The first thing people do when they leave the Amish church is get a car.
—Amish leader
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.
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 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
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 thirty 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.
The Ordnung specifies that members may not own or operate a motor vehicle, hold a driver’s license, or lend money to someone to purchase a car. Drivers may be hired when necessary. The definition of “necessity” is, of course, a slippery one. Members sometimes accuse one another of hiring drivers for unnecessary trips. Many businessmen have standing agreements with drivers who provide transportation on a daily basis.
Today Amish taxis, operated by non-Amish neighbors and members of other Plain churches, transport Amish to auctions, job sites, funerals, weddings, and family gatherings. Many of these taxi arrangements developed over the years as acts of neighborly kindness. Dozens of taxi operations function as full-time and part-time businesses. Indeed, according to one Amish woman, “We jest among ourselves that if we continue to prosper, half of North America will soon be Amish and the rest will be taxi drivers.”
In 1977 the Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission (PUC) cracked down on non-Amish taxi owners who were charging fees for their services without holding a common carrier license. An abrupt crackdown on five drivers at an Amish funeral angered both the Amish and non-Amish. Responding to pressure from bus companies who could not compete with the informal taxis, a PUC spokesman justified the enforcement: “We’ve seen this thing grow like a cancer. At least a hundred people must be doing this illegally and we are going to try and cut it out. It’s a thorn in our side.”11 After fourteen months of hearings and negotiations, the PUC agreed to issue taxi permits to about forty drivers who transported the Amish. The special permits allow the drivers to charge fees for their service as long as they only transport people whose beliefs and religious convictions prevent them from owning or operating a vehicle.12
Amish concessions to car use were prompted by several factors: the collapse of the rural trolley system, the birth of Amish settlements in other counties, Amish expansion in Lancaster County, and the rapid growth of Amish businesses. Carpentry crews need transportation to construction sites, cabinet makers sometimes travel to nearby states to install “Amish kitchens,” and manufacturing establishments must find ways to transport their products.
Many Amish businesses have a non-Amish employee who provides a car or truck for company use. The employee owns the vehicle, and the proprietor pays mileage. The employee may be an unbaptized son of the owner or, more frequently, a member of another Plain group that permits automobiles. The mileage rate pays for the vehicle’s initial cost and maintenance and perhaps a marginal profit. Amish businessmen often have agreements with other non-Amish neighbors or commercial truckers to transport their products. In some cases, business owners have made “sweetheart” loans to employees, enabling them to purchase vehicles for company use. Most bishops have forbidden such “under the table” deals that amount to de facto ownership.
The solution to the car riddle lies in the fine print of the public agreement negotiated with modernity. In brief, the Amish vehicle policy prohibits holding a driver’s license as well as owning, driving, and financing a vehicle. With the exception of Sundays and obvious frivolities, hiring drivers and riding in vehicles is permitted. A fascinating settlement, the bargain balances the tug of traditional values with the press of economic survival and convenience. The compromise controls the detrimental effects of the car, yet allows access to it for business and building community.
The agreement acknowledges that car ownership cannot be entrusted to the individual. If ownership were permitted, the church would lose control of the car. Ownership would intensify the pace and complexity of Amish life. Parents and youth alike would spend more time away from home at meetings and worldly amusements. Car ownership, in the long run, would not only erode the social base of the small face-to-face community, but it would also destroy the local church district—the cornerstone of social organization. The limitations of horse travel hold the local community together; uncontrolled access to cars would fragment and scatter it. The car, in short, would drain social capital out of the social system.
Hiring a taxi is inconvenient: arrangements must be made, and drivers paid. Amish taxis provide transportation, but not automatic mobility. One yields to the schedule, itinerary, fees, and mood of the driver. One Amishman explained: “When we need a driver, we call the ones who are less expensive or who we enjoy riding with. Oftentimes we must call as many as a half a dozen before we can find one who is not busy. When we want to go on a long trip, there are quite a few things to consider, such as: Does he drive carefully; does he gladly go where we want to go; does he allow us to give our small children something to eat such as pretzels or crackers to keep them quiet during the long drive; is he a pleasant, courteous driver who charges a decent fee.”13
In forging the car deal, the Amish gave up autonomy and independence, but some benefits come with the compromise. By permitting the use of cars, they are able to travel to distant places and conduct business in a kind of door-to-door limousine service without the typical costs of purchase and maintenance and without driving fatigue. In this way, the Amish have retained the virtues of simplicity as well as the convenience of modernity. It is a way of using modern technology without being enslaved by it or allowing it to destroy community. The use of motor vehicles has become essential for the fiscal survival of Amish industries. Moreover, it also links families and friends living in other counties and states.
English drivers wait while an Amish construction crew pumps gas in their trucks before traveling to a construction site.
Traveling by van also fosters community; it builds social capital. As with other things, the Amish do it together. Traveling in groups not only reduces costs but also builds community. Van loads of Amish are, in essence, portable subcommunities, keeping the Amish world alive on daily jaunts to work and on visits to relatives in far-flung settlements. They are traveling at high speeds but traveling with like-minded others in the context of community.
Controlled use of the car is a way of keeping faith with tradition while giving just enough freedom to maneuver in the larger society. The Amish believe that by turning the use of cars over to individuals, they would quicken the pace of their life, erase geographical limits, weaken social control, deplete their social capital, and eventually ruin their community. The rejection of self-propelled mobility encourages people to work near home, which helps to hold the family together. Thus the Amish took the car, the charm of modernity, on their own terms and struck a deal that enabled them to use it to enhance their community. It is a cultural compromise that baffles Moderns who miss its fine print.
Tractors are standard equipment on Amish farms today, but they remain at the barn and rarely go out to the fields. Horses and mules pull plows and other machinery across the fertile soil. Why would anyone purchase a tractor and then keep it at the barn? How did the tractor riddle emerge?
Banning the car was an easy decision for the Amish. The tractor, however, was a different story. Tractors support agriculture. They enhance productivity, ease work, increase efficiency, and speed up planting and harvest. An attractive product from the merchants of progress, tractors could not be easily scuttled like the car. Tractors tantalized and enticed Amish farmers in the 1920s, 1940s, and again in the 1960s. Although there is little evidence that members of the church drove cars, they were indeed driving tractors, not only near their barns, but in their fields as well. But that is getting ahead of our story.
By the late 1880s large steam engines operated threshing machines on many Lancaster County farms. Small gasoline engines were widely used by the turn of the twentieth century to saw wood, grind feed, pump water, and power washing machines. Like their neighbors, the Amish owned and operated steam and gasoline engines and used horses to pull machinery in their fields.
In 1906, the International Harvester Company built a single-cylinder tractor, and by 1910, a non-Amish farmer on the eastern edge of Lancaster County had purchased one of the clumsy contraptions.14 Boasting the power of twenty horses, some of the early tractors weighed as much as six tons. Due to labor shortages and the demands of World War I, all-purpose tractors were not available until the mid-1920s. The first tractors were awkward monstrosities, ill-suited for the modest farms of eastern Pennsylvania. Their wide steel wheels packed the soil, and they were difficult to maneuver in small fields. But, surprisingly, some Amish began using them.
In the early 1920s, there were probably a dozen or more Amish farmers experimenting with these sod packers in their fields.15 According to oral tradition, Moses King took his newly purchased tractor out in the field and began harrowing. The dealer who had sold the tractor forgot to explain how to stop it, so King simply drove it in circles until it ran out of gas. On several occasions, tractors were overturned by inexperienced Amish drivers. In about 1920, Ike Zook was using a noisy tractor to plow. His neighbor, Deacon Jonas Beiler, irked by the clanging noise, thought the contraption was ridiculous. So according to oral tradition, Deacon Beiler tied his horses to a post, walked across the road, and told Zook: “Now you have to get rid of this stupid thing, I’m offended by it.” Beiler was not only the deacon of Zook’s congregation, but he was also the brother of stern Bishop Ben Beiler. Zook was soon “called on the carpet” and asked to confess before the church. But liking his tractor more than the church, Zook left the Amish for the Peachey church, which permitted tractors without any qualms.
About the same time, two ministers visiting Amish settlements in the Midwest discovered that tractors were not being used there, even on large Amish farms. Upon their return, the ministers concluded that if sod packers were not needed on big farms in the Midwest, they certainly were not necessary in Lancaster County. However, the tractor experiment continued until 1923, when tractors were finally banned from Amish fields.
Several factors tightened the Amish tractor policy. First, the wayward Peachey church permitted tractors in the field, a sure sign of decadence. Second, the early tractors were quite expensive and impractical. Horses were clearly advantageous. Although horses required feeding, they were easier to turn in the field, cheaper to buy, and did not pack the soil. Moreover, they provided free fertilizer. Third, in the first two decades of the twentieth century, Amish leaders had already blessed a host of new farm equipment—mechanical manure spreaders, hay loaders, tobacco planters, and silos. In fact, the Amish were often the first ones in a community to buy the new inventions as they came on the market.16 Was not the use of tractors going just a bit too far? Fourth, Bishop Ben Beiler believed that the tractor seemed dangerously close to the car, which was already taboo. A nephew remembers the bishop saying he was afraid “that the tractor would lead to the car.” The early tractors did not have rubber tires, but they were self-propelled, mobile units—suspiciously similar to the car. Given all of these concerns, tractors were recalled from Amish fields in about 1923.
Discussions about tractors quieted down in the late 1920s. During the Depression, horse feed was cheap, and tractors were too expensive for farmers anyway. But by the late 1930s and early 1940s, general purpose tractors on rubber tires were available. They were handy for cultivating crops even in small fields. Such tractors were appearing on virtually every non-Amish farm in the early 1940s. In a single decade (1940–50), the number of workhorses in Lancaster was cut in half.
Several Amish farmers were lured by these improved tractors for fieldwork. Clearly superior to horses, the new tractors were lighter, cheaper, and more versatile. The bishops could no longer condemn them as impractical. But in the judgment of the older bishops, the 1923 distinction between barn and field was a wise line, and they stood firm. So once again, in the early 1940s, tractors were recalled from Amish fields. Young farmers were soon on their knees in front of the church promising to “put their tractors away” and vowing to stay in touch with nature, tradition, community, and God.
The issue was not entirely settled, however. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, a wide array of new tractor-drawn machinery was being manufactured. The new equipment—hay mowers, hay crushers, grain combines, hay balers, and corn harvesters—required a powerful engine and was heavy for horses to pull. Horse-drawn machinery was becoming scarce as non-Amish farmers shifted to tractors. So the tractor became tempting once again. Trying to strike a balance between tradition and efficiency, some Amish mechanics built a power unit that soon claimed the nickname “Amish tractor.”
The power unit consisted of a gasoline engine on a four-wheel cart that could power various implements. It functioned, in essence, as a homemade tractor. The power unit was pulled, of course, by the symbolic horses, for as one farmer said in jest, “We need the horses to steer it.” Moreover, the ingenious young farmers were staying within a senior bishop’s rule of thumb: “If you can pull it with horses, you can have it.” But the old sage probably never imagined that horses would someday pull such modern, powerful, and shiny machines—forage harvesters, combines, and haybines. Even younger bishops were sure that the power unit was only a step away from a tractor. Furthermore, the mocking laughter of Mennonite neighbors was embarrassing.
The bishops were not fooled by the new contraption, and they held to the old line: no tractors in the field. The line has remained taut ever since.
Why did the church not outlaw tractors completely? Why permit this worldly contraption to sit around the barn? Why play with temptation? When asked that question, a bishop said: “I don’t know. I can’t answer that. I still think if we don’t want to go with the world altogether, why we better use horses instead of going along with the modern way.” Although using a tractor in the field simply feels “too worldly” to this bishop, there were good reasons for drawing the line that way in the 1920s.
Gasoline engines were widely used on Amish farms by World War I. Feed silos, thirty feet high, jutted up by Amish barns. Hefty power was needed to blow chopped silage to the top of the silos in order to fill them. The gasoline engine and the steam engine were used for such high-power demands around the barn—grinding, threshing, and blowing silage. Several Amishmen owned steam-powered threshing rigs and harvested wheat on neighboring farms. In fact, Bishop Beiler’s own brother had a steam engine for his threshing rig. To outlaw tractors around the barn would have been a step backward, one that surely would have ignited a political ruckus in the church. In essence, limiting tractors to the barn amounted to freezing history on the farm, drawing a line that simply conformed to customary practice. Such a policy allowed the silage to blow and the wheat to be threshed so that things could go on much as they had before.
The ban on field tractors and other self-propelled equipment that crystallized in about 1923 remains firm today. The fear that tractors would lead to cars is the most frequently cited reason for not using them in the field. Amishmen tell numerous stories of progressive churches in other localities that permitted tractors in the field. “Before you know it, they put rubber tires on the tractors, and the next thing they are driving them to town for groceries. And as the next generation grows up, they can’t understand the difference between using a tractor for trips to town and a car. And so they get a car.”17
If tractors had been manufactured before cars, might the Amish be driving them in their fields today? Possibly. But there are other compelling reasons for banning tractors from the fields as well. They displace farm workers. In contrast to Moderns, who seek to save labor at every turn, the Amish have always welcomed work as the heartbeat of their community. The church was anchored on the farm where work, like a magnet, pulled everyone together. A tractor might save labor, but in Amish eyes that spelled trouble. With more and more labor-saving gadgets, there might not be enough work to go around for all the children. Leisure, the devil’s workshop, would run rampant. Worse yet, the loss of home work would lead to factory work and unwanted ties to the outside world. So in these ways, a labor-saving device like a tractor could threaten not only the family but the church itself.
A tractor provides power to blow green corn to the top of a silo. Tractor wheels and farm wagon wheels are steel; hand-pulled wagons and carts may have rubber wheels.
The use of the tractor conspired against community in other ways as well. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, local farmers, Amish and non-Amish alike, worked closely together in large crews, especially at planting and harvest times. It was hard manual work. But it was good work—communal work—as the community pitted itself against the forces of nature. Self-propelled tractors would not only enable individuals to work fast and independently, but they would also destroy the neighborhood work crews that in bygone days had joined together to harvest crops. The tractor was a great labor saver but also a sure way to lose social capital and the joy of collective work.
Insisting on horses and mules in the field was also a way of perpetuating a horse subculture. Family members would continue to learn about the care and feeding of horses. Related occupations such as blacksmiths and harness makers would survive to support the horse culture—an essential infrastructure if the Amish were to keep the horse and buggy on the road. With only a driving horse in the barn, the entire horse culture as well as its supporting industries might collapse. Thus, keeping horses in the field helped indirectly to keep them on the road.18
The line drawn between barn power and field power in 1923 appears today as a perplexing riddle, but it was a sensible compromise. With tractor power at the barn, silos could be filled, grain ground, and wheat threshed as always, thus avoiding an economic setback and a political brawl. Furthermore, the bargain provided some breathing space, a time-out to observe the consequences of the new contraptions more carefully. The arrangement has served the Amish well over time. As new power needs developed around the barn, the tractor was handy and helpful.19 Today modern steel-wheeled tractors power large feed grinders, spin ventilating fans, run manure pumps, blow silage, operate hydraulic systems, and power irrigation pumps on Amish farms. They power all sorts of equipment from their power takeoff shaft, belt pulley, or hydraulic system. Tractors are also used to pull stumps out of fence rows and milk trucks out of snowdrifts. Thus, while horses protect Amish identity in the field, tractors at the barn help to boost agricultural productivity.
There are some restrictions, however, even around the barn. Steel wheels are mandatory. Pneumatic tires, initially associated with the car, came to symbolize freedom and mobility—and hence worldliness. Thus, over the years the Amish have rejected pneumatic tires on farm equipment, fearing they might lead to the car. Hard rubber tires and pneumatic tires are permitted on small hand-held items such as wheelbarrows, tricycles, wagons, and feed carts. However, the steel-wheel restriction applies to all machinery pulled by horses—wagons, corn pickers, balers, and so forth.
A front-end forklift on a tractor to hoist heavy items up to a second floor is acceptable as a necessity. However, a front-end manure loader, which would lessen the work of family members, is off-limits. In some church districts, small Caterpillar-like tractors push and load manure inside barns. In other districts, they are forbidden. Many businesses use small forklifts to load and unload goods. For safety reasons and because of pressure from shop owners in the 1990s, the church permitted hard rubber on the wheels of forklifts.
TABLE 9.1
General Patterns of Farm Equipment Use
Preventing tractors from replacing horses in the field marked a major turning point in Amish history. It maintained the pace of the past and offered daily evidence that the Amish had not capitulated to modernity. The tractor would not separate them from the soil, their past, their identity, or their families. Thus, by the mid-twentieth century, the horse in the field had become a cogent symbol of Amish identity—a symbolism underscored by nearby Old Order Mennonites who used steel-wheeled tractors in their fields.
Today horses and mules pull modern farm implements in Amish fields. This unusual union of tradition and modernity jelled in the mid-1960s. Before the 1950s, the Amish used traditional horse-drawn equipment to harvest their crops. Grain binders and grass mowers, for example, were powered by their own “ground-driven” wheels.
Numerous factors converged in the 1950s to create strong pressures for change. Farming became more specialized as dairy farms took the lead. Farmers who began with eight cows in the 1930s expanded their herds to twenty-four or even thirty-six. The use of commercial fertilizer and alfalfa produced three to four crops of hay per year. Like other farmers, the Amish had traditionally stored hay loose in their barns. The expanding dairy herds and larger hay crops created storage problems. Farmers had to either limit their herds, build larger barns, or find new ways to store their hay.
The engineers of progress had been tinkering with a solution. Hay balers, pulled by tractors through the field, were able to pack loose hay into tight rectangular bales that were easy to haul and stack in the barn. The tightly compressed bales alleviated the storage problem. After World War II, hay balers became popular among American farmers. Some non-Amish farmers began baling hay for the Amish in the early 1950s. And by 1955, several Amish farmers had purchased their own hay balers. Pulled by horses, the balers were powered by a gasoline engine installed at the factory. It seemed like an innocent turn of events, but it was a revolution of sorts, for it was the first widespread use of gasoline engines in Amish fields.20 Surprisingly, church leaders said little about it. Economic forces propelling the dairy industry as well as the hay storage problem had forced the bishops’ hand. Besides, the baler conformed to the old bishop’s favorite dictum: “If you can pull it with horses, you can have it.”
Amish oral historians report that the hay baler stirred little agitation in the church. One leader reflected: “It surprised me that the baler slipped through.” By 1960 the baler had slipped onto many Amish farms, and when the bishops drew up a list of taboo equipment in the early 1960s, it was conspicuously missing.21 Shunning the baler would have been foolish for both political and financial reasons. Some limits, however, were placed on the baler. Labor-saving bale throwers, which automatically tossed bales onto wagons behind the baler, were forbidden. And steel wheels, of course, were placed on the balers.
Other issues incubating in the early 1960s also brought change and controversy. Manufacturers of farm equipment were producing large, heavy machinery designed for powerful tractors. New horse-drawn machinery was becoming scarce, so the Amish began buying old-fashioned used machinery in other parts of the country. But this pool started to shrink. Commercial fertilizers, hybrid seed, and improved methods of cultivation produced bumper crops that were difficult to harvest with antiquated equipment.
With horse-drawn machinery scarce, some bold farmers, knowing the baler had slipped into use and feeling the pressure for increased productivity, began using modern corn harvesters and wheat combines. In the past, the Amish had used “ground-driven” binders pulled by horses to cut their corn and wheat. The new corn harvesters chopped green corn in the field and blew it into a trailing wagon. The silage was then hauled to the barn and blown into silos for storage. The corn harvester was a boon to the dairy farmer because chopped corn silage was a prime source of feed. The combine was a modern threshing machine that cut and threshed wheat in the field in one operation.
Meeting in 1960, the Amish bishops singled out the harvester and the combine as two inventions they would not tolerate. Several factors likely explain the ban. First, the modern harvesters and combines on nearby non-Amish farms were self-propelled.22 The horse-pulled corn harvesters and wheat combines, already slipping into use on some Amish farms, might eventually lead to self-propelled units. Second, the lenient bishops had already “looked the other way” when the hay baler slipped in. Why, they reasoned, let another labor-saving device slip through? They had to draw the line somewhere in order to govern the expansionist impulses of farmers. Unlike the baler, the corn harvester did not improve storage. It just saved labor and time, and that was no excuse for tolerance. Third, as dairy operations flourished, wheat and tobacco were in decline.23 The combines used for harvesting wheat were not critical for the survival of dairy farmers. The few acres of wheat farmed by the Amish could still be cut with old-fashioned, ground-driven binders and threshed at the barn in traditional ways. Although the bishops would tolerate the hay baler, the economic and political pressures were not strong enough to persuade them to endorse corn harvesters and combines.
A new development in the fall of 1960 sealed the fate of the modern corn harvester for at least several decades. An inventive Amish farmer mounted a gasoline engine on a corn binder designed to be pulled and powered by a tractor. Using the gasoline engine to cut the corn, he could pull the tractor binder with his horses. Until this time, old-fashioned ground-driven binders were used to cut green corn for silage. The inventive farmer explained: “We put engines on the corn binders because there weren’t enough ground-driven binders around anymore and to keep away from the combines and harvesters.” Amish mechanics soon began making replacement parts for the binders, which were no longer manufactured. It was a watershed in the evolution of Amish technology: the Amish could now move beyond simple ground-driven machinery. By mounting engines on equipment designed for tractors, they could increase productivity, use modern equipment, eliminate the need for large self-propelled models, and still keep horses and mules plodding across their fields. Rather than being dominated by modern farm technology, the Amish had redesigned it to fit their moral order.
A state-of-the-art round baler is pulled by horses. A large engine mounted on the baler provides power. The rubber tires are permitted because the baler is jointly owned with a non-Amish neighbor.
Using engines to power field equipment was another bargain that delicately balanced a variety of factors; it (1) kept the modern harvester off Amish fields, (2) retained the symbolic horse, (3) provided plenty of work for farm hands, (4) permitted silage harvesting to continue according to tradition, (5) eliminated the difficulty of buying scarce ground-driven binders, (6) created new jobs for Amish mechanics who manufactured replacement parts, (7) provided extra power to cut the larger varieties of hybrid crops, (8) enabled dairy farmers to remain financially competitive, and (9) opened a way for the bishops to escape from their political quandary.
The bishops negotiated a deal that has lasted for more than four decades. In essence, they said: “You may use modern farm equipment powered by gasoline engines as long as you pull it with horses, but you may not use self-propelled equipment.” The farmer who mounted the first engine on the corn binder described the technological watershed innocently: “I just mounted it [the engine] on to see if it would work. There was no meeting with the ministers and bishops. It didn’t make no ruckus.” But it was a historic compromise that cleared the way for gasoline engines to be installed on other farm equipment—the hay crimper (1960), corn picker (1965), grass mower (1966), and eventually the roto beater, round baler, and sprayer.
The riddle of pulling modern implements with horses is indeed a compromise between modernity and tradition, a way of keeping the horse in the field and the family on the farm while tapping new power sources to harvest robust crops and increase productivity.
The increased mechanization was welcomed by most farmers, but for some it was too little too late. Their impatience set the stage for the division of 1966. Despite two world wars, the Depression, and rapid social change, things had been relatively quiet among the Amish since the cleavage of 1910. They had struggled with a variety of changes, none of which had induced a schism. The serenity broke in the late 1950s. Pennsylvania farmers were rapidly adopting mechanized field equipment, modern milking machines, and barn cleaners. Banks encouraged Amish farmers to enlarge their operations, and dairy herds were expanding.
Joining the tide of mechanization, Amish farmers in several districts began using haybines, wheat combines, and corn harvesters to harvest their crops. Others installed mechanical barn cleaners to clean manure from their barns. A few enterprising farmers even hooked electric generators to their diesel engines to make 110-volt electricity for light bulbs, home freezers, and appliances.
In 1960, the bishops met and identified six worldly items—combines, forage harvesters, barn cleaners, power units (“Amish tractors”), electric generators, and deep freezers—that they wanted “put away” before they got completely out of hand. Outlawing these items, which had been slipping onto Amish farms, was easier said than done. A number of bishops had difficulty enforcing the decrees, and others were reluctant to act because some of their members had been using the items for several years. The bishops agreed to permit generators to be used for welders, but they would not budge on the other issues.
In the fall of 1962, twenty bishops assembled and agreed once again to prohibit these worldly items. In December 1962, a special all-day meeting of 140 ordained ministers, deacons, and bishops was called to discuss the volatile issues. The bishops gave persuasive talks on the need to “hold the line” on the six items and urged the ministers to help “clean them out.” Most of the ordained men supported the eradication effort, but leaders in several districts, obviously hedging, gave qualified responses to the bishops’ requests. The hesitant ministers were in a quandary—caught between the requests of senior bishops and the enormous consequences back home if they forced their members to get rid of the six conveniences.24 Another special Ministers’ Meeting in July 1964 also failed to resolve the impasse.
Consequently, during the spring and summer of 1966, about one hundred families severed ties with the Old Order Amish and began worshiping separately. These New Order Amish formed two church districts and by 1967 added a third.25 They accepted the controversial items and also used tractors in their fields and electricity in their homes. Abandoning another Amish marker, some New Orders placed rubber tires on their tractors and used them not only in the fields but also on the road for errands and shopping. Disagreements over the use of tobacco, cars, and other conveniences eventually fragmented the New Order group, leaving only one viable district by 2000.
Forklifts are widely used in shops to move products. Hard rubber tires are permitted to ease turning on concrete floors. This shop produces steel garbage containers.
The social fabric of the Old Order Amish has not been rent since 1966—an amazing feat in the face of much subsequent change. Ridding themselves of the progressives in 1966 fortified the Amish taboo on combines, harvesters, barn cleaners, power units, electric generators, and deep freezers. These items remain forbidden by the Ordnung, except that generators may now be used for welders, bulk tanks, and recharging batteries.
Why would barn cleaners appear on the bishops’ taboo list? As the dairy herds expanded in the 1950s, barn cleaners became popular. Small paddles, pulled by motor-driven chains, cleaned the manure from gutters in dairy barns and saved an enormous amount of hand labor. The barn cleaners troubled the bishops in three ways: they required electricity, they would leave Amish boys idle, and they were a license for expansion. Farmers who had already doubled their herds from twelve to twenty-four cows would soon be expanding their herds again if they could clean their gutters so easily. Forbidding barn cleaners was a way of braking the burgeoning dairy business. Consequently, the cleaners were banned.
In the 1970s and 1980s, high milk prices and easy credit tempted Amish farmers once again. To the dismay of some leaders, many herds were doubled, with up to forty-eight cows—still a modest number in contrast to the hundred-cow herds of their non-Amish neighbors. Because no one enjoys the sloppy work of cleaning up after four dozen cows, farmers devised two detours around the bishops’ taboo on mechanical cleaners. Some cleaned their barns by scraping the manure through the gutters with a cable paddle pulled by a mule. Others installed liquid manure pits by digging “basements” beneath the barns at considerable expense. These liquid manure pits hold the slop as it drains out of the gutters by gravity. The manure is then pumped from the pit into a tank spreader, which scatters it over the fields.
Reflecting on the barn cleaner taboo in light of twenty-five years of history, an Amish minister said that the leaders “made a big mistake with the barn cleaner. They should have never tried to stop it, because these pits and stuff are so expensive.” Although they were unwilling to renege on their 1960 decree, leaders did permit Amish farmers to devise alternative ways to clean their barns. These new barn-cleaning methods pay respect to traditional authority and, at the same time, ease the burden of work that accompanies a larger herd. It is a gentleman’s stand-off. The farmers have respected the letter of the law by not installing mechanical cleaners, and the bishops have respected the dirty work of farming by not clamping down on the new methods, which pay polite deference to tradition.
TABLE 9.2
Selected Technological Adaptions by Approximate Date of Use
In order to limit herd size, church leaders added other restrictions for dairy farmers. Amish farmers had been using mechanical milking machines for many years, but they carried the milk to the milk house in buckets. In the 1960s and 1970s many non-Amish farmers replaced their milk buckets with glass pipe lines. Pumped through the pipe lines, the milk flowed directly from the cow stable to an adjacent milk house, thus eliminating the need for buckets. By outlawing these popular pipe lines, church leaders hoped to stifle expansion and preserve work for Amish boys. Furthermore, shiny glass pipes in Amish barns seemed a bit too modern. They looked worldly and certainly seemed out of character with Amish modesty. Today Amish farmers either carry their milk in buckets or transport it in a small wagon-sized tank from the cow stable to the milk house.
Two developments in the 1990s prompted new controversies. Some farmers experimented with large round balers. Instead of creating rectangular bales, the new balers rolled the hay into large bales that could be stored outside or wrapped in plastic to make haylage. Pulled by horses, these state-of-the-art round balers stirred debate in the church but were gradually accepted in some districts. Another issue surfaced in the summer of 2000, when several farmers took the bold step of replacing their corn binders with modern forage harvesters, pulled by horses. This move created intense controversy because harvesters had been banned in 1966. Ironically, scarce labor was one of the reasons that made the harvesters tempting. Farmers had difficulty finding help because Amish boys were landing well-paying jobs in shops and construction. In any event, the bishops who remembered the earlier ban on harvesters were very annoyed.
The bishops’ rejection in the early 1960s of the six items, with the exception of the household freezer, is seen by thoughtful elders as a sincere attempt to arrest social change, limit the size of farm operations, and keep the family on the farm. Describing those pivotal decisions, a farmer said: “I can’t give enough credit to our leaders for keeping us back from large equipment, tractors, combines, and harvesters. They stressed not having big equipment and said that if we allow big equipment we’ll go in debt and need more land to pay if off and it will break up the family farm.”
The division of 1966 became a benchmark in Amish history. It was a time when key understandings became inscribed in the Ordnung. Horses would stay in the field. Plodding symbols of Amish identity, they would set the pace of things and curb expansionist tendencies. Self-propelled harvesters, combines, and haybines were outlawed, probably forever. Modern farm machinery—mowers, balers, sprayers, corn pickers, all powered by engines—would be tolerated if pulled by horses. And so the Amish farmers who baffle Moderns by pulling state-of-the-art balers through the fields with mules are not ridiculous. They are simply yielding to a reasonable compromise with modernity, an agreement that respects tradition, curtails expansion, provides labor, protects ethnic identity, and permits just enough technology for economic growth. It has become a good bargain—one that harnesses the power of progress in creative and positive ways for the welfare of the community.
