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

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

Twice a year, with a fine show of democracy, the people assemble in the Tabernacle at Salt Lake, and there vote for the general authorities who are presented to them by the voice of revelation. If there were no tragedy, there would be farce in the solemnity with which this pretense of free government is staged and managed. Some ecclesiast rises in the pulpit and reads from his list: "It is moved and seconded that we sustain Joseph F. Smith as Prophet, Seer and Revelator to all the world. All who favor this make it manifest by raising the right hand." No motion has been made. No second has been offered. Very often, no adverse vote is asked. And, if it were, who would dare to offer it? These leaders represent the power of God to their people; and against them is arrayed "the power of the Devil and his cohorts among mankind." Three generations of tutelage and suppression restrain the members of the conference in a silent acquiescence. If there is any rebel among them, he must stand alone; for he has scarcely dared to voice his objections, lest he be betrayed, and any attempt to raise a concerted revolt would have been frustrated before this opportunity of concerted revolt presented itself. Being a member of the Church, he must combat the fear that he may condemn himself eternally if he raise his voice against the will of God. He must face the penalty of becoming an outcast or an exile from the people and the life that he has loved. He knows that the religious zealots will feel that he has gone wilfully "into outer darkness" through some deep and secret sin of his own; and that the prudent members of the community will tell him that he should have "kept his mouth shut." If there were a majority of the conference inclined to protest against the re-election of any of its rulers, the lack of communication, the pressure of training and the weight of fear would keep them silent. And in this manner, from Prophet down to "Choyer leader" (choir leader) the names are offered and "sustained by the free vote of the freest people under the sun."

During the days just before the American party's political agitation, a young Mormon, named Samuel Russell, returned from a foreign mission for the Church and found that the girl whom he had been courting when he went away was married as a plural wife to Henry S. Tanner, brother of the other notorious polygamist, J. M. Tanner. The discovery that his sweetheart was a member of the Tanner household drove Russell almost frantic. She was the daughter of an eminent and wealthy family, of remarkable beauty, well-educated and rarely accomplished. Young Russell was a college student—a youth of intellect and high mind—and he suffered all the torments of a horrifying shock. Unless he should choose to commit an act of violence there was only one possible way for him to protest. At the next conference, when the name of Henry S. Tanner was read from the list to be "sustained"—as a member of the general Sunday School Board—Russell rose and objected that Tanner was unworthy and a "new" polygamist. He was silenced by remonstrances from the pulpit and from the people. He was told to take his complaint to the President of his Stake. He was denied the opportunity to present it to the assemblage.

Almost immediately afterward, Tanner, for the first time in his life, was honored with a seat in the highest pulpit of the Church among the general authorities. And Russell was pursued by the ridicule of the Mormon community, the persecution of the Church that he had served, the contempt of the man who had wronged him, and the anger of the woman whom he had loved. One of the reporters of the Deseret News, the Church's newspaper, subsequently stated that he had been detailed, with others, to pursue Russell day and night, soliciting interviews, plaguing him with questions, and demanding the legal proofs of Tanner's marriage—which, of course, it was known that Russell could not give—until Russell's friends, fearing that he might be driven to violence, persuaded him to leave the state. Tanner is now reputed to have six plural wives (all married to him since the manifesto of 1890) of whom this young woman is one.

Similarly, at the General Conference of April, 1905, Don C. Musser (of whom I have already written) attempted to protest against the sustaining of Apostles Taylor and Cowley; but Joseph F. Smith promptly called upon the choir to sing, and Musser's voice was drowned in harmony. In more recent years Charles J. Bowen rose at a General Conference to object to the sustaining of some of the polygamous authorities, and he was hustled from the building by the ushers.

But the most notable case of individual revolt of this period was Charles A. Smurthwaite's. He had joined the Church, alone, when a boy in England, and the sufferings he had endured, for allying himself with an ostracized sect, had made him a very ardent Mormon. He had become a "teacher" in his ward of Ogden City, had succeeded in business as a commission merchant and was a great favorite with his bishop and his people, because of his charities and a certain gentle tolerance of disposition and kindly brightness of mind.

Smurthwaite, in partnership with Richard J. Taylor (son of a former President of the Church, John Taylor) engaged in the manufacture of salt, with the financial backing of a leading Church banker. Along the shores of Salt Lake, salt is obtained, by evaporation, at the cost of about sixty cents a ton; its selling price, at the neighboring smelting centers, ranges from three dollars to fourteen dollars a ton; and the industry has always been one of the most profitable in the community. In the early days, the Church (as I have already related) encouraged the establishment of "salt gardens," financed the companies, protected them in their leasehold rights along the lake shores, and finally, through the Inland Crystal Salt Company, came to control a practical monopoly of the salt industry of the intermountain country. (This Inland Crystal Company, with Joseph F. Smith as its president, is now a part of the national salt trust.)

After Smurthwaite and Taylor had invested heavily in the land and plant of their salt factory, the Church banker who had been helping them notified them that they had better see President Smith before they went any further. They called on Smith in his office, and there—according to Smurthwaite's sworn testimony before the Senate committee—the Prophet gave them notice that they must not compete with his Inland Crystal Salt Company by manufacturing salt, and that if they tried to, he would "ruin" them. This proceeding convinced Smurthwaite that Smith had "so violent a disregard and non-understanding of the rights of his fellow-man and his duty to God, as to render him morally unqualified for the high office which he holds." For expressing such an opinion of Smith to elders and teachers—and adding that Smith was not fit to act as Prophet, Seer and Revelator, since, according to his own confession to the Senate Committee he was "living in sin"—for expressing these opinions, charges were preferred against Smurthwaite by an elder named Goddard of Ogden City, and excommunication proceedings were begun against him.

Smurthwaite replied by making a charge of polygamous cohabitation against Goddard; and after the April Conference of 1905, Don Musser and Smurthwaite joined in filing a complaint in the District Court of Salt Lake City demanding an accounting from Joseph F. Smith of the tithes which the Church was collecting. Meanwhile Smurthwaite had been "disfellowshipped" at a secret session of the bishop's court, on March 22, without an opportunity of appearing in his own defense or having counsel or witnesses heard in support of his case; and on April 4, after a similarly secret and ex-parte proceeding, he was excommunicated by the High Council of his Stake, for "apostasy and un-Christianlike conduct." His charges against Goddard were ignored, and his suit for an accounting of the tithes was dismissed for want of jurisdiction!

From the moment of his first public protest against Smith, all Smurthwaite's former associates fell away from him, and by many of the more devout he was shunned as if he were infected. Benevolent as he had been, he could find no further fellowship even among those whom he had benefited by his service and his means. I know of no more blameless life than his had been in his home community—and, to this, every one of his acquaintances can bear testimony—yet after the brutally unjust proceedings of excommunication against him the Deseret News, the Church's daily paper, referred to "recent cases of apostasy and excommunication" as having been made necessary by the "gross immorality" of the victims. When a man like Chas. A. Smurthwaite could not remonstrate against the individual offenses of Joseph F. Smith, without being overwhelmed by financial disaster, and social ostracism, and personal slander, it must be evident how impossible is such single revolt to the average Mormon. Nothing can be accomplished by individual protest except the ruin of the protestant and his family.

In the case of my own excommunication, the issues were perhaps less clearly defined than in Smurthwaite's. I had not been for many years a formal member of the Church; and yet in the sense that Mormonism is a community system (as much as a religion) I had been an active and loyal member of it. In my childhood—when I was seven or eight years of age—I began to doubt the faith of my people; and I used to go into the orchard alone and thrust sticks lightly into the soft mould and pray that God would let them fall over if the Prophets had not been appointed by Him to do His work. And sometimes they fell and sometimes they stood! Later, when I was appalled by some of the things that had occurred in the early history of the Church, I silenced myself with the argument that one should not judge any religion by the crudities and intolerance's of its past. I felt that if I were not hypocritical—if I were myself guided by the truth as I saw it myself—and if I aided to the utmost of my power in advancing the community out of its errors, I should be doing all that could be asked of me. In the days of Mormon misery and proscription, I chose to stand with my own people, suffering in their sufferings and rejoicing with them in their triumphs. Their tendency was plainly upward; and I felt that no matter what had been the origin of the Church—whether in the egotism of a man or in an alleged revelation from God—if the tendencies were toward higher things, toward a more even justice among men, toward a more zealous patriotism for the country, no man of the community could do better than abide with the community.