I asked: "Has the Church not been responsible?"

He replied—equivocating—: "Well, not the Church. The Church has never taken a vote on it."

"That," I said, "answers why you have never got redress and never will get it because you are all liars, from top to bottom. You know you would never have entered the polygamous relation—nor could you have induced your wife to enter it—except with full knowledge that the Church did authorize it. The Church is one man, and you know it. The whole theory of your theology collapses if you deny that."

He shook his head blankly. "I don't know what is to become of us. I don't see any way out."

I could only advise him that he should join with other new polygamists in demanding that the Church authorities make all possible reparation to the women and children who were being crushed under the penalties of the Church's crime. But I knew that such advice was vain. He could not make such a demand, any more than any other slave could demand his freedom. And if the non-polygamists demanded it, the Prophets would deny that polygamy was being practiced. The children could not be legitimized—for the Church cannot obtain legitimizing statutes without avowing its responsibility for the need of them; and the Gentiles can not pass such statutes without encouraging the continuance of polygamy by removing the social penalty against it.

So the burden of all this guilt, this shame, this deception, falls upon the unfortunate plural wife and her innocent offspring. She is bound by the most sacred obligations never to reveal the name of the officiating priest—even if she knew it—nor to disclose the circumstances of the ceremony. She has justified her degradation by the assumption that God has commanded it; that her husband has received a revelation authorizing him to take her into his household; that her children will be legitimate in the sight of God, and that eventually the civilized world will come to a joyous acceptance of the practice of polygamy. When the trials of her life afflict her and she finds no relentment in the world's disdain, she sees no avenue of retreat. To break the relation is to imply at once that it was not ordained of God, and to cast a darker ignominy upon her unfortunate children. Her only hope lies in her continued submission to her husband and his Church, even after she has mentally and morally rejected the doctrine that betrayed her. A more pitiably helpless band of self-immolants than these Mormon women has never suffered martyrdom in the history of the world. Heaven help them. There is no help for them on earth.



Chapter XVIII. The Prophet of Mammon



In an earlier day among the Mormons, the ecclesiastical authorities collected one-tenth of the "annual increase" of the faithful into "the storehouse of the Lord;" and this was practically the entire assessment made by the Church; although, by the same law of tithing, every Mormon was held obliged to consecrate all his earthly possessions to "God's work" on the demand of the Prophet. The common fund was used, then, to promote community enterprises and to relieve the poor. The tithe-payer saw the good result of the administration of the Church's moneys, and was generally satisfied. He was promised eternal happiness if he paid an honest tithe, but he was also given an earthly reward—for the Church admitted him to many opportunities and enterprises from which the niggardly were adroitly excluded. He was spiritually elevated and enlarged by giving for a purpose that he considered worthy—the fulfillment of a commandment of God and the relief of his fellow-creatures—and the community benefited by having a part of its yearly surplus administered for the common good.

But by the time the Church had reached its third generation of tithe-payers, the "financial Prophets" had made a change. On the theory that since the Mormons were paying the bulk of the taxes, they should share in the distribution of the public relief funds, the Mormon poor were denied assistance from "the storehouse of the Lord," and were compelled to enter the poorhouses, to seek shelter on the "county farms," or to take charity from their neighbors. The resulting degradation of a sublime principle of human helpfulness is strikingly shown in the fact that in some cases, where the county relief funds are distributed through a Mormon clerk of paupers for out-door relief, the Mormon bishop even collects one-tenth of this money, from the wretched recipients, as their contribution to God Almighty!

Nor is the greed of the present hierarchy satisfied with one-tenth of a Mormon's income. Said Joseph F. Smith, at the April Conference of 1899 (according to the Church's official report): "If a farmer raises two thousand bushels of wheat, as the result of his year's labor, how many bushels should he pay for tithing? Well, some go straightway to dickering with the Lord. They will say that they hired a man so and so, and his wages must be taken out; that they had to pay such and such expenses, and this cost and that cost; and they reckon out all their expenses and tithe the balance." To Smith's inspired financial genius this was "dickering with the Lord." He wished to collect ten per cent of the farmer's entire yield—a tithe that would have bankrupted the farmer in three years!

Nor is the tithe any longer the only exaction demanded by the Prophet. A score of "donations" have been added. There is the Stake Tabernacle Donation, which is a fund collected from the Mormons of each "Stake" (corresponding usually to a county) for the building of a house in which to hold Stake Conferences. There is the Ward Meeting-House Donation, which is a fund collected from the Mormons of every "ward" for the erection of a local chapel. There is the Fast Day Donation, made up of contributions gathered on the afternoon of the first Sunday of each month, at what is called "a fast meeting," for the support of the local poor; and this is supplemented by the Relief Society Donation, solicited by the members of the Ladies Relief Society, in a house-to-house canvass, from Mormons and Gentiles alike. A Light and Heat Donation is collected by the deacons of the ward, under direction of the bishop, to pay for the lighting and heating of the ward meeting house; a Missionary Donation is collected at a "Missionary benefit entertainment," to help defray the expenses of a member of a ward sent on a mission; and since a missionary must necessarily be an elder, a Quorum Missionary Donation is also taken from his fellow members of the quorum, to assist him. So far as the Church is concerned, he travels "without purse or scrip," by order of "revelation;" but this inhibition does not extend to the use of his own money—if he has any left after paying the other exaction's—nor does it prevent him either from receiving contributions from his impoverished fellows or accepting charity from "the enemies of God's people," whom he labors to redeem. And on these terms about ninety per cent. of the adult male Mormons perform missionary services for the Church.

All priesthood quorums have monthly Quorum Dues collected from their members. On one Sunday of each month, called Nickel Sunday, the Sunday School members pay in five cents each for the purchase of new books, etc. On Dime Tuesday, once a month, the members of the Young Men's and the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Associations pay in ten cents each for the purchase of books, etc. On Nickel Friday, once a month, the infant members of the Primary Association pay in five cents each to the association. Religious Class Donations are paid once a month by the Mormon public-school pupils for the support of the week-day religious classes. Amusement Hall Donations are collected from the members of a ward whose bishop finds them able to build a place of amusement. When a temple is to be erected, Temple Donations are collected, continuously, until the work is finished and paid for; and when members of the Church "go through the Temple," they are required to pay another form of Temple Donation in any sum that they can afford. Should a need arise, not provided for by the specific donations given above, a Special Donation is collected to meet it. Yet in the face of all these exaction's of tithes and donations, the ecclesiast still boasts: "We are not like the 'preachers for hire and diviners for money.' We never pass the plate at our sacred services. Our clergy labor, without pay, to give free salvation to a sinful world!"

In addition to doing missionary service, paying tithes, and contributing donations, the latter-day Mormon, if he be obedient to the counsel of the Church's anointed financiers, must support the commercial and financial undertakings of the hierarchy. These are officially designated "the Church's institutions" by the authorities; but they are in no way the property of the Church. They are advertised as community enterprises, but they are such only in the sense that the community is commanded by "the voice of God" to sustain them. There is no voice of God to command a distribution of their profits. And they are no longer conducted for the benefit of the community but to exploit it.

The good Mormon must purchase his sugar from "the Church's" sugar company (Joseph F. Smith, president), which is controlled by the national sugar trust and charges trust prices. He must buy salt from "the Church's" salt monopoly (Joseph F. Smith, president), which is a part of, and pays dividends to, the national salt trust. He is taught to go for his merchandise to the Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution (Joseph F. Smith, president), where even whiskey is sold under the symbol of the All-seeing Eye and the words "Holiness to the Lord" in gilt letters; and Joseph F. Smith, at the April Conference, of 1898 (according to the Church's official report), scolded those "pretendedly pious" Mormons who "were shocked and horrified" to find "liquid poison" sold under these auspices—for, as Smith argued, with characteristic greed, if the Mormon who wanted whiskey could not get it in the Church store, "he would not patronize Z.C.M.I. at all, but would go elsewhere to deal!"

The farmers are "counselled" to buy their vehicles from "the Church's" firm, the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company (Joseph F. Smith, president); to take out their fire insurance with the Church's "Home Fire Insurance Company" (Joseph F. Smith, controller); and to insure their lives with the Church's "Beneficial Life Insurance Company" (Joseph F. Smith, president). The Salt Lake Knitting Company (of which Joseph F. Smith is president) makes, among other things, the sacred knitted garments that are prescribed for every Mormon who takes the "Endowment Oaths," to be worn by him forever after as a shield "against the Adversary;" and these garments bear the label: "Approved by the Presidency. No knitted garment approved which does not bear this label." By which ingenious bit of religious commercialism, the sacred marks on the garments (accepted as a sort of passport to Heaven) have been increased by the sacred Smith trademark that admits the wearer to the Smith Heaven.

The Church's banking institutions, of which Joseph F. Smith is president, are recommended as safer than others because the money goes into the hands of "the brethren." Church newspapers must be subscribed for, because all others are "unreliable"—although the Church's Deseret News (Joseph F. Smith, president) is one of the most dishonest, unjust and mendacious organs that ever poisoned the public mind. And so on, through the whole list of business concerns by which the Church authorities are to profit. The Mormons, having learned of old the value of a solid, community support for community enterprises established in the interests of the community, are still kept solidly supporting ecclesiastical enterprises administered for the benefit of the hierarchy or its favorites, at the community's expense!

The Utah Light and Railway Company (Joseph F. Smith, president), which was supported by the tithes of the Mormon people, was charging $1.25 per thousand cubic feet for fuel gas and $1.75 for illuminating gas, just before the company was sold to the "Harriman interests." (The Supreme Court of the United States has fixed a rate of 80 cents a thousand as a fair price for gas in New York City.) The Salt Lake Street Railway (operating under a fifty-year franchise, obtained from the City Council by, the power of the Church while Joseph F. Smith was president of the company) charges a five-cent fare, gives but one transfer, allows no half fares for children, and pays the city nothing for the use of its streets. Before the transfer of the Church's sugar stocks to the trust, the sugar factories paid the farmer $4.50 a ton for his beets and sold him sugar for $4.50 a hundred pounds; today beets are bought for $4.50 a ton, and sugar sold at $6.00 a hundred. The price asked for salt in Utah, where it should be "dirt cheap," is the same as everywhere under the salt trust. And so on—through the rest of the list.

To maintain this system of sanctified gain Joseph F. Smith invokes all the power of his "divine" authority as "the mouthpiece of the Lord." He protects the sugar trust by preventing the establishment of independent sugar factories (as for example in Sanpete and Sevier counties in 1905), just as he protects the salt trust by preventing the competition of independent salt gardens (as in the case of Smurthwaite and Taylor.) He issues his edict of protection as "the vicegerent of God on Earth" to the Mormons; and he excommunicates and ostracizes, in this world and the next, the Mormon protestant who dares rebel against commercial monopoly.

He receives between two and three million dollars a year in tithes, gives no accounting of them, and has no responsibility for them, except to God and his own conscience. He is able to use this sum, in bulk, at any given point, with a weight of financial pressure that would overbalance any other such single power in the community. As "trustee in trust" for the Church, he has the added income from stocks and previous investments; and he has practical control of the wealth of all the leading men of the Church to assist him, if he should call upon them for assistance. He uses his financial dictatorship to support monopoly against the assault of Gentile opposition, and he compels the Gentile to pay tribute as the Mormon does.

He backs his financial power with his control of legislation. He can not only prevent the passage of any laws against his favored monopolies, but (as in the case of the smelters) he can reduce independents to submission by threatening them with procured laws to penalize them. He largely controls the "labor troubles" of the State by controlling the obedience of the Mormon laboring men. He can influence judges, officers of the law and all the agents of local government by his power as political "Boss," and the same influence extends, through his representatives at Washington, to the local activities of Federal authority. He can check and govern public opinion among his subjects by announcing "the will of God" to them through the officers of the Church in every department of religious administration. He is, therefore, at once the modern "money king," the absolute political Czar the social despot and the infallible Pope of his "Kingdom!"

Just as men fight for the retention of a throne and the maintenance of a dynasty, so he and his courtiers defend his rule and maintain his autocracy with every weapon of absolutism. And just as royalty, while possessed of unlimited wealth, has never lacked mercenaries, press bureaus, and all the sycophantic defenders of a crown, so Smith is able to command an array of service as great as any ever brought to the defense of a social system. This singular and enormous power stands solidly against any movement of domestic reform; and, by its alliance with the national rulers in finance and politics, it is saved from the danger of "foreign" intervention. Like every other such absolutism, it is crushing out the life of its subjects; for, in spite of the industry, the thrift, and the abstemiousness of the Mormon people, they are sinking under the burden of imposed exaction's. Although Utah became a territory in 1853, and had its well-settled towns at that time, and was organized in a compact social body for the upbuilding of its material prosperity before any of the surrounding states had received an organic act as a territory, Utah has now lost its leadership, and the individual initiative and enterprise of the typical Western community have been relatively lost.

In this process of degeneration, one of the most promising modern experiments in communism has been frustrated and brought to ruin. In the early nineties, Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York City, viewed the Mormon system with an interested admiration. He saw that by contribution, and co-operation, and arbitration, the energies of the people were conserved and the products of their prosperity more equally distributed than under the conditions of economic war then prevalent elsewhere. He thought he saw in Utah a possible solution of some of the social problems of our civilization. But, a few years ago, he confessed that the Mormon system was no longer worthy of study. It had been destroyed by the greed of its rulers. Community contributions were being used for individual commercialism and the aggrandizement of leaders. The aged and infirm poor, who had contributed through all the working period of their lives, were being thrust into poor houses. The ambition of the earlier Prophets, to make the people great in their community prosperity and happiness, has been lost in the new desire of the head of the Church to exhibit that greatness only in his own person. The Mormon people had become the working slaves of a financial and political and religious autocracy, and Mormonism was no longer anything but a hopeless failure as a social experiment.

It is difficult to say how much of this failure was due to the character of the present Prophet, and how much to the national conditions that are threatening the success of democracy in every state of the Union. It would seem that the conditions were ideal for the production of just such a man as Smith, and that Smith was by nature fitted for the greatest growth under just such conditions. He came to power with none of the feeling of responsibility to his people which the earlier leaders showed. He considered that the people lived for him, not that he lived for the people. He regarded the Mormon system as an establishment of his family, to which he had the family right of inheritance; and he waited with a sulky impatience for the deaths of the men who stood between him and the control of his family's Church. It was as if he accepted his predecessors as exercising their powers, during an inter-regnum, by the consent of the Mormon people, but saw himself acceding to the throne by family right and the order of divinity.

He had no financial ability; he had no considerable property when he became president of the Church at sixty-three. Nor did he need any such ability. The continuous inflow of money—to be used without accountability to anyone—and the wealth of opportunity offered by the men who wished his aid in exploiting his people, made it unnecessary that he should have any creative financial vision. He needed only to move, with his opportunity, along the line of least resistance which was also, with him, the line of choice.

He had, through all his years, shown an obvious envy of any member of the Church whose circumstances were better than his own. It was apparent in his manner that he regarded such success in the community as an encroachment upon the Smith prerogatives. As soon as he came to power, he accepted every opportunity of self-aggrandizement as a new Smith prerogative. And the system of modern capitalism appealed at once to his ambition. By the older method of tithes and conscription's, he could collect only from the devotees of the Church; by the larger exploitation he could levy tribute upon the Gentiles too.

And he was aided by the Mormons themselves. They had been brought together, in obedience to "a command of God," in order that the community, by avoiding the sins of the world, might be saved from the plagues that were to descend upon the world because of its injustice. They were a credulous people, ignorant of the sins of modern finance, and prepared by industry and isolation to be exploited. Their previous leaders had observed, as a warning only, the modern aspiration for vast wealth obtained by economic injustice; but that aspiration made an instant appeal to Smith's ambition; and it is the peculiar iniquity of conditions in Utah today that his ambition has betrayed his people to the very evils which they were originally organized to escape.

In an earlier time it was the pride of the leader that the community in the large was advancing and the average of conditions improving. Today the leader assumes that as he grows richer the people are prospering and "the revelations of God" being vindicated in practice. He speaks with pride of "our" growth and wealth under "the benign authority of the Almighty" and His "temporal revelations"—because he himself has been enriched by the perversion of these same laws—very much as the "captain of industry" elsewhere boasts of the "prosperity" of the country, because the few are growing so rich at the expense of the many.

Along with this strain of commercial greed in Smith, there is an equally strong strain of religious fanaticism that justifies the greed and sanctifies it, to itself. He believes (as Apostle Orson Pratt taught, by authority of the Church): "The Kingdom of God is an order of government established by divine authority. It is the only legal government that can exist in any part of the universe. All other governments are illegal and unauthorized.... Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the Kingdom of God." Smith believes that over this Kingdom the Smiths have been, by Divine revelation, ordained to rule. He believes that his authority is the absolute and unquestionable authority of God Himself. He believes that in all the affairs of life he has the same right over his subjects that the Creator has over His creatures. He believes that he has been appointed to use the Mormon people as he in his inspired wisdom sees fit to use them, in order the more firmly to establish God's Kingdom on Earth against the Powers of Evil.

He believes that the people of the American Republic, "being governed by laws of their own making and by officers of their own appointment," are in direct rebellion against "his Kingdom of God." He believes that the national government is destined to be broken in pieces by his power; that it has only been preserved from destruction by the concessions recently made by the Federal authorities; and that it can only continue to save itself so long as it shall recognize Smith's ambassadors at Washington—and so allow him to work out its destruction in the fullness of time.

But with all this insanity of pretension he has a sort of cowardly shrewdness, acquired in his days of hiding "on the underground." On the witness stand in Washington he denied that he had had any direct communication with God by revelation; and then he returned to Utah and pleaded from the pulpit that on this point he had lied in Washington in order to escape saying what his "inquisitors" had wished him to say in order to "get him into a trap." He preaches in Utah that to deny the doctrine of polygamy is to reject the teaching of Jesus Christ; before the Senate committee he was coward enough to put the blame of his polygamous cohabitation upon his five wives. In Washington he claimed that the Gentiles of Utah condoned polygamous cohabitation and had a liberal sympathy for the Church; but at St. George, Utah, for example (in September, 1904), he was reported by a Church newspaper as saying: "The Gentiles are coming among us to buy our homes and land. We should not sell to them, as they are the enemies of the Kingdom of God." He is that most perfect of all hypocrites—the fanatic who believes that he is lying in the service of the Almighty.

In the early spring of 1888, I was in Washington, where measures of proscription were then being prepared against our people; and, early in the morning, as I walked up Massachusetts Avenue, I saw Joseph F. Smith approaching me. For several years he had been "on the underground" under the name of "Joseph Mack"—now in the Hawaiian Islands with one wife; now hidden, with another, among the faithful in some Mormon village; or again with a third, in Washington (which was probably as safe a place as any) presiding secretly over the Church lobby. As he passed me, with his head down, preoccupied, I said: "Good morning, President Smith." He jumped as if I had been a Deputy Marshal with such a sudden start of fear that his silk hat rolled on the pavement and his umbrella dropped from his hand. He drew back from me as if he were about to take to his heels. Then he recognized me, of course, and was quickly reassured; but his embarrassment continued for some time, awkwardly.

But a short time ago the President of the United States stood in the Salt Lake Tabernacle (which is "Joseph Mack's" capitol and vatican) and addressed a multitude that had assembled not more to honor the Chief Executive of the nation than to pay their almost idolatrous tribute of devotion to the head of their Church, who was reigning there in the pulpit with President Taft. "Joseph Mack" no longer fears Deputy Marshals—he appoints them; and the present United States Marshal of Utah would refuse to serve a paper under the direction of the entire power of the United States government if "Joseph Mack" forbade the service. He no longer fears the proscriptions of legislators at Washington; they come to him, through the leaders of their parties, and arrange with him for the support of the trans-Mississippi states in which the influence of his Church control is determinative. He no longer hides his wives, at the ends of the earth, and visits them by stealth; they occupy a row of houses along one of the principal streets of Salt Lake City, and the pilgrim and the tourist alike admire his magnificence as they go by. He is still a law-breaker. He stands even more in defiance of the authority of the nation than he did in 1888, and he hates that authority as much as ever. But he is today not only the Prophet of the Church; he is the Prophet of Mammon; and all the powers and principalities of Mammon now give him gloriously: "All Hail!"



Chapter XIX. The Subjects of the Kingdom



But what of the Mormon people? How can such leaders, directing the Church to purposes that have become so cruel, so selfish, so dangerous and so disloyal—how can they maintain their power over followers who are themselves neither criminal nor degraded? That is a question which has given the pause of doubt to many criticisms of the Mormon communism of our day. That is the consideration which has obtained from the nation the protection of tolerance under which the Prophets flourish. For not only are the Mormon men and women obviously as worthy as any in the United States: there is plainly much of community value in their social life; there is manifestly a great deal of efficiency for human good in their system and in the leadership by which it is directed; and this good is so apparent that it appeals easily to the sympathetic conscience and uninformed mind of the country at large.

Let me try, then, to exhibit and to analyze the causes that keep such a virtuous and sturdy people loyally supporting the leadership of men so unworthy of them that if the people were as bad as the ends to which they are being now directed, modern Mormonism would be destroyed by its own evils.

In the first place, the average Mormon chief is sincere in his pretensions and self-justified in his aims. Usually, he has been born, in the Church, to a family that sees itself set apart, in holiness, from the rest of humanity, as the direct heirs of the ancient prophets or even as the lineal descendants of Christ. From his earliest age of understanding, he is taught the divine splendor of his birth and impressed with the high duties of his family privilege in being permitted to bear a part in preparing the earth for the second coming of the Savior. He is taught that, though all the world may be saved and nearly all the people of this sphere will in some eternity work out a measure of salvation, he and 143,999 others are to be a band of the elect who shall stand about the Savior, on Mount Zion, in the final day.

He is taught that, next to Christ, Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith, has performed the largest mission for the salvation of the world; that in the councils of the Gods, when the Creator measured off the ages of the human race on this earth, to the Savior was apportioned "the meridian of time," and to Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was given the "last dispensation," which is "the fullness of times," in order that the world, having apostatized from the atonement and the redemption, might be saved to heaven by Joseph, "the Choice Seer."

He is taught that the disciples of the Mormon Prophet are literally the disciples of Jesus Christ; that the laws of right and wrong are within the direction and subject to the authority of the Prophet, to be changed, enlarged or even revoked by his commandment; that all human laws are equally subject to his will, to be made or unmade at his order; that he can condemn, by his excommunication, any man or any nation to the vengeance of the Almighty here and hereafter; and that he can pronounce a blessing upon the head of any man, or the career of any people, by virtue of which blessing power shall be held in this world righteously and the man elevated to sit at the right hand of God in the world to come. He is taught that the greatest sin which can be committed—next to the denial of Christ—is to raise hand or voice against "the Lord's anointed," the Mormon prophets. And, for morality, he is taught from his infancy, that he must scrupulously practice those special virtues of his cult, industry, thrift, purity (except as in later life he shall be inducted into the practice of the new polygamy) honesty in business, and charity toward his needy fellow-men.

Formed in character by this teaching, as a steady inculcation throughout his youth, he comes to manhood strong of body, determined of mind, practicing rigidly and intolerantly his petty virtues of abstinence from the use of tobacco, tea and coffee, proclaiming with fanatical zeal the gospel as it has been proclaimed to him, and self-justified in all that he says or does by the large measure of sincerity in his delusions.

And that is, in some degree, the common training of all Mormons. Every Mormon boy attends Sunday School as soon as he is old enough to lisp his song of adoration to Joseph, the Kingly Prophet, and to the Savior with whom Joseph is early associated in his childish mind. At six years of age, he enters the Primary Association; at twelve he is in the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association; at fourteen or even earlier, he stands in the fast-day meeting and repeats like a creed: "Brethren and Sisters, I feel called upon to say a few words. I am not able to edify you, but I can say that I know this is the Church and Kingdom of God, and I bear my testimony that Joseph Smith was a Prophet and that Brigham Young was his lawful successor, and that the Prophet Joseph F. Smith is heir to all the authority which the Lord has conferred in these days for the salvation of men. And I feel that if I live my religion and do nothing to offend the Holy Spirit I will be saved in the presence of my Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. With these few words I will give way. Praying the Lord to bless each and every one of us is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."

At fourteen he becomes a Deacon of the Church. Between that age and twenty, he becomes an Elder. Very soon thereafter he becomes "a Seventy" and perhaps a high priest. He takes upon himself "covenants in holy places." He becomes "a priest unto the Most High God"—frequently before his eighteenth year. Usually before he is twenty he is sent on a mission to proclaim his gospel—the only one he has ever heard in his life—to "an unenlightened nation" and "a wicked world." For, in addition to being taught that the Mormons are the best, most virtuous, most temperate, most industrious, and most God-fearing of all peoples—a thing that is dinned into his ears from the pulpit every Sunday in the year—he has been convinced by equal iteration that the rest of the world is a festering mass of corruption.

Often he goes abroad, to some country whose language and customs he must learn and upon the charity of whose toilers he must depend for his maintenance. He goes with an implicit reliance upon God, strong in the small virtues that have been taught him from the time he knelt at his mother's knee. He sees, probably for the first time, the afflictions and the sins among mankind; and he keeps himself unspotted from them, congratulating himself that these grossnesses are unknown to his sheltered home-life and to the religion which he holds as the ideal of his soul. He proclaims his belief that God has spoken from the Heavens, through the Mormon Prophet, in this last day, to restore the gospel of Christ from which the peoples of the earth have wandered. He "bears testimony" to the whole world, and he binds himself to the authority of his Church by proclaiming his belief in it.

When he returns home, after years of service, he is called to the stand in the tabernacle to give a report of his work. He finds waiting for him a ready advancement in the offices of the Church, according as he may show himself worthy of advancement or as the power of family or the favor of ecclesiastical authority may obtain it for him. He marries a girl who has had a training almost identical with his own. She, too, has borne her testimony before she reached years of responsibility. She has taken her vows as a priestess at the age when he was dedicating himself a priest. She may even have performed a foreign mission. They have both been promised that they shall become kings and queens in the eternal world. They are bound by their covenants to obey their superior priests. They cannot disregard their Church affiliations without recanting their vows. The only way they can adhere to their covenants with their Almighty Father—the only way they can demonstrate their acceptance of the atoning power of the Redeemer's sacrifice—is by yielding such obedience to the Prophet as they would pay to the Father and the Son if They were on earth in Their proper persons. To deviate from this faithfulness is to be marked as a Judas Iscariot by all the Latter-Day Saints.

As soon as the Mormon becomes the head of a family—in addition to all the testimonies and performances which he must give as proof of his continued adherence—he must submit himself and his household to the examination and espionage of the ward teachers, who invade his home at least once a month. They enter absolutely as the proprietors of the house. If the husband is there, they ask him whether he performs his duties in the Church; whether he holds family prayer morning and evening; whether he "keeps the word of wisdom"—that is, does he abstain from the use of alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee—whether he pays a full tithe and all the prescribed donations to the Church; whether he has any hard feelings against any of his brethren and sisters; and finally, does he devoutly sustain the Prophet as the ruler of God's Kingdom upon earth. These questions, so far as they apply, are put to each member of the family above the age of eight years. Should the husband be away, all the inquiries concerning him are made of the wife. If both parents are absent, the questions concerning them are put to their children!

This one branch of the ecclesiastical service is sufficient of itself to mark the Mormon Church as the most perfectly disciplined institution among mankind. The teachers' quorum in any neighborhood consists of some tried elders, usually of considerable ability and experience. With these are associated numerous young men, many of them returned missionaries. The fact that they have countless other duties in the Church and many other and weightier responsibilities, is not permitted to excuse them from performing strictly this important labor. Perhaps a dozen or twenty families are assigned to a couple of teachers. They are required to visit each of these families once every month. And if they discover any lapse of fidelity, they report at once to the Bishop.

No one who has not seen them on their rounds will believe with what an air of divinely privileged authority they enter a home and force its secrets of conscience—with what an imposing and arrogant zeal—with what a calm assumption of spiritual over-lordship and inquisitorial right. Some few years ago after my public criticisms of Joseph F. Smith had been followed by my excommunication, two teachers, on their monthly rounds, came to my home in the evening and made their way calmly to the library where I was sitting with some members of my family. I had just returned from a long absence abroad, and the visit was an untimely intrusion at its best; but we observed the obligations of hospitality with what courtesy we could, and merely evaded the familiar questions which they began to put to us. Finally, the elder of the two teachers, a man of some local prominence in the Church, undertook to "bear testimony" to the wickedness of anyone who opposed the divine rule of Joseph F. Smith; and when I cut him short with a request that he leave the house, he was as shocked and surprised as if he had been Milton's Archangel Michael, after "the fall," and I, a defiant Adam, showing him the door.

In addition to the visitations of the ward teachers, some members of the Ladies Relief Society call upon every family usually once a month, not only to gather donations for the poor, but to have a little quiet talk with the wife and mother of the household. These women of the Relief Society are genuine "Sisters of Charity." In most cases they have themselves plenty of household cares, yet they give much of their time to visiting the sick, supplying the wants of the needy or ministering to the miseries of the afflicted; and if it were not for them and their noblework, the Mormon poor would fare ill in these days of Mormon Church grandeur. Outside of their monthly visitations, they have definite preaching to do. At the meetings of their organization, they "bear testimony" that Joseph was a Prophet—and so on. They have the quarterly stake conferences to attend. Their traveling missionaries go from Salt Lake to the four quarters of the globe to institute and maintain the discipline of the organization and to teach the methods of its practical work in Nursing Schools, mother's classes and the like. They make up one of the noblest bodies of women associated with any social movement of humanity. And in their zeal and submissiveness they are so innocently meek and "biddable" that they can listen with reverence to young Hyrum Smith publicly lecturing the grandmothers of the order for occasionally partaking of a cup of thin tea.

Under such a system of teaching, discipline and espionage, how can the average Mormon man or woman develop any independence of thought or action? At what time of life can he assert himself? Before he has attained the age of reason he has declared his faith in public. If he shall then, in his teens, express any doubt, the priests are ready for him. "You have borne your testimony many times in the Church," they say sternly. "Were you lying then, or have you lost the Spirit of God through your transgressions?" If he reveals any doubt to the ward teachers, they will overwhelm him with argument, and either absolutely reconvert him or silence him with authority. The pressure of family love and pride will be brought to bear upon him. The ecclesiastical authorities will move against him. He knows that every one of his relatives will be humiliated by his unfaithfulness. His "sin" will become known to the whole community, and he will be looked at askance by his friends and his companions.

After he has taken his vows as a priest, how shall he dare to violate them? He knows that if he loses his faith on a mission—in other words, if he dares to make any inquiry into the authenticity of the mission which he is performing—he becomes a deserter from God in the very ranks of battle. He knows that he will be held forever in dishonor among his people; that he will be looked upon as one worse than dead; that he will ruin his own life and despoil his parents of all their eternal comfort and their hope in him.

While I was editing the Salt Lake Tribune, a son of one of the famous apostles came to me with some anxious inquiries, and said: "Frank, I have been working in the Church and teaching this gospel so assiduously for nearly forty years that I have never had time to find out whether it's true or not!"

If the Mormon, in his later years of manhood, dares to doubt, he must either reveal his disloyalty to the ward teachers or continue to deny it, from month to month, and remain a supine servant of authority. If he reveals it, he knows that the news of his defection will permeate the entire circle with which he is associated in politics, in business and in religion. If his superstition does not hold him, his worldly prudence will. He knows that all the aid of the community will be withdrawn from him; every voice that has expressed affection for him will speak in hate; every hand that has clasped his in friendship will be turned against him. And into this very prudence there enters something of a moral warning. For he has seen how many a man, deprived of the association and fraternity of the Church, feeling himself shunned in a lonely ostracism, has not been strong enough to endure in rectitude and has fallen into dissipation. Every instance of the sort is rehearsed by the faithful, with many exultant expressions of mourning, in the hearing of the doubter. And finally, it is the prediction of the priests that no apostate can prosper; and though the Mormon people are charitable and do not intend to be unjust, they inevitably tend to fulfill the prophecy and devote the apostate to material destruction.

The great doctrine of the Mormon faith is obedience; the one proof of grace is conformity. So long as a man pays a full tithe, contributes all the required donations, and yields unquestioningly to the orders of the priests, he may even depart in a moral sense from any other of the Church's laws and find himself excused. But any questioning of the rulership of the Prophets—the rightfulness of their authority or the justice of its exercise is apostasy, is a denial of the faith, is a sin against the Holy Ghost. The man who obeys in all things is promised that he shall come forth in the morning of the first resurrection; the man who disobeys, and by his disobedience apostatizes, is condemned to work out, through an eternity of suffering, his offense against the Holy Spirit. At the first sign of defection—almost inevitably discovered in its incipiency—the rebel is either disciplined into submission or at once pushed over "the battlements of Heaven!"

By such perfect means, the leaders, chosen under a pretense of revelation from God, maintain an unassailable sanctity in the eyes of the people, who are themselves priests. These people implicitly believe that the voice of the leader is the voice of God. They follow with a passionate devotion that is made up of a fanatical priestly faith and of a sympathy that sees their Prophets "persecuted" by an ungenerous, impure and vindictive world. We love that for which we suffer; and it has become the inheritance of the Mormons to love the priesthood, for whose protection their parents and grandparents suffered, and under whose oppressions they now suffer themselves.

Joseph Smith, the original Prophet, was slain in the Carthage jail; to the Mormon mind this is proof that he was the anointed of God and that he sealed his testimony with his blood, as did the Savior. John Taylor, afterwards President of the Church, was not slain at Carthage, but only wounded; and this to the Mormons is proof that he was of the eternal kindred of the Prophets, because, under God's direction, he gave his blood to their defense. But Willard Richards, a companion of Smith and Taylor, was not even injured at Carthage; and this is accepted as proof that God had charge of his holy ones, and would not permit wicked men to do them harm. When the people left Nauvoo and journeyed through Iowa, some of the citizens of that state would not harbor them; and this is argued as evidence that the Mormon movement was God's work, since the hand of the wicked was against it; but in some localities of Iowa the emigrants were aided, and this also is proof that the Mormon movement was God's work, since the hearts of the people were melted to assist it. When Johnston's army was sent to Utah, it was proof that the Mormon Church was the true Church, hated and persecuted by a wicked nation; when Johnston's army withdrew without a battle, it was a new guarantee of the divinity of the work; and it is even believed among the Mormons that the Civil War was ordained from the heavens, at the sudden command of God, to compel Johnston's withdrawal and save God's people.

In the same way the persecutions of "the raid," and the cessation of those persecutions—the early trials of poverty and the present abundance of prosperity—the threat of the Smoot investigation and the abortive conclusion of that exposure—are all argued as proofs of the divinity of a persecuted Church or given as instances of the miraculous "overruling" of God to prosper his chosen people. No matter what occurs, the Prophets, by applying either one of these formulae, can translate the incident into a new proof of grace; and their followers submissively accept the interpretation.

On the night of April 18, 1905, Joseph F. Smith and some eight of his sons sat in his official box at the Salt Lake theatre to watch a prize fight that lasted for twenty gory rounds. The Salt Lake Tribune published the fact that the Prophet of God, and vicegerent of Christ, had given the approval of his "holy presence" to this clumsy barbarity. A devout old lady, who had been with the Church since the days of Nauvoo, rebuked us bitterly for publishing such a falsehood about President Smith. "How dare you tell such wicked lies about God's servants?" she scolded. "President Smith wouldn't do such a wicked thing as attend a prize fight. And you know that no man with any sense of decency would take his young sons to look at such a dreadful thing!" Some time later, when the facts in the case had come to her, in her retirement, from her friends, the editor called upon her to quiz her about the incident. She said: "I'm sure I don't see what business it is of the outside world anyhow what President Smith does. He has a right to go to the theatre if he wants to. I don't believe they would have anything but what's good in the Salt Lake theatre. It was built by our people and they own it. And if it wasn't good, President Smith wouldn't have taken his boys there."

And this was not merely the absurdity of an old woman. It is the logic of all the faithful. The leaders cannot do wrong—because it is not wrong, if they do it. No criticism of them can be effective. No act of theirs can be proven an error. If they do not do a thing, it was right not to do it; and it would have been a sin if it had been done. But if they do that thing, then it was right to do it; and it would have been a sin if it had not been done.

This reliance upon the almighty power and prophetic infallibility of the leaders prevents the Mormon people from truly appreciating the dangers that threaten them. It keeps them ignorant of outside sentiment. It makes them despise even a national hostility. And it has left them without gratitude, too, for a national grace. Before these people can be roused to any independence of responsible thought, it will be necessary to break their trust in the ability of their leaders to make bargains of protection with the world; and then it will still be necessary to force the eyes of their self-complacency to turn from the satisfied contemplation of their own virtues. "You will never be able to reach the conscience of the Mormons," a man who knows them has declared. "I have had my experiences with both leaders and people. If you tell them 'You're ninety-nine-and-one-half per cent. pure gold,' they will ask, surprised and indignant: 'What? Why, what's the matter with the other half per cent?'"



Chapter XX

Conclusion

Of the men who could have written this narrative, some are dead; some are prudent; some are superstitious; and some are personally foresworn. It appeared to me that the welfare of Utah and the common good of the whole United States required the publication of the facts that I have tried to demonstrate. Since there was apparently no one else who felt the duty and also had the information or the wish to write, it seemed my place to undertake it. And I have done it gladly. For when I was subscribing the word of the Mormon chiefs for the fulfillment of our statehood pledges, I engaged my own honor too, and gave bond myself against the very treacheries that I have here recorded.

We promised that the Church had forever renounced the doctrine of polygamy and the practice of plural marriage living, by a "revelation from God" promulgated by the supreme Prophet of the Church and accepted by the vote of the whole congregation assembled in conference. We promised the retirement of the Mormon Prophets from the political direction of their followers—the abrogation of the claim that the Mormon Church was the "Kingdom of God" re-established upon earth to supersede all civil government—the abandonment by the Church of any authority to exercise a temporal power in competition with the civil law. We promised to make the teaching and practice of the Church conform to the institutions of a Republic in which all citizens are equal in liberty. We promised that the Church should cease to accumulate property for the support of illegal practices and un-American government. And we made a record in proof of our promises by the anti-polygamy manifesto of 1890 and its public ratification; by the petition for amnesty and the acceptance of amnesty upon conditions; by the provisions of Utah's enabling act and of Utah's state constitution; by the acts of Congress and the judicial decisions restoring escheated Church property; by the proceedings of the Federal courts of Utah in re-opening citizenship to the alien members of the Mormon Church; by the acquiescence of the Gentiles of Utah in the proceedings by which statehood was obtained; and finally, and most indisputably, by the admission of Utah into equal sovereignty in the Union—since that admission would never have been granted, except upon the explicit understanding that the state was to uphold the laws and institutions of the American republic in accordance with our covenants.

Of all these promises the Church authorities have kept not one. The doctrine and practice of polygamy have been restored by the Church, and plural marriage living is practiced by the ruler of the kingdom and his favorites with all the show and circumstance of an oriental court. There are now being born in his domains thousands of unfortunate children outside the pale of law and convention, for whom there can be entertained no hope that any statute will ever give them a place within the recognition of civilized society. The Prophet of the Church rules with an absolute political power in Utah, with almost as much authority in Idaho and Wyoming, and with only a little less autocracy in parts of Colorado, Montana, Oregon, Washington, California, Arizona and New Mexico. He names the Representatives and Senators in Congress from his own state, and influences decisively the selection of such "deputies of the people" from many of the surrounding states. Through his ambassadors to the government of the United States, sitting in House and Senate, he chooses the Federal officials for Utah and influences the appointment of those for the neighboring states and territories. He commands the making and unmaking of state law. He holds the courts and the prosecuting officers to a strict accountability. He levies tribute upon the people of Utah and helps to loot the citizens of the whole nation by his alliance with the political and financial Plunderbund at Washington. He has enslaved the subjects of his kingdom absolutely, and he looks to it as the destiny of his Church to destroy all the governments of the world and to substitute for them the theocracy—the "government by God" and administration by oracle—of his successors.

And yet, even so, I could not have recorded the incidents of this betrayal as mere matters of current history—and I would never have written them in vindication of myself—if I had not been certain that there is a remedy for the evil conditions in Utah, and that such a narrative as this will help to hasten the remedy and right the wrong. Except for the aggressive aid given by the national administrations to the leaders of the Mormon Church, the people of Utah and the intermountain states would never have permitted the revival of a priestly tyranny in politics. Except for the protection of courts and the enforced silence of politicians and journalists, polygamy could not have been restored in the Mormon Church. Except for the interference of powerful influences at Washington to coerce the Associated Press and affect the newspapers of the country, the Mormon leaders would never have dared to defy the sensibilities of our civilization. Except for the greed of the predatory "Interests" of the nation, the commercial absolutism of the Mormon hierarchy could never have been established. The present conditions in the Mormon kingdom are due to national influences. The remedy for those conditions is the withdrawal of national sympathy and support.

Break the power at Washington of Joseph F. Smith, ruler of the Kingdom of God, and every seeker after federal patronage in Utah will desert him. Break his power as a political partner of the Republican party now—and of the Democratic party should it succeed to office—and every ambitious politician in the West will rebel against his throne. Break his power to control the channels of public communication through interested politicians and commercial agencies, and the sentiment of the civilized world will join with the revolt of the "American movement" in Utah to overthrow his tyrannies. Break his connection with the illegal trusts and combines of the United States, and his financial power will cease to be a terror and a menace to the industry and commerce of the intermountain country.

The nation owes Utah such a rectification, for the nation has been, in this matter, a chief sinner and a strong encourager of sin. President Theodore Roosevelt, representing the majesty of the Republic, stayed us when we might have won our own liberties in the revolt that was provoked by the election of Senator Apostle Reed Smoot. Misled by political and personal advisers, the President procured delays in the Smoot investigation. He seduced senators from their convictions. He certified the ambassador from the Kingdom of God as a qualified senator of the United States. He gave the hand of fellowship to Joseph, the tyrant of the Kingdom. He rebuked our friends and his own, in their struggle for our freedom, by warning them that they were raising the flag of a religious warfare. He filled the Mormon priests with the belief that they might proceed unrestrainedly to the sacrifice of women and children upon the polygamous altar, to the absolute rule of politics in the intermountain states, and to the commercial exploitation of their community in partnership with the trusts. The one policy that President Taft seems to have accepted unimpaired from his predecessor is this same respect for the power of the Mormon kingdom. In his placid but wholehearted way he has encouraged his co-ordinate ruler, the Mormon Prophet, and extended the Executive license to the support and inevitable increase of these religious tyrannies of the Mormon hierarchs which now the people of Utah, unaided, are wholly unable to combat.

And the nation owes such a rectification not only to Utah, but also to itself. The commercial and financial Plunderbund that is now preying upon the whole country is sustained at Washington by the agents of the Mormon Church. The Prophet not only delivers his own subjects up to pillage; he helps to deliver the people of the entire United States. His senators are not representatives of a political party; they are the tools of "the Interests" that are his partners. The shameful conditions in Utah are not isolated and peculiar to that state; they are largely the result of national conditions and they have a national effect. The Prophet of Utah is not a local despot only: he is a national enemy; and the nation must deal with him.

I do not ask for a resumption of cruelty, for a return to proscription. I ask only that the nation shall rouse itself to a sense of its responsibility. The Mormon Church has shown its ability to conform to the demands of the republic—even by "revelation from God" if necessary. The leaders of the Church are now defiant in their treasons only because the nation has ceased to reprove and the national administrations have powerfully encouraged. As soon as the Mormon hierarchy discovers that the people of this country, wearied of violated treaties and broken covenants, are about to exclude the political agents of the Prophet from any participation in national affairs, the advisers of his inspiration will quickly persuade him to make a concession to popular wrath. As soon as the "Interests" realize that the burden of shame in Utah is too large to be comfortable on their backs, they will throw it off. The President of the United States will be unable to gain votes by patronizing the crucifiers of women and children. The national administrations will not dare to stand against the efforts of the Gentiles and independent Mormons of Utah to regain their liberty. And Utah, the Islam of the West, will depose its old Sultan and rise free.

With this hope—in this conviction—I have written, in all candor, what no reasons of personal advantage or self-justification could have induced me to write. I shall be accused of rancor, of religious antagonism, of political ambition, of egotistical pride. But no man who knows the truth will say sincerely that I have lied. Whatever is attributed as my motive, my veracity in this book will not be successfully impeached. In that confidence, I leave all the attacks that guilt and bigotry can make upon me, to the public to whom they will be addressed. The truth, in its own time, will prevail, in spite of cunning. I am willing to await that time—for myself—and for the Mormon people.



The End