The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [131]
The funeral press reacted, as usual, like a rather inefficient bull confronted with a red flag. In a brave attempt at incisive sarcasm, Mortuary Management prefaced an editorial: “Coal is black and dirty. A Collier is ‘a vessel for transporting coal’—Webster.” The words “shabby handling” and “dirty journalism” reverberated through its pages. Forest Lawn’s spokesman Ugene Blalock called it “an invitation to socialism.” But what was to follow required a subtler and more sophisticated approach than mere angry denunciation.
Because the article dealt quite fully with funeral industry abuses in California, the legislature of that state launched an official investigation into “Funeral Directors, Embalmers, Morticians and Funeral Establishments.” For a while it looked as though real trouble was in store. The resolution creating the investigating committee mentioned a “need for closer regulation” of funeral establishments and “needed revision of laws” relating to the funeral business. The funeral men were thrown into a state of alarm and confusion; should they or shouldn’t they answer the questionnaires sent out by the legislative committee? (“Don’t be in too big a hurry to complete and send in your questionnaire,” counseled Mortuary Management.) Should they or should they not cooperate with the committee’s investigators?
This consternation in the ranks proved to have been unwarranted, for their interests were being more than adequately protected. The committee’s report, when it finally appeared in June 1953, over the signature of Assemblyman Clayton A. Dills, must have been cause for much rejoicing and self-congratulation in funeral circles. What a relief to read, after the months of nagging uncertainty, “The funeral industry of California is unusually well organized for the public interest.… Criticisms of retail prices overlook the high operating costs, many of which are mandatory under the public health laws, while others are required under social and religious custom and the stress of emotion.… It is the considered opinion of the committee that no further legislative action is needed in this matter.”
The report has a strangely familiar ring to anybody versed in the thought processes and literary style of funeral directors. There are phrases that could have come directly out of the proceedings of a National Funeral Directors Association convention: “Embalming is first and foremost an essential public health measure. A concomitant function, which developed with the evolution of embalming and funeral directing as a distinct vocation, is to restore the features of the deceased to a serene and natural appearance. Both functions demand a high degree of professional skill based on specialized education and training.” There is mention of the “evolution of the funeral director as a part of the American way of life”; there is praise for the funeral home with its “special features planned and furnished to provide facilities and conveniences to serve the living and reverently prepare the dead for burial.” The Association of Better Business Bureaus pamphlet Facts Every Family Should Know (itself based on material furnished by the NFDA) is reproduced in its entirety as part of the report.
Was this report really written by a subcommittee of the California State Assembly? Apparently not. A more plausible explanation of how it came to be written is contained in a letter that came into my possession. The letter—dated July 24, 1953—is from J. Wilfred Corr, then executive secretary of the California Funeral Directors Association, and is addressed to Mr. Wilber M. Krieger, head of National Selected Morticians: