Voluntary organization

“ 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. ”

“ At first, a voluntary organization intended to be a service- able adjunct to government, by the performance of necessary functions, such as the public discussion of mooted questions, the dissemination of knowledge pertaining to public affairs, the ascertainment and carrying into execution the will of its members, all this and much more that a political party could and should do in the promotion of the general interests ”

“ But it ignores altogether the difference between involuntary and voluntary organizations. Involuntary organizations ought to be tolerant, but voluntary organizations, so far as the fundamental purpose of their existence is concerned, must be intolerant or else cease to exist. The state is an involuntary organization; a man is forced to be a member of it whether he will or no. ”

“ Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that step by step it would gradually and slowly work out a solution. Looking the country over, we see that voluntary organizations have accomplished temporary good, but their effort has never been persistent, continuous, permanent, authoritative, legal. ”

“ 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? ”

“ We want voluntary organizations for missionary purposes, the distribution of bibles, tracts, books, etc., etc., all of which we have a right to form in any way which we may conceive most conducive to the interests of the Redeemer’s cause. ”

“ For we can say that the task of the political organization is to maintain the conditions of the good life, leaving the work of developing the meaning of the good life, the fostering and inculcation of ideals, to voluntary associations. The state will then maintain a certain minimum of moral behaviour, while the more delicate and freer work of inspiration is left to individuals and voluntary associations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They are not a corporation but knit together, by a voluntary combination, in a Society, with out constraint or penalty; aiming to do good and to plant Religion.” Their organization, officers, and rules of conduct, as given by Smith, have already been quoted. ”

“ Alongside these great public agencies stand the very effective voluntary organizations among the farmers themselves which are more and more learning the best methods of cooperation and the best methods of putting to practical use the assistance derived from governmental sources. ”

“ Yet the spirit of voluntary association and giving was not only a virtue but also a practical necessity for those residing on the frontier.
Today, even with the best efforts of Federal, State, and local government, voluntary service remains essential to solving our Nation's most serious social problems. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If it were possible for the Army to be governed locally, and to some extent, nationally by boards, a part of whose membership represented the public, we believe that the tendency to advance its own interest would be diminished. Study out the workings and control of this organization, and it is found a machine, ever seeking to increase its power and field of work. ”

“ It is therefore of supreme importance that all classes of the community, down to the lowest, should have much to do for themselves; that as great a demand should be made upon their intelligence and virtue as it is in any respect equal to; that the government should not only leave as far as possible to their own faculties the conduct of whatever concerns themselves alone, but should suffer them, or rather encourage them, to manage as many as possible of their joint concerns by voluntary co-operation ”

“ In the second place, we see that, throughout the society as a whole, there spreads a kindred form of organization—kindred in so far that, for the purpose of maintaining the militant organization and the government which directs it, there are similarly established over citizens agencies which force them to labor more or less largely for public ends instead of private ends. ”

“ Thus while voluntary association is sometimes advocated as a step towards, and sometimes on the other hand as a substitute for, and bulwark against, state socialism, we find in practice these two forces working each in its own sphere, and in ways complementary one to the other, while underlying and essential to both is the force of individual action and self-help. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the other hand, there is gradually developing a new sense of responsibility for assuming voluntary leadership in community activities, and a larger appreciation of the need of leadership and the duty of supporting it. ”

“ We shall probably see the idea of free organization carried far, and in every organization and every institution, private and public, there must, we believe, be some place for the services and the interest of all. ”

“ Thus it was that the consciousness of a distinct life, and a right independent of all positive grant, in the long run developed an immense number of great and small local and special authorities, such as universities, ecclesiastical corporations, boroughs, parish vestries, and chartered bodies. Created one by one, each body remained more or less independent of the others; not one of them was content to take rank passively in a co-ordinated whole, nor to feel itself strictly dependent on an organization, which was itself subject to the general welfare. ”

“ In order to protect the welfare of each political unit, these principles must form the basis of all scientific politics. In the social units evolved by co-operative life, these conditions are embodied and expressed. In them, we shall find the basis upon which to build a grand, social, industrial and political organization. An organization, which shall truly represent Liberty and Justice ”

“ That voluntary action by so many millions over so great an extent of country was a tremendous example, showing what an ideal and a public spirit and a call to action can do for people in making them forget private interests and convenience and making them great. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But, above all, their social organization is firmer and more efficient, because their respect for and obedience to their chiefs, and their loyalty to their community, are much greater; each man identifies himself with the whole community and accepts and loyally performs the social duties laid upon him. ”

“ A higher authority might, in certain cases, order societies to be dissolved. These provisions related to voluntary societies; but it was competent for communal authorities also to order the formation of a friendly society, and to make a regulation compelling all workmen not already members of a society to join it. ”

“ The consequence is that under voluntary systems there is continual progress, the constant development of new views, and the action necessary for their practical application; under political systems, immobility on the part of the administrators, discontented helplessness on the part of those for whom they administer. ”

“ There is a mistaken notion that organization does not foster individual freedom; that, on the contrary, it means the decay of individuality. In reality, however, the true function of organization is to aid the development and growth of personality. ”

“ The voluntary system is in its very earliest development and so, in calculating the prospects of associations among large groups of people, a league of nations, industrial government, or a federal union of states, the degree to129 which the material for a common consciousness exists determines how far coöperation will depend upon force, or upon the milder alternative to force, which is patronage and privilege. ”

“ Before we proceed to expose the even yet more hideous loathsomeness of this vile association, a few words of explanation are necessary. In all we write we have in view an organization—its constitution and motives—and that only. The individual responsibility of its several members is a matter for their own conscience ”

“ Public responsibility.—The organization of community is best for the mass of the people when all desires are allowed to give their proper impulse to action, and when every enterprise is encouraged by freedom until it is seen to infringe upon the general welfare. Any system of government which checks natural impulses and hinders individual enterprise, without clear evidence that all must suffer from such freedom, is harmful. ”

“ And since, under the present industrial system, it is impossible for him to assert and maintain this right without organization, all who love justice and freedom ought to encourage him to organize, and stand by him and see that he gets the fruits of his organization. ”

“ It is evident that an organization so constituted must, whenever intrusted with public power, use that power for the benefit of its members and dependents, rather than for the benefit of the community ”

“ The social organization system and legal regime, ranging from ancestral family and community principles and ethical and moral standards, passing through production and trade relations, solidarity and social responsibility, forms of community and state administration; up to a very complex system of laws, rules, uses and customs that embodied free work by the community, the stewardships and charges system, which allowed the orderly and balanced community life as well as relationships and exchanges with other communities or states. ”

“ For, to realize its proposed aim and accepted plan of action, organization alone can enlist and keep secure the sympathies of patrons and members, co-ordinate the various forces, and call into play, when necessary, new and fresh energies. The greater the number to be reached by the society or societies which embody this movement, the more efficient should be the organizing power.
Experience and reason prove that an organization destined to affect the masses and hold its grip on them, will not live and thrive only on an occasional appeal or a printed message. ”

“ Thus, by formal organization we mean a planned system of co-operation effort in which each participant has a recognized role to play and duties or tasks to perform” (p. 5) . “... the dignity of the individual can be respected only in an administrative situation in which all participants will gain, in one way or another, from the accomplishment of the organization goal. In such a situation, administration can be ‘co-operative’ in the broadest sense” (p. 23) . ”

“ The more you spread government as an organization of the people themselves, the more humane, upon that working basis, are likely to be its operations—on one condition: that such organisation of the people, whatever its numbers, submits to the operation of its own laws and shares equally in the conditions which it imposes—that, if it provides a qualification for citizenship, it provides also the means for all to qualify. ”

“ For people who, carrying on their private transactions by voluntary coöperation, also voluntarily coöperate to form and support a governmental agency, are, by implication, people who authorize it to impose on their respective activities only those restraints which they are all interested in maintaining—the restraints which check aggressions. ”

“ We fill our night schools by adjusting them to the industrial organization and securing its coöperation. We fill our civilian training camps by the coöperation of employers in granting absences and paying wages. We obtain a common standard of living by enforcement of laws that set the standard. Civic and philanthropic agencies may be the pioneers, the educators, the balance restorers; they can care for the waste and discover causes. But America has too long regarded them as the unifiers of its many peoples, as the makers of citizens. ”