The Amish
Page 37
Occasionally, church leaders have tried to channel occupational change. In the 1950s, a number of men in the Arthur, Illinois, community obtained driver’s licenses so they could operate trucks for their non-Amish employers. Fearing this would lead to car ownership, bishops strongly urged members to end outside employment and instead develop their own businesses. The church-dictated change in Arthur was an exception to the rule, however, because employment patterns in most Amish communities change with little formal direction from church leaders.
Local economic and demographic contexts often shape choices. Yet the mere presence of outside jobs in rural communities is not always enough to lure Amish workers. Objections to union membership or contracts that require high school credentials tarnish the appeal of some industries. In north-central Indiana and in Geauga County, Ohio, Amish men are heavily engaged in factory work because nonunion shops are common in those locations, and English employers waive company preferences for high school graduates. In contrast, industrial jobs abound in the factory city of Kokomo, Indiana, but local Amish avoid them because the workers are unionized or the employers hire only high school graduates.
In those places where Amish men do gravitate to industrial employment, they find it appealing because the factory makes few demands of off-duty workers. Amish employees see their work as a means to an end, a way to make a living, rather than a source of identity in the way that mainstream Americans might. Few Amish women work in factories, but those who do leave their jobs when they marry. Although Amish men of various ages punch industrial time clocks, younger men—age thirty-five and under—are more firmly ensconced in industry. Furthermore, some men in their fifties exit the factory for less stressful work in small shops or other sideline jobs.5
Unlike farming, most outside jobs offer a predictable income. But they also have a down side. All the profits stay in English pockets, and the social ethos is not always conducive to Amish values and practices. Although some employers are willing to let Amish workers take time off for community activities, a rigid production schedule can make this difficult. Moreover, non-Amish employers are required to deduct Social Security taxes from Amish paychecks, tempting Amish workers to later claim some returns, despite the church’s opposition. Outside employers also typically offer commercial health insurance and pension benefits, which can undercut the church’s long-held conviction that members should help one another bear the burdens of medical costs and care for the elderly. Another consequence of high-paying jobs in English factories is that they force Amish-owned business to dramatically increase wages in order to attract Amish employees.
Finally, when Amish employees are heavily clustered in a particular industry, they risk widespread layoffs if that sector of the economy contracts. During the national recession of 2008–2009, for example, the recreational vehicle industry was hit severely, and hundreds of northern Indiana Amish men were left out of work. For months, households lived from their savings, turned to relatives for support, or, in a few cases, took the unprecedented step of applying for public unemployment assistance. By late 2009 most of the region’s manufacturers had begun to rehire, but some former factory employees had other ideas. As Mervin Lehman, an Amish man from Shipshewana, explained, “Our eyes were opened in this recession. All our eggs were in one basket, and we can’t have that. So we need to diversify [and] … open small businesses.” After Lehman was laid off from his factory job in 2008, he started making handcrafted mattresses in his garage. By 2011 his infant business, Heartland Mattress LLC, had “expanded the garage to a 3,600-square-foot manufacturing facility and small showroom.” The business is a family affair, with Mervin’s wife, Naomi, managing the accounts and their sixteen-year-old daughter helping Mervin stitch queen-size mattresses that sell for $279 to $1,399.6
An Amish Industrial Revolution
Heartland Mattress represents the most common Amish alternative to farming: small business entrepreneurship. The Amish stayed on the sidelines of the American Industrial Revolution for a century (1875–1975) by perpetuating a small-farm lifestyle. Nevertheless, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, many Amish communities experienced an industrial revolution of their own (e.g., see fig. 16.1). It was hardly an upheaval by the standards of automated mass production, yet Amish people set up hundreds of their own businesses and hired their fellow Amish as workers.7
The foray into businesses was spurred by several factors: the rising cost of land, livestock, and equipment; the decreasing profitability of small-scale agriculture; and the growth of the Amish population. In some settlements there were simply too many Amish and not enough land.
The rise of Amish-owned businesses was a bargain with modernity. The Amish in many areas said, in essence, “We will leave the farm, but instead of punching time clocks in outside factories, we will build our own microenterprises where we can control the terms and conditions of our work and pocket the profits of our toil.” This family-friendly bargain meant that many shops could be based at or near home, where grandparents, parents, and children could work together as a productive unit.
Nonfarm work had another appealing incentive. Setting up a farming operation in some settlements could cost a young couple upwards of $2 million dollars in land, animals, and equipment. By contrast, a few thousand dollars was enough to prime and nurture a small business. Working as a laborer in an English factory or an Amish shop required only a lunch box and the cost of transportation, of course. In several settlements, advocates of home-based businesses organized revolving loan funds to supply seed money for Amish microenterprises. The aim, one supporter said, is “getting fathers established at home so they won’t have to work away.”
Amish-owned businesses have proliferated much more rapidly in some settlements than in others. But even in newer communities, ostensibly established by migrants looking for farmland, many households start small shops. Most Amish businesses are owned by single proprietors, although some are organized as small partnerships or limited liability corporations. The estimated twelve thousand enterprises can be sorted into two broad types: cottage industries that focus on stability and small businesses that pursue profit and growth.8
The cottage industries, with fewer than five employees, are usually family-related, home-based operations such as small engine repair shops, greenhouses, cabinet shops, quilt shops, carriage or bicycle shops, auction companies, small retail stores, and so on. The owners of these businesses are content with providing a modest income for family members and perhaps a few other employees. Preserving traditional values and keeping the family together, rather than making a profit, are the primary goals of cottage industries. These family-based operations have a custodial and non-entrepreneurial bent that reflects the traditional Amish values of humility and modesty. They are successful, by Amish standards, simply because they provide a stable income for family members and neighbors who work together at or near their homes.
FIGURE 16.1. Rise of Amish Businesses in Thirteen Districts of the Lancaster Settlement, 1940–1990. Source: Kraybill and Nolt, 2004, 37.
By contrast, growth-oriented small businesses typically have five to thirty employees. They require more investment capital, generate larger sales, and have owners who are more entrepreneurial. As Erik Wesner has shown, these owners, unlike owners of cottage industries, are more competitive, take more risks, experiment more, articulate a vision for growth, emphasize efficiency and productivity, and seek profits to reinvest in their businesses.9 Sales volumes range widely, but it is not unusual for larger firms to have annual revenues well above $10 million.
This small Amish business is a sawmill operation in northern New York State. The young family lives in the white “skid house” that can be moved from one site to another. As a family becomes stable economically, they may build a permanent home or acquire a farm or other business. Donald B. Kraybill
Small or large, many Amish businesses engage in mobile work that most often involves construction-related trades or retail sal
es at farmers’ markets. Construction crews—typically involved in carpentry, excavation, roofing, and other building trades—take a wide range of commercial and residential jobs, from new construction to remodeling. They build, finish, or do subcontract work on barns, industrial buildings, single-family homes, apartment complexes, restaurants, and stores—even structures associated with Amish-themed tourism. Around Dover, Delaware, many Amish men work in masonry and related trades, ironically contributing to the suburban sprawl that has prompted many Amish families to move away. In other parts of the country, some work crews commute two or more hours one way, sleeping overnight in local motels when necessary.
Amish people sell their products in markets in many regions of the country. In the eastern seaboard region from northern New Jersey to the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, Amish vendors and workers operate dozens of farmers’ markets, and some Amish entrepreneurs even own or lease large buildings and rent market stands to fellow Amish and non-Amish retailers. Other Amish sellers of products such as baked goods, deli items, produce, and preserves rent stands in English-owned markets. Like construction crews, some vendors travel only a few miles, while others travel several hours one way or stay overnight, depending on the distance.
Clearly, although church leaders may have hoped the rise of Amish businesses would eliminate lunch pails, many Amish workers still spend their days far from home and family. Fathers and mothers may work separately from each other in jobs that remove one parent from the homestead, introducing sharp distinctions between the lives of husbands, wives, and children.
The Power of the Ordnung
Differences in the Ordnung from one settlement or affiliation to another have produced a diverse pattern of Amish participation in nonfarm employment. The Swiss Amish of Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, for example, prefer mobile construction work because their Ordnungs severely restrict technology in home shops. About 65 percent of male breadwinners in the Adams County, Indiana, settlement, an ethnically Swiss settlement, work in construction away from home and under the more permissive canopy of English work sites.10
In all Amish groups, technology rules are usually more lax for those who work away from home. Like a factory employee, a market standholder or subcontractor works on alien turf, usually serving non-Amish customers. By sharply separating their work from their home, mobile workers in many groups are freer to use an array of electrical tools.
The Ordnung also limits or expands the range of entrepreneurial options, depending on the particular affiliation. Some ultraconservative groups require those engaged in carpentry to accept only jobs within buggy-driving distance of home. Amish construction companies in higher communities, however, often have at least one English employee or co-owner who supplies a truck or van. Prohibitions on electric generators in some affiliations have eliminated the possibility of starting welding or machine shops, channeling entrepreneurs into starting woodworking establishments that can operate without electricity.
A flexible Ordnung in liberal settlements allows hydraulic and pneumatic power, electric generators, forklift tractors, cell phones, and third-party access to computers, websites, and e-mail. These technologies permit sizable shops to produce vast quantities of kitchen cabinets, household furniture, farm machinery, and fabricated plastic products, to name just a few. At the other end of the spectrum, traditional groups restrict shop power to a small gas engine that spins a line shaft to operate belt-driven machines, severely reducing their capacity. Moreover, prohibitions on electric inverters and, in some cases, even battery-powered calculators, also diminish output. Such restrictions nudge conservative shops toward making crafts such as wooden baskets that favor intensive handwork over volume.
Products and Services
The diversity and vitality of Amish-owned enterprises is astonishing to many outsiders. Plain Communities Business Exchange, a monthly trade newspaper “serving plain communities everywhere,” according to its masthead, chronicles business activities and trade shows, and includes advice columns as well as advertisements from suppliers, wholesalers, and retailers of Amish products across the continent.11 A 400-page business directory produced in one settlement features dozens of four-color ads for Amish firms selling products ranging from solar panels and office furniture to manure spreaders and playground equipment.12 Likewise, the annual directory of Amish Woodworkers of America is filled with color ads for furniture and a listing of hundreds of shops and manufacturing companies in nine states, with a heavy concentration in Ohio and Indiana. The directory aims to help “Amish woodworkers from all over the United States network among each other, buy and sell products across state lines and compete against foreign competition.”13
Dominant types of Amish businesses include furniture making, farm equipment manufacturing, and construction firms specializing in residential or commercial buildings, as well as related trades such as roofing, plumbing, and painting. Amish retail stores that sell food, clothing, crafts, hardware, equipment, and tools—purchased wholesale from Amish and non-Amish sources—also comprise a sizable segment of business activity. A large number of Amish products are sold through national networks of dealers and wholesalers (Amish and English) who market them across the country.
Some Amish businesses are linked to the global economy. One Amish entrepreneur, for example, buys hand-braided rye straw from China and distributes it to Amish hat makers in at least a dozen states. An Amish inventor of LED lighting fixtures for Amish use relies on Chinese factories to manufacture his products. And European buyers purchase small-scale farm equipment produced by Amish shops.
Small shops in Colorado, Missouri, Maine, Kentucky, Wisconsin—and other places where the Amish are found—make and sell a wide range of goods to both Amish and English customers. Some entrepreneurs operate cleaning or food service businesses. From dry goods stores and welding shops to leather products and furniture making, Amish enterprises involve male and female entrepreneurs. Table 16.1 offers a sample of the hundreds of types of Amish-owned businesses and services.
The following descriptions illustrate in more detail the broad range of enterprising activities in which Amish people are involved:
• An innovative precision machine shop near Fort Wayne, Indiana, makes brass fittings and couplings for major industrial clients as well as decorative items for gift shops across the country.
• Two unmarried sisters in New York run a thriving stand selling produce and quilts. Their business is built on face-to-face interaction, yet their quilts have been shipped internationally.
• In Pennsylvania, a woman who enjoys flowers, meeting people, and business, developed a booming dried flower enterprise. She sells the flowers and other gift items in a retail store on her property and through mail order.
• A large firm in Ohio manufactures horse-drawn equipment that is sold to both Amish people and non-Amish horse enthusiasts around the world.
• Without using a cell phone or e-mail, an Amish man developed a food retail business with $1.8 million in sales, using mail order and a national network of distributors.14
• An Indiana couple started a bakery in their home. Their operation grew rapidly, and their products soon found their way to downtown Chicago. Although they sold the company to English neighbors who opened two retail outlets in the Windy City, the Amish couple still runs the day-to-day operations.15
• East of Kalona, Iowa, an Amish man operates a large “bent and dent” store for both Amish and non-Amish patrons. The store sells heavily discounted bulk-sized dry and canned foods that have been removed from the shelves of grocery chains because of damage to the containers or soon-to-expire “sell by” dates.16
Local conditions often shape the direction and limits of off-farm work. Proximity to major markets or interstate highways may invite certain types of business, as might the historical tradition of a particular settlement. Long-term relationships with non-Amish neighbors also can provide technical expertise, offer ready cus
tomers, and garner civic support for Amish enterprises. Then, too, nearby industrial jobs or tourist traffic may open some economic doors while closing others.
Such factors alone, however, do not fully explain the various types of nonfarm enterprises. The literal landscape, coupled with the contours of the regional economy, also plays a decisive role. Marginal farmland and local economies that foster wood-related businesses encourage the development of sawmills, furniture-making businesses, and other lumber-related work. In western Pennsylvania, for example, a regional economy oriented toward forestry and connected to suppliers of wood products has provided wholesale outlets for remote communities far from urban retail markets.
Table 16.1. A Sampler of Amish Businesses
Construction
Residential
Commercial
Log houses
Storage sheds
Metal buildings
Crafts
Folk art
Hats
Quilts
Toys
Baskets
Food Production
Baked goods
Deli products
Health foods
Jams and candies
Installation
Air pumps and systems
Fence installation
Floor covering
Storm windows and glass
Solar systems
Machine and Metal
Hydraulic systems
Machinery assembly
Machinery manufacturing
Machinery repair
Welding and fabricating
Manufacturing
Carriages
Doors (home and garage)
Lanterns and lighting
Vinyl products
Retail Operations