Index
Everything on this site
The full set of essays and reference pages, in the order they are best read.
Mutual aid
Friendly societies and the box with three locks
Before there was sick pay there were sick clubs, and before there was a treasurer there was a chest that three people had to be present to open.
Housing
Societies that were built to dissolve
The first building societies had a defined end. They existed to house their members, and once the last member was housed the society closed its books and stopped.
Credit
The common bond as underwriting
Cooperative credit societies lent to people with no security worth taking. What they lent against instead was membership of a group small enough to know the borrower.
Savings circles
Everyone pays in, one person takes out
Under dozens of local names, the same arrangement recurs across the world: a fixed group, a fixed contribution, and a pot handed to one member each round until everyone has had it.
Risk
Sharing a loss before anyone called it insurance
Long before there were policies and premiums there were groups who agreed, in advance, that whoever suffered the loss would not bear it alone.
Cooperation
The dividend as a savings account
Cooperative retailing was not only a way of buying groceries. For a great many households it was the only savings institution they used, and the dividend was the deposit.
Mechanics
The working parts of a small fund
Subscriptions, arrears, benefit scales, officers and books. Almost every organisation described on this site is assembled from the same half-dozen components.
Governance
The enforcement problem
A pooled fund has almost no security. What it has is sureties, fines, expulsion, and the fact that everybody knows where everybody lives.
Change
What the actuary changed
Tables, valuations, audits and registration made these funds far safer and made the meeting that had held them together largely beside the point.
Vocabulary
A glossary of pooled money
The same words carry different meanings in different traditions. These are the senses used across this site.