“Let it be noted that the Mormon church is a business institution. It owns and controls properties, banks, commercial institutions and industries. It is conservative. It is a foe of all doctrines and plans that might weaken property rights. Also, let it be noted that the organization of the Mormon church is perfect and that those who hold power depend upon the doctrines of the church for their tenure upon power and influence.”
And then I take up the catalogue of the university, to see what they are teaching their three thousand students, and I find that they are catholic in their tastes. As courses leading to university degrees, they include commerce and finance, commercial art, business bookkeeping and stenography, auto mechanics, carpentering and plumbing! Three professors at the university write me that conditions under the new administration are greatly improved. One professor asserts that there is now complete freedom. I trust he will not think me unduly skeptical if I say that I would attach more weight to his experiences if he were teaching, say economics, instead of “ancient language and literature.”
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE MINING CAMP UNIVERSITY
We continue our journey on the Union Pacific Railroad, and come to the metropolis of the Rocky Mountains, a city entirely surrounded by gold mines, silver mines, coal mines and copper mines, and entirely controlled by hard-fighting piratical gentlemen who have seized these hidden treasures. Denver is only a generation removed from the mining camp stage of civilization, and mining camp manners and morals still prevail in its financial, political and educational life. In other portions of the United States you find the great captains of industry hiring politicians to run the state and city governments for them; but in Colorado up to quite recently they did their own dirty work—you would find the grand dukes of the interlocking directorate, Evans of traction, Doherty of gas and electric, Field of telephones, Cheesman of water, Guggenheim of copper, themselves the political bosses, hiring their thugs and repeaters and ballot box stuffers, and paying their own cash to their newspaper editors, clergymen and college presidents. These mighty chieftains used to fall out and quarrel and turn their scandal-bureaus loose on one another, so it was always easy to learn the insides of Denver finance, politics and education.
The leading prejudice factory of the State of Colorado has been the University of Denver, founded by the father of William G. Evans, traction magnate and Republican boss. Mr. Evans made himself president of the board of trustees of the university, and selected to run the institution an extremely venomous and abusive Methodist clergyman by the name of Buchtel. In running the government of Denver, Mr. Evans worked in alliance with the gamblers and the keepers of brothels and wine-rooms for the seducing of young girls; the violations of law became so flagrant that the political gang operating under Evans found its power threatened, and cast about for some candidate for governor to take the curse off them, and selected the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel, D.D., LL.D., chancellor of their university. As the Denver “Post” delicately phrased it, “They reached up in the House of God and pulled down the poor old chancellor to cover up the rottenness of their machine.”
There was a meeting of the chancellor with Mr. Evans and his political henchmen. One of the purposes of his nomination was that his candidacy might aid Simon Guggenheim, head of the Smelter Trust, to buy his way into the United States Senate. The chancellor accepted the nomination, and invited all present to rise, join hands and sing: “Blest Be the Tie That Binds.” You may find this anecdote in “The Beast,” by Ben B. Lindsey, Judge of the Children’s Court of Denver—that is, you may find it if you can find a copy of the book, which its publishers mysteriously ceased to push. Says Lindsey:
The tie that binds the Beast and the Church? Yes, and the Beast and the College! During the Peabody campaign (according to the “Rocky Mountain News”) a young student named Reed had been practically driven from the Denver University because he criticized the corporation Governor. Later a university professor was sent to Europe to gather data which was used in the campaign against municipal ownership in Denver; and the professor was “exposed but not forced into retirement.” Later still, Buchtel reprimanded a student named Bell for volunteering as a worker in one of our Juvenile Court campaigns. Mr. Evans was president of the Board of Trustees of the University, and the Reverend Henry Augustus Buchtel was his Chancellor.
The use of Buchtel in the campaign that followed was a huge success. Everywhere people said to me: “Why, the Chancellor will never stand for the sale of the senatorship to Guggenheim!” Or the “dear chancellor” will never permit this or that undesirable thing in politics. But Buchtel had already admitted to a ministerial friend that he believed Guggenheim ought to be elected—though he said nothing of it from the platform, you may be sure. After he was Governor, he not only endorsed Guggenheim but vigorously defended the Legislature for electing Guggenheim, honored Evans with a place on the gubernatorial staff, and gave a public dinner to the corporation heads who had most profited by the rule of the System in the state. They reciprocated by sending the Denver University handsome donations; Evans led with $10,000, and Guggenheim, Hughes and others followed with fat checks.
The keeper of a gambling hell, whom I summoned to my court and forced to make restitution to one of his victims, said to me: “I have some respect for Mayor Speer. He tells these preachers that he believes in our policy of open gambling. But I have nothing but contempt for that old stiff up in the State House who talks about ‘the word of God,’ and gets his nomination from a boss who protects us, and gets elected on money that we contributed to the organization!” It is one of the saddest aspects of this use of the Church that The Beast gains respectability thereby, and the Church contempt....
Buchtel was elected. His candidacy proved a successful disguise for the Guggenheim “deal,” and the “church element” was used as well as “the dive element.” A corporation legislature was put in power. It only remained for the corporations to deliver the United States senatorship to Guggenheim “for value received,” and to betray the nation as they had betrayed the state.