ABSTRACT
Fraternal organizations were among the most important voluntary social organizations of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century America, perhaps second only to the church. In America the Slovak is likely to be quickly drawn into a mutual benefit organization of his own nationality." Fraternal lodge membership grew explosively between the Civil War and the 1920s. Fraternals provided members with "a form of entertainment," "ready-made sociability, the promise of financial protection" through low cost sickness, accident, and life insurance. Slovaks' Body Mass Indices increased with age, as would be expected, but none of the family or locational variables is significantly different from zero with ninety percent confidence. Making an adjustment for the relationship between height and longevity is more difficult. Fortunately one source can be used to compare directly the heights of the earliest-born individuals in the Federation Life sample to those of a more general group of Polish-Americans.
