should be free in this country to fight in the public forum to advance their own causes, to promote their choice of candidates and parties and to work for the doctrines or the laws they favor. But to the extent that Government steps in to force people to help espouse the particular causes of a group, that group-whether composed of railroad workers or lawyers-loses its status as a voluntary group. ”

“ In all the movements we have described, the spiritual stimulus, the initial drive, and the solid successes have been provided by voluntary association. The State has not been the pioneer of social reform. Such a notion is the mirage of politicians. It has merely registered the insistent demands of organized voluntary effort or given legal recognition to accomplished facts. This is the distinctive note of English social development in the nineteenth century. ”

“ Another normal use of the voluntary association is the development and application of a criticism of established customs and institutions. It is not reasonable to expect all the members of a great people to move forward at an equal pace. ”

“ No voluntary association was ever formed, and in the nature of things there never can be one formed, for the accomplishment of any objects except those in which all the parties to the association are agreed. ”

“ This might do very well if the state were, like the temperance society or debating club, a simple voluntary association, which men are free to join or not as they please, and which they are bound to obey no farther and no longer than suits their convenience. ”

“ The conclusion, therefore, is, that, in a government formed by voluntary association, or on the theory of voluntary association, and voluntary support, (as all the North American governments are,) no law can rightfully be enforced by the association in its corporate capacity, against the goods, rights, or person of any individual, except it be such as all the members of the association agree that it may enforce. ”

“ Again, a voluntary association may conduct in such a way as to create the impression or belief that it is a corporation, and is forbidden from denying its corporate liability for an injury or loss to a third person. ”

“ There are many objects, of great value to man, which cannot be attained by unconnected individuals, but must be attained, if at all, by association. For many of them government seems the most natural and the most efficient association. Voluntary association has done much, but it cannot do all. To the great honor and advantage of your own State, she has been forward in applying the agency of government to great objects of internal utility. ”

“ A man’s actions are considered not as exertions of his individual will, but as acts of the kindred, and all the fellows of the maegth are held responsible for them. What began as a natural alliance was used later as a means of enforcing responsibility and keeping lawless individuals in order. When the association of kinsmen failed, the voluntary associations—guilds—appeared as substitutes. The gild brothers associated in mutual defence and support, and they had to share in the payment of fines. ”

“ Those individuals who form that type of voluntary association known as a corporation are, to be sure, given special advantages-notably, the immunization of their personal fortunes from liability for the actions of the association-that the State is under no obligation to confer. ”

“ Of an individual freely attending to his affairs or promoting his interests we say neither that he governs nor that he is governed. Just as little can we say so of a society of individuals who form a voluntary association for a common purpose and call this association a State. And if for the practical attainment of their purpose they entrust or commission certain persons with certain functions, the exercise of these functions will as little constitute an authority or a government as the control of a joint-stock company or any other joint enterprise by a board of experts and trustees. ”

“ The more critical factors are that the society is a voluntary fraternal association 'organized and carried on solely for the mutual benefit of its members and their beneficiaries, and not for profit, and having a * * * representative form of government, and which shall make provision for the payment of benefits' in accordance with certain statutory requirements. ”

“ It is not true that in all voluntary association between two people, one of them must be absolute master: still less that the law must determine which of them it shall be. The most frequent case of voluntary association, next to marriage, is partnership in business: and it is not found or thought necessary to enact that in every partnership, one partner shall have entire control over the concern, and the others shall be bound to obey his orders. ”

“ Most Socialists are opposed to coercion, and when they openly proclaim their adherence to the principal of voluntary association they will remove the only barrier between them and those who wear the name of Individualists.
Our ideal of the co-operative commonwealth is one free from the blighting effects of authority; one wherein each is a sovereign of his own person, and where the association is that of free individuals. in short, we contend for a co-operative commonwealth organized by mutual consent, and maintained by mutual consent. ”

“ Individualism may suffice to define the dominant legal trend, but it conceals the influence exerted on the legislature from without and from below by the action of voluntary associations. The period of voluntary association coincides with and overlaps the period of individualism. ”

“ By a different road a degree of fraternal organization is being attained, through voluntary associations of workingmen, for mutual support as toward their employers, or for independent production or distribution. ”

“ How can a number of voluntary associations, like so many insurance or stock companies, liable at any moment to disband, with no cohesive power, compete with a grand organization whose charter is divine, whose officers are divinely appointed, and whose laws bind in conscience in spite of adverse imperial, royal, or republican legislation? ”

“ Should I succeed in establishing this charge, it will certainly result in the irresistible demonstration of that which I have been invited to illustrate—the great utility of voluntary associations, in some form or other, for the promotion of education. Admit the purpose to be essentially desirable, the obstacles to its attainment such as I believe they can be proved to be, and the necessity for such associations in the absence of all effective legislation, follows as an undeniable consequence. ”

“ In all the big industrial areas a growing measure of interest is being taken in social conditions. The pre-war voluntary associations are realizing their inevitable connection with the Government Departments and local authorities. Councils, representative of local authorities and voluntary associations, have been formed, based, not on the Victorian ideal of the Lady Bountiful, but on the juster, saner ideal of a common citizenship owing service to the community. ”

“ Better living, which includes making country life more interesting and attractive, is sought by using voluntary associations, some organised primarily for business purposes, and others, having no business aim, for social and intellectual ends. ”

“ In co-operation, meaning voluntary co-operation, there may also, it is true, be frequent overruling of the minority by the majority, but only so far as the minority have, when joining the association, voluntarily agreed to permit, and subject always to an effective ultimate right of secession. ”

“ There is, of course, no constitutional reason why a union or other private group may not spend its funds for political or ideological causes if its members voluntarily join it and can voluntarily get out of it. [10] Labor unions made up of voluntary members free to get in or out of the unions when they please have played important and luseful roles in politics and economic affairs. ”

“ All legitimate government is a mutual insurance company, voluntarily agreed upon by the parties to it, for the protection of their rights against wrong-doers. In its voluntary character it is precisely similar to an association for mutual protection against fire or shipwreck. ”

“ The same admirable qualities by which the associations were carried through their early struggles, maintained them in their increasing prosperity. Their rules of discipline, instead of being more lax, are stricter than those of ordinary workshops; but being rules self-imposed, for the manifest good of the community, and not for the convenience of an employer regarded as having an opposite interest, they are far more scrupulously obeyed, and the voluntary obedience carries with it a sense of personal worth and dignity. ”

“ To share in the general benefit, he must voluntarily contribute time and money to the general good. The necessary machinery of society will, of course, exist — courts to settle disputes and police to keep order — but they will be maintained by voluntary co-operation. ”

“ Our people are responding to these impulses in remarkable degree. The best contribution of government lies in encouragement of this voluntary cooperation in the community. The Government, National, State, and local, can join with the community in such programs and do its part. ”

“ We consider that, based upon the privilege of each individual to act on his own behalf, by the very basis of society, the privilege to join all of one's energy to that of one's co-citizens, in all projects aiming for defence or mutual interest, and consequently the right of association, is a right as sacred and as unalienable as that of individual liberty itself. ”

“ In all places individualists of our tendency wish to establish — now and at all times — a human milieu founded on the individual act and in which, without any control, intervention, intrusion of the State, all individuals can, whether isolated or associated, govern their affairs among themselves, by means of free agreements, voidable on notice, no matter what the activity, whether the association be the work of a personage or of a collectivity. ”

“ I have laid it down as a first principle to educate the people through the people themselves, by their own voluntary co-operation and exertion, through the usual elective municipalities and other acknowledged and responsible organs of a free people. ”

“ No doubt, however, our growing system of voluntary institutions—churches, philanthropic societies, fraternal orders, labor unions and the like—are training us in the habit of expressing ourselves through the check-book and other indirect agents. ”

“ We saw, too, that there is a congruity between that compulsory coöperation which is the organizing principle of the militant type of society, and that compulsory coöperation characterizing the polygynous household; while with the industrial type of society, organized on the principle of voluntary coöperation, there harmonizes that monogamic union which is an essential condition to voluntary domestic coöperation. ”

“ As Progress is the great intellectual discovery of the modern world, so Association is its new-found instrument. Thus association must be dear to the state as individual liberty; and provided that any particular association is peaceful and public, and respects elementary liberties, and has no immoral end in view, the state must allow it perfect freedom. ”

“ And this guild of civilization exacts costly admission fees, imposes strict and rigorous disciplines, visits heavy penalties on all dissenters and nonconformists, while it confers few personal licenses or privileges except those of enhanced security against common dangers and racial perils.
Social association is a form of survival insurance which human beings have learned is profitable; therefore are most individuals willing to pay those premiums of self-sacrifice and personal-liberty curtailment which society exacts from its members in return for this enhanced group protection. ”

“ Moreover in an association based upon the individual freedom of the associates, each man had a right to guard the integrity of the compact to which he was himself a party; and not only a right, but a strong interest in exercising it, for in proportion to the smallness of the state, is the effect which the conduct of any single member may produce upon its welfare. ”

“ It seems possible that from the early form in which social and family organizations are compulsory in character, we are passing through semi-militant, semi-industrial phases, in which the organizations of both state and family are partly compulsory, partly voluntary, in character; and that, along with complete social reintegration on the basis of voluntary coöperation, will come domestic reintegration of allied kind, under which the life of the family will again become as distinct from the life of the state as it originally was. ”

“ The problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before. ”

“ Nearly every class of employers has its own special organization; the associated press, associated charities, local, state, and national educational associations, and associations of learned societies, show the influence of organization in other departments; nearly every class of employees also has its trade union or mutual benefit association; everywhere, except in the household, mutual interests are drawing together for protection, for consultation, for economy of forces and resources, for a score of reasons, those engaged in the same activities. ”

“ In the past the citizen has been left largely to his own resources and to purely voluntary cooperation to provide for these wants. Government has not even adequately PROTECTED his rights of this kind, to say nothing of positively PROMOTING them. At present, however, community team work through government is being organized as never before both to promote and to protect the interests of all citizens in the fullest possible enjoyment of life. ”