The Riddle of Amish Culture

by Donald B. Kraybill

  The issue flared up again when several farmers in three different townships requested zoning approval to build more kennels in 2000. With milk and tobacco prices down, many farmers were searching for additional income. Public zoning hearings, generous newspaper publicity, and active opposition by the Lancaster Humane Society stirred lively debate.23 One township received more than 120 emails and 55 faxes from “crazy people on a crusade,” in the words of a zoning officer. Most of the protests came from outside Pennsylvania.

  Some of the planned kennels were approved, and those that failed township codes were rejected. To Amish farmers, dogs—like cows or chickens—were simply another source of income. And as long as they met licensing and inspection standards, they saw no problem producing puppies just like they did calves or peeps. For animals’ rights advocates, however, the so-called puppy mills mistreated dogs and produced an unnecessary surplus. One woman leaving a public hearing was so incensed that she doubted “that the Amish will go to heaven” if they continue raising dogs. Another person called the Amish farmers “killers.” One member of the audience said, “You people disgust me and make me sick. I’m going outside and throwing up.”24 A few weeks later, irked by all the commotion, an Amishman wrote the editor of a local newspaper. “I’m surprised these folks come from so far away to mind our business. Seems to me someone needs something to do. Why not start some dog kennels?”25

  The Amish were learning that making a living was no longer a simple matter of milking a few cows in the privacy of one’s own barn. Now it involved zoning laws, publicity in faraway states, and Humane Society lawyers. In short, the heated discussions reflected a clash of modern and agrarian cultural values.

  The Amish movement into business also brought other new complications. In 1996 U.S. Department of Labor investigators fined three Old Order saw mill operators in Pennsylvania for violating child labor laws. Fair labor laws prohibit children under age sixteen from operating power-driven manufacturing equipment and children under fourteen from working in any type of manufacturing facility.

  The words child labor conjure up negative images of children working twelve-hour days in dangerous conditions in sweat shops, coal mines, and brothels. For the Amish, child labor means apprenticeship, family solidarity, and learning the basic values that form the foundation of their way of life. The arrests and fines frightened Amish leaders across the country. How would they train their children? What would they do without cheap labor?

  The Amish system of apprenticeship involves youth in farm and business at an early age and especially after they complete eighth grade. Instead of attending trade school, vocational-technical school, or high school, Amish youth work on farms or serve apprenticeships in shops where they learn a variety of trades. Because child labor laws are not enforced on farms, the Amish were immune from them for many years. Concerned about the impact of enforcement on family, apprenticeship, and business, an Amish lobby effort swung into action under the coordination of the National Steering Committee. Amish representatives met with more than forty members of Congress to plead their case.

  The child labor laws were designed to protect youth in the larger society from danger and exploitation in large manufacturing plants, not the needs of small family businesses providing an apprenticeship for their children. One Amish businessman complained about Department of Labor officials: “They’re trying to tell me I can’t have my own children working for me. My kids have been coming up here [to the shop] since they were two years old. This is part of our house. This is where we keep an eye on them.”26

  Even the Wall Street Journal joined the debate with an editorial by an Amish-raised woman who argued that America’s “child spoiling culture—TV instead of work and encouraging youngsters to challenge parental discipline—contributes to the boredom and dissatisfaction that cause America’s problems with juvenile violence.” She noted that some of her most gratifying childhood memories involved work and urged the government “to stop causing stress for those who choose to raise their children close to the instincts of nature.”27

  Congressman Joseph R. Pitts, representative from Lancaster County, tried without success to persuade officials in the Department of Labor to respect the Amish concerns with light-handed enforcement. Eventually he scheduled a hearing with a subcommittee of the House of Representatives and introduced a bill that addressed Amish needs.28 The legislation specified that fourteen-year-old youth in religious groups that forbid formal schooling beyond eighth grade could work in manufacturing plants if they were supervised by relatives or other members of the religious sect. The U.S. House of Representatives approved the legislation in March 1999, but the bill stalled in the Senate until it received a hearing in 2001.

  In his testimony at the subcommittee hearing, the chairman of the Amish Steering Committee said that after eighth grade, Amish youth “learn by doing . . . we cannot tolerate idleness during these adolescent years, therefore we see a dire need that our youth learn a trade . . . we believe that forced idleness at this age is detrimental to our long-standing Amish way of raising our children and teaching them to become good productive citizens. Keeping young hands busy, keeps them out of mischief.”29 To Amish thinking, keeping children busy in meaningful work was central to their entire way of life.

  THE IRONIES OF TOURISM

  The rise of tourism in Lancaster County brought several ironic twists in Amish public relations.30 The European forebears of the Amish were persecuted and exterminated because they dared to be different. Paradoxically, the Amish defiance of modern life has brought them not persecution but admiration and respect—enough to underwrite a massive tourist industry. The course of history has converted these descendants of despised heretics into esteemed objects of curiosity. Moreover, the world, which the Amish have tried so hard to keep at a distance, is now coming to them. Oddly enough, the more separate and unusual the Amish appear, the more attractive they become. And surprisingly, the tourism that appears to threaten their solitude may actually strengthen their cultural identity. Moreover, the tourism that nibbles away at farmland also tightens Amish ties to Lancaster by providing a ready market for crafts. And finally, the larger society, from which the Amish have sought independence, has now come to depend on them. These and other puzzles permeate the story of tourism.

  Several national magazines featured stories on the Pennsylvania Germans in the late 1800s and early 1900s, but tourism in Lancaster County only began in earnest after the Great Depression. Interest in the Amish expanded in 1937 with the publication of an Amish tourist booklet and the East Lampeter school dispute, which received wide national press coverage.31 An Amish farmer dates the mushrooming of tourism to the 1954 celebration of the 200th birthday of Intercourse, a village in the heart of the Amish settlement. “Mix together the word Intercourse with some Amish buggies,” he said, “and you’re bound to attract some tourists.” In any event, by 1965 nearly 2 million tourists were trekking annually to Lancaster County to catch a glimpse of the Amish. Today, some 4 million tourists visit Lancaster County annually—about 180 visitors for each Amish person. The tourists spend over $1.2 billion and generate about $177 million in taxes alone each year. Certainly not all the visitors come to see the Amish, but even with conservative estimates, each Amish person generates about $30,000 in tourist revenues.32

  The nearly six hundred members of the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors’ Bureau operate a variety of tourist sites throughout the county, including many attractions unrelated to the Amish. About a dozen Amish-owned businesses are also members of the bureau. The tourist industry creates about 18,500 jobs, not to mention the thousands that produce crafts and products for the tourist market. Indeed, there are three tourist jobs for every farmer in the county.

  Dozens of tour buses bring tourists to the village of Intercourse.

  The charm of the Plain people, especially the Amish, is the cultural magnet of tourism. The importance of the Amish for tourism is documented by several factors. The
tourist sites are concentrated in the county’s eastern part, near the Amish settlement. Tourist promotions—brochures, billboards, videos, and newspaper ads—highlight Amish images, especially the horse and buggy. The popularity of “Amish” tours, trinkets, food, and crafts underscores the primacy of Amish symbolism in the tourist industry. Without the Amish, Lancaster’s tourism would likely not flourish, and if the Amish suddenly vanished, it would certainly decline. If the Amish lure half of the tourists, to use a conservative estimate, the Amish bring $600 million annually into the local economy as well as create thousands of non-Amish jobs. This hard economic fact gives the Amish a hefty bargaining chip whenever they negotiate with the larger world.

  To relieve traffic congestion caused by tourism and growth, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation proposed six routes for a limited access highway through Lancaster County in 1987. The most direct and least expensive route cut through prime farmland in the historic heart of the Amish settlement. Over one thousand Amish residents attended a public meeting to review the plans that, in the words of a county commissioner, “would kill the goose that laid the golden egg.” The swirling controversy abated when Pennsylvania Governor Robert P. Casey declared, “We will not build a new highway in any corridor that will bisect the Amish farming community or cause major disruption to the Amish lifestyle.”33

  Whenever a distinctive culture becomes the focus of a tourist industry, special problems arise because the tourists and the “natives” have conflicting interests. Tourists hope to gain firsthand knowledge of the natives by talking to them. Visitors want to venture backstage and meet real Amish people in real Amish homes. The goal of the natives, in this case, is to avoid bothersome interruptions by people who treat them as museum objects or monkeys in a zoo. In many ways the tourist enterprise can be viewed as a social drama with both front-stage and backstage dimensions. Commercial tourist attractions provide a front-stage portrayal of Amish life that simulates a personal encounter by offering tours of refurbished Amish farms. Guided tours in the countryside are one attempt to go backstage. Busloads of tourists meander through the Amish countryside—the equivalent of a wild game preserve—ever on the lookout for a glimpse of genuine Amish life.

  Tourist sites play several crucial roles in mediating the conflicting interests of tourists and natives. Tour organizations provide a buffer zone that protects the Amish from tourists. Tour guides and simulated attractions occupy the tourists’ time and keep them a respectable distance from the Amish. Several million tourists roaming at will through the countryside would utterly disrupt Amish life. Tourist sites and guides provide structured restraints that permit Amish life to continue backstage in a normal fashion despite the presence of 4 million visitors. For the most part, tourists and their guides follow the established routes and stop at the designated spots on tourist maps. These helpful scripts and props organize the tourist experience into a predictable drama. The appearance of a real Amish person may temporarily disrupt things, but in general, the structured patterns of tourism—the sites and interpreters—provide a curtain that insulates and protects the Amish from an otherwise chaotic intrusion on their life.

  Organized tourism also helps the tourists. Lost in a foreign culture with only a day or so of time, it is difficult to have a good experience without a guide. The front-stage operations offer tourists descriptive information and a succinct overview of Amish life that few Amish persons themselves could provide. Most tourist establishments provide an educational setting where questions can be asked without fear of embarrassment or insult. In these ways, the tourist enterprises bring natives and visitors close to each other but without the disruption of face-to-face encounters.

  Tourist attractions, however, have two drawbacks. Discerning tourists realize that they are being duped—that the representations of Amish life projected in image and story are not authentic but are mere front-stage enactments. Thus, the backstage mystery lingers. What would it be like to walk inside a real Amish home and talk to a real Amish person? The Amish are also shortchanged. Commercial tourist enterprises are operated for profit by non-Amish entrepreneurs. A boon for the local economy, these enterprises bring jobs and profits to outsiders but not to the Amish. However, the financial equation began to change in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

  In the 1980s the Amish and the tourists bypassed the tourist industry and quietly negotiated a new form of encounter—the native stand. Craft and produce stands operated by the Amish began sprouting up along country roads throughout the settlement. These miniature tourist sites, announcing “No Sunday Sales” and “No Photographs,” are Amish owned and operated. They benefit both tourists and Amish alike. Tourists can peek behind the curtain and get a glimpse of backstage life. Under the guise of buying a product, they can talk with a real Amish person on Amish property. The tourist is treated to a close-up view of genuine Amish clothing and can buy authentic Amish foods and crafts. In exchange, the roadside stand enables the Amish to reap some financial benefits from tourism. As scarce farmland nudges more and more Amish off the farm, the tourist trade provides a new source of supplemental income.

  The small native stands are a symbolic and literal middle ground—at the end of the lane—where tourist and Amish can safely interact at a polite distance. In these brief exchanges, the Amish are able to regulate the type and scope of interaction—effectively keeping tourists at arm’s length. The stands also allow the Amish a firsthand look at the gaudy and frivolous dress of pleasure-seeking tourists. The proliferation of these native stands symbolizes yet another negotiated compromise between the Amish and modernity. The Amish have allowed the tourists to come one step closer to backstage Amish life, but the Amish are clearly in charge of this buffer zone—controlling its hours, personnel, location, and decor. In this sense, even the Amish roadside stand is a front-stage operation, and the tourists who had hoped to sneak backstage have been duped again.

  An Amish roadside stand for tourists.

  THE IMPACT OF TOURISM

  In many ways, tourism is a nuisance to the Amish. Cars and buses clog main roads, forcing some families to revise their weekly travel patterns during the peak of the tourist season. As many as fifty buses a day may stop at back road sites marked on tourist maps. Tourists who wish to photograph children sometimes bribe them. The clicking cameras, gawking strangers, and congested roadways are bothersome. One Amishman noted, “It’s almost summer in the Pequea when: There’s more tourists than plow furrows, more flies than tourists, more strawberries than flies, and more peas than pretty flowers.”

  Other aspects of tourism border on economic and cultural exploitation. The Amish realize that the bulk of tourist revenue fills the pockets of non-Amish entrepreneurs. “We are serving as a tool,” said one Amishwoman, “to lure tourists to Lancaster County. Personally, I do not feel any resentment against tourists, but these tourist places are what’s working against us. We are not living our peculiar way to attract attention. We merely want to live pure, Christian lives according to our religion and church standards and want to be left alone, like any human beings. We are opposed to having our souls marketed by having our sacred beliefs and traditions stolen from us and then distributed to tourists, and sometimes having them mocked.” An Amish farmer added: “Some tourist places tell the most ridiculous stories about Amish craftsmanship, Amish dress, Amish cooking, and the Amish ways of life.”34 To see one’s religious symbols—bonnet, buggy, beard—taken by outsiders and sold as plastic dolls, plastered on billboards, erected as statues, and fashioned into trinkets of all sorts is indeed a commercial assault on a religious culture. Insensitive entrepreneurs who snatch sacred symbols and convert them into profitable products exploit the Amish soul.

  The Amish insulate themselves from tourism with negative images and humor. Some tourists, according to the Amish, are sincere, friendly, and courteous. But tourism, in general, symbolizes worldly pleasure in the Amish mind. Tourists kill time, seek entertainment, and waste mone
y—all of which contradict basic Amish virtues. “The tourist attractions,” said one minister, “have converted our Amish land into a leisure lust playground.”35 Others see tourism as a new form of persecution, a modern form of tribulation that must be endured with patience. “Tourism,” suggested a minister, “is a test of our faith to see if we are as strong as our forefathers.”

  The Amish also use humor to defuse the tourism menace. Jokes about the stunts and foolish questions of tourists abound. Such humor keeps tourists at bay by trivializing their presence. By defining tourism in humorous ways, the Amish reduce its credibility and maintain social distance. Some Amish, of course, develop lasting friendships with tourists, but most Amish keep them at a healthy distance by converting them into a humorous reference group.

  Although permanent relationships with tourists could erode Amish/non-Amish boundaries, tourists are relatively harmless; they eventually return home. Often bothersome, they are at least temporary. They bring fleeting moments of highly regulated interaction, staged in public settings, which hardly endanger Amish life. Indeed, prolonged relationships with non-Amish neighbors are more likely to lead Amish people astray.

  Does tourism endanger Amish life? An Amish minister said: “We are caught in the jaws of tourism . . . and if the heat gets too hot we better get out . . . if it is our lot to move, we will.”36 Despite occasional threats and a dribble of migration, the evidence is to the contrary. The Amish community in Lancaster has remained and grown in spite of tourism. Indeed, tourism may inadvertently energize Amish life in several ways. An older Amish person noted that with the rise of tourism, “We are no longer looked down on,” and an elder remarked: “We get loads of praise for our way of life.” To many Amish, the fact that tourists come from around the world to learn of their ways reinforces their collective identity and values. Reluctant to admit pride, they take a quiet satisfaction in knowing that their culture is worthy of such respect. In this way, tourism bolsters Amish self-esteem.