There’s more tourists than plow furrows, more flies than tourists.
—Amish farmer
Groups that hope to resist modernization must regulate the interaction of their members with the outside world. This chapter explores the ties and patterns of interaction between Amish society and the larger world. Although the church regulates the participation of individual members in the dominant society, there are also systemic bonds—contracts and patterns of economic exchange—that fuse the two social systems together.
The Amish have always emphasized separation from the world. This historic religious belief has taken an ironic twist in the throes of modernization, producing yet another riddle. The rejection of mass media, modern dress, higher education, and electricity has widened the gap between the Amish and the outside world. Yet at the same time the Amish are more entangled with the larger economic system than ever before. How is it that the cultural gap widened as the economic systems merged? Moreover, as Amish dependency on the larger society increased, a mutual dependency also emerged. Today they not only lean on the larger society, but it also leans on them. How did the larger society come to rely on the Amish?
As the Amish modernized their farming, created their own industries, and adopted more contemporary lifestyles, their dependency on the larger society increased. Farmers use the telephone to call veterinarians, to order fertilizer, and to check weather forecasts before making hay. Amish housewives cook with Teflon pans, buy butane gas for their stoves, use disposable diapers, clean with detergents, and buy permanent-press fabrics. Many households depend on income from the sale of quilts, produce, crafts, and baked goods to non-Amish. Amish business owners lean on commercial suppliers for raw materials, the latest machine technology, and the modern transportation system to deliver their products. Because they borrow from commercial banks, Amish fortunes fluctuate as interest rates rise and fall. When milk and tobacco prices dip, Amish profits fall. Business sales vacillate with the costs of transportation, raw materials, diesel fuel, and competing products. In all of these ways, the Amish are dependent on the larger society. Indeed, without these economic ties, Amish society in its present form would collapse.
The Amish also use the services of professionals—physicians, dentists, optometrists, accountants, lawyers, morticians—as well as those of banks, hospitals, and real estate agencies. They rely less on professionals than Moderns do, but they could barely function without the aid of such experts. Furthermore, the vitality of Amish society is indebted to the technological achievements of the scientific age. Antibiotics and other medicines have cut their infant mortality rate and increased the longevity of their elderly, both of which have contributed to their growth. Artificial insemination of dairy cows, hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, veterinary medicines, pesticides, and the careful management of flocks and herds have all boosted agricultural output. The use of the latest welding, fabricating, carpentry, and manufacturing equipment enables Amish businesses to compete successfully in the broader marketplace. In all of these areas, Amish success hinges on the services and advancements of the larger society. They do not live in a closed society; indeed, they are deeply entangled in the economic systems of American society.
Ironically, as the systemic links tightened, the cultural gap widened. Amish sages agree that the gulf between their life and that of their non-Amish neighbors is wider today than ever. With the rise of Amish schools in the 1960s, a new generation of Amish grew up without the influence of non-Amish teachers and non-Amish friends. An Amishman described the growing separation between the two cultures: “Oh yes, there’s a stronger separation today, oh yes, oh certainly, and it’s growing faster all the time.” Over the years, the cultural distance between the two worlds has widened. As the worlds pulled apart, the economic ties tightened—all of which produced the puzzle of a separate people who are enmeshed in the modern economy. In short, cultural separation increased, and economic separation declined.
The Amish use banks and other professional services.
The Amish have many friendly relationships with non-Amish neighbors. Businessmen deal with a variety of non-Amish clients, suppliers, and professionals on a daily basis. But the relationships, though pleasant and cordial, have limits. They rarely lead to romantic involvements, intimate sharing, or religious cooperation. The church’s ability to regulate attire, control participation in public organizations, and maintain the dialect has reinforced Amish separation from the world.
Amish participation in outside organizations is selective, informal, and locally based. They usually do not hold public office or join civic organizations such as service clubs, country clubs, Boy Scouts, 4-H clubs, Little League softball teams, or the Red Cross. Membership in professional organizations is also restricted. Amish farmers are even discouraged from joining the Dairy Herd Improvement Association. Those who do join are careful not to have their achievements publicized. A few business owners are members of the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce, and a half-dozen or so are members of the Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors Bureau. As noted before, the Amish often join volunteer fire companies in many communities. Fire company benefit auctions are frequently staffed and supported by the Amish in a pleasant partnership with their neighbors.
Before World War I, an Amishman, in a rare instance, served as postmaster in a rural village.1 However, holding public office is typically taboo because it involves an “unequal yoking” with the larger world. In the first half of the twentieth century, Amish fathers frequently served as board members of one-room public schools. Despite their avoidance of public office and political activity, the Amish are good neighbors who readily assist their non-Amish friends in time of disaster, fire, or illness. They support community benefit auctions, garage sales, and historical celebrations. In one case, an Amishman was appointed to a township planning commission, but such public involvement is rare. Occasionally, special township meetings are held to deal with issues involving the Amish—zoning hearings, road wear from horseshoes, immunization of children, and so forth. An increase in polio cases among the Amish in 1979 threatened a public epidemic, and an outbreak of measles posed a similar risk in 1988. In both instances, Amish leaders cooperated with health officials by encouraging mass immunization. In such ways, they seek to be good neighbors.
The Amish rarely participate in other civic affairs. Attendance at fairs, amusement parks, carnivals, dances, and the theater is prohibited for church members. However, some Amish youth indulge in these worldly activities before baptism. Occasionally adults, and more frequently youth, will travel to the beach or attend a professional baseball game, tennis tournament, or country music concert. In 1995 the church firmly denounced playing baseball for members; however, before baptism, some youth play on local baseball teams and even wear uniforms. In sum, Amish participation in community affairs tends to be local, selective, and informal. Moreover, they seek to avoid publicity and public confrontation at all costs.
The Amish want to be law-abiding citizens but are reluctant to use the legal system to protect their rights. Lawyers are readily used by the Amish to prepare wills, establish business partnerships, and handle real estate transactions, but using the law to protect one’s personal or business rights contradicts the humble spirit of Gelassenheit. Filing a lawsuit is cause for excommunication. The Amish are taught to bear abuse and suffer insult rather than to fight injustice through legal means. But as more and more Amish move into business, use of the law becomes ever more tempting. In some instances, non-Amish customers have bilked Amish businessmen, knowing they would not likely sue. Using implicit threats, some Amish business owners have asked their attorneys to write letters to debtors asking for payment of delinquent bills. In other cases, under the advice of their attorneys, Amish have asked dubious clients to sign a “confessed judgement,” which is then filed in the courthouse if products or services are not paid in full. The confessed judgment places a lien against the debtor’s property. Asking a client to sign such a judgment is an implicit threat, but an Amish person will rarely execute such a note or testify at enforcement hearings.
In other situations, Amish businessmen have asked district magistrates to initiate bad debt collections. The Amish person is named as plaintiff, but this is not publicized. If defendants want to defend themselves at a public hearing, the Amish rarely appear but will ask their attorneys to resolve it in private. Careful not to file an actual lawsuit, some businessmen use the services of attorneys to resolve disputes quietly, out of the public limelight. The growing involvement in business will surely increase the tension between the gentleness of Gelassenheit and the brash realities of the marketplace.
The Amish are law-abiding citizens. Church leaders strongly encourage members to obey civil laws. Yet when civil law and religious conscience collide, the Amish are not afraid to “take a stand” and call on their members to “obey God rather than men.” Although they support civil government, they always keep a healthy distance from it. Self-reliance, community autonomy, and the church’s responsibility for the welfare of its members are persistent themes in Amish teaching that have made them wary of government.2
The Amish view of civil government is ambiguous. On the one hand, they believe the Bible teaches that government is ordained by God. On the other hand, the government epitomizes worldly culture, for it is the formal and legal apparatus of an unregenerate world. The European persecutors of the Amish were often government officials. Government embodies the force of law. When push comes to shove, governments engage in warfare and use capital punishment and raw coercion to impose their will. These methods violate the way of Jesus and the gentle spirit of Gelassenheit. Moreover, because the Amish church regulates much of the conduct of its members, it has little need for external control.
The Amish have a long history of caring for their own members and thus have little use for Medicaid, Medicare, public welfare programs, and other forms of public subsidy. Tapping into federal programs would, in the long run, erode the base of mutual aid and drain away precious social capital. Such an erosion would weaken the influence of the church. The Amish are adamantly opposed to government “handouts.” Why, they ask, should they be forced to participate in government welfare programs such as Social Security and Medicare when they have cared for their own people for three centuries—long before such programs were ever envisioned by politicians?
Contrary to popular misconceptions, the Amish do pay their taxes. They believe the Bible teaches Christians to pay taxes and respect government. They pay state and federal income taxes, county taxes, sales taxes, real estate transfer taxes, and local school taxes. In fact, they pay school taxes twice—for Amish schools as well as public ones. Of course, they pay few gasoline taxes. The only taxes from which they are exempt are Social Security and Worker’s Compensation.3
With the exception of serving on local school boards, the church has forbidden holding public office for several reasons. First, running for office is viewed as self-serving and arrogant, out of sync with the meek spirit of Gelassenheit. Second, holding government office means participating in the state, the most worldly of organizations—an embarrassing violation of the principle of separation from the world. Finally, a public official might need to use legal force to settle public disputes, violating the biblical admonition to not resist evil. In short, seeking, holding, and promoting political office simply contradicts a host of Amish values.
Voting is considered an individual matter in Amish society. Amish turnout is typically low.
The Amish attitude toward voting is more tolerant. The church, surprisingly, leaves voting up to individual choice. Those who vote tend to be younger businessmen with an interest in community affairs. The Amish are more likely to cast a ballot in local elections than in national ones. In the 2000 presidential election, the chairman of the Lancaster County Republican Committee was urging the Amish to vote, knowing they would likely vote Republican. Interestingly, the Republican chairman was the great-grandson of an Amish leader involved in an Amish boycott of the East Lampeter School Consolidation in 1937, described in Chapter 7. Some forty years later, the offspring of this leader was hoping the Amish would help to carry Pennsylvania for George W. Bush.4
It is safe to assume that the Amish voting rate is much lower than the national average. One minister said that he stopped voting after he was ordained to the ministry. Indeed, the Amish National Steering Committee discouraged both voting and jury duty, concluding that “if we are concerned in this line, let us turn to God in prayer that his will be done.”5 While voting has been a matter of individual choice, serving on juries is strongly discouraged.
The Amish church strictly forbids participation in military service. In fact, entering military service brings excommunication. In the Amish view, Jesus’ command to love one’s enemies and not to resist evil are incompatible with being a soldier. The purposes and techniques of military service violate the very essence of Gelassenheit; obedience to biblical teaching must always transcend civil duty.
During World War II, many Amish conscientious objectors received agricultural deferments and continued to work on the family farm.6 As the draft continued into the 1960s, some who were ineligible for farm deferments contributed two years of alternative service in public hospitals. However, working in a worldly, often urban environment created serious problems. Explained an Amish spokesman, “Many boys went with good intentions, but having so much idle time they became involved with amusements, with the nurses, or in other ways were led astray.”7 When their service was finished, many no longer wanted to come home, nor could they join the church if they had married a wife of a different faith. To alleviate this, the Amish negotiated an agreement with the Selective Service. Those ineligible for deferments at home could be assigned to farms under the supervision of the Amish National Steering Committee. In fact, it was this problem that led to the creation of the committee in 1966. The end of the draft in 1973 eliminated the problem of military service. Amish leaders continue to stay in contact with Selective Service officials in the hope that, if national conscription ever returns, they will once again be able to find alternative assignments. The church encourages young men to register with the Selective Service on their eighteenth birthday.
By the turn of the twenty-first century, the Amish National Steering Committee had become an important mediator between Amish interests and government concerns.8 An informal network of directors from Amish-populated states gathers for an annual national meeting, and various states have their own statewide meeting of local representatives as well. An informal lobbying effort of sorts, the Steering Committee has grappled with many issues over the years—conscription, child labor, slow-moving vehicles, Social Security, IRA accounts, 401(k) plans, hard hat regulations, Worker’s Compensation, and earned income credits, to name a few. The presence of the Steering Committee is also helpful to government officials at local, state, and national levels to ascertain Amish opinions on pending issues and legislation. The Steering Committee has become an important venue for negotiating traditionalist Amish convictions with the realities of the bureaucratic state. Because the chairman of the National Steering Committee has resided in Lancaster County since 1966, the Lancaster settlement has played a prominent role in coordinating discussions with government officials.
Although the Amish pay local, state, and federal taxes, they refuse to pay into Social Security or tap its benefits, which they view as an insurance program rather than a tax.9 Indeed, when the federal program began in 1935, it was called Old Age and Survivors Insurance. The Amish have objected to public insurance programs for several reasons. First, they believe that the church should care for the welfare of its own members. The Amish record on this score is commendable. Widows, orphans, and the disabled are cared for by extended families and by the church. In cases of extreme difficulty, the needy are assisted by an alms fund. The elderly retire at home under the care of their children. Families often take turns caring for senile members and others requiring special support. Rather than institutionalizing dependent people, the Amish care for the needy through extended family networks. To turn these responsibilities over to the state would, in their mind, abdicate a fundamental religious duty—the care of one’s brothers and sisters in the faith.
Second, insurance programs—especially life insurance plans—are viewed as gambling ventures that seek to plan and protect one’s fortunes rather than yield them to the will of God. For example, the Amish usually will not buy annuities because they carry life insurance benefits. Insurance programs defy the stance of Gelassenheit—of waiting and submitting to divine destiny—because they guarantee a favorable financial outcome. Participation in such programs also entails economic involvement with, and reliance on, the world—a violation of the biblical injunction of separation. Finally, Amish involvement in public insurance programs would destroy dependency on the church and erode its centrality in the lives of members. Moreover, the mutual aid programs provided by the community—the networks of social capital—would be severely diminished.
The Amish plea for exemption from Social Security was voiced by an Amish spokesman in hearings before the Ways and Means Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1983: “The Amish are only human and not as perfect as our non-Amish neighbors would take us to be, and not as near perfect as we would like to be, and we would not wish to be a burden to our government or men in authority or to be a hindrance to anyone. We desire no financial assistance from our state or federal government in any way. But again, we would humbly plea that we be allowed to take care of our own, in our own way, through alms and brotherly love as has always been our custom and has been sufficient to this day.”10
When the Social Security program began, it created little problem for the Amish because the self-employed were exempt. The loophole closed in 1955 when the self-employed, including farmers, were required to participate.11 The government, in the Amish view, had overstepped its bounds by forcing them to pay into, and receive benefits from, a federal insurance program. By May 1955, Amish representatives from across the nation, led by a Lancaster bishop, presented a petition asking for exemption to federal officials and members of Congress. The petition, signed by nearly fourteen thousand Old Order members, baffled Washington bureaucrats. This was the first time in the twenty-year history of Social Security that citizens were begging not to receive benefits. The Amish argued that if they began paying into the program it would be hard to keep their sons and daughters from collecting benefits, and in a generation or so they would be hooked on the system.
For the next several years, the Amish argued their case before congressional committees, but the legislators were hesitant to open the door for special exemptions, fearing it might dismantle the entire system. Finally, in 1958, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) began filing liens on farm animals and other Amish assets in Ohio.12 IRS enforcement varied by state and region. Frightened by the crackdown, some Amish farmers began making payments, but others still refused. In 1958 IRS agents in the Midwest began confiscating and selling Amish-owned horses. Such seizures continued intermittently. In 1961 agents seized three horses from an Amishman in western Pennsylvania while he was working in the field. By the time legislative relief arrived in 1965, there were an estimated 1,500 delinquent Amish accounts and 3,000 liens on Amish properties.13 National publicity and public outcry on behalf of the Amish brought the issue to a stalemate.14
More than a dozen bills seeking to exempt the Amish from Social Security were sponsored by legislators from heavily populated Amish states in the early 1960s. A Social Security exemption was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on 30 July 1965 as an appendage to the bill that established the national Medicare program. According to an Amish negotiator, Lancaster Bishop David Fisher told House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur Mills that “we take care of our own people and if we start paying in, the next generation will collect and we don’t want no government handouts.” Mills replied, “There’s nothing wrong with that.” And, according to an observer, “Mills just hung an exemption rider on the Medicare bill and it sailed right through the Congress.”
The exemption approved in 1965 applied only to the self-employed. A special IRS form (4029) was developed for religious groups that had convictions against Social Security. Today, within six months of their baptism, young Amish complete the exemption form, which is then signed by their bishop. After filing the exemption, they receive an “exemption number”—in essence, a Social Security number. Signers of the form agree to “waive all rights to any Social Security payment or benefit.” Thus, the Amish receive no Social Security checks for welfare, retirement, disability, Medicaid, or Medicare.15 Changes in the federal tax code in 1987 required wage earners to obtain a Social Security number for each dependent child over five years of age. The Amish objected to this and negotiated an agreement with the IRS to waive the requirement.
The Social Security exemption approved for the Amish in 1965 functioned smoothly for self-employed farmers and carpenters. However, it created complications as the Amish began moving into business. A variety of arrangements developed as the Amish coped with the self-employment restriction: (1) Amish who work for non-Amish employers have Social Security taxes deducted from their paychecks even though they will never receive Social Security payments. (2) Amish employers must pay the Social Security tax for their non-Amish employees. (3) Until 1988 Amish businesses paid Social Security premiums for their Amish employees even though they would never benefit from the program. “It’s like paying for a dead horse,” said a businessman. A retired Amish shop owner said: “I paid thousands of dollars for Social Security taxes for myself and my employees and won’t get a penny of it back.” (4) Some businesses organized themselves as legal partnerships so the employees—owners or partners in this case—were considered self-employed and exempt from Social Security payments, Worker’s Compensation, and unemployment insurance. (5) In other cases, several Amishmen worked together as a carpentry crew but kept individual records and collected their pay separately to qualify for the self-employment exemption.
With business arrangements pressing the legal definition of self-employment and with more Amish moving into business, several legislators from heavily populated Amish areas sponsored bills in the United States Congress aimed at removing the self-employment restriction.16 Finally, in 1988 the self-employment exemption was expanded by Congress to include Amish employees working for Amish employers, thus exempting both. However, non-Amish employers must continue to deduct Social Security taxes if they hire Amish employees.
Two other insurance related programs, Worker’s Compensation and unemployment insurance, have also created problems for Amish employers. The Amish view these, like Social Security, as government insurance programs. Self-employed workers are exempt from Worker’s Compensation and unemployment insurance. As employees of Amish school boards, Amish teachers were caught in a dilemma with these programs. In 1978 Pennsylvania legislators unanimously passed a bill exempting Amish teachers from Worker’s Compensation. The IRS considers Amish teachers self-employed because they teach without direct supervision, thus freeing them from paying unemployment insurance. Several states—Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and Wisconsin—eventually exempted all Amish from Worker’s Compensation because of their religious objections.
Over the years, numerous federal programs designed to stabilize the prices of agricultural products have regulated supply and demand. The Amish have typically avoided agricultural subsidy programs. For example, they refused to sell their cows in a federal buyout program in the 1990s and to accept payment to let farmland sit idle. They have historically opposed government “handouts,” from Social Security to agricultural subsidies. This repudiation has baffled government bureaucrats.
Increasingly, a few Amish have participated in some programs underwritten with government subsidies—conservation programs, land preservation efforts, and Federal Home Administration (FHA) loans for farms. One minister accepted $17,000 to build a manure pit as part of a government effort to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. In the adjoining church district a lay member refused to accept a subsidy for his manure pit as a “matter of conscience.” In 2000, several Amish families were conscientiously struggling with whether to accept $2,100 an acre in government funds to preserve their farmland.
The Amish boycott of Social Security and other government subsidies reflects two cherished ideals: community self-reliance and the religious conviction that church members are responsible for the economic welfare of their brothers and sisters.
In the spring of 1984, the Amish found themselves in a peculiar public relations quandary. They learned, to their astonishment, that Amish life would be depicted in a major Hollywood film, Witness, which Paramount Pictures planned to shoot in Lancaster County. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Motion Picture and TV Development, eager for national publicity and tourist revenues, had solicited Paramount for an Amish picture.17
The story featured a Philadelphia detective (played by Harrison Ford), who finds refuge with an Amish family. Endangered by a criminal investigation, Ford lives with the Amish family and falls in love with an Amish widow (played by Kelly McGillis). The drama ends with a violent shoot-out on an Amish farm. The violence of a cop thriller, set in an idyllic Amish countryside, created a dramatic clash of images.
As the film was being shot in the early summer of 1984, the Amish began to protest for several reasons. First, they had always opposed television, movies, and photography. They resented being portrayed in a medium they abhorred. Second, they have typically shunned publicity, and a commercial film would project Amish images on screens around the world. Third, perhaps more than any other word, Hollywood symbolized worldliness in the Amish mind—a “den of iniquity” that distributes sin, sex, and violence to viewers around the world. Thus to have Hollywood, the symbol of moral vice, make a film about the Amish and catapult them into international fame was a triple insult. Finally, the Amish knew that they were being exploited commercially by the tourist industry. Writing in protest of the film to Pennsylvania’s governor, an Amishwoman said: “We Amish feel we are serving as a tool to lure tourists to Lancaster County.”
As the filming got under way, Amish bishops warned members not to cooperate with the Paramount production crews. “We can’t stop them,” said one Amishman, “but we don’t have to help them. We don’t want it. It doesn’t belong here.” In a conciliatory overture, director Peter Weir promised not to use Amish persons in the cast. However, the Amish soon discovered that Kelly McGillis had spent several days in disguise in an Amish home. Upon identification, she was asked to leave. This breach of trust added insult to injury. An irritated Amish grandmother said: “Now, that was an intrusion. I thought that was pretty bad. We wouldn’t do that to them [the public] and they wouldn’t want us to either. They’d hike us out the door faster than we ever came in.” Although the Amish stayed aloof from the filming, they felt betrayed by some local officials who assisted Paramount Pictures. And as the Amish suspected, the monetary rewards were great. The filming alone pumped several million dollars into the local economy.
Unable to ignore the insult, three bishops and a lay leader took their protest to Lieutenant Governor William W. Scranton in Harrisburg. The delegation argued that the Amish had been mistreated because actors had been dressed as Amish and were engaged in physical fights and shown making nasty remarks. Said one leader: “If our principles were to fight, I feel we could go to court and get an injunction on the basis of misrepresenting the Amish, but this is not our way.” Using the ultimate bargaining chip, one bishop remarked that the Amish “might have to move if they were not left alone.”
Harrison Ford defends the Amish with fists during on-site filming of Witness in the Village of Intercourse. The Amish objected to this scene because Ford, dressed in ethnic garb, was fighting.
After hearing their pleas, Lieutenant Governor Scranton promised to intervene. He arranged several meetings that produced an agreement with the secretary of commerce and the director of the Pennsylvania Bureau of Motion Picture and TV Development.18 In brief, it stipulated that the state:
Will not promote Pennsylvania Amish as subjects for feature films or television productions.
Will not promote any script that uses the Amish and/or its culture as subject matter.
Will refuse to deal with film companies that attempt to film the Amish without their consent.
Will inform potential producers of the community’s strong opposition to photographs and having its culture represented in any theatrical production.19
By the time the agreement was finalized, Witness was well on its way to the screen. The arrangement placated both parties. The state was pleased because no restrictions were placed on Witness, which would soon stir the curiosity of millions around the world. And though the state promised not to solicit film producers, the secretary of commerce admitted that “really, nothing would change if Witness were coming in tomorrow as a new production . . . other than making it clear that the Amish community does not wish to be intruded upon.” The state commerce department, he noted, would again offer the same sort of support that it gives to other films.
“We were quite happy with the agreement,” an Amish leader said. “We felt it was as far as the secretary of commerce could possibly go, legally.” A bishop concluded: “We think we got what we asked for.” Negotiating the agreement gave the Amish an opportunity to vent their frustration with the whole ordeal and to inform state officials that there were limits to Gelassenheit—they would not merely pray while being trampled upon by Hollywood greed. And while the state did not want to prohibit future Amish films, it surely did not want to provoke an Amish migration.
The local Pennsylvania Dutch Convention and Visitors’ Bureau maintained a discreet distance from Witness. Although the bureau supported the agreement reached with the Amish, its representatives did not attend a highly publicized premiere of Witness in Lancaster City. After release of the film, however, bureau brochures began inviting tourists to Lancaster County, “as seen in the critically acclaimed movie Witness.”20 Meanwhile, Witness was doing well. It grossed $33.7 million at the box office in its first six weeks and even knocked another Paramount film, Beverly Hills Cop, out of the top slot. Things were also going well for tourism in Lancaster County. By the end of the first six-week run of Witness, tourism had climbed 13 percent, even before the summer rush.
Two issues that complicated Amish relations with the larger society at the turn of the twenty-first century were the so-called puppy mills and child labor laws. In fact, some observers felt these flashpoints were tarnishing public relations for the Amish community. Both issues, charged with emotion and stereotypical images, illustrate a clash of cultural values.
The “puppy mill” controversy began in 1993 when the New York Times published a story implicating some Amish farmers for violating health standards in the dog kennels where they raised puppies for pet shops.21 The article pitted three Amish farmers, “who treated dogs like any other animals,” against Humane Society officials who wanted better care. One Amishman charged that “the animal rights people are more concerned about dogs than their own children.” By the turn of the twenty-first century, Lancaster County had about 230 licensed dog kennels for breeding purposes, many of which were Amish owned.22 Amish farmers typically had twenty-five to fifty breeding dogs in licensed kennels that were inspected by the state department of agriculture.
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 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.
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 money—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.
At present, tourism underscores the cultural separation of the Amish. Tourists may be bothersome, but they do reinforce Amish separation from the world. Although the Amish complain of feeling “like monkeys in a zoo,” the imagery does underscore the sharp difference between monkeys and visitors. In this way, tourism galvanizes the cultural gap between the two worlds and helps define Amish identity.
Tourism also creates expectations for Amish behavior. The symbolism on tourist billboards reinforces the boundaries of Amish culture even in the minds of the Amish themselves. Knowing that tourists come to see a people driving horses and living without electricity reinforces expectation for such behavior. Thus, Amish behavior, in part, fulfills the expectations created by tourism. Such external expectations likely fortify rather than weaken actual Amish practice. To discard the buggy, for instance, would not only break Amish tradition, but it would also shatter the expectations of the outside world.
In these ways, rather than endangering Amish culture, tourism may inadvertently fortify it. In any event, the economic value of the Amish as a tourist attraction has greatly enhanced their bargaining power with public officials. Indeed, organized curiosity in the form of tourism may be their staunchest ally in legal confrontations with the state. There have been few public clashes with local officials since the mid-1960s, when tourism first thrust the Amish into the public spotlight. In fact, local, state, and federal officials have made striking concessions to the Amish, ranging from overlooking road damage from horseshoes, to the U.S. Supreme Court’s endorsement of their schools.
A more sinister scenario may lurk beneath this happy ending, however. The rise of Amish-owned tourist shops could, over time, foster an unhealthy dependency if the Amish become parasites of tourism. This paradoxical situation might encourage them to maintain their unique lifestyle to attract tourism because it benefits the Amish community. At the turn of the twenty-first century, the hungry appetite of tourist markets for Amish trinkets, crafts, and quilts was luring more and more Amish into establishing their own retail shops. The Amish label on products commodified Amish images on the public culture market. For example, Vogue magazine, in a special section on Plain dress, featured images of Amish clothing.37
The once-despised heretics who sought separation from an evil world were now selling their own souls on the public market. With their own compliance, Amish images and symbols had become cultural commodities. Prosperity and worldly acclaim now threatened to erode the boundaries of separation that persecution had so clearly defined centuries ago.
Apart from its other rewards, tourist fame also provides the Amish with leverage as they bargain with the larger society. They occasionally threaten to migrate if things get too bad, and public officials worry about these muffled threats, for an evacuation would be catastrophic for tourism. Ironically, the outside world that years ago sought to banish Anabaptist heretics is now begging them to stay, which brings us full circle in the riddle of public relations. Like it or not, the Amish have become dependent on modern society for their survival. But it is not a one-way street, for Lancaster’s image, identity, and economy also rest on the Amish in many ways. It is a symbiotic relationship, and for better or for worse, the county’s dependency on the Amish has strengthened their hand at the bargaining table.
