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

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

The Smiths were no sooner firm in power than rumors began to circulate of a recrudescence of plural marriage, and I heard reports of political plots by which the Prophets were to reestablish their autocracy in worldly affairs in the name of God. I sought to close my mind against such accusations, for I remembered how often my father had been misjudged, and I felt that nothing but the most direct evidence should be permitted to convince me of a recession by the Church authorities from the miraculous opportunity of progress that was now open to their leadership. Such direct evidence came, in part, in the state elections of 1902.

The Utah Democrats re-nominated Wm. H. King for Congress; Senator Joseph L. Rawlins was their candidate to succeed himself in the United States Senate. The Republicans nominated President Smith's friend, Joseph Howell, for Congress; and there began to spread a rumor that Apostle Reed Smoot was to become a Republican candidate for the Senatorship under an old promise given him by President Snow and now endorsed by President Smith. I had been made state chairman of the Democratic party; and with the growing report of Apostle Smoot's candidacy, I observed a gradual cessation of political activity on the part of those prominent Democrats who were close to the Church leaders.

Now, our party was not making war on the Church nor on any of its proper missions in the world. Our candidates were capable and popular men against whom no just ecclesiastical antagonism could be raised. We were asking no favors from the Church. And we were determined to have no opposition from the Church without a protest and an understanding.

For this reason—after consulting confidentially with the leaders of our party—undertook to make a personal visit to President Smith's office to demand that the Church authorities should keep their hands out of politics. But even while I discussed the matter with our party leaders, I was afraid that some of them might betray our concerted purpose to Church headquarters. And my fear was well grounded. When I went to the offices of the Presidency, the authorities—for the first, last and only time—refused to see me; and the secretary betrayed a knowledge of my mission by telling me that I should hear from some one of the hierarchy, later.

Two or three days afterward, Apostle M. F. Cowley came to me with word that my call had been considered and that he had been deputed to talk with me. We appointed a time for conference in my rooms at Democratic headquarters, where we spent the large part of a day in consultation. And since the argument between us covered the whole ground of Apostle Smoot's candidacy, I wish to give an account of that interview, as a brief exposition of some of the present-day aspects of the Church's interference in politics.

Apostle Cowley and I had been boyhood friends. He had been one of the older students at the school that I had attended as a child; and I knew the integrity and directness of his character. He was a stocky, strong man, with a wholesome sort of face, brown with the sunburn of his missionary travels in Canada and in Mexico. (He had been, in fact, solemnizing plural marriages in these polygamous refuges—as we found out later.)

As soon as it was clearly understood between us that I represented the Democratic state committee and he represented the Church authorities, I asked for an explanation of Apostle Smoot's candidacy.

Cowley began by admitting the candidacy, which President Smith had endorsed (he said) in spite of the opposition of some of the apostles. He argued that Apostle Smoot was only exercising his right of American citizenship in aspiring to the Senatorship; and he explained that the Church authorities did not see why the Church should be drawn into the campaign.

But, as I pointed out to him, the Church had already drawn itself in. It had held a solemn conclave of its hierarchy to authorize an apostle's candidacy. The opponents of Church rule would circulate the fact; in any close campaign, the apostle's friends would use the fact upon the faithful; and the Church would be compelled to support its apostle in an assumed necessity of defending itself.

Perhaps I was objectionably forceful in my reply to him. With his characteristic gentleness, he rebuked me by recalling that President Woodruff had once taken him into "sacred places," assured him that "Frank Cannon, like David, was a man after God's own heart," and asked him to "labor" for me in politics. If it had been right for the Prophet of God to favor me, why was it not right for the Prophet now to favor some one else?