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Article: Fraternal and Service Organizations
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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FRATERNAL AND SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS
FRATERNAL AND SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS.
Men's business lunches and women's afternoon teas blossomed into national voluntary associations for public service around 1900. The need to do public good combined with private camaraderie to change these social occasions into local clubs, which then federated with a national organization. Service clubs flourished especially in smaller cities and towns. Their typical monthly meetings involved ninety minutes of socializing over food and thirty minutes of civic uplift. Local women's clubs mostly joined the General Federation of Women's Clubs, incorporated in 1901 in Washington, D.C., by Ella Dietz Clymer. Their ...