Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

To this end there were placed in my hands sheets showing the assets, liabilities, revenues and disbursements of the Church. They gave a total cash indebtedness of $1,200,000, approximately. The revenues from tithes for the year 1897 were estimated at a trifle more than a million dollars—the total being low because of the financial depression from which the country was just recovering. The available property holdings—exclusive of premises used for religious worship, for educational and benevolent work, and such kindred purposes—were valued at several millions (from four to six), although there was no definite appraisal or means of obtaining appraisal, since the values would largely attach only when the properties were brought into business use. I was advised that the incomes of the Church would probably increase at the rate of ten per cent per annum, but I do not know by what calculations this ratio was reached.

The disbursements were chiefly for interest on debt, for the maintenance of the temples and tabernacles, for educational and charitable work, for missionary headquarters in other countries, and for the return of released missionaries. The missionaries themselves received no compensation; they were supposed to travel "without purse or scrip;" their expenses were defrayed by their relatives, and they had to pay out of their own pockets for the printed tracts which they distributed. Neither the President nor any of the general authorities received salaries. There was an order that each apostle should be paid $2,000 a year, but this rule had been suspended, except, perhaps, in the cases of men who had to give their whole time to religious work and who had no independent incomes. Some occasional appropriations had been made for meeting houses in communities that had been unable to erect their own chapels of worship, but for the most part there were few calls made upon the Church revenues to support its religious activities, its priests or its propaganda.

Our proposed committees, therefore, were a committee on missionary work, one on publication, one on colonization, one on political protective work for the Mormons in foreign countries, and most important—a finance committee selected from the body of apostles, with the addition of some able men connected with financial institutions. As a basis for the work of the finance committee, we proposed the establishment of an interest fund, a sinking fund, and a scale of percentage disbursements for the various community purposes. These committees were to be appointed by the Conferences of the people, and the committee reports were to be public. President Woodruff eagerly accepted the plan as relieving the Presidency of administrative cares that were becoming too great for the quorum to carry. Joseph F. Smith did not at once awake to the real meaning of the proposal; but when the scheme was submitted in its matured details, he spoke of the danger of allowing power to pass from the hands of the "trustee in trust" in business matters. His idea was sufficiently clear in its resistance to any diffusion of authority, but it was correspondingly void of any suggestion of substitute. For the time being he was pacified by the assurance that the "Kingdom of God" and the rule of its prophets would not be endangered by the organization of committees and the submission of financial plans to the general knowledge, and even to the consent, of the people.

It was, of course, evident to the First Councillor that this scheme of Church administration would give the Mormon people a measure of responsible government, and the proposal was a part of his wisdom as a community leader seeking the common welfare. While we had been a people on whom the whole world seemed to be making war, a dictatorship had been necessary; but now that we had arrived at peace and liberty, a concentration of irresponsible power would surely become dangerous to progress. Without, therefore, impairing the religious authority of the Prophet, the First Councillor was willing to divide the temporal power of the Church among its members.

He was as silent, about these aims, with me as with all others; but I had learned to understand him in his silences; and, in joining with him in his work of reform, I was as sure of his purpose as I have since been sure of the disaster to the Mormon people that has come of the failure to effect the reform.

When the Presidency had approved of the flotation of bonds, I went with my father to New York to aid him in interesting Eastern capitalists in the investment. We interviewed Judge John F. Dillon and Mr. Winslow Pierce, of the law firm of Dillon and Pierce, attorneys for some of the Union Pacific interests; and through them we met Mr. Edward H. Harriman, Mr. George J. Gould and members of the firm of Kuhn Loeb and Company. It was interesting to watch the encounters between the Mormon prophet and some of these astutest of the nation's financiers; for it was as if one of the ancient patriarchs had stepped down from the days of early Israel to discuss the financial problems of his people with a modern "captain of industry." He described a condition of society that was, to Wall Street, archaic. He spoke with a serene assurance that the order of affairs in Utah was constituted in the wisdom of the word of God. He was listened to, with the interest of curiosity, as the chief living exponent of the Mormon movement, its processes and its aims; and I was impressed by the fact that these men of the world had a large and splendid sympathy for any wholesome social effort designed to abolish poverty and establish a quicker justice in the practical affairs of the race.

It was of the abolition of poverty and the justice of the social order among the Mormons, that the First Councillor chiefly spoke. "Your clients," he said to Judge Dillon, "make their investments frequently in railroad stocks and bonds. What are the underlying bases of the values of railroad securities? Largely the industry and stability of the communities through which the railroad lines shall operate. Then, in reality, the security is valuable in proportion to the value of the community in its steadfastness, its prosperity and the safety of its productive labor. In your railroad investments you are obliged to take such considerations as a secondary security. In negotiating this Church loan with your clients, you can offer the same great values as a primary security. Probably no where else in the world is there a people at once so industrious and so stable as ours."

It was the boast of the Mormons that there had not been an almshouse or an almstaker in any of their settlements, up to the time of the escheat proceedings by the Federal officials; and this was literally true. Every man had been helped to the employment for which he was best fitted. If an immigrant, in his former estate, had been a silk-weaver, efforts were made to establish his industry and give it public support. If he had been a musician of talent, a little conservatory was founded, and patronage obtained for him. When the growth of population made it necessary to open new valleys for agriculture, the Church, out of its community fund, rendered the initial aid; in many instances the original irrigation enterprises of small settlements were thus financed; and the investments were repaid not only directly, by the return of the loan, but indirectly, many times over, by the increased productiveness and larger contributions of the people. Co-operation, in mercantile, industrial and stock-raising undertakings, assured the support and patronage of each community for its own particular enterprise, prevented destructive competition and checked the greed of the individual—for the more he toiled for himself, the larger the share of the general burden he had to carry.

It was the First Councillor's theory that when people contributed to a common fund they became interested in one another's material welfare. The man who paid less in tithes this year than last was counselled with as to why his business had been unsuccessful, and the wise men of his little circle aided him with advice and material help. The man who contributed largely was glad of a prosperity from which he yielded a part—in recognition of what the community had done for him and in a reverent gratitude to God for making him "a steward of mighty possessions"—but he was anxious that his neighbor also should be a larger contributor each year.

The whole system of tithe-paying was built upon a series of purported "revelations" received by Joseph Smith, the original Prophet. It was declared to be the will of God that all men, as stewards of their possessions, should give of their increase annually into "the storehouse of the Lord," which should always be open for the relief of the poor. Inasmuch as the man who received help—or whose widow and children did so—had been a tithe-payer during all his productive years, there was none of the feeling of personal humiliation on the part of the recipient, nor any of the feeling of condescending charity on the part of the giver, in the distribution of funds to the needy. And it was astonishing how few the needy were—because of the abstemious lives, the industry, and the thrift of the workers.