Statements of dues

The club that charged nothing starts sending bills — and there is a list to send them to.

Two things follow from four sentences. The first is that the club now charged dues. The 1913 book is explicit that it did not: W. D. Cheney founded it, carried the building's entire cost himself, and "no initiation fee or dues were charged". By May 1919 the reorganised club is billing its members, which is what a body does when the man who was paying for it has gone.

The second is the list. This project's standing question about the club is that it had forty members and no roll, and no roll has ever been found. This page says a membership list existed in May 1919, was in the officers' hands, and was used. That does not produce it, but it changes the search from "was there one?" to "where did it go?"

The method is worth noting too. Non-payment was to be read as resignation — a quiet way of clearing the names of men who had left Bend, or died, or lost interest during the war, without ever holding a vote. Two weeks earlier the club had bought its own building. This is the same fortnight's work from the other end: settle the property, then settle who is in.