Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft Part 18

"I don't know where to go. A friend of mine told me you would advise me.

He said perhaps you could make them give me a certificate. I don't want to expose my husband. I only want something so that my boy, when he grows up, won't be"--

What could I do? What could anyone do for this unfortunate girl, seduced in the name of religion, with the aid of a Church that repudiated her for its own protection? She had to suffer, and see her boy suffer, the penalties of a social outcast.

Her case was typical of many that came to my personal knowledge. At the Sunday Schools, in the choirs, in the joint meetings of mutual improvement a.s.sociations, young girls--taught to believe that plural marriage was sacred, and reverencing the polygamous prophets as the anointed of the Lord--were being seduced into clandestine marriage relations with polygamous elders who persuaded their victims that the anti-polygamous manifesto had been given out to save a persecuted people from the cruelties of an unjust government; that it was never intended it should be obeyed; that all the celestial blessings promised by revelation to the polygamist and his wives were still waiting for those who would dare to enjoy them.

If the tempted girl turned to one of her women friends, and besought her to say, on her honor, whether she thought that plural marriage was right, the other was likely enough to answer: "Yes, yes. Indeed it is.

Promise me you won't tell a living soul. Tell me you'll die first....

I'm married to Brother I,----, the leader of the ward choir."

If she asked her mother: "Tell me. Is plural marriage wrong?" the mother could only reply: "Oh--I don't know--I don't know. Your father said it was right, and I accepted it--and we practiced it--and you have always loved your other brothers and sisters, and it seems to me it can't be wrong, since we have lived it. But--Oh, I don't know, daughter. I don't know."

The man who is tempting her knows. He has the word of an apostle, the example of the Prophet, the secret teaching of the Church. He courts her as any other religious young girl might be courted--with little attentions, at the meetings, over the music books--and he has, to aid him, a religious exaltation in her, induced by his plea that she is to enter into the mystery of the holy covenant, to become one of the most faithful of a persecuted Church, to defy the wicked laws of its enemies.

She is just as happy in her betrothal as any other innocent girl of her age. Even the secrecy is sweet to her. And then, some evening, they saunter down a side street to a strange house--or even to a back orchard where a man is waiting in a cowl under a tree (perhaps vulgarly disguised as a woman with a veil over his face)--and they are married in a mutter of which she hears nothing.

Such a case was related to me by a horrified mother who had discovered that the marriage ceremony had been performed by an accomplice of the libertine who had seduced her daughter and since confessed his crime.

But whether the ceremony be performed by a priest of the Church or by a more unauthorized scoundrel, the girl is equally at the mercy of her "husband" and equally betrayed in the world. Even in this case of the pretended marriage, the elders of the ward hushed up the threatened prosecution because the authorities of the Church objected to a proceeding that might expose other plural marriages more orthodox.

Hundreds of Mormon men and women personally thanked me by letter or in interviews at the Tribune office, for our editorial attacks upon the hierarchy for encouraging these horrors. Strangers spoke to me on railroad trains, thanking me and telling me of cases. Three Mormon physicians, themselves priests of the Church, told me of innumerable instances that had come to them in their practice, and said that they did not know what was to become of the community. One Mormon woman wrote me from Mexico to say that she had exiled herself there with her husband and his two plural wives, and that she felt she had worked out sufficient atonement for all her descendants; yet she saw girls of the family on the verge of entering into plural marriage--if they had not already done so--and she begged us to continue our newspaper exposures, so that others might be saved from the bitter experiences of her life.

President Winder met me on the street in 1905, towards the close of the year, and said: "Frank, you need not continue your fight against plural marriage. President Smith has stopped it." "Then," I replied, "two things are evident: I have been telling the truth when I said that plural marriage had been renewed--in spite of the authorized denials--and if President Smith has stopped it now, he has had authority over it all the time."

To me, or to any other well-informed citizen of Utah, President Winder's admission was not necessary to prove Smith's responsibility. In the April conference of 1904, Smith had read an "official statement," signed by him, prohibiting plural marriages and threatening to excommunicate any officer or member of the Church who should solemnize one; and this official statement was carried to the Senate committee by Professor James E. Talmage, and offered in proof that the Church was keeping its covenant.

For us, in Utah, the declaration served merely to illuminate the dark places of ecclesiastical bad faith. We knew that from the year 1900 down, there had never been a sermon preached in any Mormon tabernacle, by any of the general authorities of the Church, against the practice of plural marriage, or against the propriety of the practice, or against the sanct.i.ty of the doctrine. We knew, on the contrary, that upon numerous occasions, at funerals and in public a.s.semblages, Joseph F.

Smith and John Henry Smith and others of the hierarchy, had proclaimed the doctrine as sacred. We knew that it was still being taught in the secret prayer meetings. Practically all the leading authorities of the Church were living in plural marriage. Some of them had taken new wives since the manifesto. None of them had been actually punished. All were in high favor. And though Joseph F. Smith denied his responsibility, every one knew that none of these things could be, except with his active approval.

Perhaps, for a brief time, while Smoot's case was still before the Senate, some check was put upon the renewal of polygamy. But, even then, there were undoubtedly, occasional marriages allowed, where the parties were so situated as to make concealment perfect. And all checks were withdrawn when Smoot's case was favorably disposed of, and the Church found itself protected by the political power of the administration at Was.h.i.+ngton and by a political and financial alliance with "the Interests."

Today, in spite of the difficulty of discovering plural marriages, because of the concealments by which they are protected, the Salt Lake Tribune is publis.h.i.+ng a list of more than two hundred "new" polygamists with the dates and circ.u.mstances of their marriages; and these are probably not one tenth of all the cases. During President Taft's visit to Salt Lake City, in 1909, Senator Thomas Kearns, one of the proprietors of the Tribune, offered to prove to one of the President's confidants hundreds of cases of new polygamy, if the President would designate two secret service men to investigate. I believe, from my own observation, that there are more plural wives among the Mormons today than there were before 1890. Then the young men married early, and were chiefly monogamists. Now the change in economic conditions has raised the age at which men marry; it has made more bachelors than there were when simpler modes of life prevailed. The young women have fewer offers of marriage, and more of these come from well-to-do polygamists. The girls are still taught, as they have always been, that marriage is necessary to salvation; and they are betrayed into plural marriage by natural conditions as well as by the persuasions of the Church.

A perfect "underground" system has been put in operation for the protection of the lawbreakers. If they reside in Utah, they frequently go to Canada or to Mexico to be married; and the whole polygamous paraphernalia can be transported with ease and comfort--the priest who performs the ceremony, the husband, sometimes the legal wife to give her consent so that she may not be d.a.m.ned, and the young woman whose soul is to be saved. And this "underground" is maintained against the reluctance of the Mormon people. They aid in it from a kindly feeling toward their fellow-believers--and with some faint thought that perhaps these wayfarers are being "persecuted" but all the time with no personal sympathy for polygamy. By one sincere word of reprehension from Joseph F. Smith every "underground" station could be abolished, the route could be destroyed, and an end could be put to the protection that is, of itself, an encouragement to polygamous practice. He has never spoken that word.

Recently, the way in which the new polygamy is perpetrated in Utah has been almost officially revealed. A patriarch of the Church, resident in Davis County, less than fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, had been solemnizing these unlawful unions at wholesale. The situation became so notorious that the authorities of the Church felt themselves impelled about September, 1910, to put restrictions upon his activity. In the course of their investigations they discovered that he did not know the persons whom he married. They would come to his house, in the evening, wearing handkerchiefs over their faces; he sat hidden behind a screen in his parlor; and under these circ.u.mstances the two were declared man and wife, and were sealed up to everlasting bliss to rule over princ.i.p.alities and kingdoms, with power of endless increase and progression. He refused to tell the hierarchy from which one of the authorities he had received his endowment to perpetrate these crimes.

He refused to give the names of any of the victims, claiming that he did not know them!

It is probable that for a long time plural marriage ceremonies were not solemnized within the Salt Lake temple. Now, we know that there have lately been such marriages in it, and at Manti, and at Logan, and perhaps also in the temple at St. George. There are cases on record where a man has a wife on one side of the Utah-Colorado line and another wife across the border. No prosecutions are possible in Utah; for, as Joseph F. Smith told the Senate committee, the officers of the law have too much "respect" for the ecclesiastical rulers of the state.

Similarly, in the surrounding states, the officers show exactly the same sort of "respect" and for the same reason. They not only know the Church's power in local politics, but they see the national administration allowing the polygamists and priests of the Church to select the Federal officials, and they are not eager to rouse a resentment against themselves, at Was.h.i.+ngton as well as at home, by prosecuting polygamous Mormons.

Some few years ago, Irving Sayford, then representing the Los Angeles Times, asked Mr. P. H. Lannan, of the Salt Lake Tribune, why someone did not swear out warrants against President Smith for his offenses against the law. Mr. Lannan said: "You mean why don't I do it?"

"Oh, no," Mr. Sayford explained, "I don't mean you particularly."

"Oh, yes, you do," Mr. Lannan said. "You mean me if you mean anybody. If it's not my duty, it's no one's duty.... Well, I'll tell you why.... I don't make a complaint, because neither the district attorney nor the prosecuting attorney would entertain it. If he did entertain it and issued a warrant, the sheriff would refuse to serve the warrant. If the sheriff served the warrant, there would be no witnesses unless I got them. If I could get the witnesses, they wouldn't testify to the facts on the stand. If they did testify to the facts, the jury wouldn't bring in a verdict of guilty. If the jury did bring in a verdict of guilty, the judge would suspend sentence. If the judge did not suspend sentence, he would merely fine President Smith, three hundred dollars. And within twenty-four hours there would be a procession of Mormons and Gentiles crawling on their hands and knees to Church headquarters to offer to pay that three hundred dollar fine at a dime apiece."

Mr. Lannan's statement of the case was later substantiated by an action of the Salt Lake District Court. Upon the birth of the twelfth child that has been borne to President Smith in plural marriage since the manifesto of 1890, Charles Mostyn Owen made complaint in the District Court at Salt Lake, charging Mr. Smith with a statutory offense. The District Attorney reduced the charge to "unlawful cohabitation" (a misdemeanor), without the complainant's consent or knowledge. All the preliminaries were then graciously arranged and President Smith appeared in the District Court by appointment. He pleaded guilty. The judge in sentencing him remarked that as this was the first time he had appeared before the court, he would be fined three hundred dollars, but that should he again appear, the penalty might be different. Smith had already testified in Was.h.i.+ngton, before the Senate Committee, to the birth of eleven children in plural marriage since he had given his covenant to the country to cease living in polygamy; he had practically defied the Senate and the United States to punish him; he had said that he would "stand" his "chances" before the law and courts of his own state. All of this was well known to the judge who fined him three hundred dollars--a sum of money scarcely equal to the amount of Smith's official income for the time he was in court!

A leader of the Church, not long ago, asked me, in private conference, what was the policy of the American party with regard to the new plural wives and their children. I replied that as far as I knew it, the policy was to have the Church accept its responsibility in the matter and give the wives and children whatever recognition could be given them by their religion. The Church was guilty before G.o.d and man of having encouraged the awful condition. It was unspeakably cowardly and unfair for the Church leaders to put the whole burden of suffering on the helpless women and children; and, moreover, this course was a justification to polygamists in deserting their wives, on the ground that the Church had never sanctioned the relation.

This Church leader, himself a new polygamist, answered miserably: "The Church will not let itself be put in such a light before the country.

That would be to admit that it has been responsible all the time."

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 pa.s.s 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 circ.u.mstances of the ceremony. She has justified her degradation by the a.s.sumption that G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, 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 a.s.sessment made by the Church; although, by the same law of t.i.thing, every Mormon was held obliged to consecrate all his earthly possessions to "G.o.d's work" on the demand of the Prophet. The common fund was used, then, to promote community enterprises and to relieve the poor. The t.i.the-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 t.i.the, but he was also given an earthly reward--for the Church admitted him to many opportunities and enterprises from which the n.i.g.g.ardly were adroitly excluded. He was spiritually elevated and enlarged by giving for a purpose that he considered worthy--the fulfillment of a commandment of G.o.d 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 t.i.the-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 a.s.sistance 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.thing? Well, some go straightway to d.i.c.kering 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 t.i.the the balance." To Smith's inspired financial genius this was "d.i.c.kering with the Lord." He wished to collect ten per cent of the farmer's entire yield--a t.i.the that would have bankrupted the farmer in three years!

Nor is the t.i.the 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 canva.s.s, 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 a.s.sist 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 G.o.d'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 a.s.sociations pay in ten cents each for the purchase of books, etc. On Nickel Friday, once a month, the infant members of the Primary a.s.sociation pay in five cents each to the a.s.sociation. Religious Cla.s.s Donations are paid once a month by the Mormon public-school pupils for the support of the week-day religious cla.s.ses. Amus.e.m.e.nt Hall Donations are collected from the members of a ward whose bishop finds them able to build a place of amus.e.m.e.nt. 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 t.i.thes and donations, the ecclesiast still boasts: "We are not like the 'preachers for hire and diviners for money.' We never pa.s.s 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 t.i.thes, 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 inst.i.tutions" 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 G.o.d" to sustain them. There is no voice of G.o.d 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 Inst.i.tution (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 s.h.i.+eld "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 pa.s.sport to Heaven) have been increased by the sacred Smith trademark that admits the wearer to the Smith Heaven.

The Church's banking inst.i.tutions, 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 t.i.thes 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 compet.i.tion of independent salt gardens (as in the case of Smurthwaite and Taylor.) He issues his edict of protection as "the vicegerent of G.o.d 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.