The American Way of Death Revisited - Jessica Mitford [48]
8
God’s Little Million-Dollar Acre
In the interment industry there have been a great many revolutionary changes taking place in the last twenty years. More progress has been made during this period than had been made in the previous two thousand years…. Today we face an era of unprecedented development in our industry through the use of progressive methods, materials and educational techniques.
—Concept: The Journal of Creative Ideas for Cemeteries
There’s gold in them thar verdant lawns and splashing fountains, in them mausoleums of rugged strength and beauty, in them distinctive personalized bronze memorials, in them museums and gift shops. Concept: The Journal of Creative Ideas for Cemeteries—the very title vibrates with the thunder of progress—circulated in 1963 to America’s five thousand then operating cemeteries, to whom it imparted many an idea on how the gold can best be mined and minted.
The cemetery as a moneymaking proposition is new in this century. The earliest type of burial ground in America was the churchyard. This gave way in the nineteenth century to graveyards at the town limits, largely municipally owned and operated. Whether owned by church or municipality, the burial ground was considered a community facility; charges for graves were nominal, and the burial ground was generally not expected to show a profit.
Prevailing sentiment that there was something special and sacred about cemetery land, that it deserved special consideration and should not be subjected to such temporal regulation as taxation, was reflected in court decisions and state laws. A cemetery company is an association formed for “a pious and public use,” the United States Supreme Court said in 1882, and more recently the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that a cemetery, even if privately owned, is a public burial ground “whose operation for purposes of profit is offensive to public policy.” Other rulings have affirmed that land acquired for cemetery purposes becomes entirely exempt from real estate taxes the moment it is acquired, even before a dead body is buried in it.
This traditional view of cemetery land proved a blessing to the land speculators who began to enter the field, and whose handiwork can now be seen on the outskirts of thousands of American communities.
The major premises which, evolved over the years, lie behind modern cemetery operation are all, on the face of it, sound and intelligent enough. Cemetery land is tax-free, which is as it should be, since in theory the land is not to be put to gainful use. Cheap land which for one reason or another does not easily lend itself to such needs of the living as housing and agriculture is commonly used for cemeteries. The purchase of a grave for future occupancy is, surely, a rational and sensible act, showing foresight and prudence on the part of the buyer who wishes to spare his family the trouble and expense of doing so when the need arises. Innovations which result in more economical upkeep of cemeteries, such as dispensing with upright tombstones to facilitate mechanical mowing, seem practical and commendable; so does the establishment of an endowment fund for the future upkeep of the cemetery.
Economies achieved by new and efficient operating methods, tax exemptions such as only schools and churches enjoy, dedication to “pious and public use”—these would all seem to point in the direction of continuously reducing the cost of burial. The opposite has been the case. The cost of burial has soared, at a rate outstripping even the rise in undertakers’ charges. The winning combination that has transformed the modern cemetery into a wildly profitable commercial venture is precisely its tax-free status, the adaptability of cheap land to its purposes, the almost unlimited possibilities of subdividing the land, the availability for reinvestment