Page 22 Advertisements Column 2

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31993, 21 May 1969, Page 22

AMERICAN SECT Modern World Ignored (N.Z.P.. 4. -Reuter—Copyright) MILTON (Iowa). A new colony of men, women and children who have permanently turned the clock back by a century is settling near Milton, lowa. The settlers consist of seven families of the Amish —a branch of the Christian Mennonite sect. The Amish first came to America from Europe in 1683 and last century started i founding colonies in lowa. Two years ago they won a long court battle as a result of which they are now allowed to use their own noncertified teachers in their own schools. The Amish practice a complete separation from the secular world. Members of the “Old Order”—a particularly strict Amish branch—wear coats without lapels and buttons, blue denim shirts, bib over-alls, and broadbrimmed black hats. lowans call them “Buggy Dutch" or “Hookies”—since they use only horse and buggy for transport and a primitive system of hooks and eyes to fasten their clothes. Before they can establish a new colony, the Amish have to find an area with several farms which is small enough to enable the settlers to’ travel from one to the other by horse and buggy. Horses are used to till the land—for the Amish do not approve of tractors. Small farms (100 to 120 acres of the type the Amish require) are becoming more and more of an anachronism in landrich, big-farm lowa. -The Amish recognise what they call “base materials," such as steel—but not rubber. Hence their vehicles have steel or steel-rimmed wheels. Married men wear beards, but shun moustaches. They explain that generals and high officials once wore moustaches “as a point of pride”—and personal pride of this kind should not be encouraged. The Amish regard buttons as pandering to vanity and pictures as a form of idolatry. Amish women wear bonnets and long dresses. They have no curtains in their homes. i The seven Amish families who bought the farms near Milton made two minor concessions to the twentieth century. When they moved they hired trucks to transport themselves, their livestock and possessions instead of moving by horse and cart. The farm houses into which they moved were equipped with electricity—and the i settlers to date have not had the electricity supply disconnected. “Maybe the hard core is getting a little soft—not much, but just a little,” said one lowan observer.

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