Sometime in the late 1880s, a young man posed with a penny-farthing bicycle in a photography studio, likely in southern Manitoba. Sources contradict one another regarding his identity; was he David Peters II, son of David Peters who ran a store in Gretna, or was he related to the Erdmann Penner family, also store owners, rumoured to have owned the bicycle? If the man was indeed David Peters II, how did the Reinlaender Church interpret his pose? Around this time David Peters I accepted the position of reeve of the Municipality of Douglas (later Rhineland), a decision that placed him in conflict with the Reinlaender Church congregation, ultimately leading to his excommunication. Reinlaender Church leadership frowned on bicycle ownership, although they did not excommunicate baptized members over it. How the Bergthaler Church, to which the Penner family belonged, viewed bicycle ownership remains unclear; however, Abram S. Rempel of the more conservative Sommerfeld Mennonite Church posed in a Gretna photography studio in the late 1890s, after his baptism, without shame.

Much of our consideration of the relationship of Mennonites with machines exists within this framework: the cultural meanings attached to technology within the community. As Hans Werner notes in his article exploring the use of machines in Manitoba’s West Reserve, machines became “markers of identity,” especially for conservative Mennonites; differences within communities introduced by bicycles, the covered buggy, and other “luxury” items gave religious leadership pause. For Mennonites in imperial Russia, the association between machines and worldliness left with their coreligionists who emigrated across the Atlantic in the 1870s. For those who remained, restrictions were not imposed on bicycles, automobiles, and telephones, which were embraced by the wealthy elite of Mennonite estate owners and industrialists.

The articles in this issue remind us that Mennonite engagement with machines went beyond communally defined ascriptions of religious and ethical values. Machines, whether binders or silk wheels, bicycles, cars, trains, or ships, shaped economic life, revising or entrenching divisions of labour, encouraging the development of expertise, and connecting Mennonites to markets.

The articles by James Urry and Rachel Pannabecker on Mennonites and the silk industry illustrate these themes. Innovators, like Abraham Janzen, used their technical expertise to develop silk reeling machines designed for domestic use, which expanded opportunities for women to increase production within their homes. Men might have invented and owned the reels, but women, in both the United States and imperial Russia, provided the essential labour for the proto-industrial manufacture of silk, becoming experts in various aspects of silk production.

This issue also highlights the importance of governments in facilitating or limiting access to markets for Mennonite agricultural and manufactured goods. Ingrid Peters-Fransen’s article on tariffs and taxes illustrates this most distinctly: in the late eighteenth century, the Prussian state, for political reasons, declared a customs duty on exports from West Prussia through the port of Danzig, affecting both Mennonite farmers and merchants in the region. Peters-Fransen hypothesizes that the economic downturn caused by these taxes on trade contributed to the migration of Mennonites from the Vistula Delta into the Russian empire. Nataliya Venger, by contrast, demonstrates how in the nineteenth century the imperial Russian state promoted economic development by encouraging Mennonites to display their technological and agricultural innovations at exhibitions within the empire and internationally. The imperial state, as Urry shows, also contributed to the establishment of the silk industry in Mennonite colonies, as tsarist officials supported Mennonite initiatives to plant mulberry trees and raise silkworms. After the migration of Mennonites to the United States in the 1870s, the US Department of Agriculture decided to encourage the development of a domestic silk industry to address a trade imbalance and reliance on imports. Based on their reputation from imperial Russia, Mennonites benefitted from the establishment of a state-supported silk station, as Pannabecker describes.

Economic activity has been a foundation of Mennonite community life. In letters home to his family from North America, Wilhelm Ewert judged the places he visited based on the progress of industry and access to markets. According to P. S. Alekseev, Mennonites in Manitoba in the 1880s faithfully followed commodity prices from the Chicago Stock Exchange to avoid selling their grain prematurely. These sources highlight Mennonite historical market awareness, a topic which deserves more attention.