An Amish Paradox

by Charles E. Hurst

  Manufacturing, tourism, and agriculture form the interconnected core of industries in the county: “If we didn’t have the agriculture going on, we would not have the tourism, and if we didn’t have the tourism, we would not have all that furniture manufacturing going on. So, really, those three here in Holmes County cannot exist without each other.”13 The county even offers awards, funded by local bed taxes, to individuals and organizations that actively promote tourism in some measurable way. Some Amish state plainly that they do not like the tourism, while others see it as almost a necessary evil: “Let’s face it; we need the tourists. Unfortunately, they’ll only buy stuff they can put in a trunk—‘trunkables.’” So although Amish residents of Holmes County have a decidedly mixed reaction to tourism, county officials and some business owners actively promote it. A recent ad in a newsletter for Amish and other readers encouraged visitors to “keep Holmes County green—bring money.”14

  Bringing money has had its effect. Holmes County’s 2007 poverty rate was lower than the state’s and lower than that of the country as a whole. The poverty rates were also lower for the other counties that are part of the Holmes Settlement (see table 6.1). With one exception, the poverty rates for individuals younger than age eighteen were also lower in the settlement counties. The lower rates of poverty reflect the smaller degree of income inequality in these counties, the historically lower levels of unemployment, and an above-average increase in per capita income in Holmes County. Between 2000 and 2005, for example, the per capita income of the county rose by more than 22 percent, compared to a 13 percent increase for the entire state.

  Despite the presence of some poverty, there is low usage of government welfare programs. In 2005 Holmes County had one of the lowest dependency ranks in the state.15 Table 6.2 shows the amounts spent and participation rates for several public assistance programs in Holmes County in January 2007 and how these compare to the amounts and rates for the state as a whole. Both the amounts spent on participants in Holmes County and the rates of program participation are lower than the county average for the state. The low figures are attributable in a significant way to the high percentage of Amish and Mennonite families in the county who are eligible for food stamps, for example, but do not participate in the program. In 2000 about 20 percent of Amish families in Holmes County had household incomes below 130 percent of the poverty threshold. A 2003 survey in the county further suggested that a greater percentage of Amish than non-Amish household incomes were under $25,000 (50% versus 27%).16 Despite the lower incomes of many Amish families, they do not apply for governmental assistance. When Amish and Mennonite families are included in a county’s population, the food stamp participation rate decreases dramatically. When those families are excluded, the rate increases significantly. For example, in Holmes County, the participation rate among all who are eligible is less than 21 percent when the Amish-Mennonite segment is included in the calculations, but it rises to 53 percent when this segment is excluded, a difference of more than 32 points. This comparison suggests the major influence that the Amish have on decreasing participation in and costs of governmental programs. The map “Estimated Impact of Amish and Mennonite Populations on Food Stamp Participation Rates” shows the differences in each Ohio county. The differences noted in Holmes and surrounding counties, as well as Geauga County, all of which have significant Amish populations, are noticeably higher than those found in other Ohio counties. To increase federal funding to Holmes County, the local government has been urged to raise participation rates even though the Amish generally are not willing to participate in government assistance programs.17

  Table 6.1. Poverty and median household income estimates for counties involved in Holmes County Settlement, 2007

  Table 6.2. Amounts spent and participation rates in selected public assistance programs: Holmes County and county average for Ohio, January 2007

  The growth in Holmes County’s income has been fueled by the proliferation of nonfarming businesses and employment that has accompanied the decades-long decline in farming. As Kraybill and Nolt have pointed out, the constraints placed upon Amish individuals by their religious beliefs have forced them to be creative in developing alternatives to farming.18 Some have been more successful than others. In some cases, less successful enterprises have resulted from ill-advised trust Amish have placed in individuals who have duped them or persuaded them to pursue businesses that were either impractical or unrealistic. A few of these “Ponzi schemes” have included worm and pigeon raising and chinchilla farming.

  Broadening Ties and Reinforcing Boundaries

  Fortunately, most nonfarm businesses have been more practical and successful. There are approximately four hundred fifty Amish woodworking and furniture manufacturers in the Holmes County Settlement. In 2005 the average Amish furniture manufacturing company in the area had begun in 1994 and employed an average of just over seven workers. Overall, these manufacturers employ almost three thousand individuals, consume roughly 11 percent of Ohio hardwood lumber, and account for about 3 percent of all furniture shipments in the United States.19

  This map presents the percentage point difference in counties’ Food Stamp participation rate that occurs when the Amish and Mennonite residents are included in the county populations and when they are not included. The 32.3 percentage point difference for Holmes County indicates that when the Amish/Mennonite population is included in the calculations, the Food Stamp participation rate decreases from 53 percent to less than 21 percent, a difference of 32.3 points. Data source: “Estimated Impact of Amish and Mennonite Populations on Food Stamp Participation Rates,” report prepared for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services by Ohio University’s Voinovich School (ILGARD), 2005. Reprinted by permission.

  These firms are complemented by a diverse array of small shops selling bulk foods, quilts, fabrics, outdoor furniture, horse equipment, storage barns, fences, hardware, flowers, and lumber. Machine, welding, hydraulics, small engine, and blacksmith shops provide further services. Individual roadside sales offer produce, baskets, birdhouses, custom-made windows, crafts, and sundry other items; these vendors’ operations are among the many side businesses that dot the countryside. Many Amish produce individual items, for example, rockers and desks, which are sold to shops that bundle them into sets of furniture. Numerous stores serve as outlets for the wood products made by individual Amish craftspeople who manufacture them in their own shops but do not want to get directly involved in sales or marketing.

  The “clustering” of several stages in the manufacture of Amish furniture “helps create a competitive advantage for all” that is “tempered by a sense of cooperation” among the Amish.20 Such cooperation can occur in the joint design of pieces as well as in individual contributions to an entire furniture collection. Groups of furniture makers in the area have also worked with local stain creators to develop a common set of stains that are shared by several manufacturers. Retail stores that specialize in Amish furniture are also located near the actual manufacturers. These stores sell to customers in almost all fifty states.

  Ironically, there are Amish-owned stores whose primary purpose is to serve their Amish neighbors but whose customers are most often tourists, because these stores “are sort of quaint and sort of unique,” said a New Order respondent. Tourism thus can have contradictory effects on maintaining a cultural boundary between the Amish and the English. Two elements that feed the tourism are the very uniqueness and separateness of the Amish community; consequently, tourism encourages the Amish to maintain their cultural integrity and reinforces boundaries between the communities. However, tourism increases the social traffic between the English and the Amish communities. The interplay of the two elements helps create a dense web of interconnected economic activity, but it also “congests” and “intensifies” living for the local Amish. Finally, the increased tourism in Holmes County has created more diverse employment opportunities and has fostered Amish businesses catering to tourists.21 />
  Increased dependence upon tourism deepens the ties Amish have with outsiders, and some Amish businessmen, especially in furniture sales, have sought to solidify and strengthen their businesses by actively advertising their products. In one effort to compete more effectively with English stores and cheaper imports, almost all of the approximately four hundred fifty furniture makers in the settlement formed the Amish Country Furniture Association, raised more than two hundred thousand dollars, and hired an English advertising firm to promote furniture produced in “the furniture heartland” of the Holmes County Settlement. In 2007 the group created its own brand to make its product better known and expand its market to a larger number of urban areas.

  Furniture has been a growing and primary source of revenue in the area. An illustration of its growth is that one of the main stores, which began six years ago with its own manufacturing shop of 2,200 square feet, has since replaced the shop with a 24,000-square-foot facility. There are stores nationwide that now sell this firm’s products, and the company just began another furniture business aimed at a more exclusive and international customer base. The owner explained, “We want a global presence.” By addressing a higher-income clientele, the owner hopes to reduce the effect of competition from cheaper furniture imports. Two hundred thousand copies of a magazine advertising all the stores in the “heartland” were circulated throughout Ohio, and the plan is to expand the magazine’s readership to a five-state region.

  The formation of cooperative associations, the cultivation of niche markets, and increased use of advertising are three of the methods used by Amish manufacturers to compete successfully in the global economy. Keeping overhead costs low also helps to maximize competitiveness. To control other costs, Amish manufacturers maintain the traditional values of efficiency and minimum waste in their production of goods, through ingenious use of by-products and energy. As one Amish owner of a furniture store put it: “I’m not a farmer … but the idea is still passed on, to be conscious of the environment and not to waste stuff, that we should leave the land as good or better than when we started.”22

  The high demand for their products and the accompanying proliferation of different kinds of Amish businesses have helped to foster a high degree of interdependence within the Amish community, and the high level of communication in that community makes interdependence even denser. As soon as someone makes a new product or changes to a different style, others start to copy it. The large number of small, similar shops all vying for sales makes the search for a competitive edge all the more intense, and since the Amish do not copyright their products, there is little that can be done to restrict this imitating. Moreover, the process is consistent with Amish beliefs about “brotherhood,” which, in the view of one Amish businessman, “promotes the sharing of new products, methods, and markets, rather than hoarding them or being competitive among ourselves.”

  A workshop for a popular furniture business, where pieces for furniture are created and assembled. Photograph courtesy of Charles Hurst.

  But being competitive with outsiders “is an entirely different matter.” As we have seen with furniture clustering, cooperation among the Amish in the market of durable goods makes competitiveness with others more successful. Paradoxically, they cooperate to compete. These entrepreneurial efforts serve as incubators for new products to be made available to tourists, rendering the Amish economy anything but static.

  Another type of interaction between Amish and English is legal business contracts. As Kraybill and Nolt observe, once in a while an Amish businessman will enter into a partnership with an English businessman.23 Such a partnership makes economic sense because it allows Amish employers to have the advantage of some technology without being accused of using it themselves; it can be argued that it is the English person who owns or uses it. This reasoning does not always work, however.

  One prominent English resident of a small town in southern Wayne County has been a lumber-business partner with an Amish man for forty-five years. The men of the Amish partner’s extended family own a hardware store, a harness shop, and a furniture store. They argued that the Amish partner owned the land and the lumber, while the English partner owned the technology and the equipment. But the Old Order church did not accept the argument, and the Amish owner was constrained to sell the business “on paper” to his English partner to avoid violating the church’s rules. The family has adapted to the new arrangement, which has also worked quite well.

  The formation of partnerships with the English makes the Amish less independent and causes concern about the future. An Old Order businessman whose family owns several enterprises admitted, “We’re drifting. We’re not as self-sufficient as we used to be. The Amish are really very dependent on the English” for their furniture sales and, consequently, their livelihoods. Although these partnerships have served them well economically by helping local Amish adapt to changing circumstances in the immediate economy, they generate uneasiness about the continued inviolability of Amish culture. Being especially wary of such intrusions, the Swartzentruber craftsmen are less likely than others to have close ties with English businessmen.

  Sometimes relationships with English businesses are avoided because of concerns about the moral atmosphere at those companies. According to one Old Order business owner, whether the Amish will work for a company depends less on whether the owner is English or Amish than on the morals of the company. In some cases, Amish have left local companies because they found the culture of the firms inconsistent with Amish values. A New Order businessman noted that the Bible’s teaching against “an unequal yoke” is still the “official position of the Amish.” Because of “friction” caused by differences in values, he argued, “we consider it dangerous to yoke up with English in business.”

  Even though their work environments are sometimes different, the relationship between English and Amish businesses is often symbiotic, each supporting the other, either directly or indirectly. By overwhelming margins, for example, Amish furniture makers would not use the term Amish-made to market their products: “We don’t want to market Amish furniture. We want to market quality.” But English-owned businesses will put up signs that identify their products as “Amish-made” or “Amish grown” or “Amish crafted,” and the Amish make the products for those businesses to sell. Amish reactions to this situation vary and depend on the affiliation’s Ordnung as well as the interpretation of when religious-cultural practices must give way to economic necessity.

  In general, whether or not to advertise, and to what extent, is a difficult issue because it traps the Amish in a dilemma. While Amish craftsmen value humility and generally do not seek the limelight, their quality-made products draw attention, and advertising increases the volume of customers and profits. When the Budget, a local newspaper designed principally for the Amish, began in 1890, the Amish had to be talked into advertising in it.24

  The products made with traditional craftsmanship by the Amish are attractive to modern English customers; in this case those who are modern want something that is traditional. A conflict Amish workers face is that diligence and careful work result in products that are in demand, resulting in higher profit and more wealth, which in turn pose a threat to the meekness and simplicity that are hallmarks of Amish life. Maintaining the boundary between an acceptable lifestyle and the outside culture in the context of these crosscutting pressures is a constant struggle. In the words of a local Mennonite historian, “When you get the fence fixed here, we’re discovering there’s a hole over here. So it’s a constant work. And we don’t believe that … you will ever get to a place where you’re just rolling free.”

  Among many ascetic Protestant groups in earlier times, work in a “calling” meant that you not only did your best and did not waste time, but you also took advantage of God-given opportunities that were presented to you to advance your position. Echoing these beliefs, some Amish businesses advertise and actively market their products, because they believe do
ing so will enhance sales. Others shy away from advertising and are less interested in increasing their profits. Rather than embracing a “purely rational” attitude toward business growth, the latter group espouses a more “traditionalist” approach to their work.25 “They really just want to earn enough to make a living, because to them, what’s really important is being with their family, being in their church, so to them it’s not a career goal to be the richest man in Holmes County. They just want to make enough to support their lifestyle,” commented a local business representative who has worked with the Amish for more than a decade. The priority of family and the commitment to an integration of and balance between family and work are fundamental axioms of Amish culture. The nature and location of that balance, however, are different for different groups and often even for individuals.

  The church may even enforce a lower profit to avoid the cultural, religious, and social dangers that can attend higher profits. In one case a Swartzentruber man had been doing a very good business selling baskets alongside the road, making forty thousand to fifty thousand dollars per year. Representatives of his church had been keeping track of his sales and told him he was making too much money; he had to make some of his money available for lending to other church members at no interest. “In a situation like that, they move in and they do something about it … Among the Old Order you wouldn’t hear about making too much money but you would hear about the size of business.” The Swartzentrubers tend to have a “set law or rule” about these matters, whereas the Old and New Order do not, but have variable and vague teaching on size limits on businesses and on the charging of interest.