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

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

The Church tribunals heard and settled all disputes over property or personal rights not involving the criminal law. Expensive litigation was thus avoided. Society was saved the cost of innumerable courts. There were many counties in which no lawyer could be found; and everywhere, among the Mormons, it was considered an act of evil fellowship, amounting almost to apostasy, for a man to bring suit against his brother in the civil tribunals.

In short—as my father pointed out—Utah, at that time, expressed the only full-bodied social proposition in the United States. There never had been in America another community whose future, in the economic aspects, offered so clear a solution of problems which still remain generally unsettled. It was as if a segment of the great circle of modern humanity had been transported to another world, otherwise unpopulated, and there with the experience gained through centuries of human travail—had attempted the establishment of a just, beneficent and satisfying social order.

I am here repeating this argument—this exposition—because the financial absolutism of the Prophets of the Church has since ruined the whole Mormon experiment in communism, put the Mormon paupers into the public poor houses, used the tithes to support the large financial ventures of the Prophet's favorites, and turned the Church's "community enterprises" into monopolistic exploitations of the Mormon people. And this change began even while our negotiations were pending in New York—for they were prolonged, for various reasons, into the summer of 1898, and they were interrupted finally by the death of President Woodruff.

As soon as I received word of his illness I took train for Utah. The news of his death met me on the journey home. Since I derived my authority solely from him, upon my arrival in Salt Lake I went to the Cashier of the Church, gave him the keys and the password to the safety deposit box in New York, and withdrew from any further participation in the Church's financial affairs. When I came to the office of the Presidency I found that my father had removed his desk; and this was an indication to me of what was happening in the inner circles of Church intrigue.

The president of the quorum of apostles invariably succeeds to the Presidency of the Church, although it is left to the apostles to decide, and their choice is supposed to be directed by inspiration. His election is subsequently ratified by the General Conference; but this ratification is a mere form, because the conference must either accept the choice of the apostles or rebel against "the revelation of God."

Apostle Lorenzo Snow was president of the quorum of apostles, and therefore in line for the Presidency. But usually, after the death of a President, a considerable period was allowed to elapse before the selection of his successor, with the government resting in the quorum of apostles meanwhile, even for a term of years. As soon as I arrived in Salt Lake, Apostle Snow asked me to a private interview (in the same small back room of the President's offices), inquired about the financial negotiations that I had been conducting, and asked me whether it was not essential to the success of our business affairs that as soon as possible the Church should elect a President, empowered as "trustee in trust." I replied that it was. He invited me to attend a conference of the apostles and give my views upon the situation to them.

This seemed to me an act of rather shallow cunning, for I knew I was too unimportant a person to be so consulted unless he thought my report would aid his intrigue. Such intriguing was offensive to the religious traditions of the Church; and it outraged my feeling for President Woodruff, who was hardly cold in death before this personal and worldly ambition caught at the reins of his office. Snow had been a man of small weight in the government of the Church. He had known none of the responsibilities of great leadership. He was eighty-four years old.

However, it was impossible for us to maintain the Church's credit in the East unless our community were represented by some choate authority, since our credit rested on the belief that the Mormon people were ready to consecrate all their possessions at any time to the service of the Church at the command of the President. I advised the apostles of this fact. Snow was elected President on September 13, 1898, eleven days after Woodruff's death. He followed the usual precedent in choosing my father and Joseph F. Smith as his Councillor's.

But he took possession of his new authority with the manner of an heir entering upon the ownership of a personal estate for which he had long waited—and which he proposed to enjoy to the full for his remaining years. In a most literal sense he held that all the property of the people of the Church was subject to his direction, as chief earthly steward of "the Divine Monarch," and he proceeded to exercise his assumed prerogatives with an autocracy that made even Joseph F. Smith complain because the Councillor's were never asked for counsel. As resident apostle of Box Elder County and president of the Box Elder "stake of Zion," Snow had already shown his ambition as a financier, disastrously; and it was as the financial head of the Church that he was chiefly to rule during his term of absolutism.

Of all the Church leaders whom I had known he was the only man who showed none of the robustness of the Western experience. Tall, stately, white-bearded, elegant and courtly, he prided himself most obviously on his manners and his culture. He rarely spoke in any but the most subdued and silken tones of suavity. He walked with a step that was almost affected in its gentility. If he had any passions, he held them in such smooth concealment that the public credited him with neither force nor unkindness. He had been a great traveler (as a missionary); he had written his autobiography, somewhat egotistically; he was devoted to the forms of his religion, like a mediaeval Prince of the Church and an elegante. But under all the artificialities of personal vanity and exterior grace, he proved to have a cold determination that seemed more selfishly ambitious than religiously zealous.