Among the mercantile houses that became strong after the establishment of Camp Floyd was that of Walker Brothers. There were four of them, Englishmen, who had come over with their mother, and shared in the privations of the early Utah settlement. Possessed of practical business talent and independence of thought, they rebelled against Young's dictatorial rule and the varied trammels by which their business was restricted. Without openly apostatizing, they insisted on a measure of independence. One manifestation of this was a refusal to contribute one-tenth of their income as a tithe for the expenditure of which no account was rendered. One year, when asked for their tithe, they gave the Bishop of their ward a check for $500 as "a contribution to the poor." When this form of contribution was reported to Young, he refused to accept it, and sent the brothers word that he would cut them off from the church unless they paid their tithe in the regular way. Their reply was to tear up the check and defy Young.
The natural result followed. Brigham and his lieutenants waged an open war on these merchants, denouncing them in the Tabernacle, and keeping policemen before their doors. The Walkers, on their part, kept on offering good wares at reasonable prices, and thus retained the custom of as many Mormons as dared trade with them openly, or could slip in undiscovered. Even the expedient of placing a sign bearing an "all-seeing eye" and the words "Holiness to the Lord" over every Mormon trader's door did not steer away from other doors the Mormon customers who delighted in bargains. But the church power was too great for any one firm to fight. Not only was a business man's capital in danger in those times, when the church was opposed to him, but his life was not safe. Stenhouse draws this picture of the condition of affairs in 1866:—"After the assassination of Dr. Robinson, fears of violence were not unnatural, and many men who had never before carried arms buckled on their revolvers. Highly respectable men in Salt Lake City forsook the sidewalks after dusk, and, as they repaired to their residences, traversed the middle of the public street, carrying their revolvers in their hands."
With such a feeling of uneasiness, nearly all the non-Mormon merchants joined in a letter to Brigham Young, offering, if the church would purchase their goods and estates at twenty-five per cent less than their valuation, they would leave the Territory. Brigham answered them cavalierly that he had not asked them to come into the Territory, did not ask them to leave it, and that they might stay as long as they pleased.
"It was clear that Brigham felt himself master of the situation, and the merchants had to bide their time, and await the coming change that was anticipated from the completion of the Pacific Railroad. As the great iron way approached the mountains, and every day gave greater evidence of its being finished at a much earlier period than was at first anticipated, the hope of what it would accomplish nerved the discontented to struggle with the passing day." *
* "Rocky Mountain Saints," p. 625.
The Mormon historian incorporates these two last paragraphs in his book, and says: "Here is at once described the Gentile and apostate view of the situation in those times, and, confined as it is to the salient point, no lengthy special argument in favor of President Young's policies could more clearly justify his mercantile cooperative movement. IT WAS THE MOMENT OF LIFE OR DEATH TO THE TEMPORAL POWER OF THE CHURCH.... The organization of Z. C. M. I. at that crisis saved the temporal supremacy of the Mormon commonwealth."* It was to meet outside competition with a force which would be invincible that Young conceived the idea of Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, which was incorporated in 1869, with Young as president. In carrying out this idea no opposing interest, whether inside the church or out of it, received the slightest consideration. "The universal dominance of the head of the church is admitted," says Tullidge, "and in 1868, before the opening of the Utah mines and the existence of a mixed population, there was no commercial escape from the necessities of a combination."**
* Tullidge's "History of Salt Lake City," p. 385.
** "Cooperation is as much a cardinal and essential doctrine of
the Mormon church as baptism for the remission of sin."—Tullidge,
"History of Salt Lake City."
Young is said to have received the idea of the big Cooperative enterprise from a small trader who asked permission to establish a mercantile system on the Cooperative plan, of moderate dimensions, throughout the territory. He gave it definite shape at a meeting of merchants in October, 1868, which was followed by
a circular explaining the scheme to the people. A preamble asserted "the impolicy of leaving the trade and commerce of this territory to be conducted by strangers." The constitution of the concern provided for a capital of $3,000,000 in $100 shares. Young's original idea was to have all the merchants pool their stocks, those who found no places in the new establishment to go into some other business,—farming for instance,—renting their stores as they could. Of course this meant financial ruin to the unprovided for, and the opposition was strong. But Young was not to be turned from the object he had in view. One man told Stenhouse that when he reported to Young that a certain merchant would be ruined by the scheme, and would not only be unable to pay his debts, but would lose his homestead, Young's reply was that the man had no business to get into debt, and that "if he loses his property it serves him right." Tullidge, in an article in Harpers Magazine for September, 1871 (written when he was at odds with Young), said, "The Mormon merchants were publicly told that all who refused to join the cooperation should be left out in the cold; and against the two most popular of them the Lion of the Lord roared, 'If Henry Lawrence don't mind what's he's about I'll send him on a mission, and W. S. Godbe I'll cut off from the church."'