Chapter 13

Utah and the Mormons: Profile of a Community

For the strength of the hills we bless Thee, Our God, our Fathers’ God.

—Mormon hymn

Give me ten years, and I shall ask no odds of the United States.

—Brigham Young in 1847

THE uniqueness of Utah among American states is utter and absolute, because its salient characteristics depend on a complex struggle for power, first between the Mormon church and the rest of the community, second within the Mormon church itself. Who runs Utah? What is Utah like? No one can begin to answer these questions—or even to describe the state, its vastness of horizon, its wide aridity, its dinosaurlike bony mountains—without reference to that extraordinary combination of theocracy, do-goodism, industriousness, and flint-hard belief in the virtue of a living God, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

The Mormons comprise roughly 60 per cent of the people of Utah, with their strength focused both in rural districts and in the capital, Salt Lake City. But the political and economic power of the church far out-reaches the population ratio. The governor of Utah, Herbert B. Maw, is a Mormon, and a first-rate governor he is. Both of the state’s senators are Mormons, and so are both its congressmen (for the first time in history). Eighteen out of twenty-three state senators are Mormon, and thirty-six out of a legislature numbering sixty.

Few individual Mormons are exaggeratedly wealthy, but the church itself is immensely rich. In the Salt Lake City area alone it owns wholly or in part:

The ZCMI (Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution), one of the first co-operative retail stores established in the United States, and today one of the biggest and most prosperous.

The Hotel Utah (which is to Salt Lake City what the Waldorf is to New York).

Temple Square Hotel.

Deseret News (leading newspaper).

KSL (radio station).

Utah-Idaho Sugar Company.

Utah State National Bank.

Zion Savings Bank & Trust Company.

Beneficial Life Insurance Company.

Great quantities of real estate.

And the church is commonly believed to be a very substantial stockholder in the Union Pacific Railroad, which is Utah’s life line.

The late president of the church, Heber J. Grant, was a director of Union Pacific for almost twenty years. He had to give up this job, however, when Congress passed the Clayton Act, by terms of which no director of a company selling any considerable volume of goods to a railway could remain a director of the railway. And Grant was president of ZCMI (as well as of the church itself), of which Union Pacific was a heavy customer.

Grant’s successor, the venerable George Albert Smith, was at the time of his accession president of the Utah State National Bank, the Zion Savings Bank, the Beneficial Life Insurance Company, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, as well as vice president of the Utah Savings & Trust Company, and a director of Western Air Lines, the Libbey Investment Company, a creamery, and Heber J. Grant & Co. Mormons believe in concentration of economic as well as ecclesiastical power—to put it mildly.

Social Attributes of the LDS

Good Mormons do not smoke, nor do they drink alcohol, tea, or coffee. The legend that spices, mustard, pepper, and similar stimulants are also barred is, however, groundless. A borderline case is Coca-Cola. This beverage is reputed to contain caffein, a drug, and is therefore condemned, but the condemnation is by “word of wisdom,” not by specific commandment, and some Mormons drink it. The church is adamant, however, on alcohol and particularly tobacco. The Improvement Era, an unofficial publication, carries a feature called the No-Liquor-Tobacco Column; one issue denies that there are any vitamins in beer, and another argues that overuse of cigarettes killed Wendell Willkie.

Here is a recent mention of tobacco:

Tobacco companies, through clever advertising, have made the approach to smoking simple, yet deadly effective—playing to the emotions and dealing with that all-important human urge—social popularity. The tobacco situation can be changed and reversed by the same approach … through an emotional appeal dealing with social unpopularity. Tobacco stinks. It does not make any difference who smokes it, or the form, or the brand, it always stinks … A slang phrase of youth today is “It stinks” for anything they don’t approve. Tobacco can soon be placed in this realm if proper leadership is given. When the idea, “It Stinks,” is thoroughly associated with tobacco … a big part of the battle will have been won.

The first presidency of the church, its ruling body, sounded this note on alcohol in October, 1942:

Over the earth, and it seems, particularly in America, the demon drink is in control. Drunken with strong drink [sic] men have lost their reason; their counsel has been destroyed; their judgment and vision are fled; they reel forward to destruction.

As to coffee, I have lunched with Mormons and non-Mormons at the same table; the Mormons simply turned their cups down when coffee was being served. I was told that some believers, very heterodox,¹ sometimes put a drop or two of coffee in a cup of hot water, and thus compromise with faith, but I never saw this happen.

There is a perfectly good historical and theological reason for Mormon abstinences. The prophet Joseph Smith, founder of the sect, believed that the use of drugs shortened life. And Mormons, who are astonishingly long-lived anyway, want to keep on living just as long as possible; moreover when they enter the life after “death” (Mormons don’t “die”), they spend eternity in the same body they wore on earth. Thus, it is simple prudence to take care of it. As I heard it irreverently put, the analogy might be that of a man who knows that he is going to have only one automobile all his life, to say nothing of a million years in the hereafter. If he has sense he will keep that automobile well oiled and greased and will watch it carefully for defects and avoid abusing it.

Mormons seldom call themselves Mormons; the phrase Latter Day Saints is much more common. Sometimes this may be shortened to the initials; I have heard a Gentile ask of someone, “Is he LDS or not?” Mormons and Gentiles mix with perfect freedom in business affairs, and to an extent socially. Intermarriage is still comparatively rare, but a Mormon boy may freely “go with” a Gentile girl, or vice versa. I have heard Utah people say, “Some of my best friends are Mormons,” almost as uncultivated people in New York might say, “Some of my best friends are Jews.” (Incidentally Jews in Utah, being non-Mormon, are theoretically subject to classification as Gentiles, which gave rise to the well-known remark that “Utah is the only place in the world where Jews are Gentiles.”)

The Mormons called Utah “Zion,” but what might be termed their territory goes considerably beyond Utah itself; powerful communities exist in Arizona, Wyoming, and Idaho as we know. Another favorite word is “Deseret,” which does not mean “desert,” as is commonly believed, but “honey-bee”; it connotes that characteristic trait of the faith, industriousness.

Until Pearl Harbor the headship of the organization was fiercely isolationist, but many individual LDS’s, especially those in medium positions, have a distinct world sense. This is partly because so many of them served as missionaries abroad; the church has proselytized with great skill, pertinacity, and vigor in the British Isles, Scandinavia, Hawaii, and elsewhere. Mormon missionaries, of whom there are about two thousand, are not paid; they have to support themselves, either by remittances from home if the family has a little money, or by other work (and frequently their wives do all but take in washing). It is a proud boast that Mormons have often converted rival missionaries in the field, but that no Mormon missionary has ever become a convert to another faith.

Mormons are great proselytizers not merely abroad, but right here at home, in fact. Many members of the church are priests and most are well trained in dialectics, so it is well to avoid heckling one about his creed, unless you are an expert. The church welcomes newcomers, and Mormonism is one of the simplest of all religions to enter. To get in, you need only convince your sponsor of your sincerity; there is no novitiate, and baptism can be immediate. All sins are washed away; you start with a clean sheet.

To members of all other faiths—Jews, Catholics,² what not—the Latter Day Saints are friendly, but possibly because Mormonism borrowed so much from Masonry (Masonic symbols like the beehive may be seen all over Utah), there is a tendency to dislike Freemasons. The Mormons will, however, often accept a converted Mason, whereas Masons are more hesitant to take in an LDS as a general rule.

Anybody may visit the Mormon tabernacle in Salt Lake City, with its celebrated organ and even more celebrated acoustics, and thousands of tourists have, but no Gentile may enter the Temple next door; in fact, only certain categories of Mormons themselves, those who have been “endowed,” or are about to be, may do so. The Mormon church is thus the only one in the world in which worshipers, unless of a special class, may not enter the chief cathedral of the faith. I have heard this explained by the analogy that, after all, very few Catholics ever see the Pope. There are, by the way, only eight temples in the world—at Salt Lake City, St. George, Logan, and Manti, Utah; Mesa, Arizona; Idaho Falls, Idaho; Hilo, Hawaii; and Cardston, Alberta.

Sinclair Lewis and Lewis Browne, on a lecture tour last year, spent a stimulating day with David O. McKay, one of the three members of the first presidency of the church. They gazed upon the outer portals of the Temple, and Browne murmured his regret at not being able to see the interior.

“Couldn’t it be arranged?” Lewis interjected.

“Certainly,” replied McKay.

“How?” asked Browne eagerly.

“All you will have to do is adhere to the faith, give up alcohol and tobacco, and donate to the church one-tenth of your income in perpetuity.”

The LDS organization is, as a matter of fact, supported by the tithe; every member is supposed to give 10 per cent of his income to the church. An astonishing fact is that this money, a very substantial sum, is never accounted for in detail. At church conferences the leadership submits a general statement of disbursements—how much of the annual budget went for education, how much for new churches, and so on—but no balance sheet is published. A member, to find out the extent of his own contributions through the years (in the event that he did not keep accurate details himself) may consult his own record, but under no circumstances is he allowed to see that of others. LDS officials are themselves very modestly paid. The allotments (the word “salary” is not used) are secret, but it is believed that the president gets something like $10,000 per year, and the twelve apostles $350 a month each. Nor is there any accounting of the vast revenues of the church from its investments.

Mormons pay great attention to education, and have always been justifiably proud of their literacy record. Indeed their accomplishments in this field are superlatively good, and as a result the state of Utah can offer statistics as impressive as any in the union. For instance:

In per cent of total population enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools, Utah (with 28.4%) is the highest in the country. (Lowest: New Hampshire)

In per cent of total population enrolled in high schools, Utah (31.6%) is third. (First, Orgeon; second, New York)

In per cent of state income spent on elementary and secondary education, Utah is third. First, South Dakota; second, New Mexico)

In per cent of population of high school age actually in high school, Utah is first, with 95.6%. (Lowest: Alabama with 28%)

Dr. E. L. Thorndike checked Who’s Who, Leaders in Education, and American Men of Science to determine the place of birth of outstanding Americans. Using the decade 1890–1900 (thus to include men and women now at full maturity), and checking all three books, he found that Utah led the nation; its rate was 857 per million white inhabitants. Some other states:

Massachusetts	697
Connecticut	653
Colorado	600
Idaho	590
Vermont	586
New Hampshire	566
New York	445
California	437
Mississippi	153
Arkansas	148
Georgia	144
Louisiana	131

Similarly Mormons pay much attention to such matters as public health. And Utah is proud of having the second lowest syphilis rate in the nation, according to selective service records. (Wisconsin 6.4 draftees rejected per 1,000; Utah 7.3 per cent.)

Members of the church marry early as a rule, and their sexual standards are strict. Their birthrate is very high, and the death rate low.³ Women are highly regarded, but it is almost impossible for a woman to become a leader in the hierarchy. The church is, as everyone knows, organized with extreme efficiency, down to the youngest child; Mark Twain is reputed to have said once that the only thing resembling it was the Prussian Army. Yet to emphasize this point unduly gives a slightly offside picture. The Mormon community in Utah is certainly Godfearing, but it is not, by and large, as “stern” or “forbidding” as the newcomer may think. Most Mormons are quite cheerful. They don’t smoke or drink and “By hell” is a terrific oath, but dancing is allowed in meeting houses, and most members are anything but dour. The way a Mormon will greet a stranger on the street with a friendly “Good morning, sir” is refreshing and not easily forgotten. And the community as a whole is distinguished by pride, serenity, and an amazing amount of social vigor.

Of course the outstanding characteristic of the church in former days, what distinguished it from everything else in the public mind, was polygamy. But first a word on general background.

The Theocratic Structure

About the history of Mormonism I can write little; the vivid, nutritious story has been too often told. Suffice it to say that a farm boy named Joseph Smith grew up in the 1820’s in western New York state, during a period of intense religious revivalism, and at the age of fourteen he saw God the Father and God the Son, as living persons; that in 1830 he completed a “translation” of the Book of Mormon and with six followers founded a church that, in the words of Bernard DeVoto, became “a cooperative society ruled by an ecclesiastical oligarchy”; that Smith married many wives, fled with his flock successively to Ohio, Missouri, and Nauvoo, Illinois, suffered the most barbarous persecutions, announced his candidacy for president of the United States, and was murdered by a mob in 1844; that after a period of schism and confusion Brigham Young, one of the most formidable characters in American history and a colonizer of the rank of Lyautey and Cecil Rhodes, succeeded Smith and led his following to refuge after a murderously difficult trek across the country; and that in Utah (which he called Deseret) he founded Salt Lake City, set on the community the stamp that it bears today, fought an Indian war, organized agriculture, introduced irrigation, and ruled for thirty years with a grip of iron, marrying the while a great number of wives and begetting many children.

That Mormonism should have arisen in the East—with remote and indirect origins that go to the root of New England—and should have become established finally in the West after traversing two-thirds of the continent, is suggestive. There are many divers-colored threads that help bind the United States together.

The following personal report shows with some vividness what life was like in Utah in frontier days:

A few days after the last battle with the indians a government surgeon wanted James Or and me to take a sley cross over on the ice and secure the indians heads for he wanted to send them to Washington to a medical institution, hired a sley crost over on the ice the weather was bitter cold, the surgeon tok out his box of instruments and comenced it took him a quarter of an hour to cut of one head the sun was getting low and frezing cold Jim and me took the job in our own hands we wear not going to wait on the surgeons slow motion jerked our knives out and had them all of in a few minutes.

they wear frozen and come of easy in our fassion the surgeon stood back and watched us finish the job the surgeon shot some ducks ten or twelve boxed them up guts feathers and all. and told me to bring them down with the indian heads in a week or two to Salt Lake City took them down according to agreement the weather turned warm and the ducks wear green with rot. the indian heads smelt loud drove to his office, and told him the ducks wear spoilt he opened the box pulled out a wing smelt it and says they are just right.

—Provo, Pioneer Mormon City, p. 59

Some good Mormons believe that Independence, Missouri, will be the seat of the Resurrection, and many believe that the New Kingdom may come at any time. For instance, consider the following from a newspaper called Progressive Opinion, which was given me in all seriousness by the present postmaster of Salt Lake City:

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRECEDING KINGDOM GOVERNMENT

President Truman is making his summer White House at Independence, Mo., and that will be the seat of the government for the summer months. Thus the U.S. government at this place precedes the coming Kingdom government which will be established there … And verily, this may come about during Mr. Truman’s term of office.

The central core of Mormon faith is, as noted above, the conviction that God is a living person, and that all members of the church are, literally, children of God and hence prophets, with life eternal. Mormons are apt to say, with a strange admixture of pride and sadness, “We are a peculiar people.” Derivative assumptions go far afield. I have met members of the cult who devoutly believe that the United States had a great civilization, with teeming cities, long before the Indians (Kansas City, Missouri, was the “capital”); that two tribes fought a terrific civil war in upper New York state in or around A.D. 500 (in punishment the Indians were afflicted with their red skins); that the heavens have been sealed for about 1,800 years, and that there were no prophets between Moroni, the son of Mormon, and Joseph Smith; and that all this and much else is clearly indicated in the present Hebrew Bible.

The Mormon manner of worship has, on the other hand, the bare minimum of fuss or pageantry. The cross is not used in or on meeting houses, nor is there any altar in the accepted sense, nor any pews, Mass, or pastor. Each member of the flock has equal standing. There are about seventy meeting houses in Salt Lake City; several represent an investment of as much as $150,000.⁴ Except for ceremonies in the temple (which, a curious point, is closed on Sundays), the ceremonies of the LDS are vigorously practical. But the temple is something else again, and as noted above only the particularly devout may enter. Age, sex, economic status, position in the community matter little; the criterion of entrance is spiritual worthiness, nothing more, nothing less. Who determines the right of entrance? Suppose a Mormon from Norway, say, happens to arrive in Utah, and wants to enter. In all probability he would have to bring with him a certificate of character from his bishop. Three particular ceremonies take place in a temple, vicarious baptism, “endowment,” and “marriage unto eternity.” A young man or woman, of proved faith, may be endowed at the age of eighteen or nineteen; the ceremony lasts six or seven hours, and is secret. Thereafter, insignia is worn for life in the underwear (though nowadays some of the young women don’t like to deface their lingerie). As to marriage, the Mormon church recognizes two kinds, the ordinary “till death do us part” ceremony, and one linking man and wife beyond death, i.e. unto eternity. Any Mormon bishop may unite believers in “simple” marriage, but a marriage unto eternity can only be performed in a temple, with the president of the church or one of the twelve apostles officiating. Quite often, young couples go through the ceremony of endowment and are then “sealed” unto eternity the same day. The philosophy of marriage unto eternity is of course that of carrying the community on. Mormons believe implicitly that they will continue to bear children in heaven, since they never die. Thus marriage unto eternity is a kind of spiritual substitute for polygamy which, as the world well knows, the church was forced to give up.

Divorce is, strange as it may seem, permitted in the Mormon church, though the divorce rate is very low, especially in regard to marriages performed in the temple.

Vicarious baptism is a story in itself. Put bluntly and crudely, it means that upon “death” a good Mormon’s status in heaven depends to a certain degree on the number of relatives he can muster. Thus, most Mormons dig back into the past to unearth ancestors, who, if proved acceptable, may be vicariously baptized in the temple, whereupon they make part of the heavenly company. This has led to the fantastically acute Mormon interest in genealogy. Believers all over the world assemble genealogical data, unearth new ancestors, and are baptized in their stead. An immense research library exists on the subject in Salt Lake City, and I have seen ancestries traced in all seriousness back to 173 B.C. Perhaps fittingly, it is the very old members of the church who dig up their antecedents with greatest fervor.

The organization of the church is concrete and fixed on a pyramidal basis. At the head are three men, the president and two counselors, who are collectively known as the first presidency. Immediately below comes the council of twelve apostles, which also has a president. The first presidency and council meet every Thursday, from 9:30 A.M. to 1:30 P.M., like a cabinet; the meeting opens and closes with prayer, and transacts the running business of the entire church. The apostles serve for life, and are chosen by revelation to the president, in his capacity as living prophet; criteria for choice are a clean life, absolute conviction, and Call from God. The president himself is, on his side, chosen from among the apostles, which makes for a very close-knit organization indeed. The other two members of the first presidency (that is, counselors) are also, as a general rule, former apostles, but the rule is not invariable. For instance, the potent J. Reuben Clark, Jr., became a counselor although he had never been an apostle; of Mr. Clark more anon. When a president dies, the first presidency is automatically dissolved, and the counselors are relieved of their duties; temporary headship passes to the president of the twelve apostles who as a rule is the senior and who is then nominated as new president of the church. The ceremony is brief; the other eleven apostles lay hands on his head. Then, at the first subsequent general conference of the church, the name of the new president is submitted to a vote of the total membership. As soon as a new president is “sustained and set apart” in his office, he chooses two new counselors—or reappoints the old ones—and a new first presidency is formed.

Seniority and venerability are greatly respected by the church; but the real secret of Mormon vitality lies in the children. From the cradle to the age of twelve they are organized into primary associations, which merge into the celebrated MIA’s (mutual improvement associations) for adolescents. Beginning at about six, a boy is trained for the priesthood, and any male child may become a deacon of the church at twelve, and an elder at nineteen.

Problem in the Past

In pious times … before polygamy was made a sin.

—Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel

When I arrived in Utah I was warned by Gentiles never to mention “plural marriage” to members of the church, because they were still so sensitive about it. What I found out was, of course, that almost all Mormons were crazy to talk about the subject, once it was broached.

I met one stalwart believer who told me, “My father died thirty years ago, but I’m still running into half-brothers I never knew I had.” I met another whose father had had five wives and thirty-four children, and at one dinner party a businessman astonished me (it was my first evening in Salt Lake City) by stating suddenly, “My father had seven wives.”

A vast lot of nonsense has been written about polygamy. A case may well be made that, far from having debauched the community, it contributed greatly to the sternly moral standards and high level of citizenship that prevail in Utah today. It made adultery unnecessary, and juvenile delinquency was practically unknown. Also, quite seriously, the position of women was often bettered by plural marriage rather than the opposite. For one thing, it meant that almost all women had a chance to marry; there was very little old-maidism among Mormons. For another, women had wide latitude in the choice of husbands. Finally, polygamy protected women economically, since only the more courageous and capable men, with considerable earning power, could afford more than one wife. As a matter of fact, less than 3 per cent of all male believers were practicing polygamy when the practice ceased. Another point frequently forgotten is that in theory no man could undertake plural marriage without (a) consent of the first wife, and (b) the church’s consent which was strictly contingent on his economic status. Some Mormons loathed the institution from the beginning; for instance Joseph Smith’s own son vigorously denied (though we know today that the denial has no basis in fact) that the prophet had ever been polygamous. Brigham Young had forty-seven children by seventeen wives,⁵ but most Mormon historians say that Young did not “serve,” i.e. have sexual relations with them all; even so, the ratio works out to 2.7 children per wife. Incidentally, plenty of Young’s grandchildren are still around; two, in fact, married present apostles of the church, Albert E. Bowen and John A. Widtsoe.

But did not women in the old days resent the intrusion of new wives; were they not subject to the ordinary emotions of jealousy, exclusiveness, and possessiveness? Of course. I talked to one lady who could recall quite vividly when her father took a second wife; her own mother was bitterly hurt, but stoical, and instructed her to call the interloper “Auntie.” First wives had, and still have in retrospect, a kind of moral priority, it would seem. For instance, one fourth-generation Mormon told me proudly that his father was the son of his grandfather by the grandfather’s first wife, and that his mother was a daughter of a first marriage also.

Why did the Mormons advocate polygamy? First, for the complex theological motives outlined above. Second, for strictly economic and demographic reasons. A hunted people, they were colonizing a vast new territory and of necessity they wanted to populate it hard and fast.

Deep in their hearts, some few Mormons today still believe in polygamy, and would secretly like to see it reinstated. They are nevertheless punctilious in obeying the law, and any polygamist who comes to light is ruthlessly excommunicated. Groups of fundamentalists, as people still polygamous are called, crop up every once in a while; when the church finds one, it informs the secular authorities immediately and assists in applying the law; polygamists are prosecuted under whatever federal statute may apply, for instance the Mann Act or the Lindbergh Kidnapping Law, or under local statutes against bigamy or unlawful cohabitation.⁶ One cluster of twenty-six was unearthed ten or twelve years ago. They might have escaped detection forever, hiding out in the Arizona “strip,” but when the depression came along they applied for federal relief, and the curiosity of the government was naturally aroused when an applicant stated that he had thirty-one sons and daughters. Members of another group, which published its own magazine called Truth, and which had a total of 55 wives and 287 children, began serving jail sentences as recently as May, 1945.

Polygamy was abolished by the church in the 1890’s, more than fifty years ago. The theological dilemma was distressing in the extreme, since God’s will, by revelation to Joseph Smith, had to be reversed. The church had no choice—after a fierce struggle—but to submit to federal pressure. Six times between 1849 and 1887 Utah sought to become a state; each time it was rejected because the Mormons practiced—and refused to give up—plural marriage, which federal statutes of course forbade. Finally it became clear that the church could not exist without Utah, and Utah could not exist without statehood. Polygamy was, in a word, abandoned as the price for admission to the union.

Present Politics of the Church

The president of the Latter Day Saints today, George Albert Smith, is a man without guile, seventy-six years old, clear spoken and practical, with an oval gray beard on a long thin jaw. His power derives not merely from his personality, which is agreeable (one of his most fervent admirers, a member of the faith, told me without any irreverence, “the thing to keep in mind about the president is that he’s a grand old boy scout”), but from two other factors. First, by Mormon doctrine, God speaks to him as to every believer, and when this comes in the form of a revelation, he is infallible. Second, a descendant of the first prophet’s family, he is the third Smith to hold the presidency, and Smith is a name to reckon with in Mormon circles. It’s hard to keep Smiths down.

I had the privilege of a brief meeting with President Smith in Salt Lake City; he read me scripture, and talked with lively clarity about the unique characteristics of his community. He thinks that the United States is a chosen land, and that the coming of the Pilgrims was not an accident; he denied that the church has any direct interest in politics in “any way, shape, or form,” adding that it simply carried on because God, at the moment, was not on hand, and that baptism does not change the structure of men’s brains as between conservatism and liberalism; he is convinced that God will fight our battles if we behave well, and that all men must pay for their crimes on the Day of Judgment, which may come at any moment.

Smith was a successful businessman in his youth, with little thought of an ecclesiastical career, but in his middle years he became an apostle. He spent considerable time as a missionary in England, where he distinguished himself as a teacher with a great executive ability; he succeeded to the presidency in May, 1945, on the death of eighty-eight-year-old Heber J. Grant. A defect of the Mormon system is that leadership is restricted to the very old; almost all presidents live to a great age indeed; there have been only a total of eight since 1830, and if Smith should die his successor would probably be George Richards, president of the council of the twelve apostles, who is eighty-two.

President Grant was, in his last years, old and tired. To this circumstance is often attributed the rise in power of J. Reuben Clark Jr., the present first counselor of the church. Mormon politics are today a kind of tussle between Clark, on the extreme right wing, and the liberals, and an important contemporary question is whether Clark’s dominance will survive the new Smith administration.

Under Herbert Hoover, Clark was under secretary of state and ambassador to Mexico; in fact he was called into the first presidency of the church while ambassador. He stumped Utah against the League of Nations in 1919 and was an implacable isolationist. Once Brigham Young paid tribute to his vigorous grandfather (the Clarks are of old Utah stock), by saying “Toss his body in a river; it will float upstream.” The same thing might well be said of Clark himself today.

He owes much of his church career to the fact that when he was a boy, Heber Grant liked him. Then he became an extremely successful man of affairs; Grant admired strong personalities who made a great show in the world, and came to rely on him more and more. But in those days the church had a powerful liberal wing, led by a counselor named Anthony W. Ivins; when the Republican party in Utah nominated Clark for senator, he was told by Ivins that, if he ran, he would have to resign as counselor of the church. Clark was in New York, and argued with Ivins by long distance phone. The position of the church was that, although the celebrated Reed Smoot had once been both an apostle and a senator, such a doubling of jobs was improper and unwise; it would be like a cardinal running for president. Clark, forced to choose between a senatorship and his position in the church, withdrew from the senatorial nomination though it had already been accepted on his behalf.

Clark’s great days came in the period of Grant’s senescence. Ivins died, and from 1934 to 1945 he practically ran the church singlehanded. Not since the days of Brigham Young have the Latter Day Saints known such vigorous rule, I heard it said, and as a consequence Clark became highly unpopular in some circles. An old dictum attributed to Joseph Smith says, “I teach correct principles; then let the church govern itself.” The rank and file wanted more chance to govern than it got. On the other hand, one should note that Clark is an absolutely sincere and able man, who has given a generation of devoted service to the church; also, opposition to him comes, not so much from liberals within the church, but from liberals outside. He is disliked on political grounds, not religious.

A counterweight to Clark to some extent is the benign old second counselor, David O. McKay, a middle-roader. He was born and raised near Ogden, began life as a schoolteacher, and was an apostle for almost thirty years. The balance of power on the council is probably held by Apostle John A. Widtsoe, who, interestingly enough, was not born a Mormon. He immigrated to the United States from Norway, and is a convert.

When we turn to the council of the twelve we find that it is pretty well packed with Clark men; of these the most conspicuous is Mark E. Petersen, whose secular job is general manager of the Deseret News. Petersen is the mouthpiece of the hierarchy, and as such has great power. Other Clark spokesmen are commonly thought to be Ezra T. Benson, Harold B. Lee, and A. E. Bowen who was a former law partner. Most of these are men in their forties; Petersen, the youngest, is for instance only forty-four. Thus the Clark machinery hopes to perpetuate itself, since apostles hold their jobs for life, or until promotion to the presidency.

Whether an apostle is a Democrat or Republican is, as a rule, a question never asked; nor is there much prying as to a member’s finances or early education. All three members of the first presidency today are Republicans and so are nine out of the twelve apostles, it is thought. Several apostles are university graduates; more are not. Petersen is without private means, living on his modest Deseret News salary; one of his colleagues is quite rich, the operator of a big automobile business who also owns a cemetery.

The church denies that it intervenes in politics; but of course it does, as I shall soon point out and as, indeed, the most cursory reading of the Deseret News will prove. Let us summarize the inner issue. The Mormon theology is based on acceptance, not on free thought; anyone who fights the hierarchy is apt to be squeezed out (for instance by being sent abroad as a missionary), and the dead weight of reactionary influence is still a great drag on LDS affairs.

Turn now to public trends. In the church, the stranglehold of the hierarchy remains; in the state, it is noticeably lifting. The Mormons are, of course, very shrewd politically, and by tradition they work well with whatever party is in control. Members often run against one another, though this means as a rule that one is a “church” (i.e. Republican) candidate, the other is a Democrat; about 60 per cent of the church membership is supposed to be Republican. In an election between a Mormon and a Gentile, each community tends to support its own candidate; progressives in the church are inclined to deplore this, since it preserves a line of religious demarcation in what should be strictly a lay affair. Utah has, incidentally, had two non-Mormon governors since statehood, George Dern,⁷ who was Roosevelt’s first secretary of war, and Simon Bamberger, one of the very few Jews ever to be governor of an American state.

To prove that the hand of the hierarchy is not so strong as it once was, on a political plane, one need only turn to the record. Before 1932, Utah was generally Republican; in 1912 for instance it was one of only two states, the other being Vermont, that went for Taft. But since 1932 it has been strongly Democratic; it returned Roosevelt all the four times he ran. The reason is not far to seek. Utah is a poor state. More than 40 per cent of its farms are mortgaged (the third highest rate of farm mortgages in the union), and in 1932 not less than 21 per cent of the population was on relief. So—no matter what the upper level thought—Mormons as well as Gentiles voted for relief. This brings up the ancillary point that the hierarchy, though paternalistic in the extreme and though Brigham Young was one of the most signal exponents of made-work in American history, violently opposed such New Deal measures as the WPA. There were two main reasons for this, first the fear that the federal bureaucracy would cut into its own vested privileges and power, second a desire to take care of its own poor in its own way, independently and alone. And indeed, every Mormon bishopric has a storehouse, or cache, of sugar, canned goods, winter vegetables, and the like, so that the indigent—in theory—never suffer.

But the rank and file didn’t follow theory. They wanted WPA, and they voted Roosevelt, Maw, and Elbert Thomas in.

On one great national issue the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints did take a formal and united stand. This was prohibition. Yet, by strange chance, Utah was the thirty-sixth state to ratify the 18th Amendment, much to Mormon shame.

Morals and the Mayor of Price

An example of direct church intervention into local politics, in the interests of public morality and good government, came in the 1944 gubernatorial election, when a man named J. Bracken Lee, the Gentile mayor of a town called Price, ran against Governor Herbert Maw. Price is in the coal country, and like most mining towns it bears sin lightly. Zealots in the church thought it should investigate Lee’s record there. The motive was almost purely moral, inasmuch as the hierarchy was at the same time strenuously opposing Maw, Lee’s opponent. Much as it disliked Maw, the church feared that if Lee got in, he might become a creature of the liquor and gambling interests, and make Utah a kind of Nevada, a thought never to be borne.

A group of churchmen made two trips to Price, and issued a choice little leaflet called Morals and the Mayor. I have a copy before me now. It regrets “involving a Utah city in the publicity of a shameful situation …” but states that the looseness and corruption of the community was such that thirteen-year-old boys “had been allowed beer.” The churchmen concluded by urging Mr. Lee’s defeat, even at the price of electing a candidate they didn’t like, and he was beaten though by a scanty margin.

L’Affaire Gaeth

In August, 1944, Arthur Gaeth, one of the best-known radio commentators in the West and for many years a leading Mormon, led a clothing drive for Russian war relief. This was sponsored by the American Legion among other organizations; President Smith was a member of the committee; nothing could have been more respectable, and 416,000 pounds of clothing were collected.

On August 23, the Deseret News, the official church newspaper, printed a leading article, “Just How Friendly to the U.S. are the Soviets?” Its implication was that the Russians were pretty selfish folk, and, though it did not mention the clothing drive specifically, it hinted that generosity to Russia might well be wasted. So several perplexed churchmen telephoned to Gaeth, asking him what the editorial was driving at; were the clothing contributions, piled up with much labor and sacrifice, merely going down the drain?

Gaeth waited a few days, and on his next regular broadcast over the Intermountain Network, of which he is vice president, he explored the issue, trying to allay fears of the flock. The broadcast was reasonable enough, though vigorous in tone. Whereupon ten days later, the News came out with a front page editorial, something almost unprecedented, and attacked Gaeth by name in two thousand furious words, insinuating that he was a Communist sympathizer and practically denouncing him as an apostate. And Gaeth had been head of a church mission for ten years! In the whole history of the Mormon church, there is no similar record of attack by the hierarchy on an individual. Reason? The hierarchy mortally hated (and hates) Stalinist Russia, and thought Gaeth a pink.

Gaeth had crossed swords with his superiors once before. Some years ago he worked for KSL, the church station. When, after the German attack on the U.S.S.R. in 1941, he welcomed Russia as an ally, he was warned that the brethren might insist on editing his broadcasts. A little later he brought up a controversial domestic issue, the need of transition in Utah from agriculture to industry, something that some Mormons oppose though it would almost certainly raise the standard of living of the community. Gaeth was told, “The brethren are dissatisfied.” He offered thereupon to put himself at the disposal of the first presidency. But he was given no appointment. Then, informally, he went to Counselor McKay. But McKay had never heard about the argument, which indicated that although pressure was put on Gaeth in the name of the first presidency, a member of the first presidency had not been consulted. Gaeth’s boss at this time, the manager of KSL, was Ivor Sharp, who is J. Reuben Clark’s son-in-law.

Footnote on the Deseret News

This is one of the most remarkable newspapers ever printed anywhere; I know nothing like it except, possibly, the old Denver Post. It has existed since 1850, and is the official church paper, supposedly reaching Mormons not merely in Utah, but everywhere in the United States. Yet its circulation is only forty thousand daily, in a region where it could reach at least five hundred thousand readers. For many years it had an annual deficit, and it is apparently disliked by many in the community; in fact I was told that a petition demanding a change in its editorial policy would get fifty thousand signers.

The Deseret News is, of course, dominated (through Petersen) by Clark. It carries no liquor or tobacco advertisements; it is full of news of genealogy; it prints nothing against morals. It was violently isolationist before Pearl Harbor, and I was told that for three solid years, 1942 to 1945, it scarcely printed a single editorial attacking Hitler or Nazism, though it denounced Roosevelt scores of times. The only columnists it publishes are Pegler, Rukeyser, and Sokolsky, and when I asked President Smith why its columns were closed to Walter Lippmann, Dorothy Thompson, and Samuel Grafton among others (who after all are not Communists), the aged head of the church looked bewildered. Then his explanation of the paper’s policy was that “the church owns it, but people on the staff have their voice” (that is, Reuben Clark’s voice), and that “it didn’t want to get embroiled in the rest of the world.”

Any of a hundred Deseret News editorials will show quickly the paper’s slant, tone, and method. I choose one from the issue of July 23, 1945:

POISONED VOTE BAIT

The plain, unadulterated bunk that is being peddled today by so-called responsible men in government to the effect that Congress must pass legislation that will provide jobs for all, is simply sickening. Congress might pass an emergency measure that would employ everybody for a few months or a year or two, but neither Congress nor the government has a dime to employ anybody until it first takes it away from the people in taxes …

Hitler’s Germany would be a kindergarten compared with the tyranny that would develop in any country that provided jobs for all …

Maw, Utah Power, and Thomas

By three years, Governor Herbert B. Maw is senior to his state; Utah became a state in 1896, and is thus fifty years old; Maw, one of the most interesting of contemporary governors, is fifty-three. He is a former professor of oratory and one of the best public speakers in the United States. In both physical appearance—he has a broad tanned forehead and a vigorous, well-cared-for body—and in deliberation of manner, plus confidence, he resembles Harold Stassen. And, like Stassen, he is a comparatively isolated figure; few people seem to know him well, and he keeps himself pretty inaccessible. When a man does get close, Maw will be apt to win him. A Republican worthy, visiting him recently, said, “It isn’t till I get away from Maw that I can make up my mind that I’m not going to vote for him.”

Maw, a tough and honest people’s man, is a typical western-type New Dealer. He was a poor boy, who wanted to be a surgeon; from the ages of ten to fifteen he sold papers on the street, and then worked nights to pay his way through college. Once again the self-made man! He had to give up a medical career because he could not afford the laboratory fees. Then he turned to law and teaching. He is, of course, a Mormon; he was one of three LDS chaplains in the U.S. Army in World War I.

But the top layer of the church fights him bitterly. For many years he belonged to the general boards of both the MIA and the Deseret Sunday School Union (one of the most important of all Mormon groups); but when he came out for the governorship in 1940, the hierarchy demanded that he resign from his ecclesiastical posts. Maw’s theory of this is that the church was punishing him for being a New Dealer. Then, on becoming governor Maw, a fighter, retaliated by refusing to reappoint two apostles as regents of the University of Utah, McKay and Richards. The church leadership considered this an unforgivable affront, and in the 1944 campaign the Deseret News opposed him with sustained ferocity.

A great many Republicans voted for Maw, a Democrat, in this complex election, because they favored his industrial development program, and without these votes he would have been beaten, inasmuch as many Democrats opposed him, though he was their candidate. But the Democratic party is severely split in Utah, and Maw was widely scratched against by his own people. What, then, is the basis of his support? First, loyal Democrats generally. Second, church and nonchurch liberals, particularly the young element. Third, the old folks. Utah, like California, does a lot for its aged and indigent, from which Maw benefited. The very young and very old comprised the wings of his coalition.

There has been no real political “machine” in Utah since Reed Smoot, and the chief pressure groups today are: (a) the Utah Power & Light Company; (b) the sheep interests, who control southern Utah; (c) the education lobby; and (d) the liquor interests. The importance of these last may be appreciated from the fact that the Utah Liquor Control Commission made a profit of $2,373,423.41 in 1944. Recently, an odd minor point, a bill was introduced but not passed to set up a new liquor tax which was to be exclusively assigned to paying for temperance propaganda.

Maw runs the state, insofar as he runs it, mostly by careful use of his power over the Liquor Commission, the pensioners (through the State Welfare Department), and the State Road Commission. Almost all governors work through similar agencies. Suppose the roads get bad in the fall. They may, in your community, be repaired or not, depending on whom your community voted for. Utah does not do things so crudely, but the pattern exists almost everywhere else in the United States.

When Maw first became governor in 1940, he cleaned house, and practically everybody attached to the previous ultraconservative Democratic administration got the sack. The joke was, “Everything was kicked out of the capitol but the statuary.” Maw had two motives in this—first to install his own people, second to reorganize the apparatus of administration. But his reorganization was so drastic that at the end jobs were scarce even for his own men, and they too became aggrieved. Also the legislature became saddled with a permanent budget commission, set up sine die as a kind of watchdog on Maw’s plans. To this day, it is all but impossible to determine accurately whether his reforms have saved the state money or not, or how worth while they have been otherwise.

Maw, as a result of all this, is himself the chief political issue in the state; the only real cleavage is Maw or anti-Maw, and he is both extolled and hated almost as Roosevelt was.

Another struggle was between Maw and the Utah Power & Light Company, until recently a subsidiary of that enormous spidery octopus, Electric Bond & Share.⁸ Maw won. He has been fighting Utah Power off and on ever since he entered politics; he was a senator for ten years before becoming governor. In fact, he first ran for governor because of irritation at what was going on in the legislature. He happened for instance on one occasion to overhear a lobbyist for the Taxpayers Association, who was Republican, calmly inform five Democrats how they were to vote. Once he wrote a bill to increase Utah Power’s taxes by a minor amount. What followed may, mutatis mutandis, be taken as an example of the technique of the power lobby all over the United States. First, though he had not told a soul about his bill, the company knew every detail of it—so he swears—before he had finished drafting it. Second, lobbyists invited him to a lavish dinner, and tried to persuade him to withdraw it. Third, they organized opposition to it in the legislature. Fourth, they asked the president of the university (where Maw was a professor and dean of men) to call him off. Fifth, when all this failed, they tried to get his job.

But Maw stuck it out. Moreover, as a direct result, because enough people liked what he was doing, he became governor. Virtue, even in American politics, is sometimes its own reward. Meantime he had been striking back all the time. He was convinced, for instance, that Utah Power, like Montana Power as we have seen, was grossly overcapitalized (the big capitalization gave it, of course, an excuse for high rates); when he said so in the senate, not a paper in the state would print his speech, though every reporter knew that he was stating facts. In the end the Federal Power Commission in Washington ordered a reorganization of the company, squeezing out a lot of water; then Maw helped to force through a rate reduction that saves the people of Utah about $1,500,000 per year; moreover, the reduction was made retroactive, and every utility customer in the state got a refund.

Elbert D. Thomas, the senior senator from Utah, is a very different type of man from Maw, but he too is a Mormon liberal. And the fact that he has won three successive senatorial races against conservatives (all Clark men) shows how the Utah winds are blowing. Thomas was a professor of classics for many years; Utah runs to professors in politics. One of his distinctions is his expert knowledge of Japanese; he spent a considerable time in Japan as a missionary, once taught English in the Tokyo War College, and is the author of a religious book in Japanese, Sukui No Michi. During World War II he broadcast regularly to Japan in Japanese, for the OWI.

Thomas, tall, lean, gray, and grave, is of English, stock; his father was a London draper, and he is quite proud of the fact that he is one of two Utahans in the British Who’s Who. He has always been a Jeffersonian, an interventionist, and a strong prolabor man. As chairman of the Military Affairs Committee of the Senate he played a powerful and constructive role during the war; he had more to do with the writing of the Selective Service Act than any other civilian. In 1942 he sponsored the Thomas-LaFollette bill which, if passed, would have imposed criminal penalties on labor spies and would have prohibited yellow-dog contracts and hiring of strikebreakers.

What Thomas believes in most is Mormonism, which he thinks gives a man more individual dignity than any other religion; a man of grace and erudition, he is greatly respected both in Utah and the Senate; he is a bit inclined to be pleased with himself, and with considerable good reason.

Utah had another strong liberal senator in Abe Murdock (also a Mormon) until 1947; he was beaten in the 1946 midterm landslide. In a chart prepared by the New Republic in February, 1946, he was one of only four senators who was credited with a 100 per cent perfect progressive voting record. The other three were Green of Rhode Island, Tunnell of Delaware, and Mitchell of Washington.⁹

What an enormously diversified country is the United States, even in respect to an item so small as this! Green is a traction magnate and millionaire aristocrat; Tunnell a public school teacher who became a vigorously successful bank president; Mitchell is the son of a civil servant; Murdock, a poor boy, was born on a farm.

Life Among the Gentiles

There are, of course, other forces in Utah aside from the Mormon church. Take the Catholics. The bishop of the Diocese of Salt Lake City, Duane G. Hunt, is probably one of the ten most important people in the state; he is a convert (from Methodism) who in 1945 celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of his conversion. And, among lay Catholics, consider John F. Fitzpatrick, who was once a railway conductor and who now runs the great Kearns estate. The Kearns interests today, operated by Fitzpatrick, include the Silver King mine, one of the biggest mining properties in the world and the foundation of the wealth of Salt Lake City, and the two Gentile papers there, the Tribune and Telegram.

I have mentioned that a Jew, Simon Bamberger, was once governor of Utah. And Salt Lake City once had a Jewish mayor. The Bambergers, a rich and influential family, own the electric railway between Salt Lake City and Ogden, and have large mining interests. One of the brothers at the head of the family is married to a grandniece of Heber Grant’s.

Also consider agriculture. Only about 13 per cent of Utah is arable (at least 75 per cent of the territory of the state is still public domain, incidentally); only 3.3 per cent of the total area is actually tilled. To double this area, which is what most progressives want, would cost about 400 million dollars in irrigation projects. Most Utah farms are very small, under twenty acres. The chief crop is sugar beets.

There must also be a word about the railways. Salt Lake City is equidistant, within forty or fifty miles, from San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle; and as any boy knows who has ever looked at a railway map, Salt Lake City and Ogden are the headquarters of a gigantic fork of routes spreading out to the Pacific coast. Seventy per cent of all transcontinental traffic in the United States goes through this Utah fork. The dominant railway is, of course, the Union Pacific; it is almost as important to Utah as, say, is the Pennsylvania to New Jersey. Its headquarters are in Omaha, Nebraska, but it was incorporated in Salt Lake City, and Utah is its spiritual home. The Mormons at one time attempted to compete with the Union Pacific by building their own line (the Utah Central) south from Salt Lake City. Long ago they gave this up, and the church and Union Pacific have co-operated closely ever since.

Does the Mormon church oppose industrialization? This is a gravely argued point. On the surface it would seem absurd that anybody with the basic interests of the community at heart should resist any such development. But industrialization means a labor influx since, after all, machines cannot be run without men. In the 1920’s, the population of Utah was 75 per cent Mormon; today, as we know, it is 60. And the more the state is opened up, the more will Gentiles filter in, thus further diluting the church majority. Also, an auxiliary point, industrialization usually means a shift in voting power, since labor is inclined to vote Democratic and—very important from the LDS point of view—a big labor immigration might bring about a breakup in the social structure and, Mormons say, a decline in moral standards.

The two greatest industrial complexes in Utah, about which space forbids any but the briefest mention though I visited them both, are the Utah Copper Company and Geneva Steel. Utah Copper, at Bingham, is absentee owned (by Kennecott and allied eastern interests); its great mine is an enormous declivity, one of the most remarkable sights I ever saw, which looks like the Great Pyramid of Egypt in reverse; it is by all odds the largest open pit copper mine in the world, having produced well over five billion pounds of copper since its foundation in 1906. The ore spooned here from the open earth is smelted in part by another great eastern corporation which maintains a plant near Salt Lake City, American Smelting and Refining. Utah Copper distributes millions of dollars per year in dividends; of this, nothing but a fraction stays in Utah. Yet 50 per cent of the state’s population depends for livelihood on the mining industry.

Geneva Steel is something else again. The copper mine seems in some indefinable way reminiscent of the past; its atmosphere is obsolescent. But the great new 220 million dollar steel plant is as contemporaneous as tomorrow’s newspaper; it is, in fact, incomparably the most modern steel works in the world. It was built from scratch near Provo for purposes of World War II, and was operated during the war by the United States Steel Corporation (through a subsidiary, Columbia Steel), for the Defense Plant Corporation. Visiting it, I saw the 150-foot-long slabs of steel shoot through the rolling mill at the rate of 1,200 feet per minute, in a thunderous and sizzling roar, in appearance like gigantic strips of well-smoked salmon. You can tell the different stages of combustion going on by the multi-colored smoke pouring out of the chimneys—orange, black, brownish, gray. Geneva Steel was the angry focus of the kind of struggle between eastern and western interests that I have already noted in connection with Henry Kaiser. After the war it lay inert for a long interval, waiting for a purchaser. Westerners hoped that Kaiser or some other western company would—or could—buy it, and so assist the integration of a growing steel industry for the entire West. Following a great deal of obscure and difficult negotiation Geneva was knocked down by the War Assets Administration to United States Steel for $47,500,000, which represents less than 25¢ on the dollar, although a Los Angeles company (New York Times, May 2, 1946) bid more than $200,000,000 for it. Kaiser did not bid. The upshot of this is that Big Steel, even more than previously, is master of the western steel industry, such as it is.

. . . . . . .

So now to conclude with Utah. From everything I have said, the essential point rises clear and sharp. The Mormon community, with so much at stake, with its tremendous contribution in pioneering, colonization, devotion to standards, and plain hard work, is hanging tenaciously onto the unique preserve it created. But the astringent winds of a new world, which bewilder the older believers, are beating mercilessly at the pillar they drove into the desert.

¹ There are plenty of backsliding Mormons, those born in the church but who nowadays take a drink or do not worship. These are called Jack-Mormons. Non-Mormons are known as “Gentiles.”

² But in Salt Lake City the large LDS and the small Roman Catholic communities vigorously proselytize each other.

³ The ratio of births to deaths in Utah is 3.458 to 1, the highest in the country. A standard joke is that the chief means of transportation is baby carriages.

⁴ In Utah the church owns recreational facilities alone valued at thirty million dollars. Most meeting houses also serve as libraries, gymnasia, and the like.

⁵ According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Other authorities give larger numbers.

⁶ The United States Supreme Court has, however, recently thrown out several convictions of Utah fundamentalists arrested under these laws.

⁷ Dern once ran against a man named Mabey. So his campaign slogan was, “We want a Dern good governor, and we don’t mean Mabey.”

⁸ Utah Power is itself a minor octopus. It owns and operates electric power and light companies in Idaho and Wyoming as well as Utah, and it wholly owns the Western Colorado Power Company.

⁹ Eight senators are given a similarly 100 per cent negative record—Millikin (Colo.), Willis (Ind.), Hickenlooper (Iowa), Reed (Kans.), Hawkes (N.J.), Moore (Okla.), Bushfield (S.D.), Robertson (Wyo.).