sought to be charged with the certificate issued by the former corporation. By § 4 "said corporation shall have a constitution, and shall have power to amend the same at pleasure; provided, that such constitution or amendments thereof do not conflict with the laws of the United States or of any State." Amendments to the laws of the association were adopted this same year, 1894, by one of which the existing rates were retained and it was provided that each member of the endowment rank should continue to pay the same amount each month thereafter so long as he remained a member, 'unless otherwise provided for by the Supreme Lodge or Board of Control of the endowment rank.' A similar provision was made in 1900, but the rate for the age of 48 was made $2.45 or $7.35 for the $3,000 in the certificate. The plaintiff paid the rates as established from time to time.

The split came in 1910. In that year the corporation passed a law providing for a rerating of every member of the Fourth Class on January 11, 1911, in accordance with his attained age and occupation, under which the plaintiff's monthly payment would be raised to $34.80, unless he accepted one of several options offered to him. It should be added that his occupation played no part as it was not ranked as hazardous. He was notified, but declined to pay or otherwise accede to the change. On January 20, 1911, he tendered $22.05 for the months of January, February and March of that year, the tender was refused and in May this suit was begun. The Court of Civil Appeals affirmed a judgment for the plaintiff on a verdict directed by the trial court, modifying it so far as to confine the recovery to payments made since the issue of the certificate of 1885, with interest. An application to the Supreme Court for a writ of error was refused.

There is a motion to dismiss but as the case necessarily will turn on the construction of the present charter, an act of Congress, and the defendant justifies under it, the

motion is denied. Creswill v. Knights of Pythias, 225 U. S. 246, 258. There is no ground for treating the plaintiff as not having come into the new company by virtue of §3. That section provided for his doing so and when he was treated and acted as a member the presumption is conclusive that he did so in pursuance of the law that authorized it.

We assume without argument that by § 3 of the charter and his assent thereto the plaintiff became a member of the organization with whatever rights he might have as such. It is not to be conceived however that the charter was intended to create a privileged class or that the right of the corporation to amend its laws was less in his case than in that of one joining after 1894. As to later members we can have no doubt, notwithstanding the differcnce of opinion in state courts, that the right to amend extends to a change in the rates to be paid. Persons who join institutions of this sort are not dealing at arm's length with a stranger whose mode of providing for payment does not concern them, but only his promise to pay. They are joining a club the members of which have to pay any benefit that any member can receive. The corporation is simply the machine for collection and distribution. Its charter expressly provides by § 5 that it 'shall not engage in any business for gain; the purposes of said corporation being fraternal and benevolent.' It is manifest therefore that it would be a perversion of its purposes, if through some ambiguity of phrase the necessary source of benefits were closed in favor of certain members while their right to insist upon payment remained. The essence of the arrangement was that the members took the risk of events, and if the assessments levied at a certain time were insufficient to pay a benefit of a certain amount, whether from diminution of members or any other cause, either they must pay more or the beneficiary take less.

The same conditions applied to the original corporation, and the plaintiff testifies that he understood them. He says in so many words that he knew that the only source of revenue to meet his and other policies was from assessments of the insured, and that if, after a proper rate was fixed for a membership of five thousand, the membership fell to two thousand, the rate would have to be increased if the obligations were to be met. The statute and the words of the law of the company under which the plaintiff entered the Fourth Class should be construed in the light of these considerations. In determining his rights it is important to bear in mind that there was no specific promise to him like the promise to pay in the certificate but that his whole reliance is upon a law of the corporation, and that he had notice that all laws of the corporation were liable to be repealed. The only language in the certificate bearing on the matter pointed to possible changes, one condition being the payment of all monthly payments as required.' It was obvious and understood that to pay a benefit an increase in the assessment might be necessary. In our opinion the present charter like the first must be construed to authorize such an increase and the clause in the law of 1884 relied upon-that the payments should continue the same so long as the membership continued-was not a contract but was a regulation subject to the possibility inherent in the case. More than ambiguous words in an amendable law would be needed to establish a departure from the ground on which the relation of the parties obviously stood and to create a privilege that attacked the corporation in its very life. Compare the language in Royal Arcanum v. Green, 237 U. S. 531, 542, and the same case below, sub. nom Reynolds v. Royal Arcanum, 192 Massachusetts, 150, 157.

The persons incorporated in 1894 were described as officers and members of the Supreme Lodge then existing, that is, of a voluntary association, and it was the rights

and duties of that association that the defendant assumed, if we are to take the words in their literal sense. We spend no time upon the inquiry what those rights and duties were, because, as we have said, we assume that the plaintiff acquired a standing in the new company. But in the second stage as in the first the law establishing the Fourth Class had received a practical construction as being open to change, by the continued rating of the plaintiff at 48 instead of 42 as at first, and although the plaintiff says in a general way that he protested, he paid, and he had notice of what the earlier companies asserted to be their rights when he came into the new one that asserted the same and put them in force as against him. We mention these details to show that the plaintiff suffers no injustice and meets with no surprise when we state our opinion that the assumption under § 3 of the new charter of a relation with the plaintiff that originally arose under a law of the old corporation was not the assumption of a contract for immutable assessments, and decide that the power to amend given by § 4 included the power to raise the rates to such point as was necessary for the corporation to go on.

The plaintiff's certificate did not absolutely promise to pay $3,000 if the plaintiff had performed the conditions. It contained a proviso by which if one monthly payment by members holding an equal amount of endowment should not be sufficient to pay the sum, the amount of the monthly payment should be the benefit received. If all other Fourth Class certificates were in similar form it may be asked whether it was reasonable to increase the assessments rather than to allow the payments to abate. The answer in addition to what we already have said is that unless the corporation continued to make substantial payments at death it could not go on. On the evidence, at the end of 1910 the plaintiff's certificate was worth very little or nothing. It well may have been.

thought better to rehabilitate the class rather than to allow their certificates to become waste paper. At all events that was the prevailing view in the republic to which the plaintiff belonged, and as we have said the charter authorized it to be enforced. It is unnecessary to discuss the options that were offered in the alternative, but it is proper to remember that for many years the plaintiff has been insured, and although by what he is not likely to regard as bad fortune his beneficiary has not profited by it, she would have if he had died. As he happily has lived, he has to bear the burdens incident to the nature of the enterprise into which he went open eyed. Judgment reversed.

SOUTHERN SURETY COMPANY v. STATE OF

OKLAHOMA.

ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA.

No. 124. Submitted December 9, 1915.-Decided June 12, 1916.

By reason of the conditions arising out of the presence of the Five Civilized Tribes no organized territorial government was ever established in the Indian Territory; and, in the absence of an organized local government, prosecutions for crime were, regardless of their nature, commenced and prosecuted in the name of the United States. Adultery is an offense against the marriage relation and belongs to the class of subjects which each State controls in its own way. Adultery is a punishable offense only when the common or statute law of the State so makes it, and where punishable, it is cognizable only in the courts of the State.

Forts, arsenals and like places within the exterior limits of a State, but over which exclusive jurisdiction has been ceded to the United States, are not regarded as a part of the State but are excepted out of

it.