The Builder Magazine 

March 1920 - Volume VI - Number 3 


MEMORIALS TO GREAT MEN WHO WERE MASONS 

ALEXANDER HAMILTON 

BY BRO. GEO. W. BAIRD. P.G.M., DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 

THE FIRST Secretary of the Treasuiy, the close friend of Washington, is mentioned on 
page 45 of "The Old Masonic Lodges of Pennsylvania," and on page 58, as subscribing a 
sum of money for the lodge, and on page 73 as having been raised to the degree of Master 
Mason on the 16th of December, 1757, in the second lodge of Modems. 


There has been so much written about this most interesting patriot that it might seem out of 
place to dwell at length on his literary, military or diplomatic career. 


He descended from a Scotch father, a French Huguenot mother, and was bom in the West 
Indies. His opportunities for education were limited. He was at first a clerk. He wrote a 
description of a hurricane at St. Kitts, which was largely copied and which invited attention 
to him. 


Hamilton possessed a splendid memory, a logical mind, and with them industry and 
ambition. He was a man of splendid disposition, having consideration for everybody, with a 
fixed determination to do right. 


He had one misfortune - he was handsome. A handsome fellow is usually envied by the 
men and spoiled by the girls. He was bom at Nevis in January 1757, and was killed in a 
duel at Weehawken in July 1 804, when only 47 years of age. The modest memorial over his 
grave in Trinity Churchyard, New York City, is visited by many. 



From his mother he learned French, but English was the language at Nevis, and when he 
went to New York for his education he was well versed in both languages. 


Hamilton's newspaper work soon placed him in the class of the better literatus of the day, 
his ability to speak in two languages, his charming voice, handsome personality and his 
magnetism induced followers. 


When the war began he became an Artillery Captain. His military operations were 
creditable. His replies in Holts Magazine to the attacks of Mr. Seabury upon the Continental 
Congress brought Hamilton into the limelight. In 1777 Washington made him his ai dede- 
camp with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. It should no longer be repressed that there was 
much jealousy between the colonies, and Washington availed himself of the grand ability of 
Hamilton to smooth the Governors of the Colonies the right way and bring peace and 
harmony among them, which he did admirably. His knowledge of French enabled him to 
smooth out difficulties with our allies, though on one occasion he was roped into being a 
second in a duel between Laurens and Lee. He was, however, averse to dueling. 


Hamilton was at West Point at the time Arnold deserted. He strongly urged a compliance 
with the request of Andre, to be shot instead of hanged. 


He married the second daughter of Philip Schuyler, after which he resigned his place on 
Washington's staff and became a commander of a New York Regiment, but soon afterward 
was elected to Congress, taking his seat in November 1783. In Congress he soon became 
active in the matter of the settlement of the public debt. The nation was without money, its 
credit as limited, its expenses were reduced to a minimum, the Army and Navy were 
dismantled and the officers and crews discharged, only one Navy officer remaining, John 
Paul Jones, but as a Commissioner, however, to remain in France for the puipose of settling 
our tangled relations. Ships were owned by each nation, and sometimes jointly. Crews in 
French hulls were sometimes American, and vice versa. Such were the problems Jones was 
obliged to reconcile, but he died before his work was finished and though the Republic 
owed him $60,000 at the time of his death, he was buried by charity. 



Hamilton became the first Secretary of the Treasuiy and was well qualified for the position. 
His efforts went far toward establishing our credit; far toward fostering our commerce and 
establishing schemes of economy which have led to the wealth of the nation. It is a pity we 
ever departed from the ways of Hamilton. 


But there has never lived a positive man - one who dared to do what he believed was right, 
but that man made enemies. Jealousy is the cause of so much of this world's trouble. If a 
man cannot be crushed; if his defense is invulnerable; if his following is overwhelming, you 
have only to associate his name with an attractive woman and make the most vague 
insinuation, and the public will believe you. 


We are not quoting from the press, but from the gossips of the Capital who have dwelt here 
for ages. The writer was bom in Washington and, when not absent on public service, has 
always lived at the Capital. More than that his parents and grandparents married and lived in 
the Capital City. The gossips give a story of interest. A very beautiful and attractive lady, 
greatly pleased with the dimpled cheeks and rosy face of Hamilton, proceeded to make him 
believe she was enamored of him. Let us drop the curtain here for a moment. 


It was not long before an infuriated husband appeared at Hamilton's office, asking $10,000 
heart-balm. He did not talk shooting, but threatened publication. The game was apparent 
and Hamilton was not the kind of man to submit. He refused to pay the money, and at the 
appointed time the daily papers printed the scandal, but with no mention of the demand that 
had been made for money. The sensation, as might be imagined, came as a great shock. 


Mr. Hamilton published a card acknowledging his guilt, offering no excuse and begging the 
public pardon. He made no counter-accusation, nor did he invite attention to the peerless 
charms of the lady. The public seemed to forgive, and the incident was closed. 


Hamilton had offended Aaron Burr, by opposing him in his candidacy for Governor of New 
York. Burr challenged Hamilton and they fought with pistols in Weehawken. Hamilton fell 



at the first fire. As a child I often heard the story of Burr practicing for this duel. Walking in 
his garden with a book he would suddenly draw and fire, and in this way became proficient 
in such tactics. 


Hamilton's modest little memorial in Old Trinity Churchyard is thus inscribed: 

The patriot of incorruptable integrity 

The soldier of approved valor 

The Statesman of consummate wisdom 

Whose talents and virtues will be remembered by 

A grateful posterity 

Long after this marble shall have mouldered 
Into dust 

He died July 12th, 1804, Aged 47 


THE AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 


BY BRO. REGINALD WRIGHT KAUFFMAN, PENNSYLVANIA 


At a dinner given in honor of Bro. Col. H.H. Whitney, of Gen. Pershing’s staff, as President 
of the Overseas Masonic Club, Paris, on June 20th, 1919, the following address was 
delivered by Bro. Reginald Wright Kauffman, author of the American war novel 
"Victorious," and the Secretary of the Club was requested by Bro. Whitney and members of 



the Overseas Masonic Club and the Masonic Overseas Mission, to send a copy of the 
manuscript to THE BUILDER for publication. 


Unfortunately the copy retained by Brother Connaway, the Secretary, was lost, but we have 
been able to obtain another from Brother Kauffman and we believe it will have lost none of 
its interest through its delayed publication. 


BY THOSE who should know more of such matters than I do, it has been said that the 
World War, differing from all preceding conflicts in the extent of its operations, and 
involving more countries and more combatants than any other struggle recorded in 
authentic history differed from every other conflict also in this: that it produced no 
outstanding hero, no figure to claim the admiration or devotion of mankind. These 
authorities aver that, just as the war now ended has been vast beyond comprehension - just 
as it has evolved theretofore undreamed - of engines of destruction and produced inventions 
for wholesale slaughter by scientific means - so it has lessened individual endeavor and 
robbed the soldier of his military acclaim. 


My novel "Victorious,” to which you, Bro. Toastmaster, have so flatteringly referred, was 
written to controvert such assertions. It was written to pay what tribute I could to the sole 
heroic figure that, it seems to me, the chaos of the past red months has flung upon our 
ensanguined horizon: I mean the fellow in our ranks, the American Enlisted Man. 


It has been my fortune to see a deal of the fighting that began in 1914 and that idealists still 
hope to end by their League of Nations and the Peace of Versailles. I remember how, when 
I left Antwerp eight hours before the Germans entered it, I got aboard a troop-train that, I 
was told, carried what remained of the Belgian Army - and how I took up almost as much 
room on that train as the Belgian Army did; I never expected to see it as a battling force 
again. Time passed; the dripping shuttle of the war darted to and fro, and I found myself in 
the first-line beyond La Panne. I was at that portion of the long front which, of all others, 
was then the worst to police and the hardest to maintain. Trenches could not be dug, 
because to dig two feet was to reach water; the dead were buried above ground, and the 
enemy outnumbered us ten-to-one. Yet there was the Belgian Army, ensconced behind 
perfect ramparts, living in cleanly order, young, vigorous, calm, heroic. And the Belgian 
enlisted-man, the Jasse as they call him, was the force that made this possible. Nor can I 



ever forget the courage of the Tommy or any of his British brothers-in-arms. During the 
Second Battle of Flanders I happened to be with a unit of the English Army in which there 
had been many recent replacements - Cockneys mostly - unused to war, of whose morale 
there was considerable doubt. How would such fellows behave under fire ? Well, a shell 
exploded in a trench in which were five veterans and a single newcomer. When the smoke 
cleared a little, one of the veterans looked at the body of another and cried to his comrades: 


"My God, just see Bill: his heady blown off!" 


There followed a moment of silence, and then came the thin, complaining voice of the 
Cockney: 


"Aw right, old top; but where is 'is 'is 'ead ? Cam't you find it for me? 'E was smokin' my 
pipe !" 


To the stubborn heroism of the French poilu, moreover, we owe the maintenance of three- 
fifths of the Allied line for three-fifths of the war. I know a Breton widow who had three 
sons of whom one had gone to America and, prospering, sent home money to support his 
mother. In 1915 she wrote him: "Your two brothers have been killed in battle: come home 
anal die for France" - and the boy came home and died before St. Quintin. When the cause 
was at its blackest hour, I have sat in the fortress of Verdun and have seen men come in 
from the trenches for a one-day rest - men that had been fighting since the outbreak of 
hostilities. They were cold, they were wet, the filth of the dugouts was still caked upon 
them; many were slightly wounded, all were in a state of exhaustion; yet when one of their 
number began to sing "You Shall Not Pass," their eyes glistened, their bodies stiffened, they 
stood erect - they joined in the refrain, and they forgot everything but that they were 
fighting for their country; they were glad to go back and fight! 


The men of Belgium, France and England were heroes; they were heroes that the world will 
do well to remember; that it will do ill ever to forget. But the native-land of the Jasse had 
been devastated; the patrie of the poilu had been invaded, the homes of the Tommies had 
been shelled from the air, whereas, from across the wide Atlantic there came your 



countrymen and mine, lads who had no reason to nourish personal revenge in their hearts, 
boys brought up in the prospect of perpetual peace, young fellows whose fatherland had 
summoned them to fight - for what? Not for reprisal, not for conquest, not for anything - 
remember the public avowals of the President, whatever has been the outcome - not for 
anything but the worldwide propaganda of democracy. What, I ask you, of them? 


We have heard tonight of how, raised from the ranks by fiat of the War Department that 
could not, or would not, help them to the insignia of the grade to which it promoted them, 
hundreds of these enlistedmen borrowed from the Masonic Overseas Mission the scant 
price of their shoulder-bars, and how every one of them has paid his debt. We have heard of 
the difficulties that this commission encountered at Washington before directed to go abroad 
as Y.M.C.A. secretaries if it hoped to go at all, how Mr. Fosdick quoted the American 
commanding-general in France as opposed to the commission's presence here and that when 
it finally came, the doughboy welcomed it. I think that you know how he welcomed it and 
why. He welcomed it because he is of the stuff of which Free Masons are made, and it was 
as such that he welcomed it. 


I knew the American Camp in France from its earliest days, and 1 knew the first American 
front. At the Camp, men were billeted, God knows why, in reeking stables, with leaking 
roofs, the cattle housed beneath them. In the trenches they found themselves, amid arctic 
surroundings, clothed in summer uniforms, wrapped in newspapers instead of adequate 
overcoats, their frost-bitten toes bursting from their imperfect boots. They found themselves 
in the condition of the Continentals at Valley Forge, in the condition of the Federal Ninth 
Army Coips when, after the Kentucky campaign, it re-enlisted to a man "for the duration of 
the war." And these boys of yesterday were the worthy sons of their fathers of the Civil War 
and of their ancestors of the Revolution: they knew that they were not there to complain, 
and they did not complain; they knew that they were there to fight - and how they fought no 
tongue can ever justly tell. 


Again, in the terrible Spring of 1918, 1 was in Brest. The enemy thundered at the gates of 
Paris, and in our own lines there was nothing but disorder and delay. At the American port I 
saw over three miles of docks that resembled a house into which a vast family had just 
moved. From one end of the place to the other ran almost uninterrupted ramparts, fifteen , to 
twenty feet high, piled with material of war that somehow could not reach the front. Mail- 
bags, motorcars and wagon-parts lay there, and had, some of them, lain there for months. 
Food rotted before one's eyes. I have seldom witnessed a more dispiriting spectacle. 



Then a Y.M.C.A. secretary, a Mason, carried me to barracks to speak to soldiers newly 
arrived abroad. I stood on a low stage at the end of a vast, tunnel-like hut, and the secretary 
had the soldiers sing for me: 


"While you are sleeping, 

Your France is weeping: 

Wake from your dreams, Maid of France!" 


They sang slowly, giving full weight to every word and conferring a true dignity on what 
they sang. 

"Her heart is bleeding: 

Are you unheeding? 

Come with the flame in your glance ! " 


I saw them as a sea of faces upraised to mine. The secretary had been telling them that I, not 
as a Y.M.C.A. man, but as a correspondent, knew what real fighting was and would tell 
them of the high battle in which they were now so soon to bear arms. 


"Through the gates of Heaven, with your sword in hand, 
Come, your legions to command!" 


I, newly arrived from the horrors of the front; they fresh from their clean homes: a sea of 
boys' faces, eager, earnest, faithful ! They were come as conscripts, but as willing ones; they 
were come here to die - and they knew it, and were ready. By God, I tell you, gentlemen, I 
never before realized what a splendid thing it was to be an American! 



I might continue with sketches of the doughboy - and that word "Doughboy," coined to 
designate the infantryman, now stands for every private in our Army - 1 might go on with 
sketches of him in seven different forms of battle, but I content myself with only one more. 
It is a sight I caught of men I knew going into action. 


It was a gray land on a gray day. The barren fields stretched eastward under a bleak and 
humid sky. From out that way, fighting through the dense atmosphere, came now the 
nimble of the distant battle's guns. Gun-carriages crawled along, the steel tubes of the field 
artillery dull in the scanty light, the wheels heavy with clogging masses of blue clay. The 
infantry, at route-step, marched with feet mud-shod. There was no bragging, no rude 
assurance: only a very certain, though very quiet, determination. 


Here was a lad that had been working his way through Harvard, starving himself in a garret, 
because he wanted to become a teacher: the brutal fist of Berlin had descended, and the boy 
forever forewent his dreams, put aside his ambitions, sacrificed what he had sacrificed so 
much to gain - and volunteered. His frugal life, his years of self-denial, even his conscious 
meannesses and skimpings - they seemed to me to form a veritable halo around that 
youngster's head. 


There was an older man, the husband of a wife, the father of a family. He had closed up, 
when drafted, business that he had just succeeded in clearing from debt. "Of course, I don't 
like it," he confessed to me; "but of course I wouldn't have stayed at home even if I could, 
because I know we're here to stop the secret diplomacy that ends tyranny and to end 
autocracy, even in America." 


The ranks had come to rest, but now the darkness grew suddenly deeper. The bugles 
sounded. I knem whither, through the faint twilight, the thoughts ox these men had gone: 
they had gone to mothers, wiver and sweethearts in quiet American towns, to Americas 
homesteads and American ways, to the great, bungling busy, loving, erratic chaos that we 
cherish and will die for and that we call the U.S.A. 



Again the bugle shrilled into the dark. 


"Fall in!" 


They were already there - the double lines of them, the long, narrow packs on their backs, 
two lines of them rising out of the dull night and passing into it again. 


"Right dress - right dress - right dress!" 


The order passed along. The men shuffled in the mud, the lines straightened, the soldiers 
stood still. 


"Front !" 


Well, it had come to this. All their love and longing, all their business deals and drudgery 
and economies - all their hopes and fears had come to this night in France, to the wet and 
the cold and the now close-by trenches, to the "arrow that flieth in darkness and the 
pestillence that destroyeth by noonday" - and not a man of them all was visibly sorry. 


"Squads right - march!" 


Their rifles went to their shoulders. They turned - by rows of four they turned - and swung 
off eastward toward those distant growling guns - swung off on their way to fight. They 
believed, and they were prepared to make sacrifice for their beliefs, and so, even into the 
darker darkness of the grave, they did not march without the company of the Immortal 
Friend. As truly as I stand here tonight, I tell you that I believe God marched along with 
them. 



My brothers, I am not what most of you would call a religious man, but I have always 
believed in the Supreme Architect, and that Architect has given me the chance to believe in 
the American Enlisted Man In His wisdom, God has given America this splendi heritage, 
the heritage of the men that fought and came home, and the men that fought and fell. In the 
ideal of those fellows, however hidden by a modesty that flung over itself a blushing 
coarseness, He has indeed built up for us and for our country a mighty salvation. If we save 
that, if we carry on the work that they magnificently began, if we end autocracy at home as 
the tried to end it abroad, we shall indeed, and in the only possible way, "make the world 
safe for democracy" but if we waste what they have done, if we neglect the pure principles 
of Freemasonry in our national life, i we tolerate ideals that militate against those of the 
Fathers of the Constitution in the severe and immine days of reconstruction, then, I assure 
you, we shall 1 committing the sin against the Holy Ghost and leading our land to eternal 
damnation. 


For my part, I do not believe that we shall so err. I have a faith in American manhood that 
cannot be shaken. Because I have seen the American Enlisted Man in battle, I believe in 
America. It is the America Enlisted Man, in very truth, that has given back the old America 
to Americans. He fought for you; fight you now with him. Rise with me, I conjure you, and 


drink the health of THE AMERICAN DOUGHBOY 




From labour health, from health contentment spring; 
Contentment opes the source of every joy. 


-James Beattie. 



Keep your eyes and ears open if you desire to get on in world. 
- Douglas Jerrold. 


THE CRYPTIC DEGREES 


BY Bro. GUSTAV A. EITEL, MARYLAND 


Many inquiries have come to us for information concerning the origin and history of the 
degrees of the Cryptic Rite, or the "Council" degrees. To Brother Wm. F. Kuhn, of 
Missouri, was assigned the task at the last meeting of the General Grand Council of 
compiling for that Body an official history of the degrees. When this official history is 
completed Brother Kuhn has promised it to us for publication in THE BUILDER. In the 
meantime we give to our readers the following article prepared by a committee of the 
Maryland Grand Council of which Brother Eitel was the chairman. The introductory 
remarks of this committee are self-explanatory. 


FOR THE benefit of the Companions of our jurisdiction, few of whom have access to 
what has been written about the degrees of the Cryptic Rite - their origin, their 
introduction and dissemination in our country - we present, without comment, what your 
Committee has been able to gather from the writings of the several accepted authorities 
and searchers in this field. 


It is not the Committee's intention to give an exhaustive history of the degrees, but only 
sufficient data to enable our Companions to get a far understanding of the history of the 
degrees, and of the claims made of their origin and dissemination. 



None of the later day Masonic writers have given this subject more research and study 
than our late Companion Edward T. Schultz, and we present in full from his "History of 
Freemasonry in Maryland," (1884,) Vol. I, pp. 335-344: 


THE CRYPTIC DEGREES 


Much obscurity has existed regarding the origin of the Degrees of Royal and Select 
Masters, and also as to the date where, and by whom they were introduced into this 
country. It would appear that the Royal Master's Degree was first known and worked in 
the Eastern States, while the Select Degree was first known, and at a much earlier period, 
in the Southern and Middle States. 


Nearly all the early Masonic writers of the country concede that Philip P. Eckel and 
Hezekiah Niles of Baltimore had, at an early period, the control of at least the Select 
Degree, and that from them emanated the authority under which it was introduced into 
many of the other jurisdictions of the country. 


In an article in Cole's Ahiman Rezon (1817), written by Brother Hezekiah Niles on the 
Select Degree, occurs the following: "Though this beautiful Degree is known to some 
persons in many parts of the United States, we are not informed that it is worked in 
anywhere but in Baltimore. We have been told that a regular Chapter of Select was held 
at Charleston, S. C., many years ago, but believe it has declined." 


Brother John Dove, of Virginia, speaking of the Select Degree, says: "This beautiful 
Degree is comparatively of modem origin, having been with the Degree of Royal Master, 
in the possession of a distinguished Chief in the State of Maryland as a purely honourary 
Degree, elucidatory of and appendant to Royal Arch Masonry, and by him conferred 
without fee; he delegated authority to others to use them in the same way, until the year 
1 824, when the Grand Chapter of Maryland, with his consent, took charge of the degrees 
and ordered them to be given before the Most Excellent Master, where all intelligent 
workers in the Royal Arch must at once perceive the propriety of their location." 



Brother Mackey, in his History of Freemasonry in South Carolina, under the head of 
Cryptic Masonry, says: "For many years there have been three distinct claims urged for 
jurisdiction over these degrees in America - first by the Supreme Council of the 33rd 
Degree; next by some of the Grand Chapters; and lastly by the Grand Councils composed 
of the Subordinate Councils of each State." 


"Connected with this question of jurisdiction is another in reference to the historical origin 
of the Degrees, and as to the person or persons by whom they were first introduced into 
America. The Masons of Maryland and Virginia contend that the Royal and Select 
Degrees were introduced by Philip P. Eckel, of Baltimore, one of the most distinguished 
and enlightened Masons of his day, who in 1817, communicated them to Jeremy L. Cross, 
and gave him authority to confer them in every Royal Arch Chapter which he might visit 
in his official character." 


The following extracts are quoted from the history of Brother Robert B. Folger, of New 
York: "The Masons of that day (1816) were divided in opinion concerning the proper 
place to which these degrees (Royal and Select) belonged. One party preferred that they 
should be kept separate and left where they were - a separate system. At the meeting of 
the General Grand Chapter in 1816, the whole matter then came up for discussion; Mr. 
Eckel, of Maryland, taking a very prominent part in advocating the union of these two 
degrees with the services of the Royal Arch Chapters. The discussion became warm and 
lasted the better part of two days, when the motion to unite them with the Chapter Degrees 
was rejected. Whereupon, immediately after adjournment, the State Grand Council of 
Royal Masters was formed, and the different Councils then came under that governing 
power, and continued so up to 1828. It was this move on the part of the General Grand 
Chapter, in refusing a recognition of those degrees, that determined Mr. Cross in his future 
course:" 


"Mr. Eckel, the Baltimore delegate, then went home; and when Cross, who at that session 
of the General Grand Chapter had been appointed and confirmed as General Grand 
Lecturer, started on his lecturing tour, he stopped at Baltimore and purchased and received 
the privilege from Eckel and Niles to erect and establish Councils of Royal and Select 
Masters throughout the Southern and Western States. This privilege he carried out pretty 
effectually, beginning with New Jersey; and all the Councils in existence in those States 



mentioned in his narrative were established by himself, also the Eastern States, except 
Rhode Island." 


From the above quotations it will be perceived that it was the general belief that the 
control of the Royal and Select Degrees were vested in Eckel and Niles. 


But we think Bros. Dove, Mackey, Folger, and others, make a great mistake in coupling 
the Royal Master's Degree with the Select, in connection with the names of Eckel and 
Niles; for there is no evidence whatever to show that these brethren ever exercised or 
claimed control of the Royal Master's Degree, or that they were even in Possession of that 
degree at the periods named by them. 


Brother J.H. Drummond, of Maine, states on apparently good authority, that Eckel did not 
receive the Royal Master's Degree until 1819; that in that year he and Bro. Benj. Edes of 
Baltimore, received it from Ebenezer Wadsworth of New York. This is probably true; for 
there is no mention of that degree being worked in this jurisdiction in any document, or 
upon the records of the Grand Chapter or of its subordinates earlier than 1 850. Bro. Cole 
in 1817 speaks of it incidentally, but not as among the degrees conferred. 


The Select Degree is recognized by the Constitution of the Grand Chapter adopted in 
1824, but there is no mention of the Royal Master's Degree. 


Furthermore, the Warrant granted to Cross by Eckel and Niles, a copy of which, taken 
from a photograph copy of the original, in the possession of Bro. Wm. R. Singleton of 
Washington, is here inserted, and from which it will be seen that the Select Degree alone 
is mentioned: 


TO ALL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN. 



Imprest with a perfect conviction that the knowledge of the mysteries of the degree of 
Royal Arch are eminently promoted by a knowledge of those revealed in the Council of 
Select Masons; and Whereas the said degree of Select is not so extensively known as its 
wants and the good of the Craft require - 


Therefore Know ye, That reposing especial confidence in my beloved and trusty 
Companion Jeremy L. Cross I do hereby, by the high powers in me vested, authorize and 
empower him to confer the said degree as follows, (viz.) In any place where a regular 
Chapter of Royal Arch Masons is established, the officers or members approving, he may 
confer said degree according to its rules & regulations, but only on Royal Arch Masons 
who have taken all the preceding degrees, as is required by the General Grand Chapter. 
When a competent number of Select Masons are thus made, he may grant them a Warrant 
to open a Council of Select and confer the degree and do all other business appertaining 
thereto. 


Given under my hand and seal at Baltimore the 27th day of May, A. D. 1817 and in the 
year of the Dis. 2817. PHILIP P. ECKEL, 


Thrice Illustrious & Grand Puissant in the Grand Council of Select at Baltimore & 
approved as G. G. Scribe. 


Approved & attested as 111. in the G. Council. H. NILES. 


In the first Warrants issued by Cross under this commission the Companions were 
empowered "to form themselves into a regular Council of Select Masters," but in the 
Warrants issued by him in 1819 and thereafter the "High Powers in him vested by the 
Grand Council at Baltimore," were enlarged to include the Royal Master's degree. 



In view of the action taken subsequently by the Brethren of Baltimore, there is every 
reason to believe that the "enlarged powers" under which Cross claimed to act were not 
granted or authorized by Eckel and Niles. 


At the Session of the Grand Chapter held in 1 827, Jos. K. Stapleton, Grand High Priest, 
submitted "documents upon the subject of the institution of the Select Degree independent 
of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter," which were referred to a committee, who 
recommended that a circular be sent to the several Grand Chapters regarding the matter 
and which was adopted. A copy of this circular is here inserted: 


M.E.G. Sir and Companion: 


I am instructed by the Grand Chapter over which I have the honour to preside, to address 
you and through you your Grand Chapter, upon the unsettled state of the Degree of Select 
Mason - a subject deemed by us of sufficient importance to claim the particular attention 
of your Grand Chapter. 


This degree existed under the authority of a distinguished chief in the State of Maryland, 
but without the recognizance of our Grand Chapter, for man years; until, in the year 1824, 
upon the revision of our Constitution, it appearing evident that the Select Degree not only 
has an intimate connection with, but is in a measure necessary, as preparatory to and 
elucidatory of, that of the Royal Arch; it was formally recognized by our Grand Chapter, 
and required to be given by our subordinate Chapters, in its proper order, immediately 
preceding that of the Royal Arch. Under this arrangement we have since progressed, 
much to our satisfaction - but it is with regret that we have learned that Councils or 
Chapters of Select Masons have been established in some of our sister States, independent 
Royal Arch Masonry, avowedly in pursuance of, but we are satisfied, through a great 
mistake or actual abuse of any authority delegated, or meant to be delegated, in relation to 
the Select Degree. We would therefore beg leave respectfully to recommend to you 
Grand Chapter the consideration of this degree, and the circumstances under which it 
exists, if it does exist, within your jurisdiction; with the hope that you will see it to be for 
the general interests of the Craft take the said degree under your recognizance and control, 
to whom of right it belongs, and thereby do away what is felt to be a grievance by those 
distinguished chiefs, whose authority, delegated to a limited extent and for special 



reasons, has been perverted for sordid purposes, by the creation of an independent order, 
never contemplated by them; and which we believe to be inconsistent with the spirit and 
best interests of our institutions. 


Respectfully and fraternally, JOS. K. STAPLETON Grand High Priest. 


It will be seen that Bro. Cross is charged with having abused the "authority, delegated or 
meant to be delegated" to him. It has been said by old Masons in the presence of the 
writer that for his course of action in this matter, he was expelled by the Grand Chapter; 
but there is nothing in the records to warrant such an assertion. 


By virtue of the powers claimed to have been received from Eckel and Niles, Cross 
established some thirty-three Councils in various parts of the United States, he also 
delegated his powers to others, who in like manner issued Warrants for Councils of Royal 
and Select Masters. It is said that as high a sum as one hundred dollars was demanded for 
a Warrant. From all that has been stated, it is evident not only that Eckel and Niles 
claimed to have had the supreme control and authority over the Select Degree, but that this 
claim was generally regarded valid, and it is equally as evident, we think, that these 
Brethren never claimed the control of the Royal Master's Degree. 


It has always been a question of much interest with Masonic writers to know the source 
whence these Brethren received their authority and control of the Select Degree. An old 
document that most unexpectedly came to the knowledge of the writer about a year ago, 
settles that question beyond a doubt. It is as follows: 


Whereas, In the year of the Temple, 2792, our thrice illustrious Brother, Henry Wilmans, 
Grand Elect, Select, Perfect Sublime Mason, Grand Inspector General, and Grand Master 
of Chapters of the Royal Arch, Grand Elect and Perfect Masters' Lodges and Councils, 
Knight of the East, Prince of Jerusalem, Patriarch Noachite, Knight of the Sun and Prince 
of the Royal Secret, did by and in virtue of the powers in him legally vested, establish, 
ordain, erect and support a Grand Council of Select Masons in the City of Baltimore and 
wrought therein to the great benefit of the craft and to the profitable extension and 



elucidation of the mysteries of Masonry - and whereas, we the subscribers to these 
presents are by regular succession possessor of all the rights, privileges and immunities 
and powers vested in any way whatsoever in the said Grand Council of Select Masons, 
considering the great Advantages that would accrue to the Craft in an extension of the 
knowledge of the Royal Secret as introductory to, and necessary for the better 
understanding of the Superior Degrees. 


Know all, whom it may concern, that we do hereby authorize and empower our trusty and 
beloved Companions, K.S. — K.T. — H.A. — of the same, to open and to hold a 
Chapter of Select Masons in the City of Baltimore, under such By-Laws and regulations 
as may be enacted and established for the government of the same, subject to the 
following general rules and regulations: 


Art. 1 st. The Degree of Select Mason shall not be conferred on any one that has not past 
the Chair and received the Honourary degree of Mark Master Mason, nor shall it be 
conferred for a less sum than Dollars. 


Art. 2nd. The Officers and Members of the Chapter shall pay due obedience to any 
regulations of the Grand Council which shall be consistent with the Rules of the Order, 
and duly respect the Officers and Chiefs thereof, and the three Chief Officers of said 
Chapter shall in virtue of said Officers constitute a part and be Members of the Grand 
Council. The said Council shall not levy or receive of any Chapter more than - Dollars 
per annum exclusive of the Secretary's fees for Warrants, Dispensations, or other Official 
Writings, which shall in no case exceed a reasonable compensation for the labour and 
trouble of furnishing the same. 


Art. 3rd. In case the G.R.A. Chapter of the State of Maryland and District of Columbia, or 
the General Grand Chapter of the United States shall assume and take charge of the 
Degree of Select Mason, then and in that case all power and authority under these presents 
shall cease and determine forthwith, provided a charter of recognition is granted to this 
Chapter. 



Art. 4th. The three Chief Officers of the Chapter must, and always shall be Royal Arch 
Masons. 


Art. 5th. Select Masons made under the authority of a Royal Arch Chapter, and by the 
High Priest thereof in the Jurisdiction of the State of Maryland and District of Columbia, 
shall be acknowledged and received as such by said Select Chapter, which Chapter shall 
be known by the name of - Chapter of Select Masons, No. 1. 


In Testimony whereof, we have Signed our names and affixed the Seal of the Grand 
Council, this 


[SEAL (1) ] PHILIP P. ECKEL, H. NILES, 


It will be noticed that all that was needed to make this document effective was the filling 
of dates, names of officers, and the price to be charged for conferring the degree. Prom 
some cause the dispensation was not used, but the fact is fully and emphatically stated by 
Eckel and Niles, under their hand and seal, that they were, "by regular succession, 
possessors of all the rights, privileges, and immunities and powers vested in any way 
whatsoever in the said Grand Council of Select Masons" which had been instituted in the 
City of Baltimore in the year 1792 by Henry Wilmans, "Grand Inspector General." 


This document, in connection with the Rules and Regulations of the Lodge of Perfection 
which have been quoted, leaves no room for doubt that Wilmans was an Inspector of the 
Rite of Perfection, and that he exercised in the City of Baltimore in 1792 the powers 
claimed by such Inspectors. But from whom did Wilmans acquire his powers of "Grand 
Inspector General," and the authority "to establish, ordain, erect and support a Chapter of 
Select Masons?" 


We regret we cannot answer the question, nor could the Brethren in various parts of the 
country, to whom we applied. The name of Wilmans does not appear upon any register or 



document in the archives of the Supreme Council of the Southern Jurisdiction, or upon 
any other known document or record containing the names of the early Inspectors. From 
the fact that in both the documents he is styled "Deputy Inspector" led to the supposition 
that he might have derived his powers from Europe; acting upon which supposition, letters 
were addressed to the Grand Lodges at Berlin and Bremen, while the result of the 
correspondence which ensued, was of an interesting nature, nothing in regard to his 
Masonic character could be learned. 


It has been ascertained that Wilmans was a native of Bremen, and that he emigrated to this 
country and settled in Baltimore, as early at least as the year 1790. The first mention of his 
name on the records of the Grand Lodge is in connection with Concordia Lodge in 1793, 
of which he was appointed the first or Charter Master. In the same year he was elected 
Deputy Grand Master, and in the following year Grand Master of Masons in Maryland. 
The register of the Old Zion Lutheran Church, of this City, shows that he died in 1795. 


In a MSS. book of Moses Holbrook, of South Carolina, written in 1829, it is stated that 
Joseph Myers, a deputy Inspector General, deposited in the year 1788, in the archives of 
the Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Charleston, "a certified copy of the Royal 
and Select Masters' Degrees, received from Berlin." 


This is evidently an error, so far as it relates to the Royal Master's Degree. As initiated, 
the degree was first known in the Eastern States, and the earliest reliable mention of it 
there is in the year 1 809. 


Bro. Holbrook wrote his book in 1829, a which time both degrees were conferred at 
Charleston, and naturally he connected the two in his statement; making a similar error 
that others do when stating that Eckel and Niles claimed the control of the Royal Master's 
degree. The book referred to, contains also the statement, that somewhere about the year 
1788, Joseph Myers was for a time located in Baltimore. 


Did Wilmans receive the Select Degree from Myers, or did Myers receive it from 
Wilmans? 



If the degree came from Berlin, it is quite probable that Wilmans brought it with him, as 
he came from Germany about the time mentioned for the deposit, in the MSS. of 
Holbrook. 


There is a tradition existing in the Eastern States, that Eckel received the degrees from a 
Prussian temporarily sojourning in Baltimore. The period of Wilman's residence in 
Baltimore was perhaps not over eight years, and with some propriety, he might have been 
regarded as a sojourner, - and a Prussian. 


It is stated, but upon what authority we know not, that the Royal and Select Degrees were 
conferred by Andrew Franken at Albany in 1769, and that he conferred them upon Samuel 
Stringer who afterwards removed to Maryland; but we have not been able to find this 
name upon any of the records of this jurisdiction. 


These statements or traditions, it will be seen, all point to Maryland as the source from 
whence the Select Degree or (as the writer will have it,) Royal Master's Degree also was 
subsequently introduced into other parts of the country. 


Brother Folger says: Eckel at the Session of the General Grand Chapter advocated "the 
union of the degrees with the services of the Royal Arch Chapter." This has always been 
the opinion of the Companions of Maryland. 


From 1824 to 1852, the Select alone was worked in the Chapter. After 1852, both degrees 
were worked in Councils specially convened for the purpose, after the Most Excellent and 
just before the conferring of the Royal Arch degree. At one period, however, they were, 
as stated by Bro. Dove, conferred before the Most Excellent. 



At the Centennial Celebration of the Grand Chapter of Maryland in 1897, Companion 
Edward T. Schultz delivered an Address on "Royal Arch Masonry in Maryland." At the 
conclusion of this paper he augments and amplifies his previous history of "The Cryptic 
Degree' by new and additional evidence and proofs. 


Although in some parts the statements of his earlier history of the degrees are repeated, yet 
to attempt to exceipt would destroy its value; and as these historical facts have not been 
heretofore embodied, and, that they may be preserved in our Grand Council proceedings, 
we print that part of the Address in full: 


CRYPTIC MASONRY 


The degrees known as the Royal and Select Masters, termed Cryptic Masonry, have been 
so closely allied to Royal Arch Masonry in our jurisdiction that a history of the one is not 
complete without a reference to the other; one of the degrees of this system, the Select, 
having been known and worked in our jurisdiction before the formation of the Grand 
Chapter, and indeed, before the organization of Chapters independent of lodge authority. 


Although the earliest known date of the introduction of the Royal and Select Degrees must 
be placed at least a half century later than that of the introduction of the Royal Arch, their 
origin is equally as obscure as that degree. 


While the degrees are undoubtedly, of European origin, the first mention of them is found 
in this country, and the earliest authentic evidence of the conferment of either of them is to 
be found in our own City of Baltimore. 


Every one of the many writers upon the subject of these degrees has assigned a prominent 
position to Maryland in connection therewith; but errors are so blended with the facts, in 
their statements, that it would seem to be a duty we owe to the memory of the fathers of 



Royal Arch and Cryptic Masonry in this jurisdiction, that in this, our Centennial year, we 
should eradicate these errors. 


Mackey, Dove and Folger, as well as nearly all writers who have followed them, state in 
general terms that in the early part of this century the Maryland Companions claimed that 
Philip P. Eckel "a distinguished Chief' in their State had the custody and control of the 
Royal and Select Degrees. 


This is true so far only as regards the Select Degree; there being not a scintilia of evidence 
to show that either Eckel, his coadjutors, or their descendants in this State, ever claimed or 
exercised any control of, or authority over the Royal Master's Degree. On the contrary 
neither of them was in possession of that degree until some years later than the period of 
which these writers speak. 


Dr. Folger, in his history of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, says: "At the meeting 
of the General Grand Chapter held at New York in 1816, the subject of the Royal and 
Select Degrees came up for discussion; Mr. Eckel of Baltimore, took a prominent part in 
advocating the union of these two degrees with the services of the Royal Arch Chapters. 
The discussion was warm and lasted the better part of two days, when the motion to unite 
them with the Chapter degrees was lost." 


This is not true, there being no reference to the subject in the printed transactions of the 
General Grand Chapter. I wrote to Companion Christopher G. Fox, General Grand 
Secretary, who kindly examined the original proceedings in his custody, and he wrote me 
that there is no mention whatever of these degrees in the transactions of that Convention. 


Companion Eckel may have urged the members individually to agree with him to a union 
of the Select with the Chapter degrees, for it is well known that he greatly favoured such a 
union; but it is not at all probable that he could have advocated a union with a degree of 
which he was not in possession, the Royal Master's degree not being conferred upon him, 
and Companion Benjamin Edes, until 1819 by Ebenezer Wadsworth of New York. 



Another grave and misleading error into which these writers have fallen is, that in the year 
1817 Jeremy L. Cross, the celebrated Masonic Lecturer, received the Royal and Select 
degrees from Philip P. Eckel and Hezekiah Niles, and that he purchased from them the 
authority to confer said degrees upon Royal Arch Masons and to establish independent 
Councils of the same. 


The facts are Eckel and Niles conferred the Select degree upon Cross on the occasion of a 
visit by him to Baltimore in the year named, and these Compassions gave him verbal 
permission to confer it upon such as he might find worthy and qualified, but under the 
sanction of a Chapter Warrant and without fee." 


Cross was greatly "impressed" with the beauties of the degree and of its importance and 
value to a full understanding of the Royal Arch. But to confer it under the sanction of a 
Chapter Warrant and without fee did not accord with "his sordid purposes." He therefore, 
conceived the idea of establishing Councils independent of Chapters, and accordingly 
conferred the degree upon a number of Companions at Windsor, Vermont, and on July 
15th, 1817, organized at that place a Council of Select Masters. He then wrote to Eckel 
under date of July 17th, 1817, requesting and urging him, as "Thrice Illustrious and 
Puissant in the Grand Council of Select at Baltimore," to confirm his action in the 
establishment of the Council at Windsor, and to empower him to establish similar 
Councils elsewhere. (After Cross's death a copy of a letter written to Eckel containing 
such a request was found among his papers.) 


It is not known what answer, if any, Eckel made to this request, but subsequent 
developments made it quite sure that such an authority was not given to him. It is true 
there was found among Cross's effects a document in his handwriting, puiporting to have 
been signed by Eckel and Niles, giving him such authority; it is dated May 27th, 1817, 
nearly two months prior to the time when he asked that such power might be given him. 


Companion Josiah H. Drummond of Maine, who has more thoroughly examined the 
origin and history of the Council degrees than anyone, especially Cross's connection 
therewith, exhibited this document, in connection with undoubted signatures of Eckel and 



Niles, to experts in handwriting. He also sent photographic copies to Brethren in various 
parts of the country, all of whom, except one, (and he has since reconsidered his opinion), 
pronounced the signatures thereupon to be not genuine. (2) 


I also submitted one of these photographic copies to experts in handwriting in our city, 
four of whom were bank officers, and every one, by a comparison of Eckel's and Niles's 
signatures in my possession, pronounced the signatures on the document in question, 
simulated, not genuine. 


If I am asked, why refer to such matters at this late day?; why throw a shadow on the 
reputation of a deceased Companion?; I reply, justice to the reputations of Companions, 
also deceased, whose memories are dear to the heart of every Maryland Mason, demands 
that the truth be told. For if this document be genuine, then Philip P. Eckel, Hezekiah 
Niles, Henry S. Keatinge and Joseph K. Stapleton basely slandered a worthy Companion 
Royal Arch Mason when they stated repeatedly, that such authority was never given to 
Cross by Eckel and Niles. Such a denial was incorporated in a circular letter issued by the 
Grand Chapter of Maryland in 1 827, copies of which were sent to all the Grand Chapters 
of the country, including the one of which Cross was a member. As Companion 
Drummond says, "Is it credible that if this document had been genuine, he would not have 
produced it when so gravely accused?" He made no special denial, expressed or implied, 
till more than twenty- five years afterwards, and all that was done then was to say that he 
received a Warrant from Eckel and Niles to confer the degrees and grant Warrants. 


Under the authority falsely claimed to have been received from Eckel and Niles, Cross 
organized many Councils in the North, South and West and deputized others to do the 
same. At first these were for the conferring of the Select Degree only, but in the year 1818 
he received the Royal Master's Degree, when he united that degree with the Select in 
Councils. 


Without doubt these were the first Councils of Royal and Select Masters ever organized 
anywhere, and whatever virtue there may be in the present Council system, now so 
generally practised in this country, the credit of its inception is wholly due to Jeremy L. 
Cross, in whatever light his questionable methods to effectuate its establishment may be 
viewed. 



We thus see that in the early part of this century it was generally believed that Philip P. 
Eckel had the custody and control of the Select Degree but neither he nor any of his 
contemporaries has left us the slightest intimation as to the source whence he received the 
degree and his power of control thereof. 


A document that most unexpectedly came into my possession some years ago, settled that 
question beyond peradventure. It is a Dispensation or Warrant for the, formation of a 
Chapter of Select Masons at Baltimore, signed by Philip P. Eckel and H. Niles. In the 
preamble to this document, it is recited, that in year of the Temple 2792 (1792) our Thrice 
Illustrious Henry Wilmans, Grand Inspector General, etc., did, "by virtue of power in him 
legally vested, establish, ordain and support, a Grand Council of Select Masons in the City 
of Baltimore, and wrought therein to the great benefit of the Craft, etc.," and that "the 
subscribers, (Eckel and Niles) are, by regular succession, possessors of all the rights, 
privileges, immunities and powers vested in any way, whatsoever, in said Grand Council 
of Select Masons. 


It is to be regretted that this document is not dated and that the blanks for the names of the 
officers are not filled in, as it shows that in all probability the organization of the Body 
was not, at that time at least, consummated; but as the signatures of Eckel and Niles, as 
well as the seal of the Body of which they were officers, are undoubtedly genuine, and the 
document having been found in the possession of a descendant of one of the signers, it 
must be accepted as evidence of the facts therein stated; namely, Henry Wilmans 
established a Grand Council of Select Masons in Baltimore in the year 1792, and that 
Philip P. Eckel and H. Niles were, by, regular succession, the possessors of the power 
heretofore residing in said Wilmans. 


Now this, we boldly assert, is the earliest authentic evidence so far produced of the 
conferment of the Select Degree; the earliest authentic evidence of the conferment of the 
Royal Master's Degree being in a so- called Grand Council of Royal Masters at New York 
in 1807. 



The word "Grand" used by these Bodies must not be construed as it is in our day. The 
term was at that time assumed by all Masonic bodies which claimed the power of 
constituting other bodies of like character. 


It has, however, been asserted that both the Royal and Select Degrees were conferred in 
the Lodge of Perfection established at Albany, New York, in 1766 by Andrew Franken, 
who received his power of Deputy Inspector General of the Rite of Perfection from 
Stephen Morin at Jamaica, who had received his powers to propagate that Rite in the New 
World from the Council of Emperors of the East and West in France, but no evidence 
whatever has been produced to substantiate this statement. 


It is also claimed by the Grand Chapter of South Carolina and the Supreme Council for the 
Southern jurisdiction, that both degrees were conferred in the Lodge of Perfection 
established at Charleston in 1783. 


As has been adverted to, in 1 827 the Grand Chapter of Maryland addressed a circular 
letter to the other Grand Chapters of the United States, in which, after referring to the 
action of Cross and others in the formation of Councils independent of Royal Arch 
Chapters, the Grand Chapters are urged to take the Select Degree under their 
"recognizance where of right it belongs." 


The Grand Chapter of South Carolina referred this circular to a special committee, who 
made a report in 1829, which was substantially as follows: 


"That three brethren then living received the Royal and select Degrees in the Sublime 
Lodge of Perfection at Charleston in 1783, and that the Grand Officers and Inspectors 
have been steadily conferring said degrees under their authority in the South and West. 
That the committee has seen and perused the first copy of these degrees that ever came to 
America and old copies of Charters that have been returned by Councils in States where 
Grand Councils had been formed. Furthermore, that in 1788 Joseph Myers, a Deputy 
Grand Inspector, deposited in the Council of Princes of Jerusalem at Charleston, certified 
copies of said degrees from Berlin, Prussia." 



Companion Dmmmond who saw what purports to be a certified copy of the rituals 
deposited by Joseph Myers, says: 


"The ritual annexed is certainly not a copy of the one deposited, for the ritual of the Select 
Degree refers to the Royal degree, and moreover both of them recognize the Supreme 
Council as the governing authority, and that body did not exist until 1801." (3) 


As has been stated, there is no mention of the Royal Master's Degree found anywhere, 
other than in this report, earlier than 1807. It does not appear in either the 1802 or 1807 
published list of the many degrees, some fifty-five, conferred by the Inspectors. 


There is no evidence that these Inspectors or Supreme Council ever issued Warrants for 
the formation of Council or Grand Council earlier than 1860; the returned Charters that 
the committee "saw and perused" were those issued by John Barker subsequent to 1818. 
This Companion claimed to act as the agent of the Supreme Council, but Companion 
Dmmmond is of the opinion that he never received any authority to do so from that body, 
It is believed he received the degrees from Cross. 


The Berlin theory of the origin of the degrees must of course be classed with the Frederick 
the Great theory of the origin of the so-called high degrees; no one at this day gives to it 
any credence whatever. 


While I would not for a single moment question the veracity of the distinguished 
Companions composing the committee of the Grand Chapter of South Carolina, it really 
seems, in view of the facts stated, that their entire report must be received with 
considerable misgiving. The evidence adduced does not, in my opinion, warrant the 
conclusions reached by the Companions of South Carolina and the Supreme Council. 



(To be continued) 


(1) The impression upon the seal is too indistinct to be read. (2) See History of the Cryptic 
Rite, by J. Ross Robertson. (3) See History of the Cryptic Rite, by J. Ross Robertson. 


AMERICANISM VERSUS SOCIALISM 


BY FRANK ALLABEN, PRESIDENT NATIONAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY 


Amid the many efforts being made these days to define Americanism it is refreshing to find 
one that is crystal clear. Masons have an unfailing desire to uphold the Constitution of the 
United States, because they believe that that document is the bulwark of Americanism. This 
article, from the pen of one who is not a Mason, gives us in simple form concrete examples 
of how some of the theories now being advanced as cure-alls for our civic ailments are 
opposed to the most vital principles contained in our Constitution. The author is President 
of the National Historical Society, an organization very similar to that of this Society in its 
general plan. We publish this article with the author's consent, granted because he feels that 
Freemasonry is devoted to the advancement of American citizenship. Delivered originally 
as an address before the Bergen Reformed Church Men's Club, we feel that it is entitled to 
the closest study of the members of this Society. 


MY SUBJECT is Americanism; and I hope we may gain new inspiration and renewed 
courage by contrasting the principles which constitute Americanism with two other sets of 
principles which just nom threaten our national peace and the welfare of the world. 


One of these hostile sets of principles is today at work underground, plotting, as secretly as 
possible, to throw our social order into sudden confusion by great labor strikes, in order that 
under cover of these a small fraction of our population, the elements of revolution and 



anarchy, may overthrow the principles of Americanism, seize the machinery of American 
government and convert the powers we have ordained for justice into a weapon of violence 
to confiscate private property and dominate the economic means of life. This is the plot of 
an unscrupulous minority to crush our governmental safeguards under a reign of terror in 
order to rob and min the great majority of law-abiding Americans as the Russian people 
have lately been robbed and mined. You need no argument from me to convince you that 
this conspiracy of destmction must be fought to its death. I seek, therefore, only to make the 
inherent wickedness of socialistic absolutism more apparent by showing that its 
fundamental principles are totally subversive of and utterly irreconcilable with 
Americanism; while I also wish to point out how these doctrines of destmction may be 
overcome without violation of the personal liberty guaranteed to all by Americanism. 


But another evil now challenges and imperils Americanism. I refer to the abuse of power by 
organized labor and organized capital, by some even claimed as an unalienable right, in 
declaring and carrying on private economic war against one another in our peaceful 
communities by means of the strike and the lockout, with their attendant evils of riots, 
bullyings, assaults, murders, arson, theft, and economic destmction. Fortunately, these 
activities are simply abuses of usuiped power, developed under years of toleration, and, 
unlike the conspiracies of socialistic absolutism, are not aimed against our Government nor 
intended to subvert our institutions and manner of life. But, in the light of the historic 
principles of Americanism, these practices belong to license and not to liberty. They are not 
rights, but tolerated wrongs. All other Americans have given up the barbarism of private 
war, and resort only to their law-courts to compel justice; and organized labor and capital 
have no inalienable rights which do not belong to all of us. Their violences we have simply 
suffered for a time, with the optimistic hope of Americans that they would solve their 
problems and reach a stable equilibrium. 


But today the labor strike has become a great peril; for it is behind organized labor that the 
"red" conspiracy against our governmental safe-guards lurks and hides, gathering energy to 
spring out upon us suddenly, camouflaged under the confusion of some great labor strike. 
All the European assaults of bolshevism, successful or abortive, have leaped out of the 
whirlwinds of labor strikes; while in America today revolutionary radicalism secretly 
struggles to seize the machinery of organized labor as a tool for the destmction of organized 
government. 



Thus the labor-strike has become a great problem for the American people. It should be 
solved, and solved speedily. I believe it can be solved by a simple application of American 
principles. Therefore let us turn now to a brief examination of these. 


Americanism is defined by the Declaration of Independence, which, basing its doctrine 
upon "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," asserts the rights of man in one immortal 
sentence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, 
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted 
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any 
form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter 
or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles 
and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their 
safety and happiness." 


This declaration was received with acclaim by our colonial forefathers, who also expressed 
their boundless joy in bonfires, torch-light processions, the firing of guns, and the ringing of 
bells. Samuel Adams bears witness that the people received this statement of their rights "as 
though it were a decree promulgated from heaven." 


And out of heaven it came - an assertion in proof of which I cite the great fact that in little 
more than one hundred and forty years these principles have covered the earth and have 
been received as self-evident by practically all mankind, Christian and pagan. To me this is 
conclusive evidence of two things: first, that the Divine Intelligence Who mles this world, 
in Whose existence and beneficent guidance I firmly believe, must be greatly interested in 
opening to all peoples the door of liberty first opened to our fathers; and, second, that our 
fathers' statement of the principles of liberty and righteous government, since it carries 
instant conviction to the universal conscience, must have gathered the fundamentals of just 
human government out of "the laws of nature and of nature's God." 


If this be true we should cherish these principles of Americanism as a sacred trust, held by 
us as trustees, for ourselves, for our posterity, and for the world; and we should reject with 
jealous zeal any doctrine or practice which transgresses these principles. 



In the light of these principles let us test two doctrines made in Germany, the doctrine of 
autocratic government promulgated and practised by Prussian royalty and nobility, and the 
doctrine of socialistic government proclaimed by Karl Marx. Let us apply the four great 
tests of Americanism. 


Firstly, the appeal of our Declaration of Indepen dence to "the laws of nature and of nature's 
God" is the acknowledgement that eternal principles of right and wrong exist and can be 
deduced by man from the laws of God and nature. But German autocracy and German 
socialism both deny this great truth. The German ruling class held that human government 
is above all standards of right and wrong, doing what il pleases to accomplish its selfish 
ends; and under this doctrine Germany set out to conquer the world with shocking 
atrocities. This autocratic anarchy, this monstrous repudiation of all our normal standards of 
righteousness, is what we fought and conquered in the late war, thus reasserting the 
American doctrine that the laws of nature and of nature's God establish standarde of right to 
which individuals, peoples, and govemmente are all alike amenable. But the doctrine of 
socialistic absolutism, even more than the doctrine of autocratic absolutism, declares war 
against all the standards or right acquired by man through painful centuries, proposing to 
overthrow governments like ours, wreck man's social order and industries, confiscate 
private property, deny religious and political liberty, and even invade the sanctity of 
marriage and the rights of the family circle. Before our eyes, in Russia, we see these happy 
gains of human progress trampled into the slime of socialistic anarchy; and the war for 
Americanism will not be won until, with the idol of autocratic absolutism, the idol of 
socialistic absolutism is broken and cast out. 


Secondly, in stating that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator 
with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that 
governments are instituted among men to secure these rights, the Declaration of 
Independence simply asserts man's relationships in nature, the Fatherhood of God and the 
brotherhood of man, with the obvious truth that just government must recognize and protect 
the equal rights and privileges of all the members of man's one race and family. But 
autocrats and socialists alike oppose this doctrine. Both preach class-hatred and class-war, 
each holding that government must be class-rule, either by the upper crust or by the 
proletariat. In other words, autocracy and socialism beat the world with the same stick of 
class-rule, and only quarrel as to which end of the stick shall do the beating. Autocrats 
believe in government of autocrats, by autocrats, for autocrats. Socialists believe in 
government of the proletariat, by the proletariat, for the proletariat. But Americans believe 



in government of the people, by the people, for the people; and by this we mean 
government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people. 


I may add that the right to pursue happiness is the right of private ownership - the right of 
each individual to pursue and to possess property and all the things of life which can be 
enjoyed without invading another's right to pursue them. Yet their denial of this right of the 
individual, to pursue and possess as his own the things which make men happy, is the 
cardinal error of all forms of socialism. 


Thirdly, the statement of the Declaration of Independence, that governments derive "their 
just powers from the consent of the governed," is necessarily the assertion that the will of 
the majority must prevail in all cases where a people differ in judgment. This principle 
underlies our Constitution, and was sealed by our fathers' blood in our Civil War. Yet 
autocracy and socialism alike attack this fundamental of government by seeking to impose 
the tyrannies of minorities upon the great majorities of the earth. 


But, fourthly, while Americanism gives to the majority the right of decision in all questions 
open to debate; it is its glory first of all to secure the rights of the minority by guaranteeing 
individual liberties which are not open to debate. Thus while autocracy and socialism 
trample the rights of great majorities, Americanism protects the rights of a minority as small 
as one man. 


The Constitution of the United States is simply a wonderfully successful plan of 
government to carry out the principles and secure the rights proclaimed in the Declaration 
of Independence. It provides a representative organization through which the people may 
exercise their executive, legislative, and judicial powers on the principle of majority mle; 
yet in the very document by which they ordain this, the people have prohibited their 
representatives from invading certain fundamental rights guaranteed to each individual. 


These personal rights, which no executive power, nor legislature, nor law-court may 
abridge, include the privilege of the writ of habeas coipus, except when rebellion or 
invasion requires its suspension; include immunity from bills of attainder, ex post facto 



laws, and unequal taxation; include religious freedom; freedom of speech; freedom of the 
press; the right to assemble peaceably; to petition Government for redress of grievances; to 
keep and bear arms; and to be secure, in person, house, papers and effects, against 
unreasonable search and seizure; include the right of trial by jury, even in civil suits, 
involving more than twenty dollars; with exemption from bearing witness against one's self; 
and include the right never to be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of 
law; with the full right of private ownership of property, which may not be taken, even for 
public use, without just compensation. 


These rights, privileges, and exemptions, the Magna Charta of personal liberty, are assailed 
alike by autocracy and socialism. In denying the right of private ownership of property, 
socialism attacks what man most prizes, next to life and liberty; and in Russia today the 
curse of socialism has robbed the people of religious freedom, freedom of speech, freedom 
of the press, the right to assemble peaceably, and the right to petition government for 
redress of grievances, robbing them of these as completely as any crowned tyrant could rob 
them. 


Do not the four tests we have made identify Germen autocracy and German socialism as 
twin deformities, the two halves of one evil, a monstrous double birth out of the perverted 
womb of class-hatred ? But this brings us again to our necessity of self-defense. We have 
conquered German autocracy on the battlefield; but German socialism conspires in our 
midst. Can we conquer this ruthless propoganda without violation of freedom of speech? 


In the first place we should support our Government in prosecuting all citizens and 
deporting all foreigners who can be convicted of instigating violence; and we should 
encourage our legislators to enact strict laws covering such crimes; for there is no principle 
of Americanism that teaches us to tolerate illegal assaults upon our liberties. 


In the second place the carrying on of secret and anonymous propaganda against our 
principles of government should be made a criminal offense; for our constitutional 
guarantees of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the right of peaceable assembly, and 
of petition for redress of grievances, are only intended to afford upright conscience and 
honest conviction full opportunity of expression in open publicity where all men can hear 
and judge. 



In the third place we must overcome evil with good, defeat error with truth, drive out the 
darkness by bringing in the light. For years we have let socialistic books and pamphlets 
multiply and spread without any serious attempt to answer them, and tens of thousands of 
Americans have been deceived. "Where no vision is, the people perish." We may win a 
temporary skirmish by policies of repression; but if we would win our children and 
posterity, we must arm every American with the light of knowledge. We should place in the 
hands of every man, woman, and schoolchild an understandable exposure of the sophistries 
of socialism, with a record of its deeds in Russia, and of its plottings here, contrasted with 
the justice and blessings of Americanism, the envy and the admiration of the whole world. 
This is the way to destroy false doctrine. The triumphs of Americanism are triumphs of 
enlightenment. 


In conclusion I return to the problem of the laborstrike and lock-out. These violences should 
cease, for they are acts of private war, and in a day when all nations seek a league to 
substitute law for wars between peoples, it certainly is incongruous for Americans to 
continue to license private war in the bosom of their own family. Moreover, these violences 
must cease, for they now conceal threats against the existence of our Government and 
liberties. 


Henceforth, like the rest of us, labor and capital must take their cases to the law-court. But 
they are entitled to the best safeguards of American justice, and labor, at least, will feel 
itself defrauded if it must take justice from some Federal commission, or central court of 
judges, far removed from the locality where the case arises. Labor and capital are entitled to 
trial of their causes by jury, and to trial in the communities where the troubles start, and 
where the facts can be established by competent witnesses. 


Organized labor, like organized capital, is now equipped with expert leaders, and in 
important labor trials, where decisions are far-reaching, these experts on either side can 
assist with their extensive knowledge. In all such trials the American people are an 
interested party, equally with labor and capital. For if labor receives higher wages, or capital 
receives larger dividends, the American people must pay them out of the higher prices 
charged them. Thus in important labor trials the people should be represented by 
Government experts who are able to present statistics and bring out significant facts. 



A problem so immense as labor violence can be barely touched in its most fundamental 
parts at the end of a brief address. But if a true solution appears in a discussion so short, it 
bears testimony to the power of American doctrines as universal solvents of political 
difficulties. 


Let us trust Americanism, applying it to our problems with constantly increasing 
confidence; for all our difficulties grow, not out of our national principles, but out of our 
departures from them. 


-o- 


What we need most is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real. 


- F.H. Hedge. 


FOR THE MONTHLY LODGE MEETING 


CORRESPONDENCE CIRCLE BULLETIN NO. 34 


Edited by Bro. H. L. Haywood 


THE BULLETIN COURSE OF MASONIC STUDY FOR MONTHLY LODGE 
MEETINGS AND STUDY CLUBS 



FOUNDATION OF THE COURSE 


THE Course of Study has for its foundation two sources of Masonic information: THE 
BUILDER and Mackey's Encyclopedia. In another paragraph is explained how the 
references to former issues of THE BUILDER and to Mackey's Encyclopedia may be 
worked up as supplemental papers to exactly fit into each installment of the Course with 
the papers by Brother Haywood. 


MAIN OUTLINE: 


The Course is divided into five principal divisions which are in turn subdivided, as is 
shown below: 


Division I. Ceremonial Masonry. 

A. The Work of the Lodge. 

B. The Lodge and the Candidate. 

C. First Steps. 

D. Second Steps. 

E. Third Steps. 

Division II. Symbolical Masonry. 
A. Clothing. 



B. Working Tools. 

C. Furniture. 

D. Architecture. 

E. Geometry. 

F. Signs. 

G. Words. 

H. Grips. 

Division III. Philosophical Masonry. 

A. Foundations. 

B. Virtues. 

C. Ethics. 

D. Religious Aspect. 

E. The Quest. 

F. Mysticism. 

G. The Secret Doctrine. 

Division IV. Legislative Masonry. 

A. The Grand Lodge. 

I. Ancient Constitutions. 


2. Codes of Law. 



3. Grand Lodge Practices. 

4. Relationship to Constituent Lodges. 

5. Official Duties and Prerogatives. 

B. The Constituent Lodge. 

1. Organization. 

2. Qualifications of Candidates. 

3. Initiation, Passing and Raising. 

4. Visitation. 

5. Change of Membership. 

Division V. Historical Masonry. 

A. The Mysteries— Earliest Masonic Light. 

B. Studies of Rites— Masonry in the Making. 

C. Contributions to Lodge Characteristics. 

D. National Masonry. 

E. Parallel Peculiarities in Lodge Study. 

F. Feminine Masonry. 

G. Masonic Alphabets. 

H. Historical Manuscripts of the Craft. 

I. Biographical Masonry. 



J. Philological Masonry— Study of Significant Words. 


THE MONTHLY INSTALLMENTS 


Each month we are presenting a paper written by Brother Haywood, who is following the 
foregoing outline. We are now in "First Steps" of Ceremonial Masonry. There will be 
twelve monthly papers under this particular subdivision. On page two, preceding each 
installment, will be given a list of questions to be used by the chairman of the Committee 
during the study period which will bring out every point touched upon in the paper. 


Whenever possible we shall reprint in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin articles from 
other sources which have a direct bearing upon the particular subject covered by Brother 
Haywood in his monthly paper. These articles should be used as supplemental papers in 
addition to those prepared by the members from the monthly list of references. Much 
valuable material that would otherwise possibly never come to the attention of many of 
our members will thus be presented. 


The monthly installments of the Course appearing in the Correspondence Circle Bulletin 
should be used one month later than their appearance. If this is done the Committee will 
have opportunity to arrange their programs several weeks in advance of the meetings and 
the brethren who are members of the National Masonic Research Society will be better 
enabled to enter into the discussions after they have read over and studied the installment 
in THE BUILDER. 


REFERENCES FOR SUPPLEMENTAL PAPERS 


Immediately preceding each of Brother Haywood's monthly papers in the Correspondence 
Circle Bulletin will be found a list of references to THE BUILDER and Mackey's 
Encyclopedia. These references are pertinent to the paper and will either enlarge upon 
many of the points touched upon or bring out new points for reading and discussion. They 



should be assigned by the Committee to different brethren who may compile papers of 
their own from the material thus to be found, or in many instances the articles themselves 
or extracts therefrom may be read directly from the originals. The latter method may be 
followed when the members may not feel able to compile original papers, or when the 
original may be deemed appropriate without any alterations or additions. 


HOW TO ORGANIZE FOR AND CONDUCT THE STUDY MEETINGS 


The lodge should select a "Research Committee" preferably of three "live" members. The 
study meetings should be held once a month, either at a special meeting of the lodge 
called for the purpose, or at a regular meeting at which no business (except the lodge 
routine) should be transacted— all possible time to be given to the study period. 


After the lodge has been opened and all routine business disposed of, the Master should 
turn the lodge over to the Chairman of the Research Committee. This Committee should 
be fully prepared in advance on the subject for the evening. All members to whom 
references for supplemental papers have been assigned should be prepared with their 
papers and should also have a comprehensive grasp of Brother Haywood's paper. 


PROGRAM FOR STUDY MEETINGS 


1 . Reading of the first section of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental papers 
thereto. 


(Suggestion: While these papers are being read the members of the lodge should make 
notes of any points they may wish to discuss or inquire into when the discussion is 
opened. Tabs or slips of paper similar to those used in elections should be distributed 
among the members for this puipose at the opening of the study period.) 



2. Discussion of the above. 


3. The subsequent sections of Brother Haywood's paper and the supplemental papers 
should then be taken up, one at a time, and disposed of in the same manner. 4. Question 
Box. 


MAKE THE "QUESTION BOX" THE FEATURE OF YOUR MEETINGS 


Invite questions from any and all brethren present. Let them understand that these 
meetings are for their particular benefit and get them into the habit of asking all the 
questions they may think of. Every one of the papers read will suggest questions as to 
facts and meanings which may not perhaps be actually covered at all in the paper. If at the 
time these questions are propounded no one can answer them, SEND THEM IN TO US. 
All the reference material we have will be gone through in an endeavor to supply a 
satisfactory answer. In fact we are prepared to make special research when called upon, 
and will usually be able to give answers within a day or two. Please remember, too, that 
the great Library of the Grand Lodge of Iowa is only a few miles away, and, by order of 
the Trustees of the Grand Lodge, the Grand Secretary places it at our disposal on any 
query raised by any member of the Society. 


FURTHER INFORMATION 


The foregoing information should enable local Committees to conduct their lodge study 
meetings with success. However, we shall welcome all inquiries and communications 
from interested brethren concerning any phase of the plan that is not entirely clear to them, 
and the Services of our Study Club Department are at the command of our members, 
lodge and study club committees at all times. 



QUESTIONS ON "INTRODUCTION TO THIRD STEPS" 


I 

In a study of Third Steps shall we expect to find architectural symbolism as in our 
preceding studies? In what terms were the teachings in First and Second Steps given to 
us? Of what will our new studies treat? 


Who originated our Third degree? and when? Have these questions ever been 
satisfactorily answered? 


II 

How many degrees were there at the beginning of the Grand Lodge period? What were 
they? Why was the old Apprentice degree divided into two parts? When was this division 
made? 


Did this change meet with unanimous approval? Was the new degree universally worked 
immediately after the division? 


Why was the new degree so slow to meet with universal approval? Was it welcomed by 
Masons outside of London? 


Ill 


Who is believed to have been responsible for the introduction of this new material? 



What was the new material introduced between 1723 and 1738? Why does Brother 
Haywood not believe that it was the Hiram Abiff legend? What is Brother Haywood's 
theory concerning the substance of this legend? His answer to the question, Who imported 
the new material? Was the Third degree as elaborate from the first as it is now? Is it 
worked uniformly in all countries? In all Grand Jurisdictions in the United States? 


If you received the degree in another State than the one in which you now reside, state for 
the benefit of the other members of your Study Club some of the details in which the work 
as you received it differs from that of the Jurisdiction where you now live. 


IV 

What is the possibility of our learning the full details concerning the origin and early 
working of the degree in the very near future? Do we have record of similar legends in 
existence before our present Masonic system was established? Can you cite some of 
them? 


What is the puipose of this degree? What is its secret? 


SUPPLEMENTAL REFERENCES 


THE BUILDER: 


Vol. II. - Differences of Ritual, p. 381; Some Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism - 
The Third Degree, p. 109; Uniform Work, pp. 348, 382; York Rite, p. 327. 


Vol. III. - Causes of Divergence in Ritual, Nov. C.C.B., p. 4; The Lodge and The 
Candidate - The Degrees, Nov. C.C.B., p. 1. 



Vol. IV - The Degrees Problem, April C.C.B., p. 6. 


Mackey's Encyclopedia: Degrees, p. 203 


THIRD STEPS PART I - INTRODUCTION TO THIRD STEPS 
BY BRO. H.L. HAYWOOD, 


THE MOMENT one enters into a study of the Third Steps he finds himself in an 
atmosphere very different from that of the First and Second: the opening and closing 
ceremonies are similar to theirs but the architectural symbolism which was in them the 
predominant feature is here crowded into the background by a symbolism of a very 
different order; for whereas the first two degrees deliver their message in the terms of 
building, the Third speaks of a living and a dying and a using again. Its language is that of 
life and death. And so compact is it of profound meanings that it furnishes the 
suggestions, as many scholars have noted, from which the highest grades have developed 
their magnificent teachings. 


By what men the degree was made, or when, are questions on which our authorities differ 
so widely that one student - Brother Robert I. Clegg - has collected no fewer than twenty 
different theories, while another - Brother Hextall - has found fourteen different 
interpretations. Where so many scholars have failed to discover a satisfactory hypothesis 
it would ill become me to offer a theory of my own, and I must content myself to state, as 
nearly as I can, such positions is the majority have agreed on. 


It seems that in the beginning of the Grand Lodge period there were at most but two 
degrees, these being known as the Apprentice and Fellow Craft or Master Mason parts, the 
latter being convertible terms. But during this same period as much new material - new at 
least, to the ritual of initiation - was introduced that it became necessary to break up the 
old Apprentice degree into two parts leaving the old Second to become the new Third. 



This was done for the sake of convenience, as the ceremonies had grown too long for only 
two evenings. This division was made some time between 1723 and 1738. 


The new arrangement was a long time in gaining a foothold among the brethren. At first 
only a few were made Masters and then only in Grand Lodge; in fact so few knew how to 
"put on" the degree that for some time special "Masters' Lodges" were organized for the 
purpose. The progress of the tri-gradal system was even slower in countries other than 
England; Gould notes that the Third did not become common in Scottish Lodges until 
after 1770. 


Why was the Third so slow in "taking on" if it was the old Second degree? The 
explanation of the problem seems to be that so much new material had been added to it 
that it had become practically a new ceremony. There is even some reason to believe that 
it was this new material which gave offense to many old Masons living at a distance from 
London, who were thereby led to form the rival Grand Lodge of "the Ancients." 


By whom was this new material introduced? Some attribute the innovations to Preston, 
others to Dr. Desaguliers; others, of whom Pike was one, held to the theory that at the time 
of the Revival certain groups of Speculatives seized the opportunity to embody some of 
their own ideas in the ritual. Another theory, more reasonable than these, it seems to me, 
will be brought out when we seek to answer the next question. 


What was the new material introduced between 1723 - 1738? Many of our scholars, 
perhaps a majority, would answer, "The Hiram Abiff legend." As we are to devote a 
section to this we can not go into that matter here except to say that it seems unreasonable, 
on the face of it that so elaborate a drama, occupying the greater part of one whole degree, 
could not have been bodily imported into the ritual as a wholly new thing; the 
conservative "old Mason," of whom many were surviving during the Revival period, 
would not have tolerated so huge an innovation. The more reasonable theory is that the 
substance of the legend, and materials appertaining thereto, had long been a part of the 
floating tradition of the Craft if indeed, as there is some evidence to show, it was not a part 
of the old operative ritual. This would answer the question, Who imported the new 
material? No one man or group of men imported it; "the Third Degree was no made, it 
grew - like the great cathedrals, no one of which can be ascribed to a single artist, but to 



an order of men working in unity of enterprise and aspiration." To this it may be added 
that the degree has not ceased to grow, in America at least, for it is more elaborate here 
than in England, even as it is more elaborate there than in other countries - more elaborate, 
and different. 


By whom the degree was made, and when, will furnish material for many debates in years 
to come and in the lap of that future must the problem be laid but of one thing we can be 
very sure, the idea shined in the ceremony is so old that we find it serving as the motif of 
initiatory dramas long before the dawn of history. In every one of the Ancient Mysteries, 
so far as we have any memorials of them, the action centred in the violent death of some 
just person and his being raised again. In various guises was this idea presented but 
always did it convey the same truth - that in men there is something that can not die, that 
this "something" is akin to the divine, that it can be given the rule of a man during his 
earth pilgrimage, and that it is the puipose of initiation to discover and to crown this 
divine element in human life. This is nothing other than Regeneration; it is nothing other 
than Eternal Life, the life of God in the soul of man lived in the bounds of time and space 
and under human conditions. Such, I take it, is the secret of our Third degree. To elicit 
that secret, and to expound it, will be the task of the remaining sections of our study. 


THE NEED FOR MASONIC STUDY CLUBS 


It should be impressed upon the minds of our members that there is in our institution 
something to help them in their every-day living, which the seeker who is willing to devote 
a small portion of his time to the quest may easily obtain. The reward of his endeavors will 
appear in the higher development of the individual with vision of practical service to 
humanity. Many of our lodges in Minnesota have taken hold of this matter with a will, but 
there must be follow-up work that these beginnings may not be lost. 


In my appeals to lodges I have attempted to show the meanings of the degrees, and the call 
they make to each Mason. I am confident that if fostered intelligently Masonry may be 
made to become dynamic, awakened out of its apparently dormant or static condition. 



What is more, I am satisfied that Masons are eager to receive whatever can be given them in 
the way of Masonic knowledge, information or assistance to study. It might be well to urge 
that greater emphasis be placed upon the monitorial readings to the candidate in the 
preparation room and so make real the fact that study must be devoted to every phase of 
Masonry, and if the candidate is unwilling to devote at least a part of his time to such study 
he should be informed that it would be better for him to proceed no further. 


Our ceremonies, symbolism and philosophy are set forth in beautiful language, but they 
must be interpreted by the individual in terms of his own need. Many of our phrases are 
archaic, testifying to the antiquity of the institution - these should be carefully analyzed to 
be understood and applied. Herein lies the opportunity of the older and better informed 
brethren, and at the same time the responsibility of the lodge to the candidate is pointed out. 
if this responsibility is accepted and the opportunity for a systematic study of Masonry is 
offered, Masonry will flourish, not in numbers only, but in the quality of its members as 
well. 


Masonry must accept the challenge for a citizenship that will stabilize free government and 
secure an enlightened democracy, thus making the world safe for democracy. It must teach 
its votaries to think in terms of civic duty, common interest and world-wide brotherhood. 
The true Mason has always been ready for service, kindly in his dealings, practicing the 
tenets of his profession, brotherly love, relief and truth. There are many such among us 
today and we know them by "the perfect points of their entrance." 


Masons are for more light, willing to receive information and may be interested in the study 
of Masonry if they can be induced to read some Masonic literature, journals like those 
published in our own and other jurisdictions which put the facts and claims of the institution 
in a simple and straightforward manner. 


Where the officers of our lodges are anxious to help the membership to a fuller and better 
understanding of the teachings and principles of the institution great interest is being 
awakened. 



There should be a departure from the formal notices of lodge meetings. In other words, 
more attention should be devoted to modern advertising of their meetings. 


During the past several months I have visited fifty or more of our lodges in the interest of 
the Study Club movement and without exception all of these lodges have expressed a desire 
for more visitations of this character - they want help and will welcome whatever will bring 
light. 


The time is ripe and crucial in Minnesota for a real awakening among Masons in order that 
they may march together, shoulder to shoulder, to the drumbeats of high and noble 
principles which will sound the death knell of the slavery of ignorance, superstition, passion 
and low motives. 


As the founders of our liberties marched and fought, so let us, Masons of Minnesota, march 
and fight for true manhood, home and country, until we can say that we have achieved a 
civilization as lasting in its grandeur as those mighty monuments that dot the banks of the 
historic Nile. 


Bro. R. E. Denfeld, Chairman, 


Committee on Masonic Study and Research Grand Lodge of Minnesota. 


- 0 -- 


BEAUTY FROM ASHES HERE 



BY BRO. L. B. MITCHELL, MICHIGAN 


Beauty from ashes, - if so be the soul 
Is forging on towards its glory goal,- 
Lor it must first within the life repose 
Though ashes lie upon its trail of woes, 

The heart may pluck its flowers by the way 
E'en though the green of years be turned to gray. 

It is for it, though skies but slowly clear 
To qualify e'en through the ashes here. 

Lor all it is and has must now appear 
Though hopes deferred may start the flowing tear, 
It is for it to brave each searching test 
Lor it may be that it was for the best. 

O, it may 'mong the ashes scattered round 
Rich harvests find upon life's sacred ground! 

The way may hold so much to bless and cheer 
That beauty rare may spring from ashes here. 

So while upon the pathway that we tread 



The ashes lie, 'tis there our hopes are spread 
The fairest flowers may bloom for us today 
Because they grew in sorrow's yesterday. 
From ashes there may new creations spring, 
The price is paid for each new offering 
May strew the path whereon we forward go 
With all the best that mortals here may know, 


WHY WE ENUMERATE TO TEN 


BY BRO. U.R. PARTLOW, ARKANSAS 


The following article by Brother Partlow, while containing no particular reference to 
Masonry will, appreciated by many readers of THE BUILDER who have a liking for 
curious facts. 


An arrangement of ten dots in a triangular form of four rows, called the "tetractys," was 
emblematic of the Tetragammaton, or sacred name of four letters, and this figure was held 
in high veneration by the Pythagoreans who are said to have taken their most solemn 
oaths, especially that of initiation, upon it. In the symbols of Masonry the sacred delta 
bears the nearest analogy to the tetractys of the Pythagoreans. 


ARISTOTLE is attributed with asking the question, "Why do all men, barbarians is well 
as Greeks, numerate up to ten and not any other number?" Aristotle, even at that time, had 



made a very wise and true observation for with but one exception the statement of 
Aristotle is true. 


Number is co-eval with spoken language and probably antedates even symbolism. 
Primitive man must have had some way of recording results of his fishing and hunting 
expeditions, the number of warriors in opposing camps as well as of the friendly strength. 
History records many methods of keeping this record and with one exception all 
reckoning was done in terms of ten. 


Example of this is to be found in the mode of reckoning by the Paloni Indians of 
California. Dr. Hoffman reports that each year these Indians chose from their number 
certain representatives to visit the San Gabriel settlement to sell native blankets. Every 
Indian sending blankets provided the salesman with two cords of twisted hair or wool, one 
of which was used for the puipose of keeping a record of values received and the other 
cord for keeping record of the blankets sold. For every real received a knot was tied in the 
cord and when the sum reached ten reals a double knot was used. 


The ancient Peruvians used a method similar. Edward Clodd says: "The quipu has a long 
history, and is with us in the rosary upon which prayers are counted, in the knot tied in the 
handkerchief to help a weak memory, and in the sailor's log line." The quipu consisted of 
a main cord to which were attached at given distances other cords of different colours to 
represent different objects, such as cattle, corn, sheep, and etc., and for every ten of 
anything a single knot was tied in the cord and for twenty, two knots, for thirty, three 
knots and so on, thereby proving the method of reckoning by ten. 


Dr. Conant gives an interesting example regarding the number concept. He says: "More 
than a century ago travellers in Madagascar observed a curious but simple mode of 
ascertaining the number of soldiers in the army. Each soldier was made to go through a 
passage in the presence of the principal chiefs; and as he went through a pebble was 
dropped on the ground. This continued until a heap of ten was obtained, when one was set 
aside and a new heap begun. Upon the completion of ten heaps, a pebble was set aside to 
indicate one hundred, and so on until the entire army had been numbered." Before the 
use of writing paper the British exchequer used a system of reckoning and accounting at 
was interesting as well as curious. The method as by use of tally sticks on which notches 



were cut, a deep notch for a pound, a shallow one for a shilling. The stick was then sawed 
half in two near one end and split down to the cut, each half bearing a record the notches. 
One piece was given to the depositor, the other half was kept. A great mass of these sticks 
was deposited in the basement of the Parliament building and in 1834 a bonfire was made 
of them. So great as the accumulation of these sticks that from the great bonfire and heat 
that on Thursday, October 16, 1834, a furnace became overheated and set fire to the 
building and in a few hours the House of Commons and House of Lords were in ashes. 


The Hawaiian tax-gatherers kept account of the assessable property by means of cords in 
which knots were tied and they carried one for every ten. 


It can be seen that calculating by tens was a method in general use among ancient 
peoples. W.R.R. Ball in his Short History of Mathematics, page 127, says 'The only tribes 
of whom I have read who did not count in terms of either five or some multiple of five are 
the Bolans of West Africa who are said to have counted by multiples of seven, and the 
Maories who are said have counted by multiples of eleven." These exceptions are hard to 
explain in terms of other methods. 


Most races have shown the same aptitude in representing numbers by means of tens, and 
various inventions have been devised to expedite these; namely pebbles arranged in 
groups of tens, and from these developed the abacus. Ball, in his History of Mathematics, 
says: "This instrument (abacus) was in use among nations so widely separated as the 
Etruscans, Greeks, Egyptians, Hindoos, Chinese, and Mexicans; and was, it is believed, 
invented independently at several different centres. It is still in common use in Russia, 
China and Japan." It is rather interesting to see the similarity in calculating and reckoning 
among primitive people especially where they are isolated from each other by impassable 
barriers, such as oceans, seas and mountains. One is led to look for this cause in some 
natural means common to all races. Aristotle in commenting upon the matter of peoples 
enumerating by tens and not by other numbers, remarks that manifestly it is not by 
chance. He says: "The truth is, what men do upon all occasions and always they do not 
from chance but from some law of nature. Whether is it, because ten is a perfect number? 
For it contains all the species of number, the even, the odd, the square, the cube, the linear, 
the plane, the prime, the composite, or is because the number ten is a principle? For the 
numbers one, two, three and four when added together produce the number ten. Or is 
because the bodies which are in constant motion are nine? ... Or is it because all men 
from the first have ten fingers? As therefore men have counters of their own by nature, by 



this set, they numerate all other things." Prof. Ball, of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 
commenting on this same subject, says: "Up to ten it is comparatively easy to count, but 
primitive people find great difficulty in counting higher numbers; apparently at first this 
difficulty was overcome by the method (still in use in South Africa) of getting two men, 
one to count the units up to ten on his fingers, and the other to count the number of groups 
of ten so formed." "The number five is generally represented by the open hand, and it is 
said in almost all languages the word five and hand are derived from the same root word. 

It is possible that in early times men did not readily count beyond five, and things if more 
numerous were counted by multiples of five." Prof. Ball goes further and says: "That some 
tribes seem to have gone further and by making use of their toes were accustomed to count 
by multiples of twenty. The Aztecs, for example, are said to have done so. It may be 
noticed that we still count some things (for instance sheep) by scores, the word score 
signifying a notch or scratch made on the completion of the twenty." 


It can be seen that man carries with him a natural counting machine, - that is the fingers of 
his hands, and from all authority it appears that the counting on the fingers was the 
beginning of the number concept, for with exceptions named above all reckoning has been 
in multiples of five, and that in all instances nearly have been ten. 


The Chinese have an interesting kind of digital signs and the same was interestingly told 
in Leslie's and well illustrated in that magazine a few years ago. Since each finger has 
three joints, the thumb nail of one hand touch the joints in succession, passing up one side 
of the finger, down the middle, and again up the other side, thereby giving nine applicable 
to the decimal notation. On the little finger these signify units, on the next tens, on the 
next hundreds, etc. I relate this incident to show various methods of calculating, and are 
based upon the "ten system." 


After years of struggle primitive man learned the use of making some definite account of 
the reckoning with his hands in order that a definite record might be kept. This led us to 
consider the origin of numbers with especial reference to how they are made. One, of 
course, is made by one mark, and in fact all other of the numerals were made by the 
number of marks it represented. Ultimately the straight lines were discarded, the comers 
becoming rounded and the numerals are rounded as we have them today. 



The use of the alphabet as numerals probably dates from about 500 B.C. The Greeks used 
the letters of their alphabet as symbols for numerals, the first nine letters of the alphabet 
being used for the first nine numbers, the next nine numbers for the numbers ten, twenty, 
thirty, etc. As the Greek alphabet consisted of but twenty-four letters, three obsolete 
letters were introduced or interpolated. The Greek mode of writing fractions was simple, 
the denominator simply being written under the numerator. 


The Hebrews used their alphabet in the same way, each letter having a numerical 
signification as well as representing certain sounds in the formation of words and ideas. 


The Babylonians had a strange system inasmuch as sixty was the base. It is presumed as 
the year was at that time reckoned as 360 days, thus dividing the circle into 360 equal 
parts, and that the perimeter of the circle was divided into six equal parts by stepping off 
the length of the radius upon the circumference. Further the Babylonians had a basal 
number of 12,960,000, and if you raise 60 to its fourth power your product will be this 
famous number. Prof. Hilprecht thinks that 12,960,000 is the famous number of Plato. It 
is said that the number 12,960,000 is constructed from 216, the minimal number of days 
of gestation in the human kind, and if the 216 be interpreted as day, together with 
12,960,000 the latter number gives 36,000 years, the "great Platonic year," which was the 
Babylonian cycle. 


The most famous system was that of the Hindus which assigned a symbol to each of the 
nine numbers. In the Hindu notation each number has in addition to its intrinsic value an 
acquired value by reason of position. Thus 3 standing in the second place would have a 
value of thirty, while in the first place it would have its intrinsic value only. The best we 
can say is that the origin of the Hindu's system of notation is shrouded in mystery as many 
other Oriental customs are; for the reason the Orientals attribute all great inventions or 
discoveries to a direct revelation of God. The history of Oannes, the Babylonian god of 
mathematics and learning, is an example of primeval belief that all human knowledge 
goes to divine revelation. Hamurabi, the great Babylonian law giver, claimed to have 
received his legend information from the sun god. Moses, the Hebrew law giver, claimed 
to have received his laws directly from God, yet much of the law of Moses is identical to 
the law of Hamurabi, indicating that Moses had some acquaintance with the laws of his 
famous predecessor. 



In searching into the origin of the numeral system, as in all other knowledge of great 
antiquity, we are confronted with the fact that knowledge was from remote antiquity up to 
the period almost of public education, concealed from the masses and was sacredly held in 
the breast and the hearts of the priestdom. Also, no method of perpetuity then existed 
except by tradition, symbols, legends and written hieroglyphic on papyrus and other 
destructible materials. 


EDITORIAL 


"TOGETHER, BRETHREN, LET IT BE DONE." 


WHAT CAN American Masons make our new-found unity to mean? To ask the question in 
this way implies limitations. "WHAT CAN IT NOT BE MADE TO MEAN?" would be the 
better way of putting it. The possibilities of cooperation among the brothers of our Craft are 
without limit. 1 Recognition of our common aims is almost at hand. In every Jurisdiction the 
rank and file of our Fraternity are coming to believe that Freemasonry has a mission to 
perform in the world today. The history of every organization which grows to the maturity 
implied in the word "institution" is that it lives if it performs the functions for which God 
intended it. If it dies, it does so for one of two reasons, either it has FAILED to meet the 
responsibilities imposed upon it, or it dies after having accomplished its mission. 


The most egotistical Mason in America would not say that we have accomplished our 
mission - especially when he ponders the five years of world history just closed. He who 
would admit that Freemasonry is doomed to fail in its mission would be a coward. 


The sane Mason, the optimistic Mason, the brother who has glimpsed the true meaning of 
"Brotherhood," believes that Masonry is ordained to work in the present generation for the 
fulfilment of its time-honored prophecies. Talk to him and see if this is not true. Come to 
my desk and read the letters he is writing, and you will believe. "Hope" is written there. 
"Determination" is written there. "God prosper the vision of the Masonic Service 
Association" is written there. "Let us work together, after a common plan, for the fruition of 



brotherhood," is the battle cry of the thinking Mason of today, who sees the foundation of 
the world crumbling because the cement of brotherly love is being dissolved. 


The Executive Commission of the Masonic Service Association, after two months of careful 
consideration of the task imposed upon it, has tried to define "Service." It has determined to 
create a practical machinery capable of carrying into effect the objects of the Association. 
Foundations only have been laid. But the general plan for the superstructure has been 
drafted. It will be found in the center of this issue of THE BUILDER, and has been 
furnished by the Commission to every other Masonic magazine with which we are in touch. 


This plan claims to be only a method of cooperation. The immediate tasks before us are 
succinctly stated in terms the spirit of which cannot be misinterpreted. The method of 
approaching those tasks is indicated. The Commission is able to promise more than the 
cooperation of its own members, for it has the assurance of many of our ablest men 
throughout the country that they will help us to the limit of their abilities in carrying out this 
plan. 


What remains? One thing, and one thing only. The active and enthusiastic cooperation of 
our several Jurisdictions themselves. If each of our Grand Lodges, through its responsible 
officers, will use its best efforts to adapt this program to the use of the Craft within its 
boundaries, Masonry will begin to move forward, unitedly. 


It is no small thing that the Executive Commission, drawn from eleven different parts of the 
United States, each member having his own individual viewpoint, should hold a three-day 
session devoted exclusively to this problem of cooperation and, BY UNANIMOUS 
AGREEMENT, build a program of cooperation and state it in words! Yet that is exactly 
what did happen. They came together wondering whether so tremendous a problem as faces 
the Masonic Fraternity could be expressed in terms upon which they could all agree. They 
faced the problem together, as brethren. They did agree. 


Will our Grand Bodies cooperate to make the administration of the Association succeed, by 
considering the proposed plan with the determination to make it succeed? Each will use that 



part of the machinery of organization which meets its individual need. Each must carry out 
the proposed plans as the judgment of its leaders shall dictate. The way is provided. It is a 
practical way. 


Every thinking Mason should put his shoulder to the wheel. Together we can insure REAL 
cooperation. 




A CONFESSION - AND A CHALLENGE 


Who am I? I am one of the more than 100,000 young men who, during the year 1919 
knocked at the doors of your Masonry. I was accepted, and initiated. I was passed and 
raised to the sublime degree of a Master Mason. I took my first degree on a beautiful bright 
morning, the lodge having favored my convenience. For nearly nine hours I watched other 
young men receive the degree. It impressed me to the very depths of my soul. I had found 
what I wanted - fellowship, earnestness, reverence for higher things. With relief I missed 
dogma. I subscribed to no creed. Yet I was told that the new path which I had commenced 
to tread led to heights still to be climbed. I was content. 


I took your lessons seriously. I worked hard to leam your catechism. I was determined that 
no idle curiosity should be impugned to me. I had come to leam, and I was learning. In like 
spirit I was passed. Again I studied. I was raised, in more senses than one. I was raised 
above myself. You men who performed the ceremonies upon me will never know how great 
your impression was. I caught something of your inspiration. I took the Masonic lesson 
home to myself. If in making application for membership there had been anything of 
unworthy motive, or if I had expected to find "horseplay" I was ashamed. You illumined my 
path. You placed a star before me to guide me. I tried to leam all that you had to teach me. 
Dimly I realized its vastness. I was humble in your presence. I was determined that you 
should never be as ashamed of me as I was of my own ignorance. 



Months passed. I have been a regular attendant. I have not sought to obtain an office I am 
not yet worthy of honors. I only want to learn. 


Now I have become "proficient." I am able to "travel in foreign countries." I know my tests. 
I can prove that I have received the degrees. 


I have been "traveling" a little, here and there, as my duties in life have permitted. I have 
visited other lodges. I have seen the three degrees exemplified four or five times a month. I 
know the rote. I have even learned all the parts in the Entered Apprentice degree, though I 
never expect to have a chance to confer it. My lodge has several hundred members, and 
there is no use in my aspiring to hold an office. 


I have even learned the chal ge of the first degree. It is "great stuffy" and I love it. I should 
like to give it, some day. Wonder if I'll ever have a chance? 




It is six months since I wrote the above. We had our election last night. The Senior Warden 
of our lodge was elected Master. The Senior Deacon was elected Junior Warden. A brother 
whom I do not know and have never seen was appointed Junior Deacon. He will go "up the 
line" as they describe it to me. The new Junior Deacon has been a Mason six years, they 
say, and has never held an office until now. 


I wish our lodge wasn't so large! A young fellow would have a chance, then. But I suppose 
that is all right. 


A brother shoved a "Chapter" petition under my nose tonight. Said if I wanted to "get it all," 
I ought to belong to the "higher bodies." Wonder what they are? I was told I would be a 
Mason when I received the third degree. 





I've been elected in the Chapter, now. As soon as I get that, I'll take the Commandery, too - 
Brother Jones, whom I met coming out of the church last Sunday told me that the "Black 
Cross" degree was the "ne plus ultra" of Masonry. There was a "Consistory" meeting in 
town last week, too. It lasted four days. And then on Friday night there was a "Shrine" 
meeting. I met some of the "Shriners" in the temple parlors. They surely were a bunch of 
good fellows! It looks as if I was going to spend at least $250.00 in getting Masonry, before 
I'm through! It certainly is a luxury. I cannot really afford it, but I want to know what 
Masonry really is. There is much that I do nor understand. They told me it would all be 
explained is the Chapter. But it wasn't. I want all they have to give me! 




I've had it all. It is exactly twelve months sines I took my first degree, and I'm an "R.A.M.", 
"K.T.", "32d," - yes, and a "Noble of the Mystic Shrine," too. Everything but the 33d and 
they say I shall have to wait fifteen or twenty or thirty or forty years for that, if I ever get it. 


If I go to all the "bodies" it will take me three or four nights a week, and to get the benefit of 
the Scottish Rite and the Shrine I'll have to lay off at least two weeks a year. But it is all 
grand! It is worth it! My wife doesn't think so. She wonders what it must be, to attract me so 
much. 


I wonder, too. 





I haven't been to lodge for three weeks. It is the first week I've missed going to at least one 
session of some kind, since I was first initiated. But I've been thinking a lot, these three 
weeks. I was talking to Brothers J. and K. last Wednesday night. I met them down at the 
American Legion meeting. J. took the work two weeks before I did; K. was "passed" the 
same night I was. Both of them finished up about the same time I did. They asked me 
whether I thought, after taking the other degrees, that it would be worth while for them to 
"go on up" - as one of them expressed it. 


I said NO! 


They were suiprised. But I told them - they're good friends and splendid fellows, and we 
"went over the top" together just before the Armistice - my whole story about Freemasonry. 


I told them I was disappointed. I expected so much - perhaps too much, when I joined 
Masonry. I liked it at first, and I love it still. But I've stopped learning about it, and really 
know less now than I did when I was studying the first three degrees. There's some mystery 
about it. I don't understand, yet, what it's all about. I've rushed through. I've seen it all. But I 
haven't digested it. Now, I've got a high school education. I can read, I think, as intelligently 
as the average. I follow the "Literary Digest," as well as read several other magazines. I've 
tried to find a real Masonic magazine. Hunted high and low, until Brother L. (who has never 
filled an office, though he's been a Mason thirty years) told me about "THE BUILDER." 


I like it, but some of it is over my head. 


I've talked to older brethren. They cannot give me what I'm after. I have read something 
about where Masonry came from. I'm glad to know that. But, honestly, fellows, I want to 
know what Masonry is doing, today. Maybe I don't understand it as I should, and that is the 
reason why I chafe about it. But I want to know what it is that Masonry really tries to teach! 



"I go up to lodge once in awhile, now," replied J. "I've been asking the Master and Wardens 
until I'm ashamed to ask them any more. Besides, they cannot answer my questions. They 
say they're too busy conferring degrees. But, honestly, I believe they do not know 
themselves!” 


The foregoing is not a literal experience of one doughboy. It is the combined story of three 
or four to whom ye scribe has had the privilege of talking during the past three months. Is it 
not time for us to stop and think of what we are doing? Is it not time that a program of 
Masonic education be announced, and carried into every lodge in the United States? Dare 
we be slow in answering honest questions like these, and justifying the hopes of the young 
men who are flocking to our doors ? 


Bring the lesson home and your lodge and my lodge, your Grand Master and my Grand 
Master, will vie with one another to see which can arrange programs that will prevent the 
inevitable slump if we keep taking young men in at the rate of 100,000 a year and do not 
teach them that which they need to know. 


The challenge is to us, my brethren. We accept these young men - but we are not treating 
them fairly. 


It is to meet conditions such as are pictured in this article that thinking Masons are coming 
to feel that every Jurisdiction should join with each other to try to answer the inquiry 
(sometimes spoken, often unuttered,) of these sincere young men who have learned the 
meaning of "efficiency" and want to do the work which their conscience tells them they 
ought to do in making Masonry a real part of our civilization. G.L.S. 


o 



THE COIN OF GOD 


BY BRO. L. B. MITCHELL, MICHIGAN 

Not mere existence counts for worth, 

We came, we're here as parts of earth, - 
As parts of its all-nature plan 
We live and act the part of man; 

But higher values there must be 
Than those of mere nativity. 

And if there's value we must pay 
The price beyond the right to stay,- 
The price above the normal need 
Or privilege that we may plead, - 
The price that pays for something worth 
More than can be derived from earth. 

And we must duly share in things 
Beyond what just mere living brings; 

Our entries on life's balance sheet 


Must for the higher realm be meet, 



And if thereon there's credits made 


'Twill show that we in kind, have paid. 

And just as we invest in gold,- 
The soulful things of worth untold, - 
Just as we pay the price of life 
Above its elemental strife, - 
Just so much then will worth appear, - 
The coin of God, so precious here. 

THE LIBRARY 


EDITED BY BRO. ROBERT TIPTON 


The object of this Department is to acquaint our readers with time-tried Masonic books not 
always familiar; with the best Masonic literature now being published; and with such non- 
Masonic books as may especially appeal to Masons. The Library Editor will be very glad to 
render any possible assistance to studious individuals or to study clubs and lodges, either 
through this Department or by personal correspondence; if you wish to leam something 
concerning any book - what is its nature, what is its value, or how it may be obtained - be 
free to ask him. If you have read a book which you think is worth a review write us about it; 
if you desire to purchase a book - any book - we will help you get it, with no charge for the 
service. Make this YOUR Department of Literary consultation 


SPEAKING OF BOOKS 



A GREAT MAN once told us that we should not read any book that was not at least a year 
old. The tendency today, apparently, is to read as many books as possible that are not a year 
old. Booksellers, publishers and newspapers everywhere seem to vie with each other in 
announcing the enormous sales of the best sellers. Reading occasionally a best seller is fast 
convincing us that enormity in sales of best sellers is far from indicating a heightening of 
the taste for real literature among the American people. We have often heard it said by a 
dear friend that the many people love the photo play, as it spares them the necessity of 
exercising their brains - an observation of course in which opinion may differ. Our opinion 
is that there is a sort of sensuous intoxication bordering too frequently on the sensual that 
lends attractiveness both to the best seller and the photo play that keeps them first among 
the things in the affections of the mass of the people. However that may be, the monotonous 
similarity in what sells for a book, and that which is dramatized on the screen, is criterion 
enough for us stating that our interest in things bookish is very much along one track. Let us 
as Masons solemnly ponder this fact that those immoral agencies that are undermining 
society are intensely aggravated by the realism of the so-called books that are so 
vociferously handled as best sellers. Divorce, crime, anarchy and the other malignant ills are 
not going to be mitigated by our present book method of portraying ugly realism. 


If this land of ours exists for aught under the starry blue, it stands for homes where the 
hearth is a sanctuary, it stands for clean men, women and children. It stands for the things of 
beauty and goodness, justice and benevolent government. "To your knees, O Israel," was a 
cry among our ancient brethren when the world was out of joint. To our knees must we 
come too, that arising from them, we might catch a vision of the finer things. We need 
respite from, best sellers and sensational films with their leprous taint. As Masons let us be 
sure that our shelves are richly stored with those books that have stood the test of time. As 
Masons and Americans we have yet in our literature those of an older day whose eyes were 
freer than to behold iniquity, or if they did see it they did not place a halo about it. 
Hawthorne, Irving and Howells, to read them today, is as partaking of rich draughts that 
come from deep wells in Elysian fields. We have aped in literature those mad sensualists of 
lands abroad, and the day of emulation of their great ones seems to have passed. The other 
day we read George McDonald's "Robert Falconer," a wise and good work. We confess to 
having found it in some measure laborious, but we arose feeling the stronger for having read 
it. We read Silas Lapham, too, and came away with a sorrow because so few books of 
fiction in this land were of its noble quality. In this day of revaluation and adjustment we 
need as Lincoln needed, in his trying hours, the ministry of books that are as a gift of the 
gods, and not those cheap effusions of maudlin sentimentalists that delight in naught save 
those things of dark moral phases. 



* * * 


OUR HUGUENOT ANCESTORS 


"French Blood in America," by Lucian Fosdick. Price $2.50. Published by The Gorham 
Press, 7-11 West 45th St., New York, N. Y. 


A book that has stirred our blood recently has been Lucian Fosdick's "French Blood in 
America." The heroic qualities of the Huguenot ancestors of those of French blood among 
us is set forth in admirable fashion. Not a few surprises are in store for the reader as the 
author essays to set us right about the nationality of the Pilgrims. Many of them were of 
French extraction we are told, who having sought refuge in England found in due process of 
time their names to be Anglicized. John Alden and Priscilla, many will be shocked in 
discovering, were really French Huguenots. For the proof of the pudding of course there is 
but one avenue, and that in this case, is to read the book. 


Of nearer interest and greater importance is the history of those connected with the founding 
of this great Republic. And of especial interest to Masons will be the fact that many of these 
were active members of the Craft. The author indeed has been compelled to set aside a 
chapter under the caption of the French in Freemasonry - a chapter indeed that is wondrous 
with its names of patriots and suggestions of their prodigious efforts in the Revolutionary 
period. We would urge its reading by the Craft, if for no other reason - and there are many - 
than that it is one of the most powerful books that we have been privileged to read of late, 
that will resolve Masons to be as heroic as those godly Huguenot exemplars, whose tales 
Fosdick has so powerfully retold in their fight against religious tyranny and oppression. 


* * * 


A BIOGRAPHY OF GENERAL GRANT’S MILITARY SECRETARY - THE LAST 
GRAND SACHEM OF THE IROQUOIS 



"Life of Ely S. Parker," by A.C. Parker. Published by the Buffalo Historical Society, 
Buffalo, N. Y. 


Through the thoughtfulness of the author, we are in receipt of a splendid biography of 
General Ely S. Parker, the last Grand Sachem of the Iroquois, and General Grant's Military 
Secretary. 


The work is valuable from a number of angles. Its able setting forth of Indian customs and 
life, its vivid description of the rise of the General from a position of affluence among his 
own people to one of great power among the whites; and its brilliant elucidation from an 
Indian standpoint of the wrongs suffered by the redmen at the hands of the whites, gives it a 
pertinent historical significance. That both the author and the subject of the book were 
Masons is amply assured by the frequent allusions to Masonic terminology. 


There is a chapter devoted to the General's Masonic career, and an extract from an oration 
indicates his tender solicitation for the order. "I feel assured," says he, "that when my glass 
is run out and I shall follow the footsteps of my departed race, Masonic sympathies will 
cluster around my coffin, and drop in my grave the ever green acacia, sweet emblem of a 
better meeting.” Of vivid interest is the General's effort to get into the army in the early 
sixties and his refusal by Secretary Seward. He was disqualified on account of his being an 
Indian, but later he was commissioned and ultimately attached to General Grant's staff. He 
had known Grant years before, and as our author suggests, rendered him some signal 
service, when Grant was an obscure Captain in the West. 


Tender and touching are the pictures of the General's friendships with prominent whites, 
and his patriarchal mindfulness for the betterment of his own people has assured the 
preservation of the name of the last Grand Sachem in the historical annals of our country. 


* * * 



A BOOK OF PROMISE AND HOPE 


"The Hill of Vision," by Frederick Bligh Bond, F.R.I. B.A. Published by Marshall Jones 
Company, 212 Summer St., Boston, Mass. Price $1.50. 


At this time of writing we are entertaining in this country Maurice Materlinck and Sir 
Oliver Lodge. A contemporary has referred to the one as having an interesting message, 
and the other as being probably the most popularly known advocate of a belief in 
Spiritualism. After commenting further on the notables he cites that the solid men of 
England are interested in Spiritualism but concludes that the movement is not likely to gain 
much foothold in America. However that may be, solid men in America are from time to 
time suiprising us with declarations in regard to it, and those frequently come from 
unlooked for quarters. Notably of late, espousing the belief in Spiritualistic phenomena and 
enhancing the interest in Spiritualism is Dr. Russel H. Conwell, of Philadelphia, the eminent 
Baptist Divine. 


Our interest in the subject has not been generated by any psychic experience - we keep the 
open mind and we plead as our sole interest the desire to draw the attention of the Craft to 
such books as are the statements of the conviction of men who will ever merit our respect of 
their opinions, even though we do not agree with them. Ralph Adams Cram has written the 
introduction to the Hill of Vision. In it he sets forth his association with the author and the 
author's effort in resorting to automatic writings to locate the Edgar Chapel among the ruins 
of Glastonbury. His search, we are told, is successful as a result of the information revealed. 
Their spirit communicators, it is of interest to know, are scholastic and prophetic. Especially 
is this demonstrated in the Scripts that pertain to the great war. An admirable case is made 
out showing that a prediction of the end of the great war did actually transpire at the stated 
date. The book further contains a powerful analysis of the world forces that clashed, and its 
suggestions regarding the aftermath are extremely pertinent, and many things prophecied 
are indeed coming to pass under our very eyes. It is a book of promise and of hope whether 
arising out of the subliminal consciousness of its author or the communications of those 
who are among the Cloud of Witnesses. The scholastic and philosophic dissertations will 
afford a feast for those appreciative ones, into whose hands this little book chances to come. 



GOULD’S "CONCISE HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY" 


"A Concise History of Freemasonry," by Robert Freke Gould. Published by Gale & 
Polden, Ftd., Fondon, England. Copies may be had through the National Masonic 
Research Society, Anamosa, Iowa. Price $4.50, postpaid. 


Among the great names in Freemasonry ever to be counted with, is that of Robert Freke 
Gould. His name is always a synonym for Masonic Research. His prodigious labours so 
nobly embodied in his works are a priceless heritage to the Masonic Craft. Could he but 
speak to us he probably would say of his works that "this was the best of me for the rest, I 
have lived just as other men." It is needless for us to dwell further upon the character of his 
gifts of research as our business here is but to urge upon Masons the indispensibility of 
having some of his works in their libraries. We often hear it said that not to have read such 
and such a book is not to be a well read man, and in view of this we could say that not to 
have read certain Masonic works that are standard, is to find one's self frequently in the 
class of the limited in Masonic knowledge. To read many books is not the privilege of the 
many, but to the many a liberal education, we are told, is afforded if they but sit fifteen 
minutes a day at a five-foot bookshelf, where the best of the world's literature is available. 
The basic fault today as it pertains to growing wiser through the good use of books, is not 
our little reading, but the character of the reading that we do. 


Even so among us Masons. Our Masonic information has oftentimes been derived from 
sources that are chimerical or highly speculative. Masonry probably has suffered more from 
nonsensical, fanciful literature, loaded to bursting with impossibilities, as much as any 
movement since the dawn of time. We would submit Gould's Concise History as one of the 
great necessary corrective books of Masonry. As a brief compendium of the forces that in 
the aggregate make our antecedents, it is in a field by itself. It is not a book that will read 
like a best seller, it is rather like a profitable mine to which one can go again and again and 
bring forth treasures. It disillusions us by setting forth to us in dispassionate manner those 
movements of the past in which something of the Spirit of Freemasonry is seen, but only by 
a prodigious stretch of the imagination can be identified with the Freemasonry that we 
know. Cyclopedic in nature it is the admirable handbook necessary to the new initiate 
coming from the hands of one of the greatest Masonic scholars that will give an estimable 
appreciation of the greatness of the order to which he belongs. It is a story of the 
development of the Craft, and its trials and expansion affords it being eminently useful on 
any Masonic library shelf. 



MARCH BOOK LIST 


PUBLICATIONS ISSUED BY THE SOCIETY 


1915 

bound volume of THE BUILDER 

$ 

1916 

bound volume of THE BUILDER 

3.75 

1917 

bound volume of THE BUILDER 

3.75 

1918 

bound volume of THE: BUILDER 

3.75 

1919 

bound volume of THE BUILDER 

3.75 


1 722 Constitutions ( reproduced by photographic plates from an original copy in the 
archives of the Iowa Masonic Library, Cedar Rapids). Edition limited, 2.00 

Philosophy of Masonry, Roscoe Pound 1.25 

"The Story of Old Glory, The Oldest Flag," Bro. J. W. Barry, P. G. M., Iowa, red buffing 
binding, gilt lettering, illustrated. A story of the Flag and Masonry, 1 .25 

"The Story of Old Glory, The Oldest Flag," paper covers .50 

"Further Notes on the Comacine Masters," W. Ravenscroft, England. A sequel to "The 
Comacines, Their Predecessors and Their Successors," a Masonic digest of Leader Scott's 
book "The Cathedral Builders" and containing the latest researches of Brother Ravenscroft 
which present a very logical argument for the connection of Freemasonry of the present 
day with the Roman Collegia and traveling Masons of the early times, paper covers, 
illustrated .50 

Symbolism of the First Degree, Gage, pamphlet . 1 5 

Symbolism of the Third Degree, Ball, pamphlet . 1 5 



Symbolism of the Three Degrees, Street, 68 pages, paper covers. The lessons and symbols 
of each degree traced to their origin, in every instance that it has been possible to so trace 
them. Brother Street gives many explanations of our symbols in this little book on which 
our monitors but vaguely touch .35 

Deeper Aspects of Masonic Symbolism, Waite, pamphlet . 1 5 


* * * 


PUBLICATIONS FROM OTHER SOURCES IN IN STOCK AT ANAMOSA 


"The Builders," a Story and Study of Masonry, by Brother Joseph Fort Newton, formerly 
Editor-in-Chief of THE BUILDER $1.50 

Mackey's Encyclopaedia, 1919 edition, in two volumes, Black Fabrikoid binding 
15.00 

Symbolism of Freemasonry, A. G. Mackey 3.15 

Masonic Jurisprudence, A. G. Mackey 3.15 

Masonic Parliamentary Law, A. G. Mackey 2.15 

Freemasonry in America Prior to 1750, Melvin M. Johnson, P.G.M., Massachusetts 
1.35 

Concise History of Freemasonry, Robert Freke Gould 4.50 


The foregoing prices include postage and insurance or registration fee on all items except 
pamphlets. The latter will be sent by regular mail not insured or registered. 



* * * 


The foregoing prices include postage and insurance or registration fee on all items except 
pamphlets. The latter will be sent by regular mail not insured or registered. 


THE QUESTION BOX 


THE BUILDER is an open forum for free and fraternal discussion. Each of its contributors 
writes under his own name, and is responsible for his own opinions. Believing that a unity 
of spirit is better than a uniformity of opinion, the Research Society, as such, does not 
champion any one school of Masonic thought as over against another, but offers to all alike 
a medium for fellowship and instruction, leaving each to stand or fall by its own merits. 


The Question Box and Correspondence Column are open to all members of the Society at 
all times. Questions of any nature on Masonic subjects are earnestly invited from our 
members, particularly those connected with lodges or study clubs which are following our 
'Bulletin Course of Masonic Study." When requested, questions will be answered promptly 
by mail before publication in this department. 


INFORMATION DESIRED ON SCANDINAVIAN MASONRY 


I am making a special study of Scandinavian Masonry and would particularly like to know: 


1. The present status of Norwegian Masonry. 


2. The exact degrees worked. 



3. The requirements of candidates as regards religious belief. 


4. Would a Master Mason from the United States be able to gain admission with the 
knowledge and means of recognition at his command? 


5. The influence of Rosicracianism and Swedenborgianism, and also of the old Druids and 
Drottars on Norwegian Masonry. 

O. Ingmar Oleson, North Dakota. 


We have sent such material to Brother Oleson as we have been able to dig out of our 
Clipping Bureau and library, but this has been somewhat meagre so far as present day 
conditions in the Scandinavian countries is concerned. 


We should like to hear from such members of the Society as may have made late 
investigations on the foregoing subjects. 




ATTITUDE OF GERMAN GRAND LODGES TOWARD THE MASONRY OF OTHER 
COUNTRIES 


I should like to know on what grounds German Masons severed relations with the Grand 
Lodges of other nations during the late war. 


Henry E. Mielke, California. 



Since we have no method of ascertaining the present attitude of the German Grand Lodges 
toward the Masonry of America and other countries allied against Germany during the war 
we are publishing a report of a "Special Committee on Fraternal Relations with the Grand 
Lodges of the German Empire" of the Grand Lodge of Colorado which, we believe, will 
throw practically as much light on the question as is at this time obtainable. This report 
follows: 


For many years the published Proceedings of this Grand Lodge have set forth lists of Grand 
Representatives of Grand Lodges with which this Grand Lodge was in fraternal 
correspondence. These lists include the Grand Lodges of the United States, which exchange 
representatives; the Grand Lodges of England, Scotland, Ireland and the colonies of the 
British Empire; Egypt, Cuba, the Philippine Islands, Porto Rico and Valle de Mexico. 


These lists included a list of seven lodges under the subs title "Confederation of German 
Grand Lodges." 


The last mentioned list does not appear in the published Proceedings for 1918, for what 
reason we are not advised, as no action was taken by this Grand Lodge at the Annual 
Communication of 1918, touching the matter here involved, except the appointment of this 
committee. 


It will be noticed that the German Grand Lodges with which we were in fraternal 
correspondence are under the jurisdiction of the "Confederation of German Grand Lodges." 


Our investigation leads to the conclusion that there is a "German Grand Lodge Diet," and a 
"Grand Lodge League of Germany" in addition to the "Confederation of German Grand 
Lodges." 



We are not concerned at this time with the number of so-called Grand Lodges in Germany, 
for the reason that our fraternal correspondence was limited to those Grand Lodges which 
are listed as members of the "Confederation of German Grand Lodges." 


It has been very difficult to secure authentic information as to what action, if any, has been 
taken by Grand Lodges of the German Empire, or their constituents, upon the matter here 
under consideration. 


The following extracts taken from the March, 1917, Bulletin of the "International Bureau 
for Masonic Affairs" are presented as showing the state of mind of some German Masons 
and Masonic writers: 


"THE COILING SERPENT OF HATRED" 


!'The Masonry of Germany alone," writes a German newspaper, "deserves esteem and 
respect." 


"The war," says a German writer, "has taught us that the Masonry of our country must 
become exclusively national. It must wear a German dress, and have a German character. It 
must renounce every connection with the World's Masonry." 


"The War," says another German journalist, "has destroyed all ideas of Masonic 
Internationalism. International Masonry has become bankrupt. This opinion is general in 
all German lodges. Masonic Cosmopalitanism is, therefore, a fiction. German Freemasonry 
has no need for the 'International,' which has nothing to offer it." 


"The so-called English Masonry, which made such a boisterous entrance into the world in 
1717, notwithstanding its unimportance, was very different from what we German Masons 



represent to ourselves as models of virtue. It was a very narrow - and very English - 
organization which had absolutely no thought of a union of humanity. 


"The great extension of the idea to the whole of mankind is the work of International 
'Deutschtum'; it is only the German brain and the German heart that can carry the 
enterprise to a successful end, together with the current of the World's Union. Let us be 
frank; for us Germans, our ideal dream of Internationalism has come to naught. Instead of 
being figurants we have become actors. In future we shall also continue to practice the 
model of Masonic virtues, but we shall not carry them out into the vast world." 


"Latin Masonry does not possess a single spark of the Masonic spirit. Our Masonic ideal is 
truly German, or, in a wider sense - Germanic. English Masonry is nothing but vanity and 
sport: in it there is no trace of our spiritual comprehension. In Trance, Masonry works in 
politics, to which it sacrifices the great part of its activity. International Masonry is dead, 
and notwithstanding ah efforts to the contrary, will remain dead. Let us, therefore, be 
German Lreemasons, and work in our own way." 


And lastly, here is the concluson arrived at by a brother: "We German Lreemasons will 
have nothing more to do with international relations, and above ah we will have no official 
relations. Long live German Lreemasonry! Down with international fanaticism! It has 
deceived the world long enough and now deserves to be struck down!" Here, as elsewhere, 
it is "Germany above all." 


The views above expressed may be the extreme views of individual German Masons and 
German writers, and not fairly presentative of the mental attitude of the great body of the 
Craft of the German Empire. We sincerely hope that this is the case. 


It appears from the best information which we have that during the years 1914, 1915 and 
1916, the Grand Lodges of Gemany with which we were in fraternal correspondence, i.e., 
the Grand Lodges of the "Confederation of German Grand Lodges," passed and 
promulgated edicts severing fraternal relations with ah Grand Lodges of enemy countries. 



The declaration of war by the United States, April 6, 1917, against the German Empire, 
automatically placed the Grand Lodges of the United States under the edicts of the Grand 
Lodges of the "Confederation of German Grand Lodges," passed and promulgated in 1914, 


1915 and 1916. 


In other words, fraternal relations between the Grand Lodges of the "Confederation of 
German Grand Lodges" and the Grand Lodge of Colorado are interdicted by the action of 
said German Grand Lodges above set forth. 


We are of the opinion that fraternal relations were thus severed with the German Grand 
Lodges without the necessity of any retaliatory action on our part, and we recommend that 
they be so considered and that all necessary proceedings as to the withdrawal of 
commissions, etc., be taken by the proper officers of this Grand Lodge. 


— o- 


CORRESPONDENCE 


MASONIC PINES 


The fifty- four landmarks of the Grand Lodge of Kentucky, published in the January issue 
of THE BUILDER, opens up a new phase of Masonic penalizing in the following: 


"52. The only penalties known to Masonry are PINES, reprimand, suspension for a 
definite period, and expulsion." 



I have been a Mason for thirty years, and never before even heard of such a penalty as a 
fine warranted by Masonic law. 


Is there any authentic record of any lodge, or Grand Lodge, having fined a Mason? If so, 
for what offense? and to what puipose was the fine applied? 


This Landmark, to me, is as curious as are some of the allegations contained in the "old 
Constitutions," and I am interested to leam further of "Masonic fines." 

Gene T. Skinkle, Illinois 


(Will some of our Kentucky brethren give us a few concrete examples ? - Editor.) 


* * * 


WHAT WOULD BE THE STATUS OF FREEMASONRY UNDER "SINN FEIN" 
GOVERNMENT IN IRELAND? 


In this community, and I presume where conditions are thought to be favorable all over the 
country, we are about to witness the beginning of a "drive" to place the bonds of the "Irish 
Republic." There is a phase of this situation to which I have as yet seen no reference made, 
and which I believe is of vital concern to American Masons. What would be the status of 
the Grand Lodge of Ireland under such a government as is proposed for Ireland by Mr. de 
Valera and his followers? I have seen no contradictions to the statements that the Sinn Fein 
movement has the hearty approval and assistance of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in 
Ireland (and for that matter, in this country also) and on the other hand there is 
considerable evidence to support such statements. This being so, is there any reason to 
suppose that the Grand Lodge of Ireland would meet with any more favorable treatment 
than has been received by Freemasons in Austria, Portugal, and in some of the South 
American countries where clerical influence has controlled the government? 



I do not see how American Freemasons can remain indifferent to the possible fate of a 
Grand Lodge of such ancient and honorable traditions, and one which has been bound by 
close ties of affiliation to the Grand Lodges of the United States. I would be glad to have 
your comment on this matter. 


Francis H. Coffin, Pennsylvania. 


(This communication was received after the February number of THE BUILDER 
containing the article by Brother Trimble on "The Effect of Home Rule on Freemasonry in 
Ireland" had gone to press. - Editor.) 


* * * 


THE OPPORTUNITY FOR A BETTER KNOWLEDGE OF MASONRY 


The field of Masonic research is so vast that there is abundant room for many more 
prospectors than are at present engaged in exploring the rich veins of history, legend and 
tradition. 


Furthermore we are fortunate in having THE BUILDER to act as both promoter and 
superintendent of this work, furnishing moreover a storehouse for whatever material of 
value is obtained from the same. The quest is alluring and the assured return to the seeker 
is well worth the labor involved. 


For example, in studying the religion of the ancient Egyptians, one leams of their extensive 
use of amulets and further search reveals the fact that among these talismans against evil 
are found 



“the Square, which because of its phonetic value NEH, (protection,) 


assured divine protection to the soul. Also interpreted as an admonition 'to act rightly to 
act justly.' 


"The level, SEKHEKH, emblematical of the moderation and justice which were hoped for 
on behalf of the dead." 


Other symbols and signs are met with in the temples and ruins of buildings excavated in 
Yucatan, Mexico, among the Incas of Peru, and in the Caroline Islands. 


The sources are unlimited. The opportunity is here. Not to take advantage of it is to miss a 
great deal in Masonry. 


Curtis G. Culin, New Jersey. 


* * * 


THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES 


Readers of THE BUILDER and the editors were indeed fortunate in their opportunity to 
recently enjoy the articles by Brother Dudley Wright on the above subject. Through his 
scholarship we received a comprehensive outline of a once powerful fraternity, which 
seems to have been resurrected, or reincarnated, in the Freemasonry of today. 



A few gleanings may perhaps be permitted to one who has always been attracted by 
Eleusis and all the name connotes, and I offer them in the hope that others may find them 
useful. 


The name itself means "the Place of the Coming," as it marked the spot on the Attic coast 
where the distracted mother first landed when she had started on her long search for the 
stolen Prosperine. The Triptolemus mentioned in the earlier part of the story appears to 
have been rather a method of cultivation than a person, although he is used to represent 
mankind as a recipient of instruction in agriculture from Ceres. 


The local inhabitants marked the anniversary of this event by a festival and ceremony, 
which naturally grew more elaborate as time passed. When they were finally conquered 
by-the Athenians in one of the fratricidal wars which so long disturbed ancient Hellas, the 
festival was taken over with other loot by the victors and adopted into their own system of 
rites, as has happened into so many other customs related to man's spiritual necessities. 


Otherwise Eleusis was an obscure little town, having no other reason for its importance in 
classical history, even as Oberammergau in Bavaria has a world-wide fame for the Passion 
Play conducted decennially by its pious townsfolk, but that very respect giving valuable 
evidence of the strong religious instinct inherent in all sorts and conditions of men, which 
forces them to raise objects of worship and build revered legends wherever they are 
gathered together. 


As regards the nature of these observances, it is not wise to take the statements of the 
Church Fathers without a few grains of salt, for they were, almost all of them, notoriously 
partisan in matters of system; and there is enough other evidence without going to that 
which is so clearly prejudiced. There is also the analogy of our own lodges today, for those 
who visit much know that some delight in being "noise factories," others are not particular 
as to any perfection of word rendering in their work so long as the sense is adequately 
conveyed, and others believe in a due decorum and dignity both ceremonial and social. So 
too must the ancient hierophants and their subordinates have differed during the long 



centuries in which Eleusis prospered, and all we have today is the scattered impressions of 
those whose accounts have survived the tooth of time and the torch of the invader. 


So, while it is true that Sophocles in his "Antigone ' speaks of Bacchus as "Thou who 
reignest in the arms of the goddess of Eleusis" (Ceres), yet we are justified in believing that 
the two modes of celebration were widely different in their general character. The 
Bacchanals sought liberation from the flesh and union with their God by exhausting sense 
impressions of the most violent type. We have borrowed a word from them to convey just 
such an idea in "orgies," but this is only another form of an older Greek word "ergo" or 
"ergon" which Homer uses to indicate both the hard labors of war and the equal toil of 
peace. 


The rites of Eleusis, on the contrary, sought to lead their votaries by an inward path to the 
same goal. Certainly they had a spectacular element, for like our Freemasonry of today they 
appealed to and received almost all classes of citizens, those who take their obligations 
seriously and those who regard them as only a fanciful trimming to the social privileges and 
prestige of membership. Still, barriers existed so that homicides and others, and those whom 
we would call "mediums" were not admitted; even the autocratic Nero being unable to force 
his way in, as Suetonius tells us. 


But apart from all this, the chief value for us lies, I think, in the picture of our ancient 
brethren trying to find their way to the Great Architect in His Temple hidden so securely 
from the flippant, yet right next to every honest seeker. The ceremonies portrayed the drama 
of a great experience in the evolution of every human soul. For over eighteen hundred years 
they directed the minds of their participants to almost all that is good in modern 
Christianity, such as the life after death, the due rewards of virtue and iniquity, and the 
immanence of Divinity; only the vicarious atonement was lacking, and that idea - which had 
not then been taught - is more a concession to human frailty than a stirring of the will to 
meet bravely the trials of life, to stand as victor by resolution of the Warrior fighting within 
each one of us. 


By the end of the fourth century A.D. the Mysteries of Eleusis had run their race and 
ended their usefulness. Their physical death may be said to date from the invasion of 
Alaric and his Goths in A.D. 396 but they had been solemnly renounced by the emperor 



Theodosius some two years earlier. Unlike the Collegia Fabromm they had no Comacine 
Masters to lift the torch of knowledge from their failing hands and preserve it through the 
Dark Ages of mediaeval ignorance which eclipsed the glories of Greece, Rome, and 
Byzantium while retaining their cruelties. The shrines of Eleusis are now a pasture for 
goats and its sunny hillsides see only the perennial mystery of wooing as conducted by a 
humble peasantry. Legends remain in plenty embodied in the local folklore, even as the 
heroic figures of forgotten years reappear in the twilight tales of many another fallen race. 
But of outer physical relics there are now none save the timeworn statue of Ceres, alone 
and unworshipped, a mark for curious eyes, in the quiet hall of the Library of Cambridge 
University. Thus has history again written "Ichabod.” 


In case any reader of THE BUILDER would like to follow up this avenue of research, I 
append some sources of information that should be useful: 


Grote's History of Greece, Vol. 1. 


Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 73, 1853. 


Contemporary Review, Vols. 37 and 38, 1880. 


These contain Lenormanf s encyclopedic articles on the Eleusinian Mysteries. 


American Catholic Quarterly Review, Vol. 26, 1901, an article by Daniel Quinn. 


"Echoes of the Eleusinian Mysteries in modem Greek folklore," by G. F. Abbott in "The 
19th Century," Vol. 63,1908. 



"Greek Mysteries and the Gospel Narrative," by Slade Butler, in "The 19th Century," 
Vols. 57 and 60, 1905-6. 


N.W.J. Hayden, Ontario. 



FREEMASONRY IN THE UNITED STATES, ENGLAND, 
SCOTLAND, IRELAND, AUSTRALIA AND CANADA 

COMPILED IN DECEMBER, 1919 
BY BRO. JOHN P. KEYS. PENNSYLVANIA 


United States 


Masonry Formation of Number of Membership GRAND MASTER GRAND SECRETARY 

First Planted Grand Lodge Lodges 


Alabama 

1811 

1821 

556 

35000 

Robert S. Teague, 

Montgomery 

George A. 
Beauchamp, 

Montgomery 

Arizona 

1866 

1882 

26 

3366 

James H. Barrett, 

Douglas 

George J. Roskruge, Tucson 

Arkansas 

1837 

1838 

555 

25000 

G. W. Wells, 

Imboden 

Fay Hempstead, 

Little Rock 

California 

1849 

1850 

383 

68095 

Bradford Webster, 

San Francisco 

John Whicher, 

San Francisco 

Colorado 

1860 

1861 

134 

21257 

Frank L. Bishop, 

Denver 

Charles H. 
Jacobson, 

Denver 

Connecticut . 

1750 

1789 

112 

29417 

Wallace S. Moyle, 

New Haven 

George A. Kies, 

Hartford 

Delaware 

1765 

1806 

22 

4169 

George B. Hynson, 

Wilmington 

Harry J. Guthrie, 

Wilmington 

District of 

1793 

1810 

30 

11857 

Joseph H. Milans, 

Washington 

Arvine W. Johnston Washington 

Columbia 

Florida 

1768 

1830 

237 

14749 

T. Picton Warlow, 

Orlando 

Wilbur P. Webster, 

Jacksonville 

Georgia 

1735 

1787 

667 

50000 

Robert J. Travis, 

Savannah 

Frank F. Baker, 

Macon 

Idaho 

1864 

1867 

65 

5940 

Arch Cunningham, 

Boise 

George E. Knepper, Boise 

Illinois 

1805 

1840 

877 

176286 

Daniel G. Fitzgerrell, Normal 

Isaac Cutter, 

Camp Point 

Indiana 

1809 

1818 

565 

90000 

Charles J. Orbison, 

Indianapolis 

Calvin W. Prather, 

Indianapolis 

Iowa 

1841 

1844 

532 

62472 

W. A. Westfall, 

Mason City 

Newton R. Parvin, 

Cedar Rapids 

Kansas 

1854 

1856 

418 

51202 

Owen J. Wood, 

Topeka 

Albert K. Wilson, 

Topeka 

Kentucky 

1788 

1800 

593 

52000 

W. Carson Black, 

Barbourville 

Dave Jackson, 

Louisville 

Louisiana 

1793 

1812 

235 

20588 

Rudolph Krause, 

Lake Charles 

John A. Davilla, 

New Orleans 

Maine 

1769 

1820 

206 

33386 

Silas B. Adams, 

Portland 

Charles B. Davis, 

Portland 

Maryland 

1770 

1783 

116 

20638 

Charles C. Homer, Jr. Baltimore 

George Cook, 

Baltimore 

Massachusetts 

1733 

1733 

269 

78282 

Leon M. Abbott, 

Boston 

Frederick 

W.Hamilton, 

Boston 

Michigan 

1764 

1826 

439 

96403 

Charles B. Eddy, 

Grand Rapids 

Lou B. Winsor, 

Grand Rapids 

Minnesota 

1849 

1853 

272 

36976 

George M. Stowe, 

Wadena 

John Fishel; 

St. Paul 

Mississippi 

1800 

1818 

375 

21700 

L. A. Benoist, 

Natchez 

Frederick G. Speed, Vicksburg 

Missouri 

1807 

1821 

645 

80000 

John W. Bingham, 

Milan 

John R. Parson, 

St. Louis 

Montana 

1863 

1866 

117 

13817 

W. L. Parmelee, 

Butte 

Cornelius Hedges, 
Jr., 

Francis E. White, 

Helena 

Nebraska 

1855 

1857 

276 

28136 

John J. Tooley, 

Broken Bow 

Omaha 

Nevada 

1862 

1865 

22 

2078 

Wm. B. S. Park 

Las Vegas 

Ed. D. Vanderleith 

Reno 

New Hampshire, 

1736 

1789 

80 

11520 

Harry G. Noyes, 

Gorham 

Harry M. Cheney, 

Concord 

New Jersey 

1729 

1786 

208 

49788 

Wm. L. Daniels, 

Trenton 

Isaac Cherry, 

Trenton 

New Mexico 

1841 

1877 

51 

4370 

Alex D. Goldenberg, Tucumcari 

Alpheus A. Keen, 

Albuquerque 

New York 

1737 

1781 

872 

220777 

William S. Farmer, 

Syracuse 

Robert J. 

New York 



Kenworthy, 


North Carolina, 

1755 

1787 

445 

28584 

Henry A. Grady, 

Clinton 

William W. Raleigh 

Willson, 

North Dakota 

1863 

1889 

118 

11612 

Amil P. Lenhart, 

Bismarok 

Walter L Stockwell, Fargo 

Ohio 

1788 

1808 

560 

122343 

Isaac Kinsey, 

Toledo 

J. H. Bromwell, Cincinnati 

Oklahoma 

1853 

1874 

441 

36200 

O. L. Conner, 

Vinita 

Wm. M. Anderson, Oklahoma City 

Oregon 

1846 

1851 

149 

16607 

Earl C. Bronaugh, 

Portland 

James F. Robinson, Portland 

Pennsylvania 

1727 

1731 

508 

151693 

John S. Sell, 

Greensburg 

John A. Perry, Philadelphia 

Rhode Island, 

1747 

1791 

38 

11385 

Herbert A. Rice, 

Providence 

S. Penrose Providence 

Williams, 

South Carolina 

1735 

1737 

272 

19636 

W. W. Wanamaker, 

Orangeburg 

O. Frank Hart, Columbia 

South Dakota 

1862 

1875 

148 

13526 

James Roane, 

Yankton 

Geo. A. Pettigrew, Sioux Falls 

Tennessee 

1796 

1813 

456 . 

31434 

Thomas Steele, Jr., 

Ripley 

Stith M. Cain, Nashville 

Texas . 

1837 

1838 

900 

83600 

A. A. Ross, 

Lockhart 

W. B. Pearson, Waco 

Utah 

1860 

1872 

20 

2841 

Arthur C. Wherry, 

Salt Lake City 

F. A. McCarty, Salt Lake City 

Vermont 

1781 

1794 

103 

15246 

Edwin L. Wells, 

Lyndonville 

Henry H. Ross, Burlington 

Virginia 

1733 

1778 

328 

1 

28467 Sol. Cutchins, Richmond 

Charles A. Nesbit, Richmond 

Washington 

1852 

1858 

213 

25536 

T. E. Skaggs, 

Olympia 

Horace W. Tyler, Tacoma 

West Virginia 

1864 

1865 

153 

21650 

George S. Laidley, 

Charleston 

John M. Collins, Charleston 

Wisconsin 

1843 

1844 

285 

36386 

Charles E. Shane, 

Eau Claire 

William W. Perry, Milwaukee 

Wyoming . 

1868 

1874 

37 

4448 

Geo. E. Brimmer, 

Rawlins 

Joseph M. Lowndes, Lander 

Porto Rico 


1884 

42 

2800 

W. F. Lippitt, 

San Juan 

Jose G. Torres, San Juan 

Philippine 

Islands 

1856 

1912 

53 

3545 

Milton E. Springer, 

Manila 

Newton C. Comfort, Manila 


Great Britain 



Masonry First 
Planted 

Formation of 
Grand Lodge 

Number of 
Lodges 

Member-ship GRAND MASTER 

GRAND SECRETARY 

England 

926 

1717 

3242 

240000Duke of Connaught 

London 

P. Colville Smith 

London 

Scotland 

1140 

1736 

1168 

6974SGordan Gilnlour 

Edinburgh 

David Reid 

Edinburgh 

Ireland 

1688 

1725 

530 

1 8000Earl of Donoughmore 

Dublin 

Lord Plunket 

Dublin 

Australia 








New South Wales 

1820 

1888 

287 

25980William Thompson 

Sydney 

Arthur H. Bray 

Sydney 

New Zealand 

1842 

1890 

210 

1 5 1 OOOliver Nicholson 

Auckland 

Malcolm Niccol 

Auckland 

Queensland 


1904 

72 

2700James Stodart 

Brisbane 

Charles H. Harley, Brisbane 



South Australia 

1867 

1884 

79 

6165Eustace B. Grundy 

Adelaide 

Chas. R. J. Glover Adelaide 

Tasmania 


1890 

31 

1 800Wm.ElisonMacartney 


John Hamilton Hobarth 

Victoria 

1841 

1889 

247 

18500F. T. Hickford 

Melbourne 

Charles J. Barrow Melbourne 

Western Australia 

1843 

1900 

99 

4488Archbishop of Perth 

Perth 

John D. Stevenson Perth 


Canada 

Masonry 

Formation of Number of Member-ship GRAND MASTER 

GRAND SECRETARY 

Alberta 

First Planted 

1892 

Grand 

Lodge 

1905 

Lodges 

111 

8546W. J. Botterill 

Red Deer 

S. Y. Taylor 

Calgary 

British Columbia 

1859 

1871 

78 

8025S. J. Willis, 

Vancouver 

W. A. 

New 'Westmins 

Manitoba 

1870 

1875 

79 

7881 Alexander 

Winnipeg 

DeWolf-Smith 
James A. Ovas, 

Winnipeg 

New Brunswick 


1867 

39 

McIntyre, 

3898Hadley V. Bridges, 

Fredericton J. 

Twining Hartt, 

St. John 

Nova Scotia 

1738 

1866 

75 

745 5 George 

NewGlasgow 

James C. Jones, 

Halifax 

Ontario 


1855 

458 

D.MacDougall, 
63562William H. 

Hamilton 

William McG. 

Hamilton 

PrinceEdwardlsl'd 

1797 

1875 

16 

Wardrope, 

960Benjamin Rogers, 

Charlottetown 

Logan, 

E. T. Carbonell, 

Charlottetown 

Quebec 

1760 

1869 

66 

9500A. B. Wood 

Montreal 

W.W. Williamson, Montreal 

Saskatchewan 


1906 

135 

8286James McCauley, 

Moose Jaw , 

William B. Tate 

Regina