The Company You Know

One of the world's largest silverware manufacturers. Your grandmother's good dinnerware that only gets used on Thanksgiving probably has Oneida silverware with it.

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"These are specially made for tossing salads!"

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How It Got Started

A freaking sex colony.

In 1848, John Humphrey Noyes had a dream, one that many of us have to this day. Noyes' dream was for people to be able to bang whomever they wanted, consequence-free. But more importantly, he wanted them to bone in the name of Jesus. So Noyes formed a splinter faction of Christianity that believed that Jesus had already returned to Earth in 70 (not 1770 or 1670, just 70), and therefore his followers were able to bring about paradise on this mortal coil and achieve perfection by screwing the bejesus out of each other. He and his Humpayoo tribe decided to settle their den of divine inequity in Oneida, New York.



"Right here looks good!"

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Even though our fantasy involves us being able to orgy it up all day without ever having to work, Noyes still lived in reality and needed a way to pay the bills. Since this was the 1800s, there were no university research grants they could take advantage of, so they set up a number of different businesses to help facilitate their extracurriculars. For a while, life was good. The businesses were thriving, the sex was plentiful and the people were happy, even though Noyes decreed that men were not permitted to ejaculate.

In 1879, Noyes was tipped off that the local police were coming to arrest him (turns out the older members had a thing for sexing underage girls), so Noyes fled to Canada, never to return. He eventually wrote to his followers and said they should go back to monogamy. Presumably after a massive "last hurrah" orgy, the community disbanded. A number of the members split off into monogamous pairs and decided to remain in Oneida. They sold off all the businesses except the most profitable one: silverware manufacturing. They incorporated their community and have been banging it out ever since.