Nor is the tithe any longer the only exaction demanded by the Prophet. A score of "donations" have been added. There is the Stake Tabernacle Donation, which is a fund collected from the Mormons of each "Stake" (corresponding usually to a county) for the building of a house in which to hold Stake Conferences. There is the Ward Meeting-House Donation, which is a fund collected from the Mormons of every "ward" for the erection of a local chapel. There is the Fast Day Donation, made up of contributions gathered on the afternoon of the first Sunday of each month, at what is called "a fast meeting," for the support of the local poor; and this is supplemented by the Relief Society Donation, solicited by the members of the Ladies Relief Society, in a house-to-house canvass, from Mormons and Gentiles alike. A Light and Heat Donation is collected by the deacons of the ward, under direction of the bishop, to pay for the lighting and heating of the ward meeting house; a Missionary Donation is collected at a "Missionary benefit entertainment," to help defray the expenses of a member of a ward sent on a mission; and since a missionary must necessarily be an elder, a Quorum Missionary Donation is also taken from his fellow members of the quorum, to assist him. So far as the Church is concerned, he travels "without purse or scrip," by order of "revelation;" but this inhibition does not extend to the use of his own money—if he has any left after paying the other exaction's—nor does it prevent him either from receiving contributions from his impoverished fellows or accepting charity from "the enemies of God's people," whom he labors to redeem. And on these terms about ninety per cent. of the adult male Mormons perform missionary services for the Church.
All priesthood quorums have monthly Quorum Dues collected from their members. On one Sunday of each month, called Nickel Sunday, the Sunday School members pay in five cents each for the purchase of new books, etc. On Dime Tuesday, once a month, the members of the Young Men's and the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Associations pay in ten cents each for the purchase of books, etc. On Nickel Friday, once a month, the infant members of the Primary Association pay in five cents each to the association. Religious Class Donations are paid once a month by the Mormon public-school pupils for the support of the week-day religious classes. Amusement Hall Donations are collected from the members of a ward whose bishop finds them able to build a place of amusement. When a temple is to be erected, Temple Donations are collected, continuously, until the work is finished and paid for; and when members of the Church "go through the Temple," they are required to pay another form of Temple Donation in any sum that they can afford. Should a need arise, not provided for by the specific donations given above, a Special Donation is collected to meet it. Yet in the face of all these exaction's of tithes and donations, the ecclesiast still boasts: "We are not like the 'preachers for hire and diviners for money.' We never pass the plate at our sacred services. Our clergy labor, without pay, to give free salvation to a sinful world!"
In addition to doing missionary service, paying tithes, and contributing donations, the latter-day Mormon, if he be obedient to the counsel of the Church's anointed financiers, must support the commercial and financial undertakings of the hierarchy. These are officially designated "the Church's institutions" by the authorities; but they are in no way the property of the Church. They are advertised as community enterprises, but they are such only in the sense that the community is commanded by "the voice of God" to sustain them. There is no voice of God to command a distribution of their profits. And they are no longer conducted for the benefit of the community but to exploit it.
The good Mormon must purchase his sugar from "the Church's" sugar company (Joseph F. Smith, president), which is controlled by the national sugar trust and charges trust prices. He must buy salt from "the Church's" salt monopoly (Joseph F. Smith, president), which is a part of, and pays dividends to, the national salt trust. He is taught to go for his merchandise to the Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (Joseph F. Smith, president), where even whiskey is sold under the symbol of the All-seeing Eye and the words "Holiness to the Lord" in gilt letters; and Joseph F. Smith, at the April Conference, of 1898 (according to the Church's official report), scolded those "pretendedly pious" Mormons who "were shocked and horrified" to find "liquid poison" sold under these auspices—for, as Smith argued, with characteristic greed, if the Mormon who wanted whiskey could not get it in the Church store, "he would not patronize Z.C.M.I. at all, but would go elsewhere to deal!"
The farmers are "counselled" to buy their vehicles from "the Church's" firm, the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company (Joseph F. Smith, president); to take out their fire insurance with the Church's "Home Fire Insurance Company" (Joseph F. Smith, controller); and to insure their lives with the Church's "Beneficial Life Insurance Company" (Joseph F. Smith, president). The Salt Lake Knitting Company (of which Joseph F. Smith is president) makes, among other things, the sacred knitted garments that are prescribed for every Mormon who takes the "Endowment Oaths," to be worn by him forever after as a shield "against the Adversary;" and these garments bear the label: "Approved by the Presidency. No knitted garment approved which does not bear this label." By which ingenious bit of religious commercialism, the sacred marks on the garments (accepted as a sort of passport to Heaven) have been increased by the sacred Smith trademark that admits the wearer to the Smith Heaven.
The Church's banking institutions, of which Joseph F. Smith is president, are recommended as safer than others because the money goes into the hands of "the brethren." Church newspapers must be subscribed for, because all others are "unreliable"—although the Church's Deseret News (Joseph F. Smith, president) is one of the most dishonest, unjust and mendacious organs that ever poisoned the public mind. And so on, through the whole list of business concerns by which the Church authorities are to profit. The Mormons, having learned of old the value of a solid, community support for community enterprises established in the interests of the community, are still kept solidly supporting ecclesiastical enterprises administered for the benefit of the hierarchy or its favorites, at the community's expense!
The Utah Light and Railway Company (Joseph F. Smith, president), which was supported by the tithes of the Mormon people, was charging $1.25 per thousand cubic feet for fuel gas and $1.75 for illuminating gas, just before the company was sold to the "Harriman interests." (The Supreme Court of the United States has fixed a rate of 80 cents a thousand as a fair price for gas in New York City.) The Salt Lake Street Railway (operating under a fifty-year franchise, obtained from the City Council by, the power of the Church while Joseph F. Smith was president of the company) charges a five-cent fare, gives but one transfer, allows no half fares for children, and pays the city nothing for the use of its streets. Before the transfer of the Church's sugar stocks to the trust, the sugar factories paid the farmer $4.50 a ton for his beets and sold him sugar for $4.50 a hundred pounds; today beets are bought for $4.50 a ton, and sugar sold at $6.00 a hundred. The price asked for salt in Utah, where it should be "dirt cheap," is the same as everywhere under the salt trust. And so on—through the rest of the list.
To maintain this system of sanctified gain Joseph F. Smith invokes all the power of his "divine" authority as "the mouthpiece of the Lord." He protects the sugar trust by preventing the establishment of independent sugar factories (as for example in Sanpete and Sevier counties in 1905), just as he protects the salt trust by preventing the competition of independent salt gardens (as in the case of Smurthwaite and Taylor.) He issues his edict of protection as "the vicegerent of God on Earth" to the Mormons; and he excommunicates and ostracizes, in this world and the next, the Mormon protestant who dares rebel against commercial monopoly.
He receives between two and three million dollars a year in tithes, gives no accounting of them, and has no responsibility for them, except to God and his own conscience. He is able to use this sum, in bulk, at any given point, with a weight of financial pressure that would overbalance any other such single power in the community. As "trustee in trust" for the Church, he has the added income from stocks and previous investments; and he has practical control of the wealth of all the leading men of the Church to assist him, if he should call upon them for assistance. He uses his financial dictatorship to support monopoly against the assault of Gentile opposition, and he compels the Gentile to pay tribute as the Mormon does.
He backs his financial power with his control of legislation. He can not only prevent the passage of any laws against his favored monopolies, but (as in the case of the smelters) he can reduce independents to submission by threatening them with procured laws to penalize them. He largely controls the "labor troubles" of the State by controlling the obedience of the Mormon laboring men. He can influence judges, officers of the law and all the agents of local government by his power as political "Boss," and the same influence extends, through his representatives at Washington, to the local activities of Federal authority. He can check and govern public opinion among his subjects by announcing "the will of God" to them through the officers of the Church in every department of religious administration. He is, therefore, at once the modern "money king," the absolute political Czar the social despot and the infallible Pope of his "Kingdom!"