Invention and Innovation
Amish mechanics and self-taught engineers are quite resourceful. Early in the twentieth century, an Amish man invented a threshing machine governor to control the speed of the conveyor feeding sheaves of wheat into the machine.12 If the engine began to stall because there were too many sheaves going into the thresher, the governor slowed the conveyor belt to prevent the engine from choking. Decades later, another inventor built small compressed air motors to operate large cooling fans and water pumps, and yet another made a battery-powered pollinator for tomato plants.
A team of Amish inventors solved a problem faced by families who use propane gas to fuel stoves, refrigerators, and portable lights. Stoves and refrigerators connected to outside propane tanks use gas at a psi (pounds per square inch) that is too low to fuel propane lamps. Amish “engineers” worked on the problem for six years until they were able to create a lamp in 2002 that would burn brightly and quietly even though it used gas at the same pressure as stoves and refrigerators.13 Thus, all the gas fixtures in a home could draw on the same propane source, eliminating the need for separate propane canisters for portable lamps. This invention also made it possible to connect wall-mounted lamps to a central gas distribution system.
Ownership versus Access
In their struggle to harness technology, the Amish have also drawn a distinction between ownership and access. This demarcation grants access to the power of technology without placing it completely in the hands of individuals, thereby preserving historic boundaries around Amish identity while harvesting some of the fruits of progress. The distinction developed early in the twentieth century when the Amish confronted the telephone. The church forbade the installation of telephones in homes, but most communities permitted the use of public telephones for business and emergency calls.
The Amish took a similar approach to transportation. Even as they rejected the private ownership of motor vehicles beginning in the 1920s, some communities permitted the hiring of “taxis”—vehicles owned and operated by non-Amish drivers—for transportation to distant weddings, funerals, reunions, and for some business trips.
The line between use and ownership applies to self-propelled machines, electricity, computers, and office equipment. A man who works as a groundskeeper for a local motel is permitted to operate the motel’s riding lawn mower but not to buy his own. The proprietor of a quilt shop may use electric lights because she rents the building from a non-Amish neighbor. Another Amish woman works as the receptionist at a real estate office, where she operates the computer on a regular basis, but she cannot have one at home. Some Amish business owners hire neighbors or third-party vendors to provide computer services, website operations, and e-mail service for their businesses. Contractors may lease specialized equipment for construction jobs as needed.
These hybrid practices illustrate how distinguishing ownership from use enables access to technology without granting unfettered access. The most traditional groups, however, rarely permit access to any “dangerous” technology that they would not own.
To the outside eye, these practices might appear inconsistent—and the traditionalists would agree. Yet the more liberal communities contend that the distinction between use and ownership provides access to needed technological power while reminding everyone about the boundaries, the dangers, and the church’s oversight.
A Spectrum of Restraint
The guidelines for technology use not only vary among affiliations but also within them. Most groups have a spectrum of restraint stretching across six sites of Amish life: school, home, farm, shop, away-from-home jobs, and work for outsiders. Restrictions on technology are most severe in Amish schools and most relaxed in work for non-Amish employers. Overall, households have more restrictions than farms, and shops have more than construction sites.
Schools
Apart from a battery-powered clock, a stove for heating, and a hand-operated pump, most schools have few technological accessories—no calculators, computers, science laboratories, telephones, and in many areas, not even indoor plumbing. School technology varies by church affiliation. Although some schools have copy machines and indoor plumbing, the technology is generally more limited than in the homes of the school’s students.
This minimalist approach ensures that schools send a clear message to students: technology is not important! Such a countercultural statement differs starkly from education in modern society, in which schools scramble to stay abreast of the ever-accelerating pace of new technology. In the Amish world, technological competence is simply not considered critical for one’s vocation or life satisfaction. Thus, the school provides a protected setting, undisturbed by technological intrusion, for nurturing children in Amish ways.
Home
The periodic use of Amish homes for church services, weddings, and funerals underscores their sacredness. Home life undergirds and nurtures the entire social system. In pre-industrial fashion, the home is the site of most social functions, including birthing, family meals, religious services, childcare, family prayers, and, for many Amish families, work. Because the home is the hub of Amish life, leaders are careful to protect it from worldly influences. Excessive technologies are not welcomed there because they would expose Amish people, particularly children, to the dubious influences of mass culture and would also disrupt the natural ebb and flow of family life.
Table 17.1. Amish Household Technology in Traditional and Progressive Affiliations
Silence and sociability are two striking features in Amish homes. Apart from the chatter of parents and children around the big kitchen table or in the wide-open living area, Amish homes are quiet. There is no noise from dishwashers, televisions, computer games, air conditioners, or sound systems. And that is the way the home should be, say Amish people: an island of sanity insulated from noisy and distracting technological intrusions. Without the laptops, video games, televisions, or iPods with earbuds that can isolate individuals in non-Amish families from each other in the evenings, Amish people at home often engage in conversation, games, or household tasks together.
The range of technology in homes varies considerably by subgroup (see table 17.1). In the most traditional settings, women cook on wood or kerosene stoves, and food is either cooled in an icebox or there is no refrigeration at all. In higher communities, propane refrigerators and freezers as well as state-of-the-art gas stoves are widely used. In lieu of automatic washers, Amish families use old-style wringer washers powered by gas engines or air motors. Without electric dryers, clothing is dried on outside lines, indoor racks, or in spinners powered by compressed air. Food processors and mixers, powered by compressed air, are found in some homes. But compared to many American homes laden with a myriad of entertainment devices (TVs, DVD players, radios, iPods, computers, game consoles) and personal care items (hair dryers, electric shavers, curling irons), even the most progressive Amish homes are Spartan.
The most traditional Amish homes use wood stoves for cooking and heating water, and do not have pressurized water systems or indoor plumbing. This mother of twin boys cooks and bakes with a wood stove. She is a member of the Nebraska Amish affiliation, which is located in central Pennsylvania. Donald B. Kraybill
Farm
More technology is employed in barns and in fields than in homes. Even so, Amish farms are much smaller and technologically leaner than those of their English neighbors. With few exceptions, Amish farms do not tap electricity from the public grid or use self-propelled equipment in the fields.14 The differences between the lowest and highest Amish farms, however, are substantial. A traditional farm may have one small gasoline engine (power unit) to operate a corn chopper that grinds and blows silage into a small silo at the barn. Half a dozen cows are milked by hand, and milk is chilled by cold water. In contrast, a more progressive Amish farmer may milk eighty cows with automatic milkers and chill the milk in a large, temperature-controlled bulk tank. On such a farm, a diesel engine provides the power to operate
a variety of equipment in the barn. A tractor provides motorized power for work such as grinding feed and filling the silo. In the fields, horses pull highly mechanized equipment powered by gasoline engines.
This New Order Amish home in Ohio has indoor plumbing and beautiful cabinetry, which is typical of the more liberal groups. A skylight in the ceiling illuminates the kitchen even on cloudy days. Propane gas powers the refrigerator, the stove, and the iron on the counter. Electricity, from a battery via an inverter, runs the fan. Daniel Rodriguez
Shop
Although the levels of production technology vary by subgroup, all affiliations permit more technology for business than for farming. There are several reasons for this difference. The farm Ordnung that emerged over the last century is woven into Amish identity, making it more resistant to change. Conversely, because the emergence of machine shops in the 1970s was largely a new phenomenon, there was little historical Ordnung pertaining to commercial enterprises. As a result, Amish business owners and small manufacturers in progressive settlements experimented, creating innovations that eventually were grafted into the Ordnung. Finally, while farm technologies—especially outdoor ones—are visible and therefore open to community surveillance, innovations inside shops and stores can sometimes hide under the community’s collective radar.
Operating without public electricity, Amish businesses have to innovate to compete in the marketplace. Shops in more liberal communities typically have a diesel engine that operates alternators to charge batteries, generators to make electricity, hydraulic pumps to operate large machinery, and compressed air pumps to power air-driven motors. Without using computers, some Amish technicians have rigged homespun systems to automate drilling, machining, and the assembly of some products.
Mobile Work
Mobile Amish workers have considerable flexibility with technology because their jobs take them away from home and often out of the church-community itself. Construction crews typically need electric power, so they plug into public utilities or bring portable generators to building sites to power their electric tools, even though most churches forbid using them at home. Contractors in some settlements lease backhoes, hydraulic lifts, and other equipment that they otherwise could not use.
Amish construction crews also need daily access to vehicles for hauling tools and for long distance travel. An English employee may provide and drive a truck, or a business may lease one and have an English employee or an unbaptized Amish youth drive it. Some companies contract with outside drivers to provide a vehicle and driver as needed. In liberal groups, business owners who travel to work sites are permitted to have a cell phone to coordinate their work; however, some districts have a hard-to-enforce policy: at night the phone is supposed to remain turned off and in the truck! Progressive communities grant families who operate stands at farmers’ markets in urban areas greater access to electricity, cell phones, vehicles, and other technologies because the market stands are in rented spaces far from home.
On the other hand, mobile workers in the strictest communities continue to rely on horse-and-buggy transportation, which limits how far they can travel. Yet because they are using traditional technologies, they have less overhead and charge cheaper rates, sometimes irritating English contractors and, occasionally, those from more progressive Amish communities.15
Outside Employment
Amish people working for non-Amish employers have the most access to technology. One of the reasons that the lower groups object to members working for outsiders is that they would be exposed to so much technology. Some affiliations permit outside employment, but discourage members from using computers or the Internet on the job. In the large Elkhart–LaGrange settlement in northern Indiana, hundreds of church members work in large recreational vehicle factories where they operate all types of high-tech equipment. The long-standing distinction between owning and using technology makes this possible.
Just Leave a Message
In the first decade of the twentieth century, some Amish people installed telephones in their homes, only to be asked by their churches to remove them.16 The telephone troubled Amish waters for several reasons. The early phone system made use of party lines, which enabled participants to eavesdrop on others’ conversations. Moreover, the phone wires literally tied Amish residences to those outside the church-community, a visual violation of separation from the world. It permitted outsiders easy access to Amish homes, and its ringing disrupted the normal rhythms of family life and church services.
Deeper issues were also at stake, however. Telephone talk threatened face-to-face conversation, the social glue of Amish society. Visiting involves not only words but also the cultural cues of body language and dress, especially pertinent in Amish culture, which mediate the presentation of the self. Phone conversations strip these two crucial elements of Amish discourse—nonverbal signs and social context—as voices are extracted from context, bodies, and appearance.
By the 1910s, a telephone taboo was in effect in most Amish communities. Although phones in homes were prohibited, most affiliations permitted members to use public phones for emergencies—one of the earliest distinctions between ownership and access. High communities eventually made many accommodations as the phone inched closer to the house. By midcentury, some groups permitted “community phone shanties” at the end of a farm lane or another accessible site so that several families could place calls and receive messages. By the turn of the twenty-first century, phones were accepted in New Order homes. Some other progressive church-communities allowed families to install a phone in an outside shanty, barn, shop, or retail store—and even in the basement of their house.
The rise of Amish businesses added pressure to expand phone use. Some churches have permitted phone booths several yards away from offices, others have allowed them adjacent to offices but outside the buildings, and still others have permitted phones inside offices. Business owners without an office phone typically visit their outside phone booth once or twice a day to take and return messages. Some list a time when they are available for live conversations. “Call between 6:45 and 7:00 p.m. or leave a message” instructs an advertisement for an Amish-owned concrete business in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Although members of some ultraconservative Amish groups shy away from any direct use of a telephone and prefer to ask an outside person to make calls on their behalf, others use their English neighbors’ phones. Some neighbors even allow Amish businesses to share their phone number, in effect providing an answering service for emergency messages from far-flung family members. Many Amish churches welcomed answering machines and voice-mail service as a means of exchanging messages on community phone lines.
By the mid-1990s, cell phones began making an end run around the long-standing no-phone-in-the-home tradition. To the literalists, cell phones did not violate the Ordnung because they were wireless and not physically installed in houses. They were handy for contractors on job sites to coordinate subcontractors. Easy to conceal, they were also difficult to suppress. Moreover, young people who acquired them during Rumspringa found them hard to discard after baptism. As cell phones became widespread in some communities, leaders despaired of being able to ban them. Yet they worried that cell phones with cameras and Internet access would open the door to moral depravity, and they threatened to recall them. Still, some people welcomed this new technology that so conveniently sidestepped the old taboo on telephones in homes.
No Love for the Car
During the nineteenth century, the Amish used many forms of public transportation—ships, trolleys, and trains—and these generated no controversy in the twentieth century. With the exception of airplane travel, which all Amish except some New Order districts reject, public transportation has been uncontroversial. Not so the individual mobility promised by the automobile, however.
During the twentieth century, most Americans fell in love with the car—with its power, speed, convenience, and control—and they found it exhilarating
to drive. But not the Amish. For Amish leaders trying to keep their congregations intact and sequestered from urban influence, the car was a threat. They feared its speed and easy mobility would decimate their close-knit church-communities whose social ties traditionally drew strength from face-to-face visiting and physical proximity.
Spurning the car, the icon of modernity, illustrates the fortitude of Amish resistance. Although Amish people have made accommodations, such as riding in motor vehicles, horse-drawn transportation remains a cogent protest against the creeping influence of all things modern and, as we have argued, it’s the defining feature of Amish identity. “When people leave the Amish,” said one member, “the first thing they do is buy a car.”
One Amish leader explains the harm that cars would cause, arguing that (1) they are luxury and status symbols designed for style, speed, comfort, and convenience; (2) they ruin tightly woven communities where members live, work, worship, and care for each other; (3) they make it too easy to travel to cities; (4) they bring moral decay as people work and live away from their families; and (5) they are dangerous because of their speed. Moral temptations, he proposes, increase in direct relation to speed. Finally, he argues that members must consider the overall harm that cars would have on the church, not just their harm to one individual.17
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