Alex Strating

Department of Anthropology

University of Amsterdam

Rijnsburg, a town with 12.000 inhabitants and located in the center of the western part of Holland, is totally depending on the flower trade. It is not an isolated, peripheral, traditional community, on the contrary, it is a modern town in the center of the Randstad, the urban agglomeration that stretches from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. Of its workforce of about 4500 people, 3500 work in the flower trade, either as independent traders or as employees of trade related businesses like the flower auction. The flower trade is of an international character. Most traders sell their flowers in Europe, some have specialized on the Dutch market.

Rijnsburgers, even the ones who are not involved in the trade, see themselves as traders: "we have the trade in our blood" as they say. Their identity as traders, as opposed to the flower growers of the surrounding areas, is expressed in the saying: "the scum of the trade is better than the cream of the land". The association of trade with local identity is also expressed by the statue in the central square of the town. This statue, the Pionier, pays homage to the first traders, the ones that at the beginning of this century brought prosperity to the erstwhile poor town.

There is strong competition among the traders. They compete not only for customers, but also for flowers at the auction. Despite pressure from the banks and the auction on traders to merge their firms into bigger companies in order to enhance their competitive position on the international market and to benefit from economies of scale, no big companies developed in Rijnsburg. There are hundreds of small trading companies, to a very large extent family firms in which fathers, sons, brothers, brothers-in-law and cousins do all the work. There is almost no specialization; they all do the buying, transporting, and selling themselves. Individual and family autonomy, which is lost in large companies, is one of the highest local values and the main '˜obstacle' to the development of economies of scale. Consequently there is an important relation between economic activity and kinship. Most males work in the flower industry and marry and settle in Rijnsburg. This results in dense kinship networks and a strong interest in the flower trade. It is within these networks that young males acquire the skills and knowledge they need in order to be successful in the flower trade. The articulation of kinship (with its notions of moral obligations and solidarity) and the flower trade (with its emphasis on individual autonomy and competition) is important in the construction of the local community. The Rijnsburg kinship-based organization of the trade gives them an edge in the competition with foreign traders and with the large Dutch flower companies that are based in the town of Aalsmeer, the world's biggest flower center.

Before discussing the relation between kinship and the Rijnsburg flower trade, we first have to look at the (historical) processes that contributed to its formation and to the actual flow of goods and services that characterize the trade.

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A short history of the flower trade

Although the flower trade in the Netherlands dates back to the 16th and 17th century, I will confine myself to the recent history, the period in which Rijnsburg changed into a town of traders. During the last 150 years the interaction of processes at global, regional and local level produced a specific type of trade in Rijnsburg.

Global

In the 19th and early 20th century flowers changed from being an elite good to a product for mass-consumption. From the colonies new varieties found their way to Europe; new cultivation techniques made mass production possible and new means of transportation increased the possibilities of distribution. At the same time industrialization created a large urban lower and middle class population that adopted the elite's use of flowers. They were stimulated to do so by the elite through the education system, through the allotments that were offered to the urban working class for cultivation of vegetables and flowers and through the organization of flower shows and competitions. Flowers became a sign of civilization and good taste. Because of mass production they became affordable for most people. As a result, demand for flowers, especially in the urban centers, rose sharply at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century.

Regional:

In the western part of Holland three centers of flower production developed out of old agricultural centers in the vicinity of the three main cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. The growers in these areas produced food for the urban markets, but in the early 20th century gradually switched from vegetables to flowers for the simple reason that the latter were more profitable. The knowledge of flower cultivation was developed in the bulb flower growing area in the center of the region, where since the 16th century bulbflowers were cultivated on a large scale, not for the flowers, but for the bulbs that were used in gardens. For distribution the growers used the long established distribution network for vegetables that linked the growers through wholesalers and retailers to the consumer. The balance of power in this system was in favor of the traders. When flowers start to bloom they must be cut and sold immediately because they deteriorate very quickly. Traders took advantage of this situation and usually offered the growers low prices. They dealt with individual growers who could not afford the risk of waiting for a better offer. The growers solved this problem by organizing themselves in auction cooperatives that brought supply and demand together in one place, thereby creating a situation where the price of flowers was determined by the market and not by negotiations between individual growers and traders. The auction system proved to be beneficial for both growers and traders. The growers got better prices for their flowers and the traders could buy a complete assortment at one place in a few hours time. The auction system made specialization in cultivation and trade possible and laid the foundation for the success of the Dutch flower industry.

Local

Each of the three centers of the Dutch flower industry contributed to this development, but the outcome at the local level was very different due to local circumstances. The flower industry in Aalsmeer, near Amsterdam, still is an important center of cultivation, but is nowadays dominated by huge international trading companies that nowadays are no longer rooted in the local community. The center near Rotterdam, Het Westland, specialized in the cultivation of flowers. The growers are locals, whereas the traders are mainly outsiders who go to Het Westland to do their business. In Rijnsburg the cultivation of flowers nowadays is of little importance, only 10% of the supply of the auction is produced locally. The flower trade, however, is dominated by local traders who account for 80% of the auction's yearly turnover. Here I will not try to explain the differences between the three centers, but discuss some aspects of the development of the flower industry in Rijnsburg.

At the end of the 19th century Rijnsburg was an agricultural town, where five families owned most of the land and where the rest of the population worked as day laborers, small tenants and farmhands. They were extremely poor and tried to supplement their meager income by peddling vegetables and potatoes in the nearby cities of The Hague and Leyden, sometimes going as far as Rotterdam and Amsterdam. They were the ones who at the end of last century started to sell flowers they grew on small garden plots and along the roadsides. In terms of financial investments the flower trade was easy accessible - a basket or a wheelbarrow and some flowers and one was in business - but in terms of skills and knowledge it was much more difficult. The Rijnsburgers lacked money, but were for generations experienced peddlers. They started out in neighboring towns, but soon went abroad. First to England and Germany but soon to other European countries. The flower trade proved to be the avenue to economic success and social mobility. As a result Rijnsburg changed in the course of the 20th century from a poor, hierarchical agricultural town into a wealthy, egalitarian trading town of individualistic, capitalistic entrepreneurs.

The flow of goods and services

The trade in cut flowers is a link in a chain of transactions. Somewhat simplified this chain looks as follows: Grower à  auction à  (wholesale) trade à  retail à  consumer. The growers of cut flowers sell their flowers through the auction. 'Flora', the auction in Rijnsburg, is a cooperative, owned by the 2000 growers who are obliged to sell their products through the auction. In size Flora is the third auction of the Netherlands with a turnover of over DFL 735 million (approx. $350 million) a year, of which 95% consists of cut flowers. The remaining 5% are potted- and garden-plants. The flowers are auctioned every weekday between 6 and 10 am. It is a Dutch auction and in the auction-room six clocks are in operation at the same time. A constant flow of carts with flowers passes in front of each clock and in the clock coded information is given about the lot that is to be auctioned, like quality, assortment, number of flowers per unit, and number of carts of the same sort of flowers. Each clock is manned by an auctioneer who announces through an intercom system the name of the grower of the batch and provides additional information on the quality of the flowers on offer.

In the stands are, depending on the day of the week, three to six hundred traders. Each of them can at any time select with which clock he wants to be in contact. The auctioneer starts the sale of a particular lot by putting the hand of the clock well above the expected price. Then the hand runs back very quickly and at the moment a buyer pushes the button the hand stops and the price is fixed. Through the intercom the buyer tells the auctioneer how many units of the lot he wants to have. With this type of auctioning it is possible to sell very quickly large numbers of small batches to a large number of buyers. As a consequence there is no direct contact between buyer and seller. Prices are not negotiated and are purely based on supply and demand. This means that prices may fluctuate per day, even per lot.

The vast majority of buyers at Flora are local traders that have specialized in a type of trade, called lijnrijder, that was developed in Rijnsburg. The literal translation is '˜to drive a line' and it refers to the fact that the traders (lijnrijders) travel with a truck loaded with flowers to visit a string (lijn) of customers, mainly flowershops and market traders. Nowadays approximately 400 lijnrijders are based in Rijnsburg of which some 80 have their lijn in Holland, 200 work in Germany, and the rest exploits lijnen in different European countries, with the exception of the most eastern regions. An average lijn consists of 25-40 customers who are located in the same area. Depending on the distance they are visited once or twice a week. Lijnrijder firms are small, the average number of workers per firm is 5. Characteristic for these firms is that there is no clear internal division of labor. A lijnrijder buys at the auction, packs the flowers, drives the truck, sells the flowers, and does his own bookkeeping.

There is strong competition between the traders. They not only compete for customers, but also for flowers at the auction. Despite pressure from the banks and the auction on the traders to merge their firms into bigger companies in order to organize the competition and simplify the logistics to be able to compete with the big Aalsmeer export firms, no big companies developed in Rijnsburg. There are hundreds of small traders, to a very large extend family firms in which father and son(s), brothers, cousins or brothers in law do all the work.

There are, broadly speaking, two settings in which the relation between kinship and the flower trade in Rijnsburg is formed and reproduced. The first is the family firm, the second is the social organization of the local community.

The family firm

As mentioned before, the Rijnsburg flower trade is to a very large extent organized in small family firms. This type of firm has its roots in the twenties and thirties, when the division of labor between growers and traders became more and more prominent. The sons of growers who also traded in flowers, began to specialize as traders pur sang. They no longer cultivated part of their merchandize themselves. After the Second World War, and especially after the foundation of the European Common Market, the flower trade boomed and the traders needed additional labor. The traders who started in the twenties, when they were still young, now had grown up sons, sons in law and cousins who could join their business. There was and still is a strong preference for relatives.

Training

Skilled lijnrijders are hard to find. It is not a profession that can be learned at school. From an early age on boys in Rijnsburg are acquainted with the flower trade. They go to the auction where they learn to master the complexities of the auction system. At five in the morning they walk with their grandfather, father, older brother or uncle past the endless rows of flowers to be auctioned that day and learn about the different qualities of flowers. They sit in the stands and learn to interpret the coded information in the six auction clocks and gradually get an understanding of the way in which supply and demand determine the price of the flowers. When they reach the age of sixteen they leave secondary school to join as an apprentice the firm of a relative. Often this is not the firm of their father in which they probably will participate once they are skilled traders, but the firm of another relative. Most traders consider an employer-employee relation a better setting for learning the trade than a father-son relation. The idea is that as an employee the boy will learn it the hard way while an apprenticeship within the firm that the apprentice once will own, will either result in serious conflicts because disagreements are no longer confined to the domain of work but become part of the private domain, or the apprentice will turn out to be an incompetent lazy trader because the father has been too easy on him. During a period of five to ten years they will get their trucker's driver license and learn the tricks of the trade by experience. Essential are learning how the market for cut flowers functions en fluctuates over time and the development of the skills that they need in the negotiations with their customers.

After this period young traders have, depending on personal circumstances and temperament, several options. They can become partners in their father's or brother's firm or in the firm of another relative. Some traders join their father-in-law's firm or the firm of another, more distant relative. Some of the apprentice traders may have decided that the hard life of a lijnrijder is not for them and become a purchasing agent at the auction, a flower salesman or a commission merchant.

Capital

Not all young traders have relatives with a firm that they can or want to join. Every year young men who have had their training within a network of kin relations, decide to start their own business. One can not run a lijnrijders firm single handed; it would be impossible to do the buying, packaging, transporting and selling all by oneself. Usually it are brothers, brothers-in-law, cousins, or good friends that start a business.

To start a lijnrijders firm they need two things: money to buy, rent, or lease a lorry and to buy flowers at the auction, and customers. Banks are not inclined to finance starting lijnrijders because it is a risky business in which bankruptcy is not uncommon, and young traders can offer no securities. Their trading skill is their main asset and banks do not want to take risks in situations that are insecure. Within the Rijnsburg trading community the general complaint therefore is that banks offer their services when they are not needed, and refuse them when they are needed. Young traders are often financed by relatives who want to invest in their (grand)sons, sons-in-laws or nephews. People in Rijnsburg have mixed feelings on this topic. On the one hand they emphasize that for three generations the flower trade has been the avenue to independence and wealth and that the older generation has obligations towards the younger generation. On the other hand they are well aware of the fact that investments in relatives may turn out to be a loss and that kinship relations may come under unwanted pressure. Nevertheless cheap capital is usually provided by kin.

A starting lijnrijder not only needs capital, even more important are customers. Until thirty years ago finding an area with enough customers to form a profitable lijn was not very difficult. Large areas of western and central Europe were not being served by lijnrijders. By the 1990's lijnrijders had established themselves all over western en central Europe which made it more difficult for newcomers to find a place within this competitive market. In order to establish themselves they have to find an area where either there is little competition or an area where the established traders do not offer high quality products and service and whose customers might be willing to buy from some one else. This kind of information is not something people talk about in public. It is strategic knowledge that can find its way through kinship networks and that can be used to help a trader to start his lijn. Two brothers who want to set up their own firm may be told by an uncle that he heard that in the area around Copenhagen or Frankfurt the florists are not particular happy with their suppliers and that it might be worthwhile to go there and see weather they can get a foot in the door and compete with the established traders for a share of the local market. It can also happen that someone knows that a particular trader wants to, or has to, end his business and shares this knowledge with relatives who might be interested in trying to take over the customers. Everyone in the flower business knows that the first trader at the scene has the best opportunities. This kind of information is not only relevant for traders who are just beginning, but also for established traders who want to expand their businesses.

Loyalty and Flexibility

The kinship networks of the Rijnsburg flower traders function as frameworks for training, exchange of information, and recruitment of labor. Kinship based recruitment is considered to be vital by the traders. Sometimes, when no suitable workers can be found within the kinship network traders reluctantly hire outside labor. There are several reasons for their negative attitude towards non-kin workers within their firms. Firstly, outsiders are not used to the type of work they are supposed to do. There are numerous stories of traders who hired an outsider as co-driver and found out that the co-driver considered the driving to be his job and was unable or unwilling to help with wrapping, loading or unloading the flowers. The traders accept that an outsider can not buy or sell flowers, they do not have the skills for that, but it makes running a lijnrijders business difficult because you can not share the heavy workload. The traders also complain that non-kin or non Rijnsburg workers usually want to keep an eight hours working day, whereas in the flower business often much longer working days are necessary. Outsiders expect a fixed salary and extra payments for overtime, in accordance with the rules of the CAO. Traders prefer to adjust the salary of workers to the fluctuations in working hours and profits, just as with their own income. When business is slow, they want to pay less but when business is booming they are willing to pay extra. Non-relatives in general negotiate their rights and obligations with their employer, and tend to stick to the CAO. Relatives on the other hand do not bargain about unpleasant chores, working hours, overtime or days off , especially not when they are, or will initially become, partners in the firm. Socialization within the kinship networks and social control by family members results in a flexible attitude towards work and earnings, one that is in accordance with the fluctuations in the flower trade (cf. Plattner 1989: 211-12).

Apart from skills and attitudes, there is another reason for a trader to prefer relatives to nonrelatives. His business depends on the relation he has with his customers. Although traders are interested in short term profit, they are acutely aware of the fact that they have to invest in the continuity of their lijn. Depending on the quantities each customers buys, they need 25 to 40 customers in order for the lijn to be profitable. The loss of a few good customers can ruin the lijn, especially since it is very difficult to find new customers within the same area. Therefore the traders invest a lot of time and energy in keeping their customers satisfied. They try to fulfill the client's wishes with regard to the quality and the assortment of the flowers they have on offer and they will visit the clients as far as possible on days and at times that the client prefers, even if it means that their routing is not as efficient as it could be. Another means at the trader's disposal to hold on to his customers is credit. When a customer can not pay the flowers in cash the trader can grant credit, thereby making the customer more dependent on the trader than vice versa.

Lijnrijders have an interest in good relations with their customers, and it is the maintenance of these relations that is at the core of a lijnrijders firm. This makes a lijn vulnerable, not only to competition but also to employees. If a lijnrijder succeeds in hiring a skilled trader-driver, he always runs the risk that this employee will take over the lijn and there is nothing he can do to prevent it. An employee who actually serves the customers, who does the negotiations and who maintains the relations, sooner or later will realize that he can make more money by exploiting the lijn all by himself. The traders are very well aware of this risk. If they hire a nonrelative trader-driver, they know that they have to accompany him on the trips most of the time in order to supervise the relations with the customers. Traders do not like this, especially not when they get older, because then it becomes physically and mentally more and more difficult to keep up the hard work. Therefore they try to reduce the visits to their customers to every other week by the time they are about fifty years old, leaving the other visits to their partners. Another reason to be careful with hired personel is that the trade is done in cash and that prices are not fixed, but negotiated. This offers ample opportunity for withholding part of the earnings. Even the suspicion that money is being withheld can ruin the relation.

For a trader to survive in the world of the flower trade, where self-interest and competition are strong, it is of the utmost importance to have skilled, trustworthy, and loyal workers in his firm. Since trust and loyalty are qualities that are part of the moral obligations that kin have towards each other, the Rijnsburg flower trader prefers relatives to work within his firm.

Kinship, endogamy and locality

For the family firms to function and expand, there must be kinship networks that are large enough to recruit workers/partners from and that have their basis within a specific locality. Kinship obligations are hard to observe, especially in everyday situations, if relatives live far away from one another. To determine how local ties and geographical mobility influence the formation of kinship networks, I looked at the degree of local endogamous marriages, and at the choice of residence after marriage, and how these were related to the occupational structure.

In a sample of 400 couples, of which the man or the woman or both were born in Rijnsburg between 1920 and 1970, 46% of the marriages was local endogamous. This high incidence of endogamy can not be explained as a result of the isolation of the village. Rijnsburg is situated in the center of the densely populated western part of the Netherlands, and since the early 20th century its traders have been travelling all over Europe. There are three factors that enhance local endogamous marriage, of which the first is more or less autonomous, whereas the other two are related to the local economic structure.

The first factor is that religious groups often function as endogamous units. Since Rijnsburgers are overwhelmingly members of protestant churches (90%), religion is not an obstacle for local marriages. The churches organize confirmation classes and youth clubs, where boys and girls in their late teens and early twenties come into close contact. In this way religious organization stimulates local endogamy.

A second factor is the school system. A large majority of children go to one of the two local secondary schools. These schools offer a basic vocational training and prepare pupils for the labor market, not for further education. Children with higher educational ambitions go to schools in neighboring towns. The preference for local schools, related to the choice for a career in the flower industry, makes that girls and boys at an age when they start dating are oriented towards their local community. In the Netherlands there is a strong preference to marry a partner with a comparable education (Uunk & Ultee 1994). The secondary schools in Rijnsburg not only offer the opportunity of meeting a partner, they also ensure that the educational capital of the partners is more or less similar.

The third factor is that people tend to marry within their own socio-economic class (Segalen 1993: 143-148; Uunk & Ultee 1994). People prefer a partner with similar experiences, expectations, ambitions and taste. In terms of socio-economic class Rijnsburg is heterogeneous. There are rich entrepreneurs and average workers, wealthy traders and marginal traders. Nevertheless, the local social and economic structure that is based on the flower trade has some specific characteristics, such as an emphasis on entrepreneurship and the absence of a clear, fixed economic and social status hierarchy. Within this structure rapid upward and downward social and economic mobility is possible. Within the flower trade one can be successful and become rich in a short period of time, but it is also possible to loose everything within the space of a few months. Upwards and downwards social mobility, for an individual as well as for successive generations, is substantial. It is not unusual for someone to start his career as a junior employee in his uncle's lijnrijders firm, then work as a purchasing agent for an export company, then start his own lijnrijders firm, and to end his career as a part-time employee at the flower auction. Within this structure people develop similar expectations, ambitions, knowledge and taste that influences the choice of a partner. Important in this respect is that there is a strict division of labor between men and women. Since men are responsible for earning money and women have the responsibility of the household as their first priority, different qualities are important with regard to the choice of a marriage partner. For men it is not their actual economic status, but their potential to be successful. For women it is important that they are able to support their husband by running a well organized household. The trade is a stressful occupation with long working hours and every week three of four nights away from home. When traders come home after a trip, they expect a haven in a stressful world. They also expect their wives to be able to cope with the ups and downs in earnings that are typical for the flower trade. Traders never told me that they choose a wife from Rijnsburg because she had these qualities. But when a trader with a wife from outside Rijnsburg runs into financial or marital problems they generally explain this by the fact that outside wives can not cope with the demands of the trade whereas Rijnsburg wives can, because they have been brought up with it.

The relation between occupation and local endogamy is reflected in my sample of 400 marriages. Of 159 local endogamous marriages, 66% of the men work in the flower industry. By comparison, of the 124 men who married a wife from outside Rijnsburg, 35 % is active in the flower industry. In other words, men from Rijnsburg who work in the flower industry marry to a much larger extend locally than men with occupations outside the flower industry. These figures indicate that local social and economic circumstances influence the choice of a partner. People do not marry because they share a socio-economic background, taste and ambitions: they marry out of love. But although love is seen as a result of chance encounters and the choice of a spouse appears to be free, it is not independent from the local economic and social structure.

Local endogamous marriages result in households that are related through men as well as women to Rijnsburg. As a consequence there are dense kinship networks, many people are related either through blood or through marriage. The meaning of kinship in everyday life is to a large extent depending on whether people take up residence in the same locality after marriage. If relatives live close to each other, they can observe kinship obligations in daily life. In my sample of 400 couples of which at least one of the spouses was born in Rijnsburg, 259 (64,75%) took up residence in Rijnsburg. The result of this settlement pattern is that kinship networks within the local community are dense and interconnected.

There is a strong tendency for people who do not work in the flower industry to leave Rijnsburg. Especially people with a higher education settle elsewhere because there are very few jobs in Rijnsburg for them. The result is that the character of Rijnsburg as a '˜flower trade community' is reinforced. In the words of a local public servant: "The flower people stay and the diploma people leave". Kinship, local economy and local identity are thus articulated in a way that confirms Harris' observation that '˜['¦] households and enterprises tend to cluster together, and household, family and familial relationships become interarticulated and form a dense social field which forms the core of what may be termed a locality' (Harris 1990: 87).

Concluding remarks

The Rijnsburg flower trade is dominated by approximately 400 small scale family firms that are surprisingly successful in a very competitive market. The workforce of these lijnrijder firms is to a very large extent trained and recruited within a local network of relatives. The result is a well trained, motivated and loyal workforce. In comparison with the much larger export firms of Aalsmeer, the lijnrijder firms are more flexible in adapting to changing circumstances. Cut flowers are a luxury item and susceptible to shifts in economic trends. In times of recession lijnrijders can decrease their turnover without serious consequences because fixed costs are low. Also, it is easier for a small family firm to adjust income to lower profits than it is for a big export firms to adjust the wages of hired personel. Flexibility is not only important for adjusting to changing market, it also enables traders to seize an opportunity when they see one as they did for instance after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Within two days the first lijnrijders were in cities like Rostock and Leipzich and established lijnen there. Big export companies need more time to develop new business relations and set up the necessary infrastructure to distribute large quantities of flowers.

Not only the fact that lijnrijder firms generally are family firms contributes to their success, also the fact that the Rijnsburg traders are part of local kinship networks is an asset. Through their network they can obtain cheap capital to start a lijn or to expand their business. A trader who has been declared bankrupt will be helped by his relatives to restart his business or they will find a another suitable job for him. The fact that traders have a network that supports them and they can fall back upon if they are not successful in the trade, makes that young Rijnsburgers are willing to take the risk of starting a business.

The success of the Rijnsburg lijnrijders on the European market is the result of the mutual reinforcement of kinship networks and the flower trade. Because the networks are localized, relatives keep in close contact and interact on a daily basis and notions of moral obligations and solidarity can be observed. In the flower trade this finds its expression in the family firm and the kinship based training and recruitment of workers.

References cited

Bourdieu, P.

1989 Distinction. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London: Routledge

Goody, J.

1993 The Culture of Flowers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Harris, C.C.

1990 Kinship. Milton Keynes: Open University.

Plattner, S.

1989 Economic Behavior in Markets. In: Plattner, S. (ed.), Economic Anthropology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Pp. 209-222.

Segalen, M.

1993 Historical Anthropology of the Family. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Uunk, W. & W. Ultee

1993 Kennis of cultuur? Het belang van opleiding en deelname aan de schone kunsten bij partnerkeuze in Nederland tussen 1948 en1992. Amsterdams Sociologisch Tijdschrift 23: 331-366. [Knowledge or culture? The importance of education and participation in art for the choice of marriage partners in The Netherlands between 1948 and 1992]