The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  CHAPTER 10

  The Transformation of Amish Work

  We’re not just backwoods dirt farmers anymore.

  —Amish shop owner

  THE LEGACY OF THE SOIL

  In the later part of the twentieth century, the Amish experienced two transformations that had the potential to destroy or bolster their destiny. Sweeping changes in the broader society forced them to grapple with two simple, but profound questions: Who will educate our children? How will we earn a living? Over the years, the answers would determine their fate. Public school consolidation and scarce farmland placed these questions on the bargaining table. The Amish would have preferred the serenity of the past, but the forces of progress were relentless. As we have seen, schooling was nonnegotiable. They refused to relinquish the education of their children. The question of work, however, was different.

  At first, the Amish refused to bargain, but gradually they agreed to deal. Ironically, they had refused to budge on public education for fear that it would lead them off the farm. Yet a few years later, a bleak economic scenario led them to hedge on their commitment to farming. Why were they willing to abandon the soil after plowing it for almost three hundred years? What factors led to this historic agreement, which could bring their cultural demise?1

  The Amish have always been a people of the land. Ever since persecution in Europe pushed them to rural isolation, they have been tillers of the soil—and good ones.2 The land has nurtured their common life. They have been stewards of the soil—plowing, harrowing, fertilizing, and cultivating it. The springtime fragrance of freshly plowed ground energizes them. They pulverize soil in their fist to test its level of moisture. Whereas all soil looks like dirt to city folks, the Amish have an eye for good soil. The rich limestone soil of Lancaster County, like a magnetic force, holds their community together and ties them to their history. They have tenaciously clung to the soil and have purchased more of it whenever possible.

  “Agriculture,” according to one leader, “is a religious tenet, a branch of Christian duty.” The divine injunction to Adam in Genesis “to till the ground from which he came” provides a religious mandate for farming.3 The Amish believe that the Bible instructs them to earn their living by the sweat of their brow. Tilling it ushers them into the presence of God. “I don’t know what will happen if we get away from the soil,” a young farmer said. “I can see where it’s not a very good thing. You get away from working with the soil and you get away from nature and then you are getting away from the Lord’s handiwork.”

  Another member argues that the Amish were unable to establish a stable life in North America until they began farming the rich soils of Lancaster County, where they could “live together, worship together, and work together.”4 A businessman explained that “good soil makes a strong church” but worries that a paradox lies below the soil’s surface. “The best soil,” he said, “holds the best people and makes them a faster people and they become prosperous and the prosperity is not good for the church and so it gets you coming in the back door.” He believes that the vitality of the Amish community depends on the quality of the local soil. But he fears that the prosperity germinating in the land will, in the long run, ruin the church with luxury.

  An Amish woman who left a farm said, “Leaving it means leaving part of my soul. When you’ve tilled the soil for generations, the feel of it can never be left behind.” Describing her former garden, she said, “On each side were wooded areas. The soil was very good, with a sand-like substance. The garden grew veggies, watermelons, and grapes to perfection. And how I loved it!”

  Although the Amish delight in working in it, the soil is not an end in itself; it is the seedbed for Amish families. A persistent theme, extolled by virtually all Amish elders, praises the farm as the best place to raise a family. Even the owners of booming Amish industries repeat the litany of praise for the family farm. Despite satisfaction in their thriving enterprises, businessmen worry about the fate of their grandchildren, growing up away from the farm. Farms provided a habitat for raising sturdy families. Parents and children worked together. Daily chores taught children personal responsibility and the virtue of hard work. Parents were always nearby—directing, supervising, advising, or reprimanding. Pitted against the forces of nature, families forged a strong sense of identity and cohesion. Moreover, the demands of farmwork kept young people at home and limited interaction with the outside world. The family farm was the cradle of Amish socialization—a cradle that until recently held the core of their way of life.

  A DEMOGRAPHIC SQUEEZE

  Although farming has always been foremost, some Amish settlers had worked as millers, tanners, and brewers. A few Amish have always worked in traditional crafts, such as blacksmithing, carpentry, painting, watch repair, and furniture making.

  Nonfarm work evolved gradually after the Depression of the 1930s. As cars gained widespread acceptance and horse travel declined, the Amish developed their own carriage and harness shops and began shoeing their own horses. Amish shops also began repairing horse-drawn machinery in mid-century as tractor farming gained in popularity among other farmers. A few small carpentry shops also developed in the 1950s. The third phase of nonfarm work evolved in the 1970s, when more sizeable cabinet and welding shops emerged.5

  By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the Amish were caught in a demographic squeeze. Their population had doubled between 1940 and 1960. To accommodate their growth, they bought more farms in the center of the settlement and also began moving into southern Lancaster County.6 In fact, one public official reported that between 1920 and 1940 the Amish bought every farm on public sale near the hub of their settlement except one, which was sold on a Sunday.7 The pressure peaked in the late 1960s when eighty young couples started housekeeping in one year and only ten farms were sold on the open market.8

  The Amish were not the only people desiring land. Lancaster County was the fastest growing metropolitan area in Pennsylvania between 1960 and 1970. Suburbs began nibbling away at prime farmland. The number of tourists jumped from some 1.5 million in 1963 to nearly 4 million a decade later.

  Lancaster County was enticing new industry because of its dependable, anti-union labor force as well as its proximity to eastern metropolitan markets. Some thirty-six new industries entered the county between 1960 and 1970.9 They, of course, needed land and attracted employees who needed housing.

  All of these factors increased the squeeze on farmland. The cheap land of the Depression years had turned into gold. In 1940 the Amish were paying between $300 and $400 per acre for farmland.10 By the early 1970s, farmland had escalated to $2,000 per acre, and it more than doubled again to $4,550 per acre by 1981, and again to $10,000 per acre by 2000.11 The Amish found themselves in a serious quandary by the mid-1970s: How could they farm without land? At first blush, tourism, suburbs, and industrial expansion were the likely culprits, but that was only half the story. Even if development had frozen, the rapid growth of the Amish themselves would have forced the crisis. In short, there were simply too many babies for too few farms.

  THE LUNCHPAIL THREAT

  Without a high school diploma, the Amish could not pursue professional jobs. If they left the farm, their training held them to manual work. By 1960, some Amish were already working in shops, warehouses, and even factories. Higher wages made nonfarm work so attractive that a few even rented out their farms to take on “outside” jobs. Church leaders were alarmed. A bishop contended that “the lunchpail is the greatest threat to our way of life.” Working in factories was not only frowned upon, it was in fact a test of church membership in the 1940s. In the school controversy of the late 1930s, the Amish repeatedly promised state legislators that they would keep their youth on the farm. Indeed, church members were excommunicated in that era if they worked in cities or nonfarm jobs.12

  When some Amish began leaving the farm in the 1970s because of scarce land, a bishop worried: “Leave this one generation grow up off the farm, and their sons won�
��t want to farm.” In 1975 another bishop articulated his fears this way: “Past experiences have proven that it is not best for Amish people to leave the farm. If they get away from the farm they soon get away from the church, at least after the first generation.”13 The lunchpail threat intensified in the 1960s when mobile home factories were built on the edge of the Amish community to attract hardworking, anti-union Amish and Mennonite employees. By the early 1970s, more than one hundred Amishmen were carrying their lunchpails to several nearby plants. But a few years later, an economic recession closed several of the trailer factories, to the quiet applause of Amish leaders.14

  FIGURE 10.1 The Demographic Crisis in the Lancaster Settlement

  Why did the factory system, symbolized by the lunchpail, frighten Amish leaders? First, they believed that removing the father from the family during the day would weaken his influence. Without watching their father at work, Amish youth would lose a significant role model. Furthermore, fathers could not supervise children from a factory. Second, the factory might subvert the father’s own values. Worldly values, conveyed by non-Amish employees, would undoubtedly tarnish even the most faithful member who spent five days a week in a foreign culture. Third, factory employment threatened community solidarity and social capital. Personnel policies, time cards, and production schedules would make it difficult to participate in community events such as funerals, weddings, barn raisings, and other mutual aid activities. Fourth, the fringe benefits of factory employment—health insurance, retirement funds, and life insurance—would undermine a community that thrived on mutual dependency. With such perks, who would need the support of the church?

  The factory, in short, would fragment the family, deplete social capital, and eventually ruin the community. An elderly bishop summed up the dilemma: “It’s best for a Christian to be on the farm. When they carry a lunchpail and go to a factory and some places it’s not too good, men and women working together and so on. We’d rather have them on the farm but the land just doesn’t reach around anymore.”

  Compared to the stormy school crisis of the 1950s, the occupational quandary of the 1970s was a quiet battle with little publicity or government meddling. But the long-term consequences of Amish work were just as important as schooling. Amish sages knew intuitively that factory work was dangerous. Even some experts predicted that without agriculture, “it is doubtful the Old Order Amish could survive.”15 Nevertheless, the babies kept coming as the acres declined. Was there no escape from the dilemma? The U.S. Supreme Court would not bail the Amish out this time; they would have to find their own way out. Given the harsh facts on the bargaining table, the Amish—with great reluctance—decided to talk.

  SIZING UP THE OPTIONS

  Was there any middle ground between the stark choice of factory work or financial collapse? There were a variety of alternatives: birth control, migration out of the United States, migration to other regions of the county and state, subdivision of farms, and nonfarm work. Birth control was not a likely option. Although the church had no official position, artificial contraception was generally considered interference with God’s will and the natural order. Despite those sentiments, some families use various forms of birth control; however, sizeable families of five to seven children remain highly esteemed. Migration to other countries was never discussed, but the other alternatives were thinkable.

  In the midst of the school controversy in the early 1940s, new colonies were established in Lebanon County, some forty miles north of Lancaster, and in St. Mary’s County, Maryland.16 But for the next twenty-five years, Amish migration to other counties stalled. In the 1950s, the Amish began to sprawl southward in Lancaster County, but by 1980 land was becoming scarce there as well. Migration within the county provided only temporary relief from the demographic squeeze. In the mid-1960s, land pressures as well as internal unrest prompted some families to start new settlements in other counties of the state.17 Land in the new areas could often be purchased for one-fourth its price at home, enabling a farmer to sell a Lancaster farm and buy three or four elsewhere. Nearly a dozen new settlements were spawned from Lancaster by 1980, as shown in Appendix D.

  The outward migration abated in the early 1980s, but by then roughly 15 percent of the Lancaster settlement had moved to other counties of the state.18 Outward migrations began again in the 1990s—this time to Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. Indeed, by 2000, some 10,000 descendants of Lancaster were living in twenty-eight other settlements. But the migrations still did not relieve the pressure of growth at home.

  Subdividing farms provided a second solution. A farm of seventy acres, divided in half, could support two families. Larger farms were sometimes split into three sections. A new house and barn were often erected on each section. A subdivision was frequently accompanied by a shift to specialized farming—vegetable farming, game animals, dog breeding, chickens—that required less land so the family could still cling to the farm, or at least to a corner of it. Outward migration and the subdivision of farms kept families on the land and perpetuated their home-based culture. But these adjustments were not enough.

  With the friendly options exhausted, the Amish were finally forced to negotiate. Unwilling to leave Lancaster County en masse, they began to search for nonfarm work. It was not a formal decision by any means, but by 1980 the signals were clear—the Amish would leave the farm rather than migrate. By the 1980s, they were pressuring township supervisors for commercial zoning in the hub of their settlement—a sure sign that they had decided to shift occupations instead of to flee.

  PRESERVING HOME WORK

  Although the Amish were willing to negotiate the type of work, they refused to budge on the conditions of employment. First, they wanted to work at home or as near to it as possible. Second, they wanted to control the nature and content of their work. Third, they insisted that the work, whenever possible, stay within their ethnic environment. Finally, the work had to remain within the moral order of Amish culture. For example, photography, television repair, jewelry shops, and hair dressing were unthinkable.

  Rejecting the lure of factory jobs, the Amish reluctantly agreed to leave the farm if they could retain control of their work. Small shops based at home made a perfect compromise. The Amish would leave their plows behind, but they would not work in large industrial factories owned by outsiders. Instead they would create their own Amish mini-factories—small shops and cottage industries—and keep them nearby home.

  TABLE 10.1

  Primary Work of Adults (aged 25–65) by Gender (in percentages)

  Today, about two-thirds of the Amish have abandoned their plows, but some of their jobs support the farm economy.19 Involvement in nonfarm jobs varies greatly among church districts. In the heart of the settlement, with scarce land and easy commercial access, nonfarm jobs climb beyond 90 percent in some districts. In more rural areas, on the southern fringe of the county, the majority of men are still farming.20 The percentage of men involved in farming varies by age. About half of the mid-age men are farming, but only a third of those who are under thirty or over fifty years of age are tilling the soil. Nearly 85 percent of adult women consider homemaking their primary work, but many of them have secondary jobs related to crafts, quilts, produce markets, retail stores, or domestic work. About 15 percent find their primary employment in such roles.

  The location of Amish work is cross tabulated by gender in Table 10.1. Perhaps the most striking fact is that although fewer Amishmen are plowing fields these days, 60 percent of them are still working at home. Among women the number working at home rises to 91 percent. About 15 percent of the men, but none of the women, travel with mobile construction crews.

  Many people are working at or near home even though they are working in cottage industries and retail stores. Thus, despite the transformation, Amish work, for the most part, remains near home.

  Even more striking in light of societal trends, married women still work at home. One Amishwoman was very blunt: “You
shouldn’t be in business if you’re married.” It is rare to find married women with children who hold a full-time job outside their homes. Many mothers have sideline jobs—such as quilting, baking, craft work, and sewing—but these are usually based at home. Many women are involved in the quilting industry, which often involves several operations at different locations as well as “middle women” who buy and sell quilts.21 Women and children often tend small roadside stands on their property that sell produce, baked goods, and crafts to tourists and non-Amish neighbors. Some married women hold part-time jobs cooking in restaurants or tending market stands in urban areas several days a week. Increasingly, women are becoming involved in a variety of businesses. Indeed, 17 percent of the hundreds of Amish businesses are owned by women.22

  Many single females hold a full-time job away from home. Young women who work before marriage and older single women are typically employed outside their home. One older woman harnesses her horse on Sunday morning to travel to church, but on Monday she walks to a small real estate office where she works as a receptionist. She operates the office computer, which in a split second can display real estate listings throughout the country. The more typical pattern is for single women to work as teachers, cooks in restaurants, domestics in motels, bakers in bakeshops, or salesclerks in Amish stores and market stands. Others clean the homes of their non-Amish neighbors.