Caucus needs some Friends

It’s easy to overlook the Quakers, the Society of Friends. For one thing, there aren’t very many of us. For another, almost 50 percent of our meetings are unprogrammed, not led by formally recognized clergy.

However, the economy with which Vermont’s clergy is struggling, the economy the very pope himself is chastising? It was in large part built by Quakers, over 200 years ago.

Frankly, you should have left us in charge of the thing.

We begin in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then Quakers were denied access to university educations and most professions, making gainful employment a bit tricky. As pacifists, sons couldn’t, for obvious reasons, enter the military. So Quakers went into business, seeking out enterprises that were nonmilitary and useful, occupations that were called “the innocent trades.”

And so it was the Quakers who pioneered the mass production of iron, bringing the technology with them to found ironworks (and Quaker communities) in central Vermont. The first railroad was run by a Quaker. Quakers were involved in wool and cloth production, kept shops, made pottery, medicine, chocolate (a tremendous amount of chocolate), sailed merchant ships back and forth across the Atlantic, and founded the Nantucket whaling industry (possibly not one of our better contributions to commerce).

Quakers brought something besides their energy to enterprise. Friends brought an unprecedented (for the time) standard of truth and honesty to business by putting into practice the testimony to integrity and truth. In short order, people realized Quakers could be trusted in business, and with money, so all that Quaker-controlled trade and business also gave rise to a web of small Quaker banks, and then large ones. The international banks Lloyds of London and Barclays were both Quaker banks.

Even if you had no idea it was the Quakers who helped launch the banking system we rely on today, or the modern industrial age, you know the names of the companies started by Friends: Cadburys, Carr’s Biscuits, Western Union.

While you recognize those companies, their founders likely would not recognize what Western Union or Barclays have become — tawdry vehicles for money manipulation and outright theft.

The New York Times reported Oct. 30 that Barclay’s profits fell 26 percent, weighed down by its legal costs. The same day, the bank faced a multimillion-dollar suit for bilking a Saudi firm over a banking license. On Nov. 12, The Guardian reported Barclay facing a massive penalty over currency rigging.

In the 18th and 19th century, it was the Quaker communities themselves that oversaw Friends’ businesses, maintaining standards of integrity and truth and preventing businesses from overextending or taking on excessive debt. Meetings regulated relationships between employers and employees, domestic servants, clerks and apprentices.

The system wasn’t perfect. Some of the wealthier Friends decided meeting oversight was too intrusive and left, possibly triggering a handful of Quaker bank failures in the mid-19th century. Quaker influence in business continued to decline in the 19th century as professions and universities liberalized and began accepting Quaker candidates.

With new opportunities open to them, Friends gravitated into teaching, medicine and social work. At the same time, Quaker businesses became appealing takeover targets as businesses transformed from family-controlled enterprises to publicly traded companies. Employee by employee, share by share, company after company sailed away from its Quaker roots.

The Vermont Interfaith Action’s Clergy Caucus position paper calls for a Moral Economy, agreeing by consensus that the current economy does not mirror the teachings and traditions of their multiple faiths. They are calling for work to be justly valued, respect for those who cannot work, stewardship of the earth and its resources — in short, they are calling for a Friendly economic system.

But instead of relying on Friends, the caucus is looking to government for the solution, and while taxation can be made more progressive, an economic system achieves morality by rewarding morality.

In 1800, just 0.2 percent of the population were Quakers, and yet Quakers were prosperous and powerful all out of proportion to their tiny number. Once we were impressed by integrity, expected truth, and rewarded decency.

Today we expect fraudulent claims, tawdry products, and unfair business practices. Firms don’t value their employees, and they get back comparable respect from staff. We don’t need government intervention. We need to redirect our purchasing power, to support businesses exhibiting a bit of moral fiber in the face of broken expectations.

The Quaker business model is not a thing of the past. On a grand scale, the international chemical company Scott Bader was formed by a Quaker, in 1910, and to this day the company will not manufacture anything used for warfare or violence. The firm employs 600 people across a good half-dozen countries.

On a small scale, there are area firms actually paying a living wage, in Stowe no less. I work for one of them, so I know it’s possible.

You want a moral economic system? Do business with people who treat you like a Friend.

Tamara Burke lives in Stowe. Comment on this article here, or email letters to news@stowereporter.com.