Hartford Workingmen's Sick Benefit Association

The Hartford Workingmen's Sick Benefit Association (also known until 1924 as Arbeiter Kranken Unterstitzungs Verein) provided an early form of disability insurance as well as burial expenses. The Association was founded in January 1896 to provide income to members in the event that they were unable to work due to illness and to provide a cemetery for members and their families.

Members were obligated to pay an initiation fee, a physician’s examination fee, banquet fees, levies when members died (to be given to the widow), and quarterly dues. In return, members received payments when they were sick, cemetery plots, burial expenses, and lump sums paid to their widows. For example, in the early 1930s, members were charged $1.75 per quarter in dues, and they received $5.00 per week in benefits when unable to work due to illness. In 1934, the dues were raised $.25 per quarter in order to create a fund to help out "Brother members who are in distress" financially. The name was changed in 1937 to The Hartford Sick Benefit Association.

The HWSBA was also charitable toward other organizations. It regularly made donations to the Talmud-Torahs, the Jewish Consumptives' Relief Society, United Jewish Charities, the Hebrew Old People's Home, and many others.

The HWSBA, although not founded as a social organization, provided some social benefits for members. Considering itself a fraternity, it provided gifts for the weddings of the member's children (to which the entire membership was often invited) and for milestone birthdays or anniversaries. It also sponsored holiday parties and testimonial banquets, the latter to raise funds.

Although the HWSBA was an economic necessity during the first half of the century, the economic prosperity and changes in working conditions following WWII probably began the decline of the group. This change was signaled by a decision at one point when income was low to discontinue the payment of sick benefits in order to maintain the cemeteries. A letter from a member to the Association in 1948 states, "[l]iving in Newington makes it almost impossible to attend meetings and keep up my interest in the association." Nor did the minutes show the same anxiety about raising funds. In early years, members were dunned for banquets, even if they didn't attend. But an Association announcement from 1949 makes it clear that its recent dinner was a great social success, and another husband-and-wife dinner would be fitted in before summer, the members to attend for free. The HWSBA became less an aid to survival and more a social activity.