Editing Shakers (section)

==Economics==
[[File:Shaker box maker.jpg|thumb|Shaker box-maker Ricardo Belden (Pittsfield, Massachusetts, 1935)]] [[File:Round barn, Hancock Shaker village.jpg|thumb|Round Stone Barn, [[Hancock Shaker Village]], Massachusetts, 2004]]
[[File:Anodyne Bottle.jpg|thumb|Shaker [[Anodyne]] bottle; Enfield Shaker Village; late 19th century; H-4, W-1.625, D-1 inches; [[Enfield Shaker Museum]] ]]
[[File:Onion Field.jpg|thumb|Onion field; Enfield Shaker Village; Enfield, New Hampshire; 1897; by F. C. Churchill; [[Enfield Shaker Museum]]]]
The communality of the Believers was an economic success, and their cleanliness, honesty and frugality received the highest praise. All Shaker villages ran farms, using the latest scientific methods in agriculture. They raised most of their own food, so farming, and preserving the produce required to feed them through the winter, had to be priorities. Their livestock were fat and healthy, and their barns were commended for convenience and efficiency.<ref>Wergland, ''Visiting the Shakers, 1778–1849''.</ref>
When not doing farm work, Shaker brethren pursued a variety of trades and hand crafts, many documented by [[Isaac N. Youngs]]. When not doing housework, Shaker sisters did likewise, spinning, weaving, sewing, and making sale goods—baskets, brushes, bonnets, brooms, fancy goods, and homespun fabric that was known for high quality, but were more famous for their medicinal herbs, garden seeds of the [[Shaker Seed Company]], [[apple sauce]], and [[knitting|knitted garments]] (Canterbury).<ref>Andrews and Andrews, ''Work and Worship: The Economic Order of the Shakers''; Beverly Gordon, ''Shaker Textile Arts'' (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 1980).</ref> Some communities, especially those in New England, produced maple syrup for sale as well.

Shakers ran a variety of businesses to support their communities; many Shaker villages had their own tanneries. The Shaker goal in their labor was perfection. Ann Lee's followers preserved her admonitions about work:

{{blockquote|Good spirits will not live where there is dirt.

Do your work as though you had a thousand years to live and as if you were to die tomorrow.

Put your hands to work, and your heart to God.}}

Mother Ann also cautioned them against getting into debt.<ref>Bishop and Wells, comps., ''Testimonies of the Life, Character, Revelations and Doctrines of our Ever Blessed Mother Ann Lee'' (Hancock, Massachusetts: J. Talcott and J. Deming, Junrs., 1816), 264–268.</ref>

Shaker craftsmen were known for a style of [[Shaker furniture]] that was plain in style, durable, and functional.<ref>Jerry V. Grant and Douglas R. Allen, ''Shaker Furniture Makers'' (Pittsfield, Massachusetts: Hancock Shaker Village, 1989).</ref> Shaker chairs were usually mass-produced because a great number of them were needed to seat all the Shakers in a community.

Around the time of the [[American Civil War]], the Shakers at Mount Lebanon, New York, increased their production and marketing of Shaker chairs. They were so successful that several furniture companies produced their own versions of "Shaker" chairs. Because of the quality of their craftsmanship, original Shaker furniture is costly. Shakers won respect and admiration for their productive farms and orderly communities. Their industry brought about many [[invention]]s like [[Babbitt (metal)|Babbitt metal]], the [[rotary harrow]], the [[circular saw]], the [[clothespin]], the [[Shaker peg]], the [[broom|flat broom]], the wheel-driven [[washing machine]], a machine for setting teeth in textile cards, a [[threshing machine]], metal pens, a new type of fire engine, a machine for matching boards, numerous innovations in waterworks, [[Planing (shaping)|planing]] machinery, a [[truss (medicine)|hernia truss]], silk reeling machinery, small looms for weaving [[palm leaf]], machines for processing [[broom corn]], [[ball-and-socket]] tilters for chair legs, and a number of other useful inventions.<ref>Edward D. Andrews and Faith Andrews, ''Work and Worship: The Economic Order of the Shakers'', (Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1974), 152–159.</ref> Even prolific Shaker inventors like [[Tabitha Babbit]] did not patent their inventions before or after putting them into practice, which has complicated subsequent efforts by 20th century historians to assign priority.<ref>M. Stephen Miller (1 January 2010). ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=3DI_xYBqKbwC&pg=PA181 Inspired Innovations: A Celebration of Shaker Ingenuity]''. University Press of New England. {{ISBN|978-1-58465-850-4}}. pp. 181, 184.</ref>

Shakers were the first large producers of medicinal herbs in the United States, and pioneers in the sale of seeds in paper packets.<ref>Andrews and Andrews, ''Work and Worship: The Economic Order of the Shakers'', 53–74.</ref> Brethren grew the crops, but sisters picked, sorted, and packaged their products for sale, so those industries were built on a foundation of women's labor in the Shaker partnership between the sexes.<ref>Wergland, ''Sisters in the Faith,'' chapter 7.</ref>

[[File:Shaker Seed Box.jpg|thumb|Original Enfield Shaker seed box (Enfield Shaker Museum, Enfield, New Hampshire)]]
The Shakers believed in the value of hard work and kept comfortably busy. Mother Ann said: "Labor to make the way of God your own; let it be your inheritance, your treasure, your occupation, your daily calling".