The Oneida Community

The new community thrived for about 30 years, turning from farming and logging to industrial pursuits, including the Newhouse trap, canning fruits and vegetables, and the making of silk embroidery floss. But hostility mounted in the surrounding communities to the Perfectionists' marriage arrangements, and in 1879 Noyes advised the group to abandon the system. As the reorganization of the community began, the entire Socialist organization of property in Oneida also was questioned. Noyes and a few adherents went to Canada, where he died in 1886. The remaining members set up a joint stock company, known as Oneida Community, Ltd. which carried on the various industries, particularly the manufacture of silver plate, as a commercial enterprise. The progressive nature of the new company was reflected in, among other things, the presence of a woman, Harriet Joslyn, as superintendent of the silk mill and a member of the board of directors.

Although the new company struggled through the next two decades it managed to survive, and by the end of the century even showed a profit. Noyes' son had taken the helm, and brought more modern business concepts into practice. Oneida gradually dropped its silk, trap and canning businesses to concentrate on silver plate. It began advertising in earnest, spending on innovative marketing techniques such as celebrity endorsements before any other advertisers had done so. It turned to military production of ammunition clips, army knives and surgical instruments for the armed forces during WWI, and managed to show a profit even during the Depression, although the management and employees took voluntary pay cuts to do so.

However, by the end of WWII, Oneida Ltd. had shifted away from a strong community-oriented business where generations of Oneidans had continued to work like a large family, to a more typical corporate structure. Subsidiaries and international sales grew in commercial china, glassware, and holloware. The most significant change in the Oneida product line was the successful introduction of stainless steel flatware to the modern home. It soon outpaced silver plate as Oneida's most popular product.

Oneida's stainless steel flatware could be designed in the ornate fashion of sterling, and was easy to care for and inexpensive to own. Its quality was undisputed and led to Oneida being the most recognized name in residential tableflatware. By 1983 the company sold over half of all flatware purchased in the United States.

Despite many changes in tastes, economics,

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