Weekly Democrat clipping

A Most Excellent and Worthy Institution

From what Col. George F. Bowles, who is the master spirit of the Universal Brotherhood, an order that is ramifying and stretching its Briaren arms out into every section of the country, tells us the Mutual Aid Department of that organization is doing a great and good work amongst the colored people who are members of it, and the membership is rapidly increasing as its benefits and advantages become the better known. The colonel says that within the past couple of days the Mutual Aid Department has made two loans aggregating $2628.40, as follows: To the Rev. Robert Woolridge, of Natchez the sum of $2000.00, and to the Pilgrim's Rest Baptist Church of Clarksdale, Miss., $628.40. From what we are told of its workings it strikes us that this is one of the best organizations that was ever instituted for the benefit of the colored people. While stimulating them to habits of industry, thrift and economy, it at the same time places within their reach the opportunity to secure their own homes by means of easy payments covering long periods of time. Col. Bowles is quite enthusiastic over the success that the department has met with up to this time (being yet in its infancy, as it were,) and he is satisfied that as its workings and its benefits and advantages become better known, its list of membership will be in the thousands where it is now hundreds, and its usefulness be increased in a proportionate degree. Col. Bowles has been a great benefactor of his race, and is ever alive to any movement that is calculated to benefit it in any manner, morally, financially, intellectually, and every other way.