The lodge census of 1921: the system at its peak

1921

Counting the second government: Polk's directory for 1921 is the lodge world's fullest single portrait, taken at the moment before the Klan, the Depression and the insurance regulators each took their share. Its Secret and Benevolent Societies department, with the Masonic and Polish rosters printed beside it, names more than fifty distinct bodies meeting in South Bend: seven Masonic bodies of the Grand Lodge tradition and three of the Prince Hall tradition; nine Odd Fellow bodies of the two traditions; three Pythian bodies of the first order and two of the second; the Elks, the Eagles and their ladies, the Moose and their legion; three Maccabees tents, four hives and a uniformed division; six Woodmen of the World camps and groves and the Modern Woodmen's camps beside them; the Red Men tribe, hay loft and Pocahontas council; the Ben Hur court, the Court of Honor, the Protected Home Circle, the Royal Arcanum, the Security Benefit Association, the Sons of Herman; the Catholic Foresters, the Knights of Columbus, and the Polish Falcons' district with its five branches — and over all of it, at 136 North Main, the Supreme Nest of the Order of Owls governing a national order from this city's downtown. Add the Grand Army posts and the veterans' bodies the directory prints on the facing pages — Veterans' own subject in this history — and the military companies of the Polish parishes, and the count passes sixty organized bodies keeping regular nights in a city of 70,000. No later directory shows the like: the 1921 columns are the high-water mark of the lodge city, and most of what this account records afterward is the story of their ebbing.

Sources:

1. Polk's South Bend City Directory (1921), "Secret and Benevolent Societies," "Masonic," "Polish Falcons," and the military-organizations listings — the count made from the directory's own columns.