TESTIMONY OF MR. SMYTHE
Nowhere else has the common prosperity been reared upon firmer foundations. Nowhere else are institutions more firmly buttressed or better capable of resisting violent economic revolutions. The thunder cloud that passed over the land in 1893, leaving a path of commercial ruin from the Atlantic to the Pacific, was powerless to close the door of a single Mormon store, factory or bank. Strong in prosperity, the co-operative industrial and commercial system stood immovable in the hour of widespread disaster. The solvency of these industries is scarcely more striking than the solvency of the farmers from whom they draw their strength. No other governor, either in the West or in the East, is able to say what the Honorable Heber M. Wells said in assuming the chief magistracy of the new state in January, 1896, "We have in Utah," said the young governor. "19,816 farms, and 17,584 of them are absolutely free from incumbrance." A higher percentage in school attendance and lower percentage of illiterates than even in the State of Massachusetts, is another of Utah's proud records. P. 71.