The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  TABLE 8.1

  Telephone and Electrical Guidelines

  As in many other issues, the Amish make a firm distinction between use and ownership. Amish farmers renting a farm from a non-Amish neighbor are permitted to use electric lights in the barn and house. However, the wiring is torn out if Amish purchase the property. A quilt shop owner renting from a non-Amish neighbor may have lights in a showroom. An Amish family buying an English home has a year to tear out the electrical wiring. One Amishman, hopeful that the church would eventually accept the wider use of electricity, placed conduits throughout his newly constructed house. But so far his hopes have been in vain.

  AMISH ELECTRICITY

  As small industries sprang up in the 1970s, they required heavy power tools in order to be competitive. Diesel engines could operate large drill presses and saws from their power shaft but not lathes, jig saws, grinders, and metal punches. The church doggedly forbade the use of electricity from public utility lines, so Amish mechanics explored other alternatives. They discovered that electrical motors on shop equipment could be replaced with hydraulic or air motors. Hydraulic and air pumps, powered by a diesel engine, could then force oil or air under high pressure through hoses to power the motors on grinders, drills, and saws. The use of hydraulic and air pressure was quickly dubbed “Amish electricity.”

  An Amish shop owner chortled: “We can do anything with air and hydraulic that you can do with electricity—except operate electronic equipment.” Today state-of-the-art saws, grinders, lathes, drills, sanders, and metal presses, powered by air or hydraulic pressure, stand in Amish shops. Once again, tradition triumphed. This new technology allowed the Amish to modernize while retaining their historic ban of public power lines and 110-volt current. Today Amish businesses have all the power they need to operate modern equipment and remain competitive. As long as televisions and computers cannot run on air pressure, air and hydraulic is a safer option than the inverter. Many families also use “Amish electricity” to power water pumps, small machinery, washing machines, sewing machines, and food processors. Indeed, hydraulic water pumps have rapidly replaced windmills on many farms. An unwritten understanding of Amish culture says: “If you can do it with air or oil, you may do it.” “Amish electricity” has enhanced economic growth, ethnic identity, and symbolic separation from mass society. This remarkable deal simultaneously preserves tradition and permits progress.

  This large machine, powered by hydraulic pressure, bends and cuts sheets of metal. The mobile gas-pressured light, on the left, helps to illuminate this welding shop.

  HOME FREEZERS

  The advent of home freezers in the 1950s offered a better way to preserve garden produce for large Amish families. But freezers required electricity. A few freezers, in fact, were operated by electricity from on-site generators in the early 1960s. However, leaders feared that allowing freezers in homes would make it too easy to plug televisions, radios, and all sorts of appliances into electrical outlets. Thus, the freezer was banned in 1966, not because the Amish view it as evil, but because other worldly devices would have likely followed it into Amish homes.

  However, most Amish families do have access to a freezer. Many rent small storage freezers located in fruit markets or stores. Other families own a freezer in a non-Amish neighbor’s garage or basement. The Amish family may contribute to the electrical costs or barter services or garden produce in exchange for the neighbor’s hospitality. At first glance, the practice of keeping freezers at nearby non-Amish homes appears hypocritical. However, rather than two-faced deviance, this arrangement is but another compromise. It permits the use of a modern appliance to preserve food, which supports self-sufficiency, the extended family, and labor in a family context. At the same time, the arrangement bars other electrical gadgets from entering Amish homes. The freezer riddle keeps technology at a distance while still using it to preserve the family garden and self-sufficiency.

  ELECTRICAL WISDOM

  The compromises emerging from Amish history point to several conclusions: (1) The taboo on electricity was a literal way of separating from the world and maintaining self-sufficiency—an independence that is still preserved today. For instance, the Amish are less threatened by power shortages caused by storm, disaster, or war. (2) The taboo on electricity also created a symbolic separation from the world, a daily reminder that “we are different.” (3) The rejection of electricity provides a symbolic bonding that unites the community internally. (4) The Amish policy on electricity implies that community wisdom, not individual fancy, must govern its use. In other words, individuals cannot be trusted with such powerful technology. (5) The 1920 rejection of high-voltage electricity conveniently slowed social change by eliminating new electrical appliances and machinery that appeared in the twentieth century. (6) By avoiding rancorous debate over each new technological item, the Amish were able to preserve communal harmony. Apart from the bulk tank and the welder, the big decision on electricity preempted a host of small debates over hair dryers, shavers, coffeepots, and so forth. (7) The proscription against electricity effectively quarantined the Amish from outside electronic media—radios, televisions, record players, CD players, and computers. Curtailing such external influences is crucial for the preservation of Amish values. (8) The concessions on electricity have been driven primarily by economic concerns. Although it benefits the whole community, the use of air and hydraulic power has facilitated the work of men more than that of women. (9) Sacrificing electrical conveniences is a daily reminder that individual desires must yield to larger community goals.

  Electric cash registers are powered by inverters. Gas lanterns light this retail store.

  Inside the Amish world, the riddles of technology make sense. Permitting selective use of the telephone and electricity in some settings and not in others is simply a commonsense solution to everyday problems posed by industrialization. Using air and hydraulic pressure to power modern shops while forbidding 110-volt electricity is a reasonable way to encourage economic growth within certain limits.

  As we have seen, the Amish are certainly not opposed to technology. They simply use it selectively. They are more likely to accept new technology for productive purposes, “for making a living,” as they would say, than for consumption and communication. They are adamant in not using media technology to consume the values and images of mass society. That line is nonnegotiable. Clearly, they want to build community and preserve social capital, so they employ technology cautiously, ever wary of its potential to tatter the social fabric. And one thing is certain: although the Amish may not enjoy all the conveniences of modern life, they try to control technology and anticipate its long-term consequences.

  CHAPTER 9

  Harnessing the Power of Progress

  The first thing people do when they leave the Amish church is get a car.

  —Amish leader

  SCOOTERS, TRAINS, AND CARS

  A funny thing happened in the summer of 2000. Outsiders who for many years had been snickering at the Amish riding on old-fashioned scooters fell in love with scooters themselves. The Amish had their turn to laugh as a scooter craze spread across the country, prompting sales of several million scooters.1 Because both bicycles and automobiles are banned, Amish children and adults for many years have used scooters for local travel—a compromise between walking and riding. The larger world was finally catching up with Old Order ways!

  The Amish readily use public transportation—trains, buses, and boats, but not airplanes. Already in the nineteenth century, before the arrival of motor vehicles, they used trains to travel to other Amish settlements. When commercial air travel developed in the middle of the twentieth century, it was simply considered unnecessary. Moreover, airports were located in large urban areas. The few Amish who go to Europe travel by ship rather than by plane. The Amish had been using public transportation since the mid-nineteenth century, so the big challenge for them was how to respond to private transportation in the form of a car.<
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  In the Amish mind, the car epitomizes worldliness. Car ownership is one of the few violations of the Ordnung that triggers automatic expulsion. “Well, anybody that gets a car just isn’t Amish, that’s all,” said an Amishwoman.

  Describing early attitudes toward cars, an Amishman said: “Our leaders never looked at them.” Other members widely agree that the car “didn’t make no issue among us.” Yet today the Amish ride in cars and often hire them on a daily basis. How can they conscientiously embrace a double standard—forbidding ownership while permitting use? That question lurks beneath the riddle of the car.

  On 14 February 1900, a battery-operated car appeared on the streets of Lancaster for the first time.2 Four years later a six-year-old Amish boy, accompanying his father to Lancaster to sell vegetables, saw nine cars in one day. In those days, cars were a rich man’s hobby. The National Automobile Company organized itself in 1907 in Lancaster and advertised motoring as “the king of sports and the queen of amusements.”3 For the Amish, who disdained both sports and amusements, such slogans turned the car into a profane symbol. They viewed the early ones as worldly toys for the wealthy.

  Henry Ford’s Model T, first produced in 1908, popularized the car for the masses after 1914. Although only 7 percent of Pennsylvania farmers had a car in 1914, 72 percent of them were driving the “devil’s machine” by 1921.4 Progressive Mennonites, along with the rest of the world, were buying new cars. An Amish leader remembers that Mennonite boys drove their cars to fairs, farm shows, and other worldly amusements. On the other hand, the liberal Peachey church, which had splintered off from the Amish in 1910 and had few qualms about using electricity, telephones, or tractors, was not seduced by the car until 1928. The Amish resolve held firm over the years; they were not about to stray after their Mennonite cousins or their wayward stepchildren.

  Some practical considerations made it easy for the Amish to avoid using cars. Between 1900 and 1910 in Lancaster County, 150 miles of electric trolley lines were strung from Lancaster City to outlying towns. The Amish rode the trolleys to town for shopping. Public trains were also used for long-distance trips to Midwestern Amish settlements. Furthermore, early cars were impractical. They were often in the garage more than on the road. Over the winter they were jacked up on blocks, because the muddy roads were impassable. As late as 1930, only 22 percent of Pennsylvania farmers lived by a paved road, which gave credence to the 1931 gubernatorial campaign, “Take the farmers out of the mud.”5

  THE CAR TABOO

  The Amish taboo on car ownership intensified by about 1915 as cars became more widely accepted in the larger society.6 Use of the car, however, varied by church district in the early years. Some Amish declared they would never “crawl into a car,” and they never did. Others rode with neighbors. Some bishops permitted traveling with a non-Amish neighbor but forbade hiring a car or driver. Other districts made a distinction between pleasure and business use, but that line was often fuzzy. In 1928 two farmers, stuck with a broken corn planter in the midst of planting, hired a trucker to haul a new planter from a dealer some fifty miles away. The farmers went along for the ride. Gossip soon spread about the “unnecessary trip,” and the culprits had to confess their sin in church. Other Amish, however, used the services of a neighbor’s car regularly for business trips.

  There is little evidence of the Amish owning cars, but some did drive on the sly. Around 1915, an Amishman “practiced” driving his hired man’s Model T Ford behind the barn. Unfamiliar with the steering, he lost control and drove over the front shafts of his own buggy, smashing them to bits. In the 1930s, an Amishman employed by a feed mill drove a pickup truck to make deliveries for the mill. But as one bishop noted: “Before 1930, we hardly rode in cars. We had no businesses, we could drive to all the Amish places by horse. The community was all close together.”

  The Amish fear of the car was not a naive one, for the car revolutionized rural life. By 1933, a presidential commission concluded that no other invention with such far-reaching importance diffused so quickly through the national culture, transforming even habits of thought and language.7 Another historian contended that no other mechanical invention in history influenced the rural farmer more than the car.8 Leaving no phase of rural life untouched, it facilitated interchange with urban life and widened the social horizon of farm families. Its arrival was cheered by many as an enormous boost to the farmer’s success.9 In the eyes of the Amish, however, the car endangered their ethnic community. A thief in disguise, it threatened to steal social capital.

  The very name of this new invention, automobile, offering self-propelled and automatic mobility, spelled trouble for the Amish. It freed individuals to travel autonomously, independently—whenever and wherever they pleased. For Americans frustrated by the end of the western frontier, the new promise of unlimited mobility was a great antidote. Auto travel symbolized the spirit of American individualism and independence—freeing people from train and trolley schedules, breaking the confines of geography, and smashing the provincialism of rural life. Liberated from geography, an individual could travel and explore at will. However, for a traditional people who preferred manual and stationary things, automatic mobility was a menace. Automatic things signaled a loss of control, and mobility would fragment local communities bonded together by the constraints of horse-drawn transportation.

  Furthermore, the car would make it difficult to remain separate from the industrial world. Manufactured and distributed in the city, the car brought “city slickers” out to secluded rural areas on pleasure-seeking excursions. The car was also a separator. Individuals could now drive away from home—far away. Youth could drive away to urban worlds of vice. Adults could drive away for business. The car would surely pull the local community apart. For a people concerned about staying together, the last thing they wanted to do was to turn the keys of cars over to individuals. A personalized version of mass transit, the car was perfect for a complicated, individuated, mobile society. But for a stable, simple, local people who cherished their close-knit community and sought separation from the world, the car was a peril.

  The car threatened to separate the community in other ways as well. If only wealthy members could afford it, the car would produce inequality. Proud individuals would use the car to show off their status, power, and wealth—all of which would mock the spirit of Gelassenheit. Cars would speed things up dramatically and disrupt the slow pace of Amish rhythms. Drivers would be out of control, mobile, independent, and free floating. The car contradicted the very core of Amish life. It was the symbol of modernity par excellence, for it entailed individualism, freedom, acceleration, mobility, and autonomy. Indeed, it was a modern brainchild, pieced together on a mechanical, rational, and highly specialized assembly line. In all of these ways, the car posed a primary threat to Amish life.

  There was little hesitation in the Amish “no” to car ownership. Yet the car brought many advantages. So over time, the Amish agreed to some concessions. They would ride in cars but only for emergencies and in special circumstances. They would not own them, for then things would surely get out of control. This firm line between use and ownership—or, as the Amish sometimes say, between use and abuse—often strikes Moderns as outright hypocrisy. But from the Amish perspective, it is a practical solution that keeps the car at bay, controls its negative side effects, but nevertheless uses it in ways that reap economic benefit and build community life.10

  AMISH TAXIS

  The use of motor vehicles by the Amish has liberalized over the decades. “Use of the car,” said one grandfather, “is something that the church has slipped on.” A bishop pointed to the collapse of the trolley system and poor rural bus service as reasons for the increasing use of cars. Distinctions were made between business and pleasure, need and luxury, emergency and convenience. But in all these concessions the taboo on ownership held firm. The Amish use of cars expanded in the mid-twentieth century with the opening of a daughter colony in Lebanon County, some th
irty miles northwest of Lancaster. After this expansion, hiring drivers became more widely accepted by the church.

  A van load of Amish people visiting Lancaster from another settlement prepare to return home in a “taxi.”

  The first regular taxi service for Amish came into existence in the early 1950s, when a non-Amish neighbor began earning a living “hauling” Amish friends to funerals, sales, family gatherings, distant settlements, and hospitals. Some adults even hired drivers on Sunday for questionable pleasure trips. In the mid-1950s, church leaders, fearing things would get out of hand, agreed to ban the hiring of drivers on Sunday except for emergencies. Present policy still prohibits hiring drivers on Sunday except in special circumstances, such as visiting family members in the hospital. Many bishops even frown on accepting free rides on Sunday. The horse and buggy—core symbols of Amish identity—must at least be hitched up on the sacred day of worship. This ritualistic abstention from cars on Sunday reaffirms the Amish moral order and the sacred significance of the carriage.