This Amana colony is a cooperative company which started with a religious motive some two hundred years ago in the Province of Hesse, Germany. In 1842 the group moved to America to avoid persecution and find a new freedom. Today it has achieved its ideal in a far greater degree than ever was visioned in the wildest dreams of its founders.
The Amana people own 25,000 acres of rich Iowa land all on one tract with central villages, operating farms, stores, restaurants, filling stations, woolen mills, cabinet shops, factories. It's a $2,000,000 corporation in which workers are the stockholders, truly working for themselves, a corporation in which the management guides rather than commands.
In the early days there was no concern with making a profit. The idea was to produce enough to supply the needs of the community and perhaps lay by a small reserve for emergencies. But strong influences outside the colony brought changes. To the younger members came long suppressed desires to try their wings in competition, to enjoy little luxuries commonplace to those on the outside.
Far-sighted leaders realized the group would be disintegrated unless measures were taken to strengthen its foundation. In 1932 more than 90 per cent of the members voted to accept the new plan of a joint stock corporation organized for profit and set up for centralized buying. Some 18,000 acres are under cultivation. The principal crops are corn, oats, wheat, and soy beans. More than 5,000 head of cattle and 7,000 hogs are raised and marketed annually. Amana Westphalian-style hams and bacons from corn-fed porkers are demanded by mail-order customers in every state in the union. But right now the hams and bacons are few, except to regular customers. But plentry is the word for the Schwarten-magen.
It's a tea for royalty, that scented mixture the “Aromatny,” the Philippoff brand, blended by Doctor David Isrin, the Russian chemist. It's blended of two Ceylons with a flowery Indian and a China black, then treated by a special process to increase the fragrance. So high soprano the perfume, it's like tea brewed by mistake from a potpourri. The doctor worked out this bit of tea wizardry twelve years ago but only now has he got around to putting the item on the market.
The tea and its name are based on a historical anecdote about the famous Russian Czar Alexander III. Enjoying his afternoon bracer, the Czar was approached by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, who announced that a group of ministers had arrived for important conference. “Your Majesty,” said the Minister, “the fate of all Europe is at stake.” (So the story goes; more likely he said, “Gulp it down, Your Majesty, bigger things are brewing.”) But the Czar, cool as a cucumber, replied, “While the Czar has tea, all Europe can wait.” The tea he was sipping was the Philippoff brand of Aromatny, a tea prepared in that time especially for the Russian Imperial Court. This blend sells at Vendome Table Delicacies, 415 Madison Avenue, R. H. Macy & Company, and Gimbel Brothers, New York City, price $1.50 for the four-ounce jar, or you may order it by mail from Dr. Isrin, 169 Spring Street, New York City, adding 10 cents for mailing.
Grocery stores are getting into the wedding cake business. Now you can buy tiny wedding cake squares wrapped in wax paper packed in little white boxes, ready to give wedding guests to carry home and tuck under their pillows for lucky dreaming. These sell twenty-four to a box for ＄5 or individually at 21 cents apiece at Charles and Company, 340 Madison Avenue, and in better class delicacy shops throughout the country.
The cake is a brandied cake, massed with fruits and nuts. The quantity of the glaceed fruits is large in proportion to the raisins. The fruits in the cake are their own neutral color, no artificial flashiness. Nuts are of two kinds—pecans and walnuts. These squares are small cuts of Hoenshel's nationally known brandied fruit cake which sells around the calendar. A cake soft and moist to the touch, no sogginess. Give it the nose test. The perfume is compounded of brandy and wine. A clean taste. The cake retails for around $1.05 a pound.
When the wedding cake is baked at home, it's such a nuisance always to bake an extra square for use in the give-away boxes. The cake is a trouble to cut and wrap and you have to go shopping for the little white wedding boxes which have been on the short side since the war years. Now the job is done for you, done to a turn. One thing you might add for a flourish would be a white satin ribbon looped around each box and tied in a perky bow with a spray of lily of the valley.
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