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1 Comment Posted on by katie_shore1 Uncategorized

Silverware and Sharing Spouses

Katie Shore

(Image of Julliard Flatware from Oneida)

The silverware pictured above is the exact set of silverware my parents received as a wedding gift nearly twenty years ago, and it is sitting in a drawer in my kitchen. Before listening to an episode of NPR’s “Planet Money” podcast, I had no idea what Oneida was, let alone that my family’s silverware was manufactured by the company.

Oneida silverware has an interesting and complex history. Before Oneida became a successful flatware company, it was just a “free love” commune. How did a group of people in a spouse-swapping commune become owners of a multimillion dollar company?

During the Industrial Revolution and the Second Great Awakening in the 1840s, a man named John Humphrey Noyes decided that he and some of his companions were going to start a commune in upstate New York. This community was composed of Christian Perfectionists. Perfectionists sought to perfect themselves by eliminating fear, sin, and other impure things from their lives.

Initially, the commune began producing animal traps since fur was in high demand. They mechanized this process and built nearly 200,000 fur traps per year. The commune also worked in other industries to see which would bring them the most income, and this eventually led them to the flatware industry.

Clearly, the Perfectionists had capitalist tendencies. Ellen Wayland-Smith, the great-great-great-grandniece of Noyes, describes his views about capitalism and Perfectionism in the podcast: “He thought capitalism was going to be a way of uniting humans into one sort of global market and that this can only bring good.” Contrastingly, the author of Major Problems in American Business History, Philip B. Scranton, defines capitalism as “a relentless drive for improvement, expansion, and control, defined and channeled through economic institutions (usually firms) and their interactions, and involving technological change” (9). The Oneida commune was a fusion of both of these ideas: the commune desired expansion and was innovative for the sake of profits, but capitalism also united the people to work together for the success of the company.

Despite his capitalist views, Noyes also avidly supported “Bible communism,” meaning that the business’s profits were shared, and everything was owned by everyone. Essentially, it was a form of religious socialism. This idea of “Bible commune-ism” was implemented because Perfectionists had to be unselfish; sharing was caring. Members of the commune even shared spouses!

The idea of “free love” made people uncomfortable. The podcast discusses America becoming more religiously conservative around this time too. In the late 1800s, the government became more suspicious of so-called unconventional religious groups, including the Mormons and Perfectionists. Rumors also got out that Noyes was having sex with and raping underage girls. Before any charges could be brought against him, he fled to Canada in 1879.

Without their fearless leader, the Perfectionists decided to close the commune and stop sharing spouses beginning in 1880. Since everyone owned part of the business, they decided to establish a joint stock company called Oneida Company Limited in which the adult members had stock.

Not only did these men and women have to adjust to a new way of life, but this new company had to succeed as many changes took place in the United States economy because of the Gilded Age. Luckily, Noyes’s son Pierrepont emerged and decided that Oneida needed to specialize. With the growth of the middle class, he thought that producing silver-plated flatware was the best option; it looked nicer than steel utensils and wasn’t as expensive as those made of sterling silver. Additionally, he engraved many of the pieces to increase their perceived value. Pierrepont also heavily emphasized marketing and advertising, selling his flatware using innovative new ads that included artwork and images.

A silverware advertisement from Oneida, New York. (Photo/The Oneida Community House)

(Image of a 1924 Oneida Advertisement from The Oneida Community House)

As time went on, Oneida struggled as tastes altered and cheaper imports began to emerge. The company even went public in the 1960s, despite its history of being family-operated. About ten years ago, Oneida filed for bankruptcy, but today, you can still buy Oneida silverware. The brand now exists within a group known as The Oneida Group.

Throughout Oneida’s history, we can see the interactions between business, state, and society. Oneida went from being just a spiritual-based commune to forming a very lucrative business within this community. The state and society significantly affected Oneida’s behavior from causing them to abandon their practices of “free love” due to governmental suspicions to causing the company to respond and adapt to consumer demand. In particular, Oneida Company Limited’s success came from understanding society’s desire – especially the middle class’s desire – for attractive, yet affordable, silverware and their ability to market their products to the masses.

It’s fascinating to think that one man’s desire for spiritual perfection led to the creation of a socialist commune and a brand of flatware. The next time I eat using our Oneida silverware, you can bet I’ll be thinking about Oneida’s intriguing past…

 

1 Comment Posted on by katie_shore1 20th century, business, state, and society

It Ain’t Easy Being Cheesy

Katie Shore

(Image from NPR: “Uncle Cheese”)

Who would have thought that the government cared about cheese? Believe it or not, they did. The government and cheese have interacted in the past and affected our country’s economy and society.

Let’s go back to when it all started: Jimmy Carter’s campaign promise to give farmers what he called “an equal break.” It makes sense that Carter would want to help the farmers because he knew what it was like to be a struggling farmer: in 1954, his farm’s net profits were a mere $187. After winning the election, Carter went to work trying to fulfill his promise. First, he raised the price of a gallon of milk by six cents. The interaction here between business, state, and society is quite remarkable. The government came into the dairy industry and raised prices by using a price floor. I wonder how other businesses felt about this decision by the government. They must have been asking why the dairy industry was getting bailed out; surely, the dairy industry wasn’t the only struggling industry at the time. The state’s involvement in the pricing of dairy clearly shows Carter’s bias towards the farmers. While these dairy farmers and their businesses might have benefited from the government’s help, the rest of society was stuck paying more for their milk.

Let me pull out my notes from my Economics class (thank you, Dr. North). Because of the government-instituted price floor, dairy farmers were ramping up production; at a higher price, producers wanted to make and sell more goods to earn more money. Consumers, however, didn’t want to pay this higher price and demanded less than the producers were producing. This led to a surplus, which led to more government intervention.

The government started buying and trying to store lots of milk, but milk has a short shelf life. The solution then was to turn this milk into products that didn’t expire as quickly, such as powdered milk, butter, and cheese. Next, the government told dairy farmers that it would set a price and purchase as much as the farmers were willing to sell. Unfortunately, farmers took advantage of the situation and tried to sell the government their worst cheese. That’s where cheese graders – not graters – came into play. These people traveled the country evaluating cheese based on specific criteria including its flavor, acidity, fruitiness, and so on. The government bought cheese that met all of the grading requirements and then stored it in caves.

This whole cheese-buying extravaganza was costing billions of dollars, and the government needed to find a way to get rid of its cheese. Rather than flood the market with the cheese, destroy it, or send it overseas, the government decided that it would process the cheese, package it, and then give it away. These blocks of government cheese – pictured below – were given to schools and food banks to try to provide for the hungry.

(Image of a Block of Government Cheese from a magazine titled Rolling Out)

Government cheese often gets a bad rap, primarily because of its unintended consequences. First, the government’s efforts to help the farmers led to very expensive cheese for consumers. Second, the government’s supposedly beneficial price controls were actually harmful and very difficult to undo. Third, the government had to start paying farmers to stop producing milk while simultaneously instituting campaigns to convince people to buy milk. Got milk? Today, instead of directly buying farmers’ products, strategies such as direct subsidies work much better – and don’t require the government to store billions of dollars worth of cheese in caves.

You would think that we had learned our lesson from the past, but it appears the government is going back to its old ways. As of August 31, there are plans to purchase $85 million worth of dairy for schools and food banks. I’ll leave you with a quote by philosopher George Santayana: “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

If you have time to listen to the NPR episode of “Planet Money” about the history of government cheese, I would recommend that you do so. Who knows? We might have another cheesy situation on our hands very soon…