Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking (7 page)

In a more serious vein, Hugo Gernsback, writing for the
American Funeral Director
, points the way to the funeral of the future: “The loved one will be quick-frozen, encased in a light metal casket, and placed aboard a space ship, which will take off for Outer Space. When the gravitational pull decreases, the casket will be ejected from a tube, in direct polarity from the sun. The casket will disappear in a few seconds to fly for eternity and a day, in perfect preservation, in the infinite void.” Presumably, arrangements could also be made for the quick-frozen loved one to orbit, Sputnik fashion, thus allowing the bereaved to catch an occasional glimpse of Uncle Ned as he flashes by on course in the heavens.

However, if the conversation of ordinary citizens chances to drift to the subject of funerals, a tone of bitterness is likely to creep in. At best, complaints will be voiced about the high cost of dying; at worst, there will be a chorus of horror stories about fleecings at the hands of unscrupulous undertakers.

Perhaps it is not surprising that dissension has begun to spread in the ranks of the living. There are growing up in dozens of communities, scattered throughout the United States and Canada, consumer cooperative groups dedicated to the principle of “dignified funerals for a reasonable cost.” Their philosophy may be summed up in the blunt preamble to the Chico, California, Burial Society’s by-laws: “Every funeral is a pagan funeral when based on show only money can buy. The costliest of caskets decays with the body, and cannot make a home for the soul.” According to literature issued by the Memorial Association of Seattle, the funeral cooperatives have declared war on “materialistic display, showing of the corpse which necessitates embalming, the sending of expensive floral pieces.”

The Battle of the Bodies has been joined. A clue to some of the practices opposed by the funeral co-op movement may be found in the pages of funeral trade magazines. For instances,
Mortuary Management
, a flossy, glossy funeral industry publication located (appropriately) in Los Angeles, announces this revealing offer from the National Casket Company: “$5 each for experiences, stories or anecdotes that illustrate where a $50–100 better sale was made because the casket had qualities, features or demonstrable values that made it a better buy than the offering at the lower price.”

As in a table-d’hôte restaurant, where the price of the entrée determines the price of the dinner ($2.25 for halibut, $7.50 for filet mignon), so in the burial business the price of the casket usually determines the cost of the funeral. According to Warren J. Ringen, past president of the Funeral Directors of San Francisco, “In keeping with our high standard of living, there should be an equally high standard of dying. The cost of a funeral varies according to individual taste and the niceties of living the family has been accustomed to” (quoted from the San Francisco
News
, September 20, 1955). A bewildering assortment of the niceties of dying is described in
Mortuary Management:
“Solid copper—a quality casket which offers superb value to the client seeking long-lasting protection,” “Hand Grained Artistic Designs for the Discriminating Purchaser,” “The Colonial Classic Beauty—18-Gauge Lead Coated Steel, Seamless Top, Lap-Join Welded Body Construction ...” In addition to the casket, which is the
pièce de résistance
, innumerable other frills are offered. The Cheney casket-lining people provide “magnificent and unique masterpieces—more than 60 color matched shades—you’ll find that the extra pennies mean more profitable dollars.” Chrisette will supply “Handmade Original Fashions—Styles from the Best in Life for the Last Memory—Dresses, Men’s Suits, Negligees, Accessories,” while Hydrol Chemical Company offers “Nature Glo—the ultimate in cosmetic embalming.”

THERE
’
LL
ALWAYS
BE
AN
AD
MAN

Honors for a truly imaginative approach to their lugubrious wares must go to the vault men. An advertisement in the 1957 souvenir edition of
Mortuary Management
reads:

Deep sea fishing off Mexico can’t be beat! When you feel that old tug on your pole and that line goes whistling into the deep, that’s it brother! And, there is nothing quite like the way I feel about Wilbert burial vaults either. The combination of a ” pre-cast asphalt inner liner plus extra-thick, reinforced concrete provides the essential qualities for proper burial. My advice to you is, don’t get into “deep water” with burial vaults made of the new lightweight synthetic substitutes. Just keep “reeling in” extra profits by continuing to recommend WILBERT burial vaults....

A two-page spread in a recent issue of the same magazine presents the reader with this startling thought: “DISINTERMENTS—RARE BUT REWARDING. It needn’t be a problem.
It can lead to repeat business
.... Prove your wisdom in recommending the trusted protection of a Clark Metal Grave Vault.”

Is a new folklore being created—a specifically twentieth-century American form of funeral rite which may seem as out-landish to the rest of the world as the strange burial customs of the past revealed by anthropological studies?

QUAINT
CUSTOMS
OF
OTHER
PEOPLE

Babylonians were embalmed in honey; Indians required self-immolation of the widow on her husband’s funeral pyre; Vikings were buried with their ships. Are these customs any weirder or more inappropriate than those described in the American funeral industry’s house organ? Etruscans buried the deceased’s treasure at his side—a practice hardly likely to win the approval of the modern funeral director, who generally manages to arrange for a different disposition of the deceased’s treasure. Indeed, many mortuaries provide a form with disarmingly direct emphasis on such questions as, “Location of Safe Deposit Boxes; My Banks Are; Savings Accounts; Location of Insurance Policies.”

Perhaps some of the frankest testimony ever uttered on the subject of funeral costs was that given by W. W. Chambers, million-dollar operator of four large mortuaries in Washington, D.C., at a 1947 Senate committee hearing:

“An undertaker never protects anybody but himself. The first thing he asks is, ‘How much insurance have you got, and how much of it can I get?’ ... In dealing with anything you buy, you have the refusal of it, but if your mother dies and you get in the hands of an undertaker, he just soft-soaps you along. You do not oppose him much as to the price.... A $30 casket is generally sold today for $150.” Explaining why he left his job in a livery stable to become an undertaker, Mr. Chambers continues: “What appealed to me mostly was when I saw one of them [undertakers] buy a casket for $17 and sell it to a poor broken widow for $265. I said, ‘This is awful sweet, I can’t let this go.’ ”

The U.S. Coal Mines Administration, investigating funeral charges demanded of the 111 Centralia mine disaster victims, found the average funeral cost was $732.78; the highest, $1,178.50 (
The New York Times
, August 3, 1947). To add insult to injury, when Centralia’s businessmen were asked to contribute to an emergency relief fund for widows and orphans the funeral directors made their contribution in the form of a discount on funeral charges—the discounts ranging from $11.85 off a $567 funeral to $22.50 off a $937.50 funeral!

Not only the survivors of sweeping community disaster feel the financial blows inflicted by the cost of modern funerals. A recent study of twenty-two Probate Court cases taken at random in the San Francisco Bay Area disclosed that the cost of funerals ranged from $344 to $3,027. The average of the twenty-two was $952. A similar study in St. Louis showed average funeral costs were $900.

It would be wrong to assume from these facts that morticians are a special, evil breed. It should be borne in mind that the funeral industry faces a unique economic situation in that its market is fixed, or inelastic. There are only a certain number of deaths each year and the funeral directors must compete with each other to obtain their share of the business. The television industry touts the advantages of a TV set in every room; auto salesmen advocate several cars to each family; cigarette manufacturers urge “a carton for the home and one for the office”—but in the funeral business it’s strictly “one to a customer,” and the number of customers is limited by circumstances beyond the control of the industry. Very likely many a funeral director has echoed with heartfelt sincerity the patriotic sentiments of Nathan Hale: “My only regret is that I have but one life to lose for my country.” Some morticians handle as few as twelve funerals a year, and the national average is under sixty a year. From these few funerals enough cash must be realized to meet all the overhead and operating costs of the establishment for a full year. Little wonder that the funeral industry has tended to become one of the most predatory and competitive in the country, that behind the decorous façade of the funeral home lurks some of the slickest salesmanship to be found this side of a Baghdad bazaar.

A network of legal realities and myths tends to keep funeral costs sky-high. For example, the California Health and Safety Code (Section 9625
et seq.
) imposes fantastic requirements for the construction of mausoleums and columbariums. Unlike schools or homes, they must be earthquake-proof, fireproof, waterproof, and their exterior trim must be of “travertine, serpentine marble or Grade A exterior type marble only.” There is an almost universal belief in California, carefully nurtured by the undertakers, that the law requires embalming and the use of a casket in all cases of death. Three Oakland morticians, selected at random from the phone book, assured me that cremation without a casket is illegal. One added, with some truth, “The average person has neither the facilities nor the inclination to haul dead bodies around.” However, a quick check with the State Board of Health revealed that there are no such legal requirements, and that in fact indigents are frequently cremated “as is,” without benefit of casket or embalming.

Legal skirmishes are frequently part of the guerrilla warfare waged by the burial cooperatives against entrenched morticians, and many of the co-ops have had their “day in court.” The Cooperative League of the U.S.A., while stressing the necessity for competent legal advice in organizing a funeral cooperative, nevertheless points out that “the legal battles with the private undertakers over the organization of the co-op can be used to great advantage, if handled correctly. One co-op association greatly increased its membership as a result of widespread newspaper publicity over a court case” (
Cooperative Funeral Associations
, James Myers, Jr., published by Cooperative League of the U.S.A.). The Chico Burial Society, prosecuted at the behest of local morticians for engaging in an insurance business without a license, grew in the course of the trial to an amazing 2,000 membership in this tiny California community of 12,000.

Existing co-ops have been organized in a variety of ways. Some function as a trade union service, as the Union Co-op Burial Service of United Auto Workers in Detroit; others, like the Cleveland Memorial Society, were formed by church groups. Some of the co-ops maintain their own burial facilities while others have negotiated contracts with one or more morticians who, guaranteed a large volume of assured business from co-op members, are willing to buck the disapproval of their colleagues. From time to time, a rare—
very
rare—soul will be found in the funeral business who has become disgusted with some of the financial practices of the profession and who welcomes the formation of a cooperative funeral society.

SIMPLICITY
IS
THE
OBJECTIVE

The East Bay, California, Memorial Association, which grew out of an existing co-op center in Berkeley, is typical of this small but growing movement. Its literature stresses community education for simplicity in disposal of the human dead, and provides detailed information on how to go about willing one’s body to a medical school or hospital for research purposes. The Association offers what it is pleased to call a “lifetime membership” covering an entire family for a single payment of ten dollars. It is interracial and requires that its contracting funeral directors follow a policy of nondiscrimination. Nonsectarian, it provides for religious services or memorials of any denomination desired. Although, like most of the co-ops, the Association holds cremation to be preferable to burial, this matter is left to the discretion of the family. The cost of funerals arranged by the Association runs between $100 and $200—for service which would cost non-members $450 to $1,000. “We don’t operate as a bargain basement or a discount house,” a board member emphasized. “We are able to reduce the cost to our members through the simple method of collective bargaining—but the funerals we arrange are in every way identical to those which would normally cost four times the amount.”

For the average, rational person who even in these days of “do it yourself” would balk at setting up a Monsieur Verdoux home crematorium in the backyard, and who would like to avoid such refinements as a quick-frozen trip to outer space, it would seem that the co-op funeral movement offers a most reasonable solution to the final return of dust to dust.

COMMENT

The title comes from a popular song of the 1950s: “Sixteen tons and what do you get?/Another day older and deeper in debt./St. Peter, don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t go/I owe my soul to the company store.” The idea for the piece came from my husband, Bob Treuhaft. Among the clients of his law office were a number of trade unions, and from time to time it fell to him to deal with the estates of union members who had died. He began to notice, to his great irritation, that whenever the breadwinner of a family died, the hard-fought-for union death benefit, intended for the widow, would mysteriously end up in the pocket of an undertaker: whether the benefit was $1,000, or $1,200, or $1,500, that would be the exact sum charged for the funeral. This prompted him to suggest to the directors of the Berkeley Cooperative Society that they organize a funeral cooperative, patterned after one in Seattle which had flourished since the 1930s.