subject: The Funeral Industry [print this page] The Funeral Industry The Funeral Industry
The Funeral Industry
In dealing with the funeral director in planning for the last rites of a loved one, the person in charge meets a representa tive of a large, well-organized, state-regulated, and self-policed industry. The phrase "funeral industry" is that used by the Senate subcommittee whose hearings are referred to below. It is used to refer specifically to the funeral directing aspect of funeral service, though in the larger sense it includes ceme tery, mausoleum, cremation, floral, and other business activi ties bearing on funerals and body disposal. The National Funeral Directors Association prefers the term "profession" rather than "industry."
The National Selected Morticians pre fer "business," "profession," "funeral service field," and other terminology to the word "industry." Testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust and Monopoly concerning the funeral industry in July 1964 showed that, omitting burials of indigents and welfare recipi ents, Armed Forces members, and other public or institutional burials, and also omitting the cost of transporting the dead, the cost of flowers, and preneed payments for cemetery lots and crypts, the Census Bureau placed personal expenditures for death expenses in 1960 (the latest year for which figures were available) as $1.6 billion, or an average of about $1,160 for each adult funeral.
This was said to be only slightly less than Americans spent in 1960 for all higher education, more than was spent for dental care, more than was spent for police and for fire protection. (The accuracy of these figures was called in question by Glenn H. Griffin, president of the Na tional Funeral Directors Association, who in a letter to Sen. Philip A. Hart, Antitrust Subcommittee chairman, dated March 19, 1965, maintained that figures gathered in the 1963 Census of Business, released after the funeral hearings were held, showed total receipts of funeral directors in 1963 as less than $1.3 billion, including flowers but not including cash advances made by undertakers, cemetery expenses, crematory costs, and the like. He also said that Census Bureau figures for1963 showed an average funeral cost as something over $723 rather than $1,160, not including cash advances by funeral directors.)
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Before the opening of the frontier to California, the under taking business had been mostly a small sideline to cabinet making, furniture dealing, and some other business enter prises. However, with the expansion of the country and the settlement of the Western states, the increasing tempo of hos tility and the number of combat deaths in the years between 1861 and 1865, a greater need for the shipment of remains developed. This lead to the widespread use of embalming in the United States. In the process of embalming, the veins are drained of blood and chemicals designed "to disinfect and preserve the body are injected." No embalming process in use hi the American funeral industry can preserve a body permanently or even indefinitely. Nevertheless, embalming does serve as a public health measure, since it disinfects the remains for a sufficient period to assure safety and reduce the risk of contamination before burial or other disposition of the body. This is particularly important if burial is to be delayed or if the remains are to be shipped any distance.
