In another respect the early death benefits and insurance systems were
alike. Participation in the more important and successful death systems
was voluntary. Membership in the Iron Molders' Beneficial Association,
created to pay death benefits, was, for example, entirely optional.[94]
The first constitution of the Granite Cutters provided for an additional
voluntary benefit.[95] In both of the above named unions the voluntary
idea was short-lived. In January, 1879, the Iron Molders provided for
the payment of a death benefit for all members of the craft.[96] By 1884
the Granite Cutters had abolished the voluntary death benefit and paid
it to all members.[97]

[Footnote 94: Iron Molders' Journal, March, 1871.]

[Footnote 95: Constitution, 1877 (Rockland, 1877), Arts. 1-2.]

[Footnote 96: Iron Molders' Journal, Vol. 26, May, 1890, p. 2.]

[Footnote 97: Constitution, 1884 (Quincy, n.d.), p. 11 ff.]

Thus, both the death benefit and the insurance systems in American trade
unions had their origin in the movement for mutual insurance which was
so widespread in the United States immediately after the Civil War. Only
in the railway brotherhoods did the plan result in any considerable
increase in membership. In the other unions the insurance systems were
replaced by the establishment of benefits, and these were usually
smaller in amount than the insurance systems had contemplated.[98]

[Footnote 98: The death benefits established by the Cigar Makers and
Iron Molders in 1870 and 1879 were for $40 and $100. The ordinary death
benefit in American trade unions is still a sum assumed to be sufficient