The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  The credit record of the Amish in the local financial community is enviable. An attorney who works closely with them knows of no suits against them for bad debts. A credit officer who loans millions of dollars annually to the Amish has “never had to foreclose on a bad loan.” Another banker said, “I never lost a dime lending to the Amish” in over fifteen years with a loan portfolio averaging $30 million.

  FIGURE 10.2 The Rise of Amish Businesses in Thirteen Church Districts, 1940–1990. Source: Amish Enterprise Profile (Appendix A).

  What are the sources of the surprising success of these shops with humble beginnings that eschew electric power, computers, and trucks? The roots of success are both external and internal to Amish society.34 External factors include a strong regional economy, positive public perceptions of Amish products, a sizeable tourist market, and cooperative public officials, as well as payroll exemptions for Social Security and Worker’s Compensation.

  Internal factors propelling the success include the pool of cultural and social capital in Amish society—a rural heritage of entrepreneurial values, a strong work ethic, religious values of austerity and simplicity, cultural taboos on education and certain forms of technology, family involvement, ethnic networks, small-scale operations, product uniqueness and quality, as well as an effective system of apprenticeship. All of these factors both within and beyond Amish society have bolstered their entrepreneurial success. Ample social capital was an important resource that enabled them to develop economic capital and achieve financial success.

  The success has been aided by a supportive infrastructure both within and beyond the community. Within the community, a growing specialization of skills and shops provides the expertise to develop and operate sizeable enterprises. Numerous shops, for example, specialize in adapting modern equipment to hydraulic or air power. Beyond the local skill base, an infrastructure of external suppliers and dealers brings raw materials to Amish shops and distributes finished products across the country. Some of the national lumber companies send their best sales people and finest lumber to Amish country. Likewise a network of non-Amish dealers distribute products far and wide. An annual trade market brings hundreds of wholesale buyers from across the country to inspect hundreds of Amish products in one location. In reverse fashion, outside vendors bring samples of their latest equipment to the same site for Amish shop owners to inspect. The growing infrastructure has provided an important base for the booming growth of Amish business.

  How will growing Amish businesses cope with the traditional limit on size and the restriction on using computers? One outside financial observer predicted that sizeable businesses may be sold off to outside buyers. Indeed, several large businesses have already been sold to outsiders. One successful owner reportedly sold his business for “millions” and bought a thousand acres of farmland in Indiana. He then sold some of the land back to other Amish families. In other cases, profits from selling off a business are invested in new enterprises within the community.

  Two restraints imposed by Amish culture ironically play an important role as well. The taboo on higher education gives Amish men only two possible career tracks: farming or business. With professional careers off the screen, many of the brightest and best head into business. The would-be surgeons, lawyers, pilots, professors, and computer gurus end up creating their own businesses with enormous energy and ingenuity. Moreover, the Amish insistence on small-scale operations keeps businesses small and spreads entrepreneurship far and wide across the settlement. Instead of a few large factories, hundreds of people run businesses and enjoy the delights of entrepreneurship. And for those employees who are not at the throttle of the business, they are nevertheless close to the action and part of a small team effort. In different ways all of these factors have contributed to the profitability of Amish business.

  THE FATE OF A RURAL PEOPLE

  The occupational transformation underway in the Lancaster settlement is the most profound and consequential change since the arrival of the Amish in North America. Its long-term consequences will fundamentally alter a way of life that for more than two and a half centuries has been anchored in a rural, separatist culture. One social scientist has called the small cottage industries—not to mention the larger ones—a Trojan horse in Amish society.35

  Human groups are resilient and dynamic, making it impossible to predict the long-term impact of this occupation swing. The Amish in particular are adept at creating new symbolic boundaries to protect their identity. How they will fare over the generations and what form their identity will take in the coming years is unclear, but one thing is certain: the transformation of work will change every aspect of their life. It is one thing for first-generation farmers to start successful businesses and abide by traditional cultural values; but it is quite something else to pass separatist values over several generations of entrepreneurs.

  In some ways, nonfarm jobs have enhanced the vitality of community life. For example, they have increased the Amish population density. Single-dwelling houses on small lots have greatly reduced the geographical size of some church districts, which enhances face-to-face interaction. This reinforces the oral base and social ties of Amish culture as well as the practicality of horse-and-buggy travel because family and friends are nearby. With fellow Amish closer together, the dialect constantly reaffirms the sectarian worldview and provides a buffer against modern ways. In these ways the occupational changes have embellished community solidarity, replenished social capital, and fortified Amish identity.

  Moreover, small-scale businesses and family-operated industries provide flexible work schedules that accommodate the community’s predictable and unexpected needs. Requests to attend a half-dozen all-day weddings in November, welcomed with delight by an Amish proprietor, might annoy the human resource department of a mainstream corporation. Although they may seem numerous, the “community days” taken by Amish employees hardly exceed the sick days, personal days, and holiday time used by modern employees. Small Amish industries can more easily respond to community needs for volunteer help at frolics, barn raisings, or disasters than large corporate industries. Employees in Amish businesses forgo the perks of hospitalization and retirement benefits, which increases their dependence on the ethnic community.

  In all of these ways, the new industries are truly Amish in character—designed to serve the needs of the community rather than those of the individual. And yet, paradoxically, the individual is also served rather well—with high levels of job satisfaction, a humane work environment, a high degree of control over production, and ethnic pride in the product. Alienation between employee and employer, typical of some contemporary work, is largely absent in the smaller shops.

  Although the rise of Amish shops has stalled the lunchpail threat, the long-term consequences of this shift in the structure of Amish life are unknown. Small, home-based cottage industries promise few disruptions to traditional Amish values, even in the long run. However, the ramifications of the retailing and manufacturing businesses that exceed a half-dozen employees and boast multimillion-dollar sales are a different story. Amish leaders, including some proprietors, are uneasy about the debilitating social effects of these ventures. Dependence on daily wages and the press of production schedules in Amish factories may eventually create complications with community activities, even with sympathetic managers. An employee whose household budget depends on daily wages may find it difficult to forgo a whole day’s wage to attend a wedding or frolic. Even Amish businessmen, under the stress of tight production schedules, may become reluctant to release employees for barn raisings or family reunions.

  Amish manufacturing establishments and construction firms follow typical business routines with fixed hours and policies. Traditional farm work often requires sixteen-hour workdays during planting and harvest. Church leaders worry that the spare time afforded by an eight-hour workday will lead employees, especially youth, into questionable recreation. A major Amish retailer voiced his anxiety: �
�The thing that scares me the most is the seven-to-five syndrome with evenings free. Our people, not just the young ones, have too much leisure time, and money in their pockets. In the past we were always more or less tied within a small radius of home because there were always chores. I even thought that Pop raised some weeds for us to pull.” Traditional Amish attitudes toward work and leisure will certainly change as the exodus from the farm continues.

  Family size typically declines during industrialization because children, no longer needed for farm work, become an economic liability. A decline in family size would certainly temper Amish population growth. Although Amish families have shrunk a bit from their mid-twentieth-century size, they still average six or seven children. Children currently are involved in home-based industries, but all that could change over time.

  Furthermore, even though young fathers are working within a mile of their families, they are nevertheless away from home. Despite a supportive ethnic system, some leaders worry that this will have a detrimental effect on child rearing. Children will no longer work with, or learn occupational skills from, their fathers; and mothers will carry a greater burden for child supervision. In a word, business involvements will surely change child-rearing practices.

  Gender relations are under flux as well. As noted before, women own about 17 percent of the Amish businesses. In a patriarchal society this will induce some changes as women have more access to money, other resources, and the outside world. Women, in short, are gaining more power, and this will likely impact their broader influence within the community as well. Although some couples work together in their business ventures, many do not. In modern fashion, this eliminates the preindustrial type of partnerships that many Amish couples enjoyed on the farm. As more and more work leaves the home, work-based marital partnerships will dissolve. Women, for example, typically had joint legal ownership of farmland; but if a husband owns a business, his wife is rarely a joint owner.

  The Pennsylvania German dialect will face greater contamination and decline as business involvements grow. Many business owners use English throughout the day as they interact with suppliers, consultants, sales people, dealers, and customers. More and more technical English words are seeping into the dialect. Children of business owners tend to learn English at an earlier age because of exposure to outsiders. Greater interaction with English speakers will obviously dilute the dialect over time and may shrink it to a sacred language, retained only for services on Sunday.

  Sometimes called “The Wal-Mart” of Amish stores, this large retail store at three locations sells food in large sizes and damaged containers. Solar panels in the roof help to illuminate the interior.

  The COME IN, WE’RE OPEN signs on doors of Amish stores, the growing advertising used by some enterprises, and the daily contact with customers signal an openness and involvement with the outside world that is unprecedented in Amish history. Indeed Olshan notes that it is hard to imagine a more graphic denial of the claim to separation than the come in, we’re open signs.36 Never before have the Amish interacted so freely and so willingly with the larger society. Moreover, the commercial involvements are creating an economic dependence on outside markets that challenge longstanding principles of separation from the world. Will it be possible in the long run to have growing economic integration and still retain a semblance of social separation?

  The greater interaction with the outside world will bring greater temptations related to technology. The Amish have carefully screened technology for its debilitating effects on community, but easy interaction with the larger world will make it more tempting to accept communicative technology—telephone, radio, television. As global commerce becomes increasingly dependent on the Internet, the use of computers will be a growing temptation. All of these factors will stretch, if not snap, traditional “understandings” of the Ordnung.

  The rapid migration into business is not only transforming Amish values, but it is also creating a three-tiered society. The Amish have never advocated communitarian equality, and as one Amishman noted, “There have always been a few wealthy Amish.” Nevertheless, the traditional farm economy placed everyone on equal social footing. All of that has changed. The ventures into commerce are producing a three-class society based on a triad of occupations: traditional farmers, business owners, and day laborers. The farmers have collateral wealth in their land but often meager cash in their hand. Farm families in general tend to be more conservative, reflecting the Plainer more traditional values. Day laborers in shops and farms have a steady cash flow but do not have significant wealth. Shop workers may earn $30,000 or more a year and enjoy a comfortable standard of living within the confines of Amish economy. The major business owners represent a new commercial class that heretofore has been unknown in Amish society. They bring the greatest challenge to traditional ways.

  THE NEW COMMERCIAL CLASS

  Despite an eighth-grade education, the members of the emerging commercial class are bright, astute managers. Some have taken special training in technical areas, such as hydraulics or fiberglass. Through self-motivation and experience, they have, within one generation, become proficient managers. Their stunning success in many ways validates the merits of their eighth-grade education. They understand the larger social system and interact easily with suppliers, business colleagues, customers, attorneys, and credit officers. They have learned basic management procedures and how to develop marketing strategies and calculate profit ratios. They walk a delicate tightrope between the boundaries of traditional Amish culture and the need to operate their business in a profitable manner. Reflecting on the electricity taboo, the young owner of a retail store said: “There is a whole new group of young shop owners who think some of the old traditional distinctions are foolish!” In the heat of a legal transaction, one business owner muttered to his attorney, “Business is business, and religion is religion,” signaling a breech between the historical integration of faith and work in Amish life. Such thinking among this managerial class may destabilize Amish life in several ways.

  First, managers, immersed in the daily logic of the business world, may become disenchanted with traditional Amish values. Will they, for instance, be satisfied on Sunday mornings with the slow cadence of Amish hymns and pleas for humility when their daily work intersects with the aggressive cut-throat world of commerce? How long will they pay polite deference to Ordnung rulings that obstruct rational planning and profits? One successful Amish entrepreneur was described by a banker as having “nine toes in the world and one toe in the church.”

  Second, this emergent class represents a new, informal power structure in Amish society. The financial achievements of this class earns it both respect and envy within Amish ranks. In some cases business owners have greater freedom to modernize their operations than farmers, because they are less constrained by longstanding rulings.37 The fact that many ministers and some bishops are now business owners provides both understanding and leniency with business issues. Business knowledge and organizational savvy arm this new breed of Amish with a power base that, if organized, could pose a serious threat to the bishops’ traditional clout.

  Third, business owners often feel caught in the cross fire of traditional values and economic pressures. They know that aggressive promotion will enhance profits, yet church leaders criticize and even excommunicate them if they expand too fast. Commenting on a rapidly growing business, a cynical entrepreneur said, “Wait till they start making money, then the church will throw the Ordnung at them.” One owner, under fire from church leaders for his booming business, voiced his frustration at being torn between business opportunity and small-scale values: “My own people look at my growth as a sign of greed—that I’m not satisfied to limit my volume. The volume bothers them. The Old Order Amish are supposed to be a people who do not engage in big business, and I’m right on the borderline right now. I’m a little over the line and maybe too large for Amish standards. My people think evil of me for being such a large busi
nessman and I don’t need any more aggravation right now.” However, struggling with the delicate tensions, he continued: “Identity, having a people, is a very precious thing.”

  Business owners also find themselves in fiscal quandaries that force them to use the law to protect their own interests—a traditional taboo in Amish culture. The Amish use lawyers to draw up farm deeds, wills, and articles of incorporation and to transfer real estate. However, filing lawsuits is cause for excommunication. Following the suffering Jesus, in the spirit of nonresistance, the Amish traditionally have suffered injustice rather than resort to legal force.

  Such humility defies normal business practice and makes Amish owners vulnerable to exploitation. “You know,” said a businessman, “we are in a bind, being in business. When you deal with the business community you are at a distinct disadvantage, because there are those who would take advantage of you.” Already the victims of shrewd debtors, entrepreneurs are asking their attorneys to write threatening letters and using legal means to recover unpaid debts, but they usually stop short of filing lawsuits. One Amishman, bilked by an out-of-state dealer for several gazebos, sent one of his drivers to pick them up under the cover of darkness and bring them home. Whether business owners will be able to retain nonresistant values in the midst of cutthroat competition is unknown.

  Fourth, many of the new commercial class are doing well financially. “The old graybeards have no idea how much money is flowing around in this community,” one banker noted. The more successful entrepreneurs earn several hundred thousand dollars a year.38 One business owner paid $117,000 on personal taxes alone. In another example, a furniture shop owner earned $340,000 in profit in one year. Some construction foremen may make $65,000 a year, while their Amish boss makes upwards of $200,000. Meanwhile, however, many farmers and shop workers are only earning $35,000. Given modest Amish standards of living, such income levels generate considerable wealth.