By that decision, as I see it now, an autocracy of financial power was confirmed to the President of the Mormon Church at a time when a renewal of prosperity among its people was about to make such power fatal to their liberties. It was confirmed to a man who proved himself eager for it, ambitious to increase it and secretly unscrupulous in his use of it. He proceeded at once to preach the doctrine of contribution with unexampled zeal, but he administered the "common fund," so collected, with none of the old feeling of responsibility to the people who contributed it He became the first of the new financial pontiffs of the Church who have used the "money power" as an aid to hierarchical domination.

Moreover, in his desire to fill the coffers of the Church, he engaged in "practical politics" and made a profit out of Church influence, both in business enterprises and in political campaigns. He proved himself peculiarly qualified by nature to construct and direct a secret political machine—a machine whose operations were never to be observable except to the close student of Utah's ecclesiasticism—a machine that was to be all the more effective because of its silent certainty. As the succeeding chapters of this narrative will show, although he affected a fine superiority to unclean political work and always publicly professed that the Church of Christ was holding itself aloof from the strife of partisanship, there was no political event on which he did not fix the calculating eye of his ambitious clericalism and no candidacy that he did not reach with those slender but powerful fingers that controlled the destiny of a state and trifled with the honor of a people.

His accession marked the change from the old to the new regime in Utah. Leadership was no longer a dangerous honor. Proscription no longer made the authorities of the Church strong by persecution—hardy chiefs of a poverty-stricken people—leaders as sensible of the obligations of power as their followers were faithful in their allegiance of duty. Political freedom and worldly prosperity made the office of President a luxurious sovereignty, easily tyrannical, fortified in its religious absolutism by its irresponsible power of finance, and protected in its social abuses, from the interference of the nation, by an alliance with the commercial rulers of the nation and by a duplicity that worldliness has learned to dignify with the respectability of material success.



Chapter X. On the Downward Path



During the last years of President Woodruff's life there had been a slow decline of the feeling that it was necessary for self-protection that the hierarchy should preserve a political control over the people. I cannot say that the feeling had wholly passed. It had continued to show itself, here and there, whenever a candidate was so pertinacious in his independence that words of disfavor were sent out from Church headquarters in one of those whispers that carry to the confines of the kingdom of the priests. But the progress was apparent. The tendency was clear. And in 1898 there was neither internal revolt nor external threat to provoke a renewal of the exercise of that force which is necessarily despotic if it be used at all.

Yet, in September, 1898, President Snow, if he did not instigate, at least authorized the candidacy of Brigham H. Roberts for Congress—a polygamist who had been threatened with excommunication for his opposition to the "political manifesto" of 1896 and who had recanted and made his peace with the hierarchy. His election, now, would be a proof that the Church could punish a brilliant orator and courageous citizen in the time of his independence and then reward him in the day of his submission; and the authorities would thus demonstrate to all the people that the one way to political preferment lay through the annihilation of self-will and the submergence of national loyalty in priestly devotion. Such a candidacy was a sufficient shame to the state; but there was also a United States Senatorship to be bestowed; and it was deliberately bargained for, between the Church authorities and a man who deserved better than the alliance into which he entered.

Alfred W. McCune was a citizen of Utah who had gone out from the territory in the days of its poverty (and his own), had made a fortune in British Columbia and Montana, and had returned to his home state to enrich it with his generosities. He was not a Mormon, but he had wide Mormon connections. He spent his millions in public enterprises and benefactions; and the Church had benefited in the sum of many thousands by his subscriptions to its funds and institutions.

Apostle Heber J. Grant, a Republican by sentiment but a Democrat by pretension, was selected by President Snow to barter the Senatorship to McCune. There can be no doubt of it. Everyone immediately suspected it. Letters from Grant, published in the newspapers of January, 1899, subsequently confirmed it. And President Snow's actions, toward the end of the campaign, proved it.

The other candidates were Judge O. W. Powers, a prominent Democrat; William H. King, also a Democrat, a former member of Congress and at one time a Federal judge; and myself as an independent Silver Republican. I had not allied myself with the Democrats after withdrawing from the Republican convention of 1896, and the Republican machine in Utah (thanks to the power of the "interests") had repudiated me, in September, 1898, by adopting a platform that refused to support as Senator any man who had opposed the Dingley Tariff Bill. But I had the votes of my own county of Weber, and some other votes that had been pledged to me before the election of members of the legislature; and though my return to the Senate seemed plainly impossible, I went into the fight in fulfillment of understandings which I had with progressive elements in Utah and with the "insurgents," of that day, in Washington.

During the campaign to elect members of the Legislature, I supported the Democratic State and Congressional ticket. Brigham H. Roberts had been nominated for Congress on this ticket despite the protests of my father and many others who foresaw the evil results of electing a polygamist. I accepted Roberts' nomination as proof that this question must be settled anew at Washington; and I contented myself with predicting, throughout the campaign, that the House of Representatives would determine whether it would admit a polygamist and a member of the hierarchy as a lawmaker, and would so forever dispose of these ecclesiastical candidacies of which Utah refused to dispose for itself. (And it is a fact that since the prompt exclusion of Roberts from the House of Representatives no known polygamist has been elected to either House of Congress.)

A Democratic legislature was elected, and A. W. McCune was put forward prominently as a candidate for the United States senatorship. He was assisted by his own newspaper, the Salt Lake Herald, by numberless business interests, cleverly by the Deseret News (the organ of the hierarchy) flagrantly and for financial reasons by Apostle Heber J. Grant, and incidentally by the Smiths on behalf of the Church. Also a Republican assistance was given him by my former colleague in the Senate, Arthur Brown, who specialized as an opponent to my candidacy.

My old campaign manager, Ben Rich, had been withdrawn from me by a Church order appointing him in control of the Eastern missions. I was without the support of either the Democratic or Republican organizations: my following was a personal one: and consequently the attack upon me chiefly took the form of stories of personal immorality, privately circulated. These stories culminated in a motion before the Woman's Republican Club, demanding my withdrawal from the Senatorial contest on the ground of "gross misconduct"—a motion introduced by a Mrs. Anna M. Bradley, a woman politician (who was a stranger to me), with the assistance of Mrs. Arthur Brown, wife of the former Senator.

If I ever had any resentment against these unfortunate women for allowing themselves to be used as the agents of slander, it passed in the miseries that overtook them later; for Mrs. Brown died of the scandal of her husband's intimacy with Mrs. Bradley, and Mrs. Bradley shot and killed ex-Senator Brown, in a Washington hotel, because he refused to marry her and recognize her child after her divorce from her husband.

My anger then, and since, was not against the women, but against the men who hid behind them—against Apostle Heber J. Grant and Apostle John Henry Smith and their tool, ex-Senator Brown. In my anger I decided to take an action that looked as desperate as it proved successful. I hired the Salt Lake Theatre—for a night (February 9, 1899), and announced that I would speak on "Senatorial Candidates and Pharisees"—intending to use the opportunity of self-defense in order to attack the "financial apostles" who were selling Church influence.

In taking that step I understood, of course, that it meant the death for me of any political ambition in Utah. It meant offending my father, who besought me not to raise my hand against "the Lord's anointed," but to leave my enemies "to God's justice"—as he had always done with his. It meant a breach with many of my friends in the Church who would blindly resent my criticism of the political apostles as an encouragement to the enemies of the faith. But the part that I had taken in helping Utah to gain its statehood made it impossible for me to stand aside, now, and see all our pledges broken, all our promises betrayed. I had to offer myself as a sacrifice to hierarchical resentment in the hope that my destruction might give at least a momentary pause to the reactionaries in their career.

It is needless that I should relate all the incidents of that wild night. The theatre was packed with people who joined me for the moment in a sympathetic protest against the disgrace of Utah. President Lorenzo Snow, his two councillors and several apostles were present, and I spoke without any reservations on account of personal relationship, my own candidacy or the possible effect upon my own affairs. I appealed to the people to prevent the sale of Utah's senatorship to McCune by Apostle Grant and the Church reactionaries; and by turning the light of publicity upon the methods that were being employed in the legislature, I made it impossible for the hierarchy to sway enough votes to elect McCune. The men who had pledged themselves to the other candidates could not be shaken from their support without a national scandal. The election settled for the time into a deadlock, in which no candidate could obtain enough votes to elect him.

Apostle Heber J. Grant started to write letters that should counteract the effect of my speech, but President Snow forbade him to continue the controversy and sent word to me that he had forbidden Grant to continue it. I did not know why President Snow wished me to feel that he was friendly to me, but I was soon to learn.

The deadlock in the legislature continued, in spite of all the efforts of the Church authorities to break it. Our political workers, summoned one by one by messengers from Church headquarters, had gone to interviews from which they did not return to us—until I had left only Judge Ed. F. Colborn (a famous character in Kansas, Colorado and Utah), and an old friend, Jesse W. Fox. One night, about a week after the meeting in the theatre, we three were sitting alone in my rooms, when the door opened and someone beckoned to Fox. He went out. Judge Colborn opened a window to see Fox getting into a carriage with a man from Church headquarters—and we knew that our last worker was gone.

He returned only to tell me that President Snow wished to see me—that if I were willing, the President would like to have me call upon him, at half past nine the following evening, in his residence. And I understood the significance of such an invitation for such an hour. I had been too often in contact with the power of the Prophets to doubt what was required of me. I was curious merely to know what form the ultimatum would take.

President Snow was then living with his youngest wife in a house a few blocks from the offices of the Presidency. I drove there in a carriage and ordered the driver to wait for me. President Snow opened the door to me himself, received me with his usual engaging smile, and ushered me into a reception room that was shut off, by portieres, from a larger parlor. There, when he had invited me to be seated, he said, winningly: "I was not sure you would come in answer to my message."

I assured him that I had not so far lost my regard for the men with whom my father was associated. "And besides," I said, "if there were no other reason, it is my place, as the younger of the two, to attend on your convenience."

"I did not know," he replied, "but that you thought me one of the 'Pharisees' of whom you spoke."

I did not accept this invitation to reply that I did not consider him one of the Pharisees. I explained merely that I had identified the Pharisees in my speech by name and deed and accusation. "Unless something there said is applicable to you, I have no charge to make against you."

He excused himself a moment to go to an infant whom we could hear crying in an inner room; and, when he returned, he had the child in his arms—a little girl, in a night gown. He sat down, petting her, stroking her hair with his supple lean hand, affectionately, and smiling with a sort of absentminded tenderness as he took up the conversation again.

This memory of him sticks in my mind as one of the most extraordinary pictures of my experience. I knew that I had come there to hear my own or some other person's political death sentence. I knew that he would not have invited me at such an hour, with such secrecy, unless the issue of our conference was to be something dark and fatal. And in the soft radiance of the lamp he sat smiling—fragile of build, almost spiritual, white-haired, delicately cultured—soothing the child who played with his long silvery beard and blinked sleepily. He inquired whether my carriage was waiting for me, and I replied that it was. He asked me to dismiss it. When I returned to the room, the little girl was resting quiet, and he excused himself to take her to her cot. I heard him closing the doors behind him as he came back. "We may now talk with perfect freedom," he announced. "There's no one else in this part of the house."

He sat down in his chair, composing himself with an air that might have distinguished one of the ancient kings. "I have sent for you to talk about the Senatorial situation. May I speak plainly to you?"

I replied that he might. He was watching me, under his gray eyebrows, with his soft eyes, in which there was a glitter of blackness but none of the rheum of old age.

"It would be most unfortunate," he said, "for us, as a people, if we failed to elect a Senator. I've had many business and other anxieties for the Church, and I want this question settled. If we act wisely—with the power and influence at our command—aid will come to me. I think you would not willingly permit our situation to become more difficult."

He must have seen a change in my expression—a change that indicated how well I understood the significance of this guarded introduction. Suddenly, his manner broke into animation, and holding out both hands to me, palms up, he said, smiling: "You must know, Brother Frank, that I had nothing to do with Mr. McCune's candidacy for the Senate, do you not? I was not responsible for what Brother Grant did. Before we go on, I want you to acquit me of responsibility for that project."

"President Snow," I replied, "I can't admit so much. I, too, wish to talk plainly—with your permission. Your responsibility is evident even to the casual observer—to say nothing of one reared as I've been. Every man in this community knows that when you point your finger your apostles go, and when you crook your finger your apostles return—and Heber J. Grant has only done what you permitted him to do with your full knowledge."

He drew himself up, coldly. "What I have done," he retorted, "has been done with the knowledge of my Councillor's."

The thrust was obvious. I replied: "If my father desires to discuss with me his responsibility for this indignity to the state, he knows I'm at his command. And if I have any charge to make, involving his good faith toward the country, I'll seek him alone."

"Very well," he said, with a frigid suavity. "We will leave that part of the question." He paused. "Last night," he continued, "lying on my bed, I had a vision. I saw this work of God injured by the political strife of the brethren. And the voice of the Lord came to me, directing me to see that your father was elected to the Senate." He studied me a moment before he added: "What have you to say?"

I answered: "It seems to me impossible. This legislature is strongly Democratic. My father's a Republican. It seems to me not only impracticable but very unwise—if it could be done."

"Never mind that," he said. "The Lord will take care of the event. I want you to withdraw from the race and throw your strength to your father. It is the will of the Lord that you do so."

"Have you a revelation to that effect also?" I asked.

He answered, pontifically, "Yes."

"You'll publish it to the world, then, the same as other revelations?"

"No," he replied. "No."

"Then I'll not obey it," I said, "because if God is ashamed of it, I am."

His air of prophetic authority changed to one of combative resolution. He explained that one of the other candidates, a strong Democrat, had agreed to accept the revelation if I would; that the two of us could give our strength to the church candidate; that the Church would turn to my father the votes that it had already in command for McCune, and my father's election would be carried.

I felt that the thumb-screws were being put on me again. For the second time I was being forced to the point of denying the Senatorship to my father by refusing him my support. And there could not have been, for me, a more vivid and instantaneous illumination of the hidden depths in this Church system—or in the individual Prophet of the cult—than was made by Snow's determined insistence that I should break my word of honor to the people of the state and of the nation, pledge that broken faith to him, induce all my supporters in the legislature to violate their covenants—Mormon and Gentile alike!—and upon his mere assumption of divine authority, direct Mormon and Gentile to stultify and disgrace themselves forever as men and public officials. There was something appalling in the calculating cruelty with which he proposed to devote us all to destruction and dishonor. There was something inhumanly malignant in the plan to use my known affection for my father in order to make me guilty of the very betrayal of the people which I had publicly denounced. I looked at him—and heard him, now, placidly, confidently, with a renewed suavity, urging me to do the thing.

"President Snow," I interrupted, "does my father know of this?"

He answered: "No."

"I'm glad of it," I said. (And I was!) "This is not the way to work out either the destiny of 'God's people' or the destiny of this state. It would place my father in a most humiliating position to be elected—at the orders of the Church—under the assumption that God Almighty had directed men to break their solemn promises to their constituents. I have as high an admiration for my father's wisdom and ability as you or the Democratic candidate who has offered to withdraw at the will of the Church, but I should be paying no honor to my father by dishonoring my pledge to my constituents and asking other men to dishonor theirs."

He dismissed me with an air of benignant sorrow!

The deadlock in the legislature continued unbroken. Among my supporters was Lewis W. Shurtliff, the President of the "Stake of Zion" in which I lived; he was one of the highest Church dignitaries in the legislature and was regarded as my foremost champion in the Senatorial contest. On the last day of the legislative session, at President Snow's instruction, my father, known as a Republican, was offered as a senatorial candidate to this Democratic legislature, and all the power of the Church influence was thrown to him. President Shurtliff's wife came to our headquarters, that night, and knelt, with a number of other ladies, to pray that her husband might be spared the humiliation of breaking his repeated promise not to desert me! We all knew that if he broke his promise, it would cause him more mental anguish than anyone else; but we knew, too, that if the command came from Church headquarters, he would have to obey it. Men broke their political pledges to their people and outraged their own feelings of personal independence or partisan loyalty, rather than offend against "the will of the Lord." The forces of the other candidates went to pieces, and on the last night of the session my father's vote reached twenty-three. (It required thirty-two votes to elect.)

The situation was saved by the action of a number of Democrats who got together and obtained a recess; when the recess was ended, a final ballot was taken, and, since no candidate had enough votes to elect him, the presiding officer, by pre-concertment, declared the joint assembly adjourned sine die, by operation of law. No Senator was elected.

But it was the last time that the Church authorities were to be balked. Since that day, they have dictated the nominations and carried the elections of the United States Senators from Utah as if these were candidates for a church office. The present Senator, Reed Smoot, is an apostle of the Church; he obtained the Mormon President's "permission" to become a candidate, as he admitted to an investigating committee of the Senate; and when the recent tariff bill was being attacked by insurgent Republicans and carried by Senator Aldrich, Senator Smoot acted as Aldrich's lieutenant in debate, and remained to watch the defense of the "interests" when his chief was absent from the Senate chamber. (Not because Smoot was such an able defender of those "interests"! Not because his constituents would uphold his course! But because he has no constituents, and is responsible to no one but the hierarchical partners of those "interests.")

Every pledge of the Mormon leaders that the Church would not interfere in politics has been broken at every election in Utah since President Snow that night pleaded to me that he had had many business anxieties for the Church and that if we elected the Church candidate "aid" would come to him. The covenants by which Utah obtained its statehood have been violated again and again. The provisions of the state constitution have been nullified. The trust of the Mormon people has been abused; their political liberties have been denied them; their Gentile brethren have been betrayed. And all this has been done not for the protection of the people, who were threatened with no proscription—and not for the advancement of the faith, which has been free to work out its own future. It has been done as a part of the alliance between the "financial" prophets of the Church and the financial "interests" of the country—which have been exploiting the people of Utah as they have exploited the whole nation with the aid of the ecclesiastical authorities in Utah.



Chapter XI. The Will of the Lord



The Mormon leaders were now hurried down their chosen path of dishonor with a fateful rapidity. A reform movement was demanding of Washington the adoption of a constitutional amendment that should give Congress power to regulate the marriage and divorce laws of all the states in the Union. And this proposed amendment—partly inspired by a growing doubt of the good faith of the Mormon leaders—gave the politicians in Washington something to trade for Mormon votes, in the presidential campaign of 1900.

The Republicans had lost the electoral votes of Utah and the surrounding states, in 1896.

Utah was now Democratic, and its one United States Senator (who was still in office) was a Democrat. Senator Hanna's lieutenant, Perry S. Heath, came to Salt Lake City in the summer of 1900, to confer with the heads of the Mormon Church. His authority (as representative of the ruler of the Republican party) had been authenticated by correspondence; and he was received by President Snow as royalty receives the envoy of royalty.

Heath negotiated with his usual directness. In the phrase of the time, "he laid down his cards on the table, face up, and asked Snow to play to that hand." If the Mormon Church would pledge its support to the Republican party, the Republican leaders would avert the threatened constitutional amendment that was to give Congress the power to interfere in the domestic affairs of the Mormon people. But if the Church denied its support to the Republican party, the constitutional amendment would be carried, and the Mormons, in their marriage relations, would be returned to the Federal jurisdiction from which they had escaped when the territory was admitted to statehood.

The sentiment of the country was known to be in favor of giving Congress such power. A strong body of reformers was urging the amendment, and the Church leaders had sent Apostle John Henry Smith and Bishop H. B. Clawson to lobby against it. After consulting with my father, I had written to President Snow pointing out the danger to the Mormons of having a lobby opposing such an amendment—for I was not then aware of the secret return to the practice of polygamy, after 1896. President Snow replied to me (in a message of guarded prudence) that although the Church inhibited plural marriage and did not intend to allow the practice, he was opposed to the interference of Congress in the domestic concerns of the other states of the Union!

He made his "deal" with Perry Heath. Church messengers were sent out secretly to the Mormons in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Montana, Washington, Oregon, California and the territories, with the whispered announcement that it was "the will of the Lord" that the Republicans should be aided. Utah went Republican; the Mormons in the surrounding states either openly supported, or secretly voted for McKinley; and the constitutional amendment was "side tracked" and forgotten.

Utah elected a Republican legislature. Apostle Reed Smoot applied to President Snow for permission to become a candidate for the United States Senatorship, and obtained a promise that if he stood aside, for the time, he should receive his reward later. President Snow had decided that Thomas Kearns, already an active candidate, was the man whom the Church would support—since Mr. Kearns' ability, his wealth and his business connection promised greater advantages for the state and (under cunning manipulation by the priests) greater advantages for the Church than the election of any other candidate. And all this may be fairly said without assuming that there was any definite arrangement between he Church and any friends of Mr. Kearns.

Kearns was associated with Senator Clark of Montana and R. C. Kerens of St. Louis in building a railroad from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, and the Church owned some fifteen miles of track that had been laid from Salt Lake City, as the beginning of a Los Angeles line. It was apparently assumed by President Snow that Kearns' election to the Senate would facilitate the sale of this Church railroad to the Clark-Kearns syndicate. The Church had a direct interest in numerous iron and coal properties in Southern Utah, and many members of the Church also had private properties there, which the Los Angeles line would develop. Some of Kearns' friends were negotiating for the purchase of Church properties, and one of his partners was proposing to buy (and subsequently bought) the Church's "Amelia Palace," a useless and expensive property which Brigham Young had built for his favorite wife, and which the Church had long been eager to sell.

My father had been in ill-health for some months and he was away from Utah a large part of the time. President Snow took counsel of his Second Councillor, Joseph F. Smith, and of Apostle John Henry Smith; and to the Smiths, he indicated Thos. Kearns as the one whose election to the United States Senate might do most to advance Snow's concealed purpose. But the Smiths had other plans, that were equally advantageous to the Church and more advantageous to the Smiths; they rebelled against President Snow's dictation, and he ordered them both away on temporary "missions."

As Joseph F. Smith was leaving the President's offices, in a rage, he met an old friend, Joseph Howell, who (at this writing) is a member of Congress from Utah, and was then a member of the Utah legislature. He told Smith that President Snow had sent for him, and Smith, controlling himself—without betraying any knowledge of the probable purpose of Snow's summons to Howell—said affectionately: "Brother Howell, I want you to make a promise to me on your honor as an elder in Israel. I want you to pledge yourself never to vote in this legislature for Thomas Kearns as Senator. I ask it as your friend, and as a Prophet to the people."

Howell gave his promise, and proceeded to his interview with President Snow. There he received the announcement that it was "the will of the Lord" that he should vote for Kearns, and he had to reply that he had already received an inspired instruction, on this point, from a Prophet of the Lord, and had given his pledge against Kearns.

The incident became one of the jokes of the campaign, for Howell held to his promise to Smith (and was subsequently rewarded by Smith with a seat in Congress), and President Snow was compelled to waive the question of conflicting "revelations."

Kearns was elected. But he had had a powerful political machine of his own, and he had been supported by a strong Gentile vote. He immediately showed his independence by refusing to take orders from the political Church leaders. He declined, further, for himself and his financial confreres, to engage with the Church in business affairs. Many charges were made that he was breaking his agreement of cooperation with the authorities, but there never has been produced any evidence of such an agreement, and I do not believe (from my knowledge of Senator Kearns) that the agreement was ever made.

The railroad into Southern Utah was later built by the Harriman interests in combination with Clark and Kearns; but there, too, Snow was disappointed. The expected development of the Church properties proved far less profitable than had been supposed, and the financial prophecies of the Seer and Revelator were not fulfilled.

By this time it was abundantly evident that some of the Church leaders intended to rule their people in politics with an absolutism as supreme as any that Utah had ever known in the old days. And for these leaders to maintain their authority—despite the covenant of their amnesty, the terms of Utah's statehood and the provisions of the constitution—and to maintain that authority against the robust American sentiment that would be sure to assert itself—it was necessary that they should have the most effective political protection afforded by any organization in the whole country. The ideal arrangement of evil was offered to them by the men then in temporary leadership of the Republican party. The Prophets were able to make the Republican party a guilty partner of their perfidy by making it a recipient of the proceeds of that perfidy, and to assure themselves protection in every religious tyranny so long as they did not run counter to Republican purpose.

For the moment, the Church took more benefit from the partnership than it conferred. The result of the presidential elections of 1900 showed that the Republicans could have elected their ticket without any help from the Prophets. But without the help of the dominant party the Prophets could not have renewed the rule of the state by the Church could not have prevented the passage of a constitutional amendment punishing polygamy by Federal statute—and could not have obtained such intimate relation and commanding influence with the great "interests" of the country.

Throughout all these miserable incidents, I had a vague hope that they would prove merely temporary and peculiar to the term of Snow's presidency. He was now in his eighty-sixth year. My father was next in succession for the Presidency, and he was seventy-three. He had remained personally faithful to every pledge that he had made to the nation, and though he had been powerless to prevent the breaches of covenant that had followed the sovereignty of statehood, I knew that he had opposed some of them and been a willing party to none. It is true that he had become a director of the Union Pacific Railway and was close to the leading financiers of the East; but his Union Pacific connection had come from the fact that he had been one of the builders of the road that had afterward merged in the Oregon Short Line; and his financial relations had been those of a financier and not a politician. In all the years that I had been working with him, I had never known him to have any purpose that was not communistic in its final aspect and designed for the good of his people.

Up to his seventieth year, he had shown no ill result of his early hardships. Living the abstemious life of the orthodox Mormon, to whom wine, tobacco and even tea and coffee are prohibited, he had seemed inexhaustibly robust and untiring. But almost from the day of President's Snow accession to office—deprived of the sustaining consciousness of the responsibilities of leadership—his physical strength gave signs of breaking. In the fall of 1900 he made a trip to the Sandwich Islands, to recuperate, and to assist at the fiftieth anniversary of the Mormon mission that he had founded there; but the Utah winter proved too rigorous for him on his return, and in March, 1901, he was taken to California—to Monterey. In April the word came to me in New York that he was sinking.

I found him in a cottage overlooking the beautiful Bay of Monterey and its wooded slope; and the doctors in attendance told me that he had been kept alive only by the determination to see me before he died. There was no hope. He had still a clear mind, but with ominous lapses of unconsciousness that foreboded the end; and in these intervals of coma, as we wheeled him to and fro on the veranda in an invalid chair—in an attempt to refresh him with the motion of the sea air—he would swing his right hand upward, with an old pulpit gesture, and say "Priesthood! Priesthood!" as if in that word he expressed the ruling thought of his life, the inspiration that had sustained his power, the obligation that had governed him in his direction of his people.

On the afternoon of the 11th of April, he was lying in a stupor on a couch before an open window, with the sound of the surf in the quiet room. One of the doctors entered, looked at him intently, and said to me: "I can do nothing more here—and my patients need me in San Francisco. He can't last long. He'll probably never recover consciousness. If there's anything imperative—anything you must say to him—any word you wish to have from him—you could perhaps rouse him"—I said "No." We had never intruded upon any mood of his silence during his masterful life; and I felt a jealous rebellion against the idea that we should intrude now upon this last, helpless silence of unconsciousness. The doctor left us. I summoned the other members of the family from the veranda to the bedside. He lay motionless and placid, scarcely breathing, his eyes closed, his hands folded. In accordance with the rites of the Church, we laid our hands on his head, while my eldest brother said the prayer of filial blessing that "sealed" the dying man to eternity.

In the silence that followed the last "Amen" of the prayer, he opened his eyes, and said in a steady, strong voice: "You thought I was passing away?"

We replied that we had seen he was very weak.

With a glance at the door through which the physician had departed, he said resolutely: "I shall go when my Father calls me—and not till then. I shall know the moment, and I will not struggle against His command. Lift me up. Carry me out on the balcony I want to see the water once more. And I want to talk with you."

To me, it was the last struggle of the unconquerable will that had silently, composedly, cheerfully fought and overcome every obstacle that had opposed the purposes of his manhood for half a century. He would not yield even to death at the dictation of man. He would go when he was ready—when his mind had accepted the inevitable as the decree of God.

We sat around his couch on the veranda, and for two hours he talked to us as clearly and as forcibly as ever. He spoke of the Church and of its mission in the world, with all the hope of a religious altruist. From the humblest beginnings, it had grown to the greatest power. From the depths of persecution, it had risen to win favor from the wisest among men. It had abolished poverty for hundreds of thousands, by its sound communal system. In its religious solidarity, it had become a guardian and administrator of equal justice within all the sphere of its influence. It was full of the most splendid possibilities of good for mankind.

With his eyes fixed on the sea—facing eternity as calmly as he faced that great symbol of eternity—he voiced the sincerity of his life and the hope that had animated his statesmanship. In an exaltation of spirituality that made the moment one of the sublime experiences of my life, he adjured us all to hold true to our covenants. I do not write of his personal words of love and admonition to the members of his family. I wish to express only the aspects that may be of public interest, in his last aspirations—for these were the aspirations of the Mormon leaders of the older generation, whom he represented—and they are the aspirations of all the wise among the Mormons today, whatever may be the folly and the treachery of their Prophets.

Ten hours later, he was dead.

I cannot pretend that I had any true apprehension, then, of what his loss meant to the community. I had no clearer vision of events than others. I felt that I had no longer any tie to connect me closely with the government of the Church, and I was willing to stand aside from its affairs, believing that the momentum of progress imparted to it would carry it forward. The nation had cleared the path for it. Its faith, put into practice as a social gospel, had been freed of the offensive things that had antagonized the world. My father's last messages of hope remained with me as a cheering prophecy.

At his funeral in the great tabernacle, President Snow put forward a favorite son, Leroy, to read an official statement in which the President took occasion to deny that my father had dictated the recent policies of the Church: those policies, he said, had been solely the President's. (He is welcome to the credit of them!) Joseph F. Smith showed more generosity of emotion, now that his path of succession was clear of the superior in authority whom he had so long regarded enviously; and he spoke of my father, both privately and in public, in a way that won me to him.

The shock of grief had perhaps "mellowed" me. I felt more tolerant of these men, since I was no longer necessarily engaged in opposing them. When President Snow died (October, 1901), I shared only the general interest in the way Joseph F. Smith set about asserting his family's title to rulership of the "Kingdom of God on Earth;" for, in effect, he notified the world that his branch of the Smith family had been designated by Divine revelation to rule in the affairs of all men, by an appointment that had never been revoked. He has since made his cousin, John Henry Smith, his First Councillor; and he has inducted his son Hyrum into the apostolate by "revelation." This latter act roused the jealousy of the mother of his son Joseph F. Smith, Jr., and the amused gossip of the Mormons predicted another revelation that should give Joseph Jr. a similar promotion. The revelation came. So many others have also come that the Smith family is today represented in the hierarchy by Joseph F. Smith, President, "Prophet, Seer and Revelator to all the world;" John Smith (a brother) presiding Patriarch over the whole human race; John Henry Smith (a cousin) Apostle and First Councillor to the President; Hyrum Smith and Joseph F. Smith (sons) Apostles; George A. Smith (son of John Henry) apostle; David S. Smith (son of Joseph F.) Councillor to the presiding Bishop of the Church and in line of succession to the bishopric; and Bathseba W. Smith, President of the Relief Societies[4]. [FOOTNOTE: She has died since this was written.]

As Joseph F. Smith has still thirty other sons—and at least four wives who are not represented in the apostolate—there may yet be a quorum of Smiths to succeed endlessly to the Presidency and make the Smith family a perpetual dynasty in Utah.

It is one of the fascinating contradictions of Mormonism that many of the sincere people—who smilingly predicted the Divine interposition by which this family succession was founded—accept its rule devoutly. "The Lord," they will tell you, "will look after the Church. If these men are good enough for God, they are good enough for me. I do not have to save the Kingdom." And they continue paying their devotion (and their tithes) to a family autocracy whose imposition would have provoked a rebellion in any other community in the civilized world!

It is "the will of the Lord!"



Chapter XII. The Conspiracy Completed



The Smiths were no sooner firm in power than rumors began to circulate of a recrudescence of plural marriage, and I heard reports of political plots by which the Prophets were to reestablish their autocracy in worldly affairs in the name of God. I sought to close my mind against such accusations, for I remembered how often my father had been misjudged, and I felt that nothing but the most direct evidence should be permitted to convince me of a recession by the Church authorities from the miraculous opportunity of progress that was now open to their leadership. Such direct evidence came, in part, in the state elections of 1902.

The Utah Democrats re-nominated Wm. H. King for Congress; Senator Joseph L. Rawlins was their candidate to succeed himself in the United States Senate. The Republicans nominated President Smith's friend, Joseph Howell, for Congress; and there began to spread a rumor that Apostle Reed Smoot was to become a Republican candidate for the Senatorship under an old promise given him by President Snow and now endorsed by President Smith. I had been made state chairman of the Democratic party; and with the growing report of Apostle Smoot's candidacy, I observed a gradual cessation of political activity on the part of those prominent Democrats who were close to the Church leaders.

Now, our party was not making war on the Church nor on any of its proper missions in the world. Our candidates were capable and popular men against whom no just ecclesiastical antagonism could be raised. We were asking no favors from the Church. And we were determined to have no opposition from the Church without a protest and an understanding.

For this reason—after consulting confidentially with the leaders of our party—undertook to make a personal visit to President Smith's office to demand that the Church authorities should keep their hands out of politics. But even while I discussed the matter with our party leaders, I was afraid that some of them might betray our concerted purpose to Church headquarters. And my fear was well grounded. When I went to the offices of the Presidency, the authorities—for the first, last and only time—refused to see me; and the secretary betrayed a knowledge of my mission by telling me that I should hear from some one of the hierarchy, later.

Two or three days afterward, Apostle M. F. Cowley came to me with word that my call had been considered and that he had been deputed to talk with me. We appointed a time for conference in my rooms at Democratic headquarters, where we spent the large part of a day in consultation. And since the argument between us covered the whole ground of Apostle Smoot's candidacy, I wish to give an account of that interview, as a brief exposition of some of the present-day aspects of the Church's interference in politics.

Apostle Cowley and I had been boyhood friends. He had been one of the older students at the school that I had attended as a child; and I knew the integrity and directness of his character. He was a stocky, strong man, with a wholesome sort of face, brown with the sunburn of his missionary travels in Canada and in Mexico. (He had been, in fact, solemnizing plural marriages in these polygamous refuges—as we found out later.)

As soon as it was clearly understood between us that I represented the Democratic state committee and he represented the Church authorities, I asked for an explanation of Apostle Smoot's candidacy.

Cowley began by admitting the candidacy, which President Smith had endorsed (he said) in spite of the opposition of some of the apostles. He argued that Apostle Smoot was only exercising his right of American citizenship in aspiring to the Senatorship; and he explained that the Church authorities did not see why the Church should be drawn into the campaign.

But, as I pointed out to him, the Church had already drawn itself in. It had held a solemn conclave of its hierarchy to authorize an apostle's candidacy. The opponents of Church rule would circulate the fact; in any close campaign, the apostle's friends would use the fact upon the faithful; and the Church would be compelled to support its apostle in an assumed necessity of defending itself.

Perhaps I was objectionably forceful in my reply to him. With his characteristic gentleness, he rebuked me by recalling that President Woodruff had once taken him into "sacred places," assured him that "Frank Cannon, like David, was a man after God's own heart," and asked him to "labor" for me in politics. If it had been right for the Prophet of God to favor me, why was it not right for the Prophet now to favor some one else?

My personal regard for Apostle Cowley kept me from showing the amusement I felt at finding myself in this new scriptural role remembering how President Woodruff had once devoted me to destruction like another Isaac on the altar of Church control. I replied to Cowley, as soberly as I could, that I had never consciously received the aid of any Church influence; that I had always objected to its use, either for or against either party; that I could oppose it now with free hands.

He retreated upon the favorite argument of the ecclesiasts: that an apostle did not relinquish his citizenship because of his Church rank; that the very political freedom which we demanded, to be effective, must apply to all men, in or out of the Church. He asked naively: "What did we get statehood for—and amnesty—and our political rights—if we're not to enjoy them?"

The answer to that was obvious: The Mormon Church is so constructed that the apostle carries with him the power of the Church wherever he appears. The whole people recognize in him the personified authority of the Church; and if an apostle were allowed to make a political campaign without a denunciation from the other Church authorities, it would be known that he had been selected for political office by "the mouthpiece of the Almighty." I cited the case of Apostle Moses Thatcher as proof that the Church did exercise power openly to negative an apostle's ambition. If it failed now to rebuke Smoot, this very failure would be an affirmative use of its power in his behalf; all Mormons who did not wish to raise their hands "against the Lord's anointed," would have to support Smoot's legislative ticket, regardless of their political convictions; and all Gentiles and independent Mormons would have to fight the intrusion of the Church into open political activities.

Cowley replied that "the brethren"—meaning the hierarchy—believed that a Mormon should have as many political rights, as a Catholic; and he asked me if I would object to seeing a Catholic in the Senate.

Of course not. There are, and have been, many such. "But suppose," I argued, "that the Pope were to select one of his Italian cardinals to come to this country and be naturalized in some state of this Union that was under the sole rule of the Roman Catholic Church; and suppose that still holding his princedom in the Catholic Church and exercising the plenary authority conferred on him by the Pope—suppose he were to appear before the Senate in his robes of office, with his credentials as a Senator from his Church-ruled state—all of this being a matter of public knowledge—do you think the Senate would seat him? Certainly not. Yet the cases are exactly analogous. We were but lately alien and proscribed. We were admitted into the Union on a covenant that forbade Church interference in politics. It is the whole teaching of the Church that a Prophet wears his prophetic authority constantly as a robe of office. The case of Moses Thatcher is proof to the world that the Church appoints and disappoints at its pleasure. I don't believe that Smoot, if elected, will be allowed to hold his seat, and—if he is allowed to hold it—a greater trouble than his exclusion will surely follow. For, with the princes of the Mormon Church holding high place in the national councils—and using the power of the Church to maintain themselves there—we are assuring for ourselves an indefinite future of the most bitter controversy."

When Cowley had no more arguments to offer, he said: "Well, the Prophet has spoken. That's enough for me. I submit cheerfully when the will of the Lord comes to me through his appointed servants. The matter has been decided, and it does not lie in your power—or anyone else's—to withstand the purposes of the Almighty." He rose and put his hand on my shoulder, affectionately. "Your father is gone, Frank. I loved him very dearly. I hope that you are not going to be found warring against the Lord's anointed."

"Mat," I replied, "you have already pointed out that Apostle Smoot appears in politics only as an American citizen. For the purposes of this fight—and to avoid the consequences that you fear I'll regard him as a politician merely, and fight him as such."

"But, you know, Frank," he remonstrated, "he has been consecrated to the apostleship, and I'm afraid that you'll overstep the bounds."

"Mat," I assured him, "I'll watch carefully, and unless he makes his lightning changes too fast, I'll aim my shots only when he's in his political clothes. If the change is too indefinite, blame yourselves and not us. The whole teaching of the Church is that an apostle must be regarded as an apostle at all times; but the whole teaching of politics is that all men should appear upon equal terms—in this country. That's why we insist that no apostle should become a candidate for public office."

Cowley took his departure with evident relief. He had discharged his ambassadorial duty—and given me the warning which he had been authorized to deliver—without a rupture of our personal friendship. And I saw him go, for my part, in a sorrowful certainty that the Church had thrown off all disguise and proposed to show the world, by the election of an apostle to the United States Senate, that the "Kingdom of God" was established in Utah to rule in all the affairs of men. I knew that if Smoot were excluded from the Senate, his exclusion would be argued a proof that the wicked and unregenerate nation was still devilishly persecuting God's anointed servants, to its own destruction; and, if he were permitted to take his seat, that this fact would be cited to the faithful as proof that the Prophets had been called to save the nation from the destruction that threatened it!

Of course, throughout the campaign that followed, the Church's newspapers and many of its political workers kept protesting publicly that the election of the Republican legislative ticket did not mean the election of Apostle Smoot to the Senate. But by means of the authoritative whisper of ecclesiasts—carried by visiting apostles to Presidents of Stakes, from them to the bishops, and from the bishops to the presiding officers of subsidiary organizations—the inspired order was given to the faithful that they must vote for the legislators who could be relied upon to do the will of the Lord by voting for the Lord's anointed prophet, Apostle Reed Smoot. This message was delivered to the sacred Sunday prayer circles. Even Senator Rawlins' mother received it, from one of the ecclesiastical authorities of her ward, who instructed her to vote against the election of her own son; and it was "at the peril of her immortal soul" that she disobeyed the injunction. Long before election day, every Mormon knew that he had been called upon by the Almighty to sacrifice his individual conviction in politics to protect his "assailed Church."

The profound effectiveness of that appeal needs no further proof than the issue of the election. King and Rawlins, the popular leaders of the Democracy in a state that had but recently been overwhelmingly Democratic—after a campaign in which they studiously avoided an attack upon the Church—were overwhelmingly defeated. The Republican legislative ticket was carried. Apostle Smoot was elected to the United States Senate; and on January 21, 1903, Governor Wells issued to him a certificate of election.

Five days later, a number of prominent citizens signed a protest, to President Roosevelt and the Senate, against allowing Apostle Smoot to take his seat. And the grounds of the protest, briefly stated, were these: The Mormon priesthood claimed supreme authority in politics, and such authority was exercised by the first presidency and the twelve apostles, of whom Smoot was one. They had not only not abandoned the practice of political dictation, but they had not abandoned the belief in polygamy and polygamous cohabitation; they connived at and encouraged its practice, sought to pass laws that should nullify the statutes against the practice, and protected and honored the violators of those statutes. And they had done all these things despite the public sentiment of the civilized world, in violation of the pledges given in procuring amnesty and in obtaining the return of the escheated Church property, contrary to the promises given by the representatives of the Church and of the territory in their plea for statehood, contrary to the pledges required by the Enabling Act and given in the State constitution, and contrary to the laws of the State itself.

These charges were supported by innumerable citations from the published doctrines of the Church, and from the published speeches and sermons of the Prophets. Evidence was offered of the continuance of polygamous cohabitation (since 1890) by President Smith, all but three or four of the apostles, the entire Presidency of the Salt Lake Stake of Zion, and many others. New polygamy was specifically charged against three apostles, and against the son of a fourth. A second protest, signed by John L. Leilich, repeated these grounds of objection to Apostle Smoot, and charged further that Apostle Smoot was himself a polygamist; but no attempt was made to prove this latter charge.

Upon the filing of the protest, there was a storm of anger at Church headquarters; and the ecclesiastical newspapers railed with the bitterness of anxious apprehension. Throughout Utah it seemed to be the popular belief that Apostle Smoot would be excluded—on the issue of whether a responsible representative of a Church that was protecting and encouraging law-breaking should be allowed a seat in the highest body of the nation's law-makers. But the issue against him was not to be heard until twelve months after his election, and every agent and influence of the Church was set to work at once to nullify the effect of the protest.

Every financial institution, East or West, to which the Church could appeal, was solicited to demand a favorable hearing of the Smoot case from the Senators of its state. Every political and business interest that could be reached was moved to protect the threatened Apostle. The sugar trust magnates and their Senators were enlisted. The mercantile correspondents of the Church were urged to write letters to their Congressmen and to their Senators, and to use their power at home to check the anti-Mormon newspapers. The Utah representative of a powerful mercantile institution, that had vital business relations with the Church, confessed to me that he had been called East to consult with the head of his company, who had been asked to use his influence for Smoot. "I could not advise our president," he said, "to send the letter that was demanded of him. And yet I couldn't take the responsibility of injuring the company by advising him to refuse the Church request. You know, if we had refused it, point-blank, they would have destroyed every interest we had within the domain of their power. I should have been ruined financially. All our stockholders would have suffered. They would never have forgiven me."

The president of the company failed to send the letter. His failure became known, through Church espionage and the report of the Church's friends in the Senate. Pressure was brought to bear upon him; and, with the aid of his Utah representative, he compromised on a letter that did partial violence to his conscience and partially endangered his business relations with the Church.

Both these men were aware that the Church had broken its covenants to the country, and that Apostle Smoot could not be either a loyal citizen of the nation or a free representative of the people of his state. "I did not like the compromise we made," my friend told me. "I feel humiliated whenever I think of it. But I tried to do the best I could under the circumstances."

The results of this pressure of political and business interests upon Washington showed gradually in the tone of the political newspapers throughout the whole country. It showed in the growing confidence expressed by the organs of the Church authorities in Utah. It showed in the cheerful predictions of the Prophets that the Lord would overrule in Apostle Smoot's behalf. It showed in Smoot's exercise of an autocratic leadership in the political affairs of the State.

He was allowed to take his oath of office as Senator on March 5, 1903; the protests against him were referred to the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections for a hearing (January 27, 1904); and a contest began that lasted from January, 1904, to February, 1907. During those years was completed the business and political conspiracy between financial "privilege" and religious absolutism, of which conspiracy this narrative has described the beginning and the growth.

It is almost impossible to expose the progression of incident by which the end of that conspiracy was approached—since it was necessarily approached in the darkest secrecy. But several indications of the method and the progress did show, here and there, on the surface of events; and these indications are powerfully significant.

As early as 1901 it had become known that Apostle Smoot was negotiating a sale, to the sugar trust, of the Church's sugar holdings. On May 13, 1902, the president of the trust reported to the trust's executive committee—

[FOOTNOTE: See a synopsis of the minutes of the trust's executive committee, published in Hampton's Magazine, in January, 1910.]

that he had agreed to buy a one-half interest in the consolidation of the Mormon factories of La Grande, Logan and Ogden. (The following day, May 14, 1902, is given by Apostle Smoot as the day on which he obtained President Joseph F. Smith's permission to become a candidate for the Senatorship.) On June 24, 1902 the sugar trust's executive committee was informed of the trust's purchase of one-half of the capital stock of these three Church-owned sugar companies. On July 5, 1902 the three companies were consolidated under the name of the Amalgamated Sugar Company, with David Eccles, polygamist, trustee of Church bonds, and protege of Joseph F. Smith, as President; and the sugar trust took half the stock, in exchange for its holdings in the three original companies.

Similarly, in this same year, the old Church-owned Utah Sugar Company increased its stock in order to buy the Garland sugar factory, and the sugar trust, it is understood, was concerned in the purchase In 1903, 1904 and 1905, the Idaho Sugar Company, the Freemont Sugar Company, and West Idaho Sugar Company were incorporated; and in 1906 all these companies were amalgamated in the present Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, of which Joseph F. Smith is president, T. R. Cutler, a Mormon, is vice-president, Horace G. Whitney, the general manager of the Church's Deseret News, is secretary and treasurer, and other Church officials are directors. Of the stock of this company the sugar trust holds fifty-one per cent. So that between 1902 and 1906 a partnership in the manufacture of beet sugar was effected between the Church and the trust; and Apostle Smoot became a Sugar trust Senator, and argued and voted as such.

Furthermore, it was at this same period that the Church sold the street railway of Salt Lake City and its electric power company to the "Harriman interests" under peculiar circumstances—a matter of which I have written in an earlier chapter. The Church owners of this Utah Light and Railway Company, through the Church's control of the City Council, had attempted to obtain a hundred-year franchise from the city on terms that were outrageously unjust to the citizens; and finally, on June 5, 1905, a franchise was obtained for fifty years, for the company of which Joseph F. Smith was the president. On August 3, 1905, another city ordinance was passed, consolidating all former franchises, then held by the Utah Light and Power Company, but originally granted to D. F. Walker, the Salt Lake and Ogden Gas and Electric Light Company, the Pioneer Power Company and the Utah Power Company; and this ordinance extended the franchises to July 1, 1955. The properties were bonded for $6,300,000, but it was understood that they were worth not more than $4,000,000. They were sold to "the Harriman interests" for $10,000,000. The equipment of the Salt Lake City street railway was worse than valueless, and the new company had to remove the rails and discard the rolling stock. But the ten millions were well invested in this public-utility trust, for the company had a monopoly of the street railway service and electric power and gas supply of Salt Lake City; and its franchises left it free to extort whatever it could from the people of the whole country side, by virtue of a partnership with the Church authorities whereby extortion was given the protection of "God's anointed Prophets."

Joseph F. Smith, of course, was already a director of Harriman's Union Pacific Railroad, a position to which he had been elected after his accession to the First Presidency. And he was so elected not because of his railroad holdings—for he came to the Presidency a poor man—and not because of his ability or experience as a financier or a railroad builder, for he had not had any such experience and he had not shown any such ability. He was elected because of the partnership between the Church leaders and the Union Pacific Railroad—a partnership that was doubtlessly used in defense of Apostle Smoot's seat in the Senate, just as the power of the Sugar Trust was used and the influence of the whole financial confederation in politics.



Chapter XIII. The Smoot Exposure



Just before the subpoenas were issued in the Smoot investigation, I met John R. Winder (then First Councillor to President Smith) on the street in Salt Lake City, and he expressed the hope that when I went "to Washington on the Smoot case," I would not "betray" my "brethren." I assured him that I was not going to Washington as a witness in the Smoot case; that the men whom he should warn, were at Church headquarters. He replied, with indignant alarm, "I don't see what 'the brethren' have to do with this!"

But when the subpoenas arrived for Smith and the hierarchy, alarm and indignation assumed a new complexion. The authorities, for themselves, and through the mouths of such men as Brigham H. Roberts, began to boast of how they were about to "carry the gospel to the benighted nation" and preach it from the witness stand in Washington. The Mormon communities resounded with fervent praises to God that He had, through His servant, Apostle Smoot, given the opportunity to His living oracles to speak to an unrighteous people! And when the Senators decided that they would not summon polygamous wives and their children en bloc to Washington to testify (because it was not desired to "make war on women and children") some of Joseph F. Smith's several wives even complained feelingly that they "were not allowed to testify for Papa."

The first oracular disclosure made by the Prophets, on the witness stand, came as a shock even to Utah. They testified that they had resumed polygamous cohabitation to an extent unsuspected by either Gentiles or Mormons. President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he had had eleven children borne to him by his five wives, since pledging himself to obey the "revealed" manifesto of 1890 forbidding polygamous relations. Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, who was next in succession to the Presidency, made a similar admission of guilt, though in a lesser degree. So did John Henry Smith and Charles W. Penrose, apostles. So did Brigham H. Roberts and George Reynolds, Presidents of Seventies. So did a score of others among the lesser authorities. And they confessed that they were living in polygamy in violation of their pledges to the nation and the terms of their amnesty, against the laws and the constitution of the state, and contrary to the "revelation of God" by which the doctrine of polygamy had been withdrawn from practice in the Church!

President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he was violating the law of the State. He was asked: "Is there not a revelation that you shall abide by the law of the State and of the land?" He answered, "Yes, sir." He was asked: "And if that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws of God?" He answered: "I have admitted that, Mr. Senator, a great many times here."

Apostle Francis Marion Lyman was asked: "You say that you, an apostle of your Church, expecting to succeed (if you survive Mr. Smith) to the office in which you will be the person to be the medium of Divine revelations, are living, and are known to your people to live, in disobedience of the law of the land and the law of God?" Apostle Lyman answered: "Yes, sir." The others pleaded guilty to the same charge.

But this was not the worst. There had been new polygamous marriages. Bishop Chas. E. Merrill, the son of an apostle, testified that his father had married him to a plural wife in 1891, and that he had been living with both wives ever since. A Mrs. Clara Kennedy testified that she had been married to a polygamist in 1896, in Juarez, Mexico, by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., in the home of the president of the stake. There was testimony to show that Apostle George Teasdale had taken a plural wife six years after the "manifesto" forbidding polygamy, and that Benjamin Cluff, Jr., president of the Church university, had taken a plural wife in 1899. Some ten other less notorious cases were exposed—including those of M. W. Merrill, an apostle, and J. M. Tanner, superintendent of Church schools. It was testified that Apostle John W. Taylor had taken two plural wives within four years, and that Apostle M. F. Cowley had taken one; and both these men had fled from the country in order to escape a summons to appear before the Senate committee.

President Joseph F. Smith, in his attempts to justify his own polygamy, gave some very involved and contradictory testimony. He said that he adhered to both the divine revelation commanding polygamy and the divine revelation "suspending" the command. He said he believed that the principle of plural marriage was still as "correct a principle" as when first revealed, but that the "law commanding it" had been suspended by President Woodruff's manifesto. He said that he accepted President Woodruff's manifesto as a revelation from God, but he objected to having it called "a law of the Church;" he insisted that it was only "a rule of the Church." He admitted that the manifesto forbidding polygamy had never been printed among the other revelations in the Church's book of "Doctrine and Covenants," in which the original revelation commanding polygamy was still printed without note or qualification of any kind. He admitted that this anti-polygamy manifesto was not printed in any of the other doctrinal works which the Mormon missionaries took with them when they were sent out to preach the Mormon faith. He claimed that the manifesto was circulated in pamphlet form, but he subsequently admitted that the pamphlet did not "state in terms" that the manifesto was a "revelation." He finally pleaded that the manifesto had been omitted from the book of "Doctrine and Covenants" by an "oversight," and he promised to have it included in the next edition!

[FOOTNOTE: He did not keep his promise. The manifesto was not added to the book of revelations until some time later, after considerable protest in Utah.]

In short, it was shown, by the testimony given and the evidence introduced, not only that the Church authorities persisted in living in polygamy, not only that polygamous marriages were being contracted, but that the Church still adhered to the doctrine of polygamy and taught it as a law of God.

President Joseph F. Smith denied the right of Congress to regulate his "private conduct" as a polygamist. "It is the law of my state to which I am amenable," he said, "and if the officers of the law have not done their duty toward me I can not blame them. I think they have some respect for me."

A mass of testimony showed why the officers of the law did not do their duty. During the anti-polygamy agitation of 1899 (which ended in the refusal of Congress to seat Brigham H. Roberts) a number of prosecutions of polygamists had been attempted. In many instances the county attorney had refused to prosecute even upon sworn information. Wherever prosecutions were had, the fines imposed were nominal; these were in some cases never paid, and in other cases paid by popular subscription. It was testified that in Box Elder County subscription lists had been circulated to collect money for the fines, but that the fines were never paid, though the subscriptions had been collected. All the prosecutions had been dropped, at last. It was pleaded that there was a strong Gentile sentiment against these prosecutions, because of the hope that no new polygamous marriages were being contracted; but it was shown also, that the Church authorities controlled the enforcement of the law by their influence in the election of the agents of the law.

The Church controlled, too, the making of the law. For example, testimony was given to show that in 1896 the Church authorities had appointed a committee of six elders to examine all bills introduced into the Utah legislature and decide which were "proper" to be passed. In the neighboring state of Idaho, the legislature, in 1904, unanimously and without discussion passed a resolution for a new state constitution that should omit the anti-polygamy test oath clauses objectionable to the Mormons; and in this connection it was testified that the state chairman of both political parties in Idaho always went to Salt Lake City, before a campaign, to consult with the Church authorities; that every request of the authorities made to the Idaho political leaders was granted; that six of the twenty-one countries in Idaho were "absolutely controlled" by Mormons, and the "balance of power" in six counties more was held by Mormons; and that it was "impossible for any man or party to go against the Mormon Church in Idaho." Apostle John Henry Smith testified that one-third of the population of Idaho was Mormon and one-fourth of the population of Wyoming, and that there were large settlements in Nevada, Colorado, California, Arizona and the surrounding states and territories.

A striking example of the power of the Church as against the power of the nation was given to the Senate committee by John Nicholson, chief recorder of the temple in Salt Lake City. He had failed to produce some of the temple marriage records for which the committee had called. He was asked whether he would bring the books, on the order of the Senate of the United States, if the First Presidency of the Church forbade him to bring them. He answered: "I would not." He was asked: "And if the Senate should send the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate and arrest you and order you to bring them" (the records) "with you, you would still refuse to bring them, unless the First Presidency asked you to?" He answered, "Yes, sir."

It was shown that classes of instruction in the Mormon religion had been forced upon teachers in a number of public schools in Utah by the orders of the First Presidency. (These orders were withdrawn after the exposure before the committee.) Church control had gone so far in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah, that in a dispute between the City Council and the electric lighting company of the city, the local ecclesiastical council interfered. In the same city, two young men built a dancing pavilion that competed with the Church-owned Opera House; the ecclesiastical council "counselled" them to remove the pavilion and dispose of "the material in its construction;" they were threatened that they would be "dropped" if they did not obey this "counsel;" and they compromised by agreeing to pay twenty-five percent of the net earnings of their pavilion into the Church's "stake treasury." In Monroe ward, Sevier County, Utah, in 1901, a Mormon woman named Cora Birdsall had a dispute with a man named James E. Leavitt about a title to land. Leavitt went into the bishop's court and got a decision against her. She wrote to President Joseph F. Smith for permission either to appeal the case direct to him or "to go to law" in the matter; and Smith advised her "to follow the order provided of the Lord to govern in your case." The dispute was taken through the ecclesiastical courts and decided against her. She refused to deed the land to Leavitt and she was excommunicated by order of the High Council of the Sevier Stake of Zion. She became insane as a result of this punishment, and her mother appealed to the stake president to grant her some mitigation. He wrote, in reply: "Her only relief will be in complying with President Smith's wishes. You say she has never broken a rule of the Church. You forget that she has done so by failing to abide by the decision of the mouthpiece of God." She finally gave up a deed to the disputed land and was rebaptized in 1904. (Letters of the First Presidency were, however, introduced to show that it had been the policy of the presidency—particularly in President Woodruff's day—not to interfere in disputes involving titles to land.)

It was testified that a Mormon merchant was expelled from the Church, ostensibly for apostasy, but really because he engaged in the manufacture of salt "against the interests of the President of the Church and some of his associates;" that a Mormon Church official was deposed "for distributing, at a school election, a ticket different from that prescribed by the Church authorities"—and so on, interminably.

Witness after witness swore to the incidents of Church interference in politics which this narrative has already related in detail. But no attempt was made to show the Church's partnership with the "interests;" and the power of the Church in business circles was left to be inferred from President Smith's testimony that he was then president of the Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, the State Bank of Utah, the Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company, the Utah Sugar Company, the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company, the Utah Light and Power Company, the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad Company, the Saltair Beach Company, the Idaho Sugar Company, the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the Salt Lake Knitting Company, and the Salt Lake Dramatic Association; and that he was a director of the Union Pacific Railway Company, vice-president of the Bullion-Beck and Champion Mining Company, and editor of the Improvement Era and the Juvenile Instructor.

It was shown that Utah had not been admitted to statehood until the Federal government had exacted, from the Church authorities and the representatives of the people of Utah, every sort of pledge that polygamy had been forever abandoned and polygamous relations discontinued by "revelation from God"; that statehood had not been granted until solemn promise had been given and provision made that there should be "no union of church and state," and no church should "dominate the state or interfere with its functions;" and that the Church's escheated property had been restored upon condition that such property should be used only for the relief of the poor of the Church, for the education of its children and for the building and repair of houses of worship "in which the rightfulness of the practice of polygamy" should not be "inculcated."

Therefore the testimony given before the Senate committee by these members of the Mormon hierarchy, showed that they had not only broken. their covenants and violated their oaths, but that they had been guilty of treason. What was the remedy? Jeremiah M. Wilson, a lawyer employed by the Church authorities in 1888 to argue, before a Congressional committee, in behalf of the admission of Utah to statehood, had pointed out the remedy in these words:

"It is idle to say that such a compact may be made, and then, when the considerations have been mutually received—statehood on the one side and the pledge not to do a particular thing on the other—either party can violate it without remedy to the other. But you ask me what is the remedy, and I answer that there are plenty of remedies in your own hands.

"Suppose they violate this compact; suppose that after they put this into the constitution, and thereby induce you to grant them the high privilege and political right of statehood, they should turn right around and exercise the bad faith which is attributed to them here—what would you do? You could shut the doors of the Senate and House of Representatives against them; you could deny them a voice in the councils of this nation, because they have acted in bad faith and violated their solemn agreement by which they succeeded in getting themselves into the condition of statehood. You could deny them the Federal judiciary; you could deny them the right to use the mails—that indispensable thing in the matter of trade and commerce of this country. There are many ways in which peaceably, but all powerfully, you could compel the performance of that compact."

This argument by Mr. Wilson in 1888 was recalled by the counsel for the protestants in the investigation. It was recalled with the qualification that though Congress might not have the power to undo the sovereignty of the state of Utah it could deal with Senator Smoot. And it was further argued: "The chief charge against Senator Smoot is that he encourages, countenances, and connives at the defiant violation of law. He is an integral part of a hierarchy; he is an integral part of a quorum of twelve, who constitute the backbone of the Church.... He, as one of that quorum of twelve apostles, encourages, connives at, and countenances defiance of law."

On June 11, 1906, a majority of the committee made a report to the Senate recommending that Apostle Smoot was not entitled to his seat in the Senate. They found that he was one of a "self-perpetuating body of fifteen men, uniting in themselves authority in both Church and state," who "so exercise this authority as to encourage a belief in polygamy as a divine institution, and by both precept and example encourage among their followers the practice of polygamy and polygamous cohabitation;" that the Church authorities had "endeavored to suppress, and succeed in suppressing, a great deal of testimony by which the fact of plural marriages contracted by those who were high in the councils of the Church might have been established beyond the shadow of a doubt;" and that "aside from this it was shown by the testimony that a majority of those who give law to the Mormon Church are now, and have been for years, living in open, notorious and shameless polygamous cohabitation." Concerning President Woodruff's anti-polygamy manifesto of 1890, the majority of the committee reported that "this manifesto in no way declares the principle of polygamy to be wrong or abrogates it as a doctrine of the Mormon Church, but simply suspends the practice of polygamy to be resumed at some more convenient season, either with or without another revelation." They found that Apostle Smoot was responsible for the conduct of the organization to which he belonged; that he had countenanced and encouraged polygamy "by repeated acts and in a number of instances, as a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles;" and that he was "no more entitled to a seat in the Senate than he would be if he were associating in polygamous cohabitation with a plurality of wives."

The report continued: "The First Presidency and the twelve apostles exercise a controlling influence over the action of the members of the Church in secular affairs as well as in spiritual matters;" and "contrary to the principles of the common law under which we live, and the constitution of the State of Utah, the First Presidency and twelve apostles dominate the affairs of the State and constantly interfere in the performance of its functions.... But it is in political affairs that the domination of the First Presidency and the twelve apostles is most efficacious and most injurious to the interests of the State.... Notwithstanding the plain provision of the constitution of Utah, the proof offered on the investigation demonstrates beyond the possibility of doubt that the hierarchy at the head of the Mormon Church has, for years past, formed a perfect union between the Mormon Church and the State of Utah, and that the Church, through its head, dominates the affairs of the State in things both great and small." And the report concluded: "The said Reed Smoot comes here, not as the accredited representative of the State of Utah in the Senate of the United States, but as the choice of the hierarchy which controls the Church and has usurped the functions of the State in Utah. It follows, as a necessary conclusion from these facts, that Mr. Smoot is not entitled to a seat in the Senate as a Senator from the State of Utah."