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are—for the prose is hypnotic by reason of its very repetitiveness—one’s eye is caught by this sort of thing in Mortuary Management: “You must start treating a child’s funeral, from the time of death to the time of burial, as a golden opportunity for building good will and preserving sentiment, without which we wouldn’t have any industry at all.” Or this in the National Funeral Service Journal: “Buying habits are influenced largely by envy and environment. Don’t ever overlook the importance of these two factors in estimating the purchasing possibilities or potential of any family.… Envy is essentially the same as pride.… It is the idea of keeping up with the Joneses.… Sometimes it is only necessary to say, ‘… Here is a casket similar to the one the Joneses selected’ to insure a selection in a substantially profitable bracket.”

Merchants of a rather grubby order, preying on the grief, remorse, and guilt of survivors, or trained professional men with high standards of ethical conduct?

The funeral men really would vastly prefer to fit the latter category. A discussion has raged for many years in funeral circles around this very question of “professionalism” versus a trade or business status, and the side that contends that undertaking is a profession is winning out in the National Funeral Directors Association.

Once again, it is apparently expected that the mere repetition of the statement will invest it with validity. Sample speeches are prepared and circulated among association members: “I am not an undertaker. He served his purpose and passed out of the picture. I am a funeral director. I am a Doctor of Services. We are members of a profession, just as truly as the lawyer, the doctor or the minister.”

In 1951 Mortuary Management reported another example of successful pioneering on this front by National Selected Morticians: “Leave it to NSM to come out with new names for old things. We’ve passed through the period of the ‘back room,’ the ‘show room,’ the ‘sales room,’ the ‘casket display room,’ the ‘casket room.’ Now NSM offers you the ‘selection room.’ ”

A 1949 press release issued by the NFDA on a survey of public attitudes towards the funeral business hopefully asks, “Please Do Not Use the Term ‘Undertaker’ at the Head of This Story.” As late as 1962, the American Funeral Director was moved to chide the New York Times for its “continued insistence upon using the relatively obsolete and meaningless words ‘undertaker’ and ‘coffin’ to the exclusion of the more generally accepted and meaningful ones, ‘funeral director’ and ‘casket.’ ”

Funeralese has had its ups and downs. The word “mortician”—first used in Embalmers Monthly for February 1895—was barred by the Chicago Times in 1932, “not for lack of sympathy with the ambition of undertakers to be well regarded, but because of it. If they haven’t the sense to save themselves from their own lexicographers, we shall not be guilty of abetting them in their folly.” “Casket,” dating from Civil War days, was denounced by Hawthorne: “a vile modern phrase which compels a person to shrink from the idea of being buried at all.” Emily Post uses it, albeit reluctantly: “In spite of the fact that the word coffin is preferred by all people of fastidious taste and that the word casket is never under any circumstances used in the spoken language of these same people, it seems best to follow present-day commercial usage and admit the word casket to these pages.”

A network of trade associations reflects the complexity of ambitions and viewpoints within the industry. While one undertaker may (and often does) belong to more than one association, and while the various associations may (and often do) join forces on a specific issue, the associations are not always in accord, for on many questions they represent conflicting economic interests.

The names of the associations are in some cases merely descriptive of the membership they represent: National Funeral Directors Association, Jewish Funeral Directors Association, National Funeral Directors & Morticians Association. Others have chosen