Before I reached Utah, my friends, Ben Rich and James Devine, met me, on
the train. The news of President Woodruff's "revelation" had percolated
through the whole community. The Gentiles were alarmed for themselves.
My friends were anxious for me. All the old enmities that had so long
divided Utah were arranging themselves for a new conflict. And Rich and
Devine had come to urge me to remember my promise that I would hold to
my candidacy no matter who should appear in the field against me.
Of my father's stand in the crisis Rich could give me only one
indication: after a conference in the offices of the Presidency, Rich
had said to President Woodruff: "Then I suppose I may as well close
up Frank's rooms at the Templeton"--the hotel in which my friends had
opened political headquarters for me--and my father, accompanying him
to an anteroom, had hinted significantly: "I think you should not close
Frank's rooms just yet. He may need them."
Rich brought me word, too, that the Church authorities were expecting
to see me; and soon as I arrived in Salt Lake City, I hastened to the
little plastered house in which the Presidency had its offices.
President Woodruff, my father, and Joseph F. Smith were there, in
the large room of their official apartments. We withdrew, for private
conference, into the small retiring room in which I had consulted with
"Brother Joseph Mack" when he was on the underground--in 1888--and had
consulted with President Woodruff about his "manifesto," in 1890. The
change in their circumstances, since those unhappy days, was in my mind
as I sat down.
President Woodruff sat at the head of a bare walnut table in a chair so
large that it rather dwarfed him; and he sank down in it, to an attitude
of nervous reluctance to speak, occupied with his hands. Smith took his
place at the opposite end of the board, with dropped eyes, his chair
tilted back, silent, but (as I soon saw) unusually alert and attentive.
My father assumed his inevitable composure--firmly and almost unmovingly
seated--and looked at me squarely with a not unkind premonition of a
smile.
President Woodruff continued silent. Ordinarily, anything that came
from the Lord was quite convincing to him and needed no argument (in his
mind) to make it convincing to others. I could not suppose that the
look of determination on my face troubled him. It was more likely that
something unusual in the mental attitudes of his councillors was the
cause of his hesitation; and with this suspicion to arouse me I
became increasingly aware (as the conference proceeded) of two rival
watchfulnesses upon me.
"Well?" I said. "What was it you wanted of me?"
Smith looked up at the President. And Smith had always, hitherto, seemed
so unseeing of consequences, and, therefore, unappreciative of means,
that his betrayal of interest was indicative of purpose. I thought I
could detect, in the communication which his manner made, the plan of
my father's ecclesiastical rivals to remove him from the scene of his
supreme influence over the President, and the plan of ambitious church
politicians to remove me from their path by the invocation of God's word
appointing father to the Senate.
"Frank," the President announced, "it is the will of the Lord that your
father should go to the Senate from Utah."
As he hesitated, I said: "Well, President Woodruff?"
He added, with less decision: "And we want you to tell us how to bring
it about?"
It was evident that getting the revelation was easy to his spiritualized
mind, but that fulfilling it was difficult to his unworldliness.
"President Woodruff," I replied, "you have received the revelation on
the wrong point. You do not need a voice from heaven to convince anyone
that my father is worthy to go to the Senate, but you will need a
revelation to tell how he is to get there."
He seemed to raise himself to the inspiration of divine authority. "The
only difficulty that we have encountered," he said, "is the fact that
the legislators are pledged to you. Will you not release them from their
promises and tell them to vote for your father?"
"No," I said. "And my father would not permit me to do it, even if I
could. He knows that I gave my word of honor to my supporters to stand
as a candidate, no matter who might enter against me. He knows that he
and I have given our pledges at Washington that political dictation in
Utah by the heads of the Mormon Church shall cease. Of all men in Utah
we cannot be amenable to such dictation. If you can get my supporters
away from me--very well. I shall have no personal regrets. But you
cannot get me away from my supporters."
This inclusion of my father in my refusal evidently disconcerted
President Woodruff; and, as evidently, it had its significance to Joseph
F. Smith.
I went on: "Before I was elected to the House of Representatives, I
asked my father if he intended to be a candidate for the Senate. I
knew that some prominent Gentiles, desiring to curry favor at Church
headquarters had solicited his candidacy. I had been told that General
Clarkson and others had assured him by letter that his election would be
accepted at Washington, and elsewhere. I discussed the matter with him
fully. He agreed with me that his election would be a violation of the
understanding had with the country; and he declared that he did not care
to become again the storm center of strife to his people, nor did he
feel that he could honorably break our covenant to the country. With
this clear understanding between us, I made my pledges to men who, in
supporting me, cast aside equally advantageous relations which they
might have established with another. I can't withdraw now without
dishonor."
My father said: "Don't let us have any misunderstandings. As President
Woodruff stated the matter to me, I understood that it would be pleasing
to the Lord, if the people desired my election to the Senate and it
wouldn't antagonize the country."
"Yes, yes," the President put in. "That's what I mean."
Smith said, rather sourly: "The people are always willing to do what the
Lord desires--if no one gives them bad counsel."
Both he and my father emphasized the fact that the business interests of
the East were making strong representations to the Presidency in support
of my father's election; and I suspected (what I afterwards found to be
the case) that both Joseph F. Smith and Apostle John Henry Smith, were
by this time, in close communication with Republican politicians. There
was a calm assumption, everywhere, that the Church had power to decide
the election, if it could be induced to act; and this assumption was
a deplorable evidence, to me, of the willingness of some of our former
allies to drag us swiftly to the shame of a broken covenant, if only
they could profit in purse or politics by our dishonor. I would not be
an agent in any such betrayal, but I had to refuse without offending
my father's trust in the divine inspiration of President Woodruff's
decision and without aiding the Smiths in their conspiracy.
Either at this conference or one of the later ones, two or three
apostles came into the room; and among them was Apostle Brigham Young,
son of the Prophet Brigham who had led the Mormons to the Salt Lake
Valley. When he understood my refusal to abandon my candidacy, he said
angrily: "This is a serious filial disrespect. I know my father never
would have brooked such treatment from me." And I retorted: "I don't
know who invited you into this conference, but I deny your right to
instruct me in my filial duty. If my father doesn't understand that the
senatorship has lost its value for me--that it's a cross now--then my
whole lifetime of devotion to him has been in vain."
My father rose and put his arm around my shoulders. "This boy," he
said, "is acting honorably. I want him to know--and you to know--that
I respect the position he has taken. If he is elected, he shall have my
blessing."
That was the only understanding I had with him--but it was enough. I
could know that I was not to lose his trust and affection by holding to
our obligations of honor; and--an assurance almost as precious--I could
know that he would not consciously permit legislators to be crushed by
the vengeance of the Church if they refused to yield to its pressure.
A few days after my arrival in Utah, and while this controversy was at
its height, my father's birthday was celebrated (January 11, 1896),
with all the patriarchal pomp of a Mormon family gathering, in his big
country house outside Salt Lake City. All his descendants and collateral
relatives were there, as well as the members of the Presidency and many
friends. After dinner, the usual exercises of the occasion were held in
the large reception hall of the house, with President Woodruff and my
father and two or three other Church leaders seated in semi-state at one
end of the hall, and the others of the company deferentially withdrawn
to face them. Towards the end of the program President Woodruff
rose from his easy chair, and made a sort of informal address of
congratulation; and in the course of it, with his hand on my father's
shoulder, he said benignly: "Abraham was the friend of God. He had
only one son on whom all his hopes were set. But the voice of the Lord
commanded him to sacrifice Isaac upon an altar; and Abraham trusted the
Lord and laid his son upon the altar, in obedience to God's commands.
Now here is another servant of the Most High and a friend of God. I
refer to President Cannon, whose birthday we are celebrating. He has
twenty-one sons; and if it shall be the will of the Lord that he must
sacrifice one of them he ought to be as willing as Abraham was, for he
will have twenty left. And the son should be as willing as Isaac. We can
all safely trust in the Lord. He will require no sacrifice at our hands
without purpose."
I remarked to a relative beside me that the altar was evidently ready
for me, but that I feared I should have to "get out and rustle my own
ram in the thicket." I received no reply. I heard no word of comment
from anyone upon the President's speech. It was accepted devoutly,
with no feeling that he had abused the privileges of a guest. Everyone
understood (as I did) that President Woodruff was the gentlest of men;
that he had often professed and always shown a kindly affection for me;
but that the will of the Lord being now known, he thought I should be
proud to be sacrificed to it!
Among the legislators pledged to me were Mormon Bishops and other
ecclesiasts who had promised their constituents to vote for me and who
now stood between a betrayal of their people and a rebellion against the
power of the hierarchy. I released one of them from his pledge, because
of his pathetic fear that he would be eternally damned if he did not
obey "the will of the Lord." The others went to the Presidency to admit
that if they betrayed their people they would have to confess what
pressure had been put upon them to force them to the betrayal. I went to
notify my father (as I had notified the representatives of every
other candidate) that we were going to call a caucus of the Republican
majority of the legislature, and later I was advised that President
Woodruff and his Councillor's had appointed a committee to investigate
and report to them how many members could be counted upon to support
my father's candidacy. The committee (composed of my uncle Angus, my
brother Abraham, and Apostle John Henry Smith) brought back word that
even among the men who had professed a willingness to vote for my father
there was great reluctance and apprehension, and that in all probability
his election could not be carried. With President Woodruff's consent,
my father then announced that he was not a candidate. I was nominated by
acclamation.
When I called upon my father at the President's offices after the
election, he said to me before his colleagues: "I wish to congratulate
you on having acted honorably and fearlessly. You have my blessing." He
turned to the President. "You see, President Woodruff," he added, "it
was not the will of the Lord, after all, since the people did not desire
my election!"
I have dwelt so largely upon the religious aspects of this affair
because they are as true of the Prophet in politics today as they were
then. At the time, the personal complication of the situation most
distressed me--the fact that I was opposing my father in order to
fulfill the word of honor that we had given on behalf of the Mormon
leaders. But there was another view of the matter; and it is the one
that is most important to the purposes of this narrative. In the course
of the various discussions and conferences upon the Senatorship, I
learned that the inspiration of the whole attempted betrayal had come
from certain Republican politicians and lobbyists (like Colonel Isaac
Trumbo), who claimed to represent a political combination of business
interests in Washington. Joseph F. Smith admitted as much to me in more
than one conversation. (I had offended these interests by opposing a
monetary and a tariff bill during my service as delegate in Congress--a
matter which I have still to recount). They had chosen my father and
Colonel Trumbo as Utah's two Senators. I made it my particular business
to see that Trumbo's name was not even mentioned in the caucus. The
man selected as the other senator was Arthur Brown, a prominent Gentile
lawyer who was known as a "jack-Mormon" (meaning a Gentile adherent to
Church power), although I then believed, and do now, that Judge Chas.
C. Goodwin was the Gentile most entitled to the place, because of his
ability and the love of his people.
I was, however, content with the victory we had won by resisting the
influence of the business interests that had been willing to sell
our honor for their profit, and I set out for Washington with a
determination to continue the resistance. I was in a good position to
continue it. The election of two Republican Senators from Utah had given
the Republicans a scant majority of the members of the Upper House,
and the bills that I had fought in the Lower House were now before the
Senate.
These bills had been introduced in the House of Representatives,
immediately upon its convening in December, 1895, by the committee on
rules, before Speaker Reed had even appointed the general committees.
One was a bill to authorize the issuance of interest-bearing securities
of the United States at such times and in such sums as the Executive
might determine. The other was a general tariff bill that proposed
increases upon the then existing Wilson-Gorman bill. The first would
put into the hands of the President a power that was not enjoyed by
any ruler in Christendom; the second would add to the unfair and
discriminatory tariff rates then in force, by making ad valorem
increases in them. Many new members of Congress had been elected on
the two issues thus created: the arbitrary increase of the bonded
indebtedness by President Cleveland to maintain a gold reserve; and the
unjust benefits afforded those industries that were least in need of
aid, by duties increased in exact proportion to the strength of the
industrial combination that was to be protected.
The presentation of the two bills by the Committee on Rules--with
a coacher to each proposing to prevent amendment and limit
discussion--raised a revolt in the House. A caucus of the insurgent
Republican members was held at the Ebbitt Hotel, and I was elected
temporary chairman. We appointed a committee to demand from Speaker Reed
a division of the questions and time for opposition to be heard. We had
seventy-five insurgents when our committee waited on. Reed; and most
of us were new men, elected to oppose such measures as these bills
advocated. He received us with sarcasm, put us off with a promise to
consider our demands, and then set his lieutenants at work among
us. Under the threat of the Speaker's displeasure if we continued to
"insurge" and the promise of his favor if we "got into line," forty-one
(I think) of our seventy-five deserted us. We were gloriously beaten in
the House on both measures.
Some of the older Republican members of the House came to ask me how
I had been "misled"; and they received with the raised eyebrow and
the silent shrug my explanation that I had been merely following my
convictions and living up to the promises I had made my constituents.
I had supposed that I was upholding an orthodox Republican doctrine
in helping to defend the country from exploitation by the financial
interests, in the matter of the bond issue, and from the greed of the
business interests in the attempt to increase horizontally the tariff
rates.
I do not need, in this day of tariff reform agitation, to argue the
injustice of the latter measure. But the bond issue--looking back upon
it now--seems the more cruelly absurd of the two. Here we were, in times
of peace, with ample funds in the national treasury, proposing to permit
the unlimited issuance of interest-bearing government bonds in order
to procure gold, for that national treasury, out of the hoards of the
banks, so that these same banks might be able to obtain the gold again
from the treasury in return for paper money. The extent to which this
sort of absurdity might be carried would depend solely upon the desire
of the confederation of finance to have interest-bearing government
bonds on which they might issue national bank notes, since the Executive
was apparently willing to yield interminably to their greed, in the
belief that he was protecting the public credit by encouraging the
financiers to attack that credit with their raids on the government
gold reserve. The whole difficulty had arisen, of course, out of the
agitation upon the money question. The banks were drawing upon the
government gold reserve; and the government was issuing bonds to recover
the gold again from the banks.
I had been, for some years, interested in the problem of our monetary
system and had studied and discussed it among our Eastern bankers and
abroad. The very fact that I was from a "silver state" had put me on my
guard, lest a local influence should lead me, into economic error. I had
grown into the belief that our system was wrong. It seemed to me that
some remedy was imperative. I saw in bimetallism a part of the remedy,
and I supported bimetallism not as a partisan of free coinage but as an
advocate of monetary reform.
The arrival of Utah's two representatives in the Senate (January 27,
1896) gave the bimetallists a majority, and when the bond-issue bill
came before us we made it into a bill to permit the free coinage of
silver. (February 1). A few days later, the Finance Committee turned
the tariff bill into a free-coinage bill also. On both measures, five
Republican Senators voted against their party--Henry M. Teller, of
Colorado; Fred T. Dubois, of Idaho; Thos. H. Carter, of Montana; Lee
Mantle, of Montana; and myself. We were subsequently joined by Richard
F. Pettigrew of South Dakota. Within two weeks of my taking the oath
in the Senate we were read out of the party by Republican leaders and
Republican organs.
All this happened so swiftly that there was no time for any
remonstrances to come to me from Salt Lake City, even if the Church
authorities had wished to remonstrate. The fact was that the people of
Utah were with us in our insurgency, and when the financial interests
subsequently appealed to the hierarchy, they found the Church powerless
to aid them in support of a gold platform. But they obtained that aid,
at last, in support of a tariff that was as unjust to the people as it
was favorable to the trusts, and my continued "insurgency" led me again
into a revolt against Church interference.
The thread of connection that ran through these incidents is clear
enough to me now: they were all incidents in the progress of a
partnership between the Church and the predatory business interests that
have since so successfully exploited the country. But, at the time,
I saw no such connection clearly. I supposed that the partnership was
merely a political friendship between the Smith faction in the Church
and the Republican politicians who wished to use the Church; and I had
sufficient contempt for the political abilities of the Smiths to regard
their conspiracy rather lightly.
Believing still in the good faith of the Mormon people and their real
leaders in authority, I introduced a joint resolution in the Senate
restoring to the Church its escheated real estate, which was still in
the hands of a receiver, although its personal property had been
already restored. In conference with Senators Hoar and Allison,--of the
committee to which the resolution was referred--I urged an unconditional
restoration of the property, arguing that to place conditions upon the
restoration would be to insult the people who had given so many proofs
of their willingness to obey the law and keep their pledges. The
property was restored without conditions by a joint resolution that
passed the Senate on March 18, 1896, passed the House a week later, and
was approved by the President on March 26. The Church was now free of
the last measure of proscription. Its people were in the enjoyment of
every political liberty of American citizenship; and I joined in the
Presidential campaign of 1896 with no thought of any danger threatening
us that was not common to the other communities of the country.
But before I continue further with these political events, I must relate
a private incident in the secret betrayal of Utah--an incident that must
be related, if this narrative is to remain true to the ideals of public
duty that have thus far assumed to inspire it--an incident of which a
false account was given before a Senate Committee in Washington
during the Smoot investigation of 1904, accompanied by a denial of
responsibility by Joseph F. Smith, the man whose authority alone
encouraged and accomplished the tragedy--for it was a tragedy, as
dark in its import to the Mormon community as it was terrible in its
immediate consequences to all our family.
By his denial of responsibility and by secret whisper within the Church,
Smith has placed the disgrace of the betrayal upon my father, who
was guiltless of it, and blackened the memory of my dead brother by a
misrepresentation of his motives. I feel that it is incumbent upon me,
therefore, at whatever pain to myself, to relate the whole unhappy truth
of the affair, as much to defend the memory of the dead as to denounce
the betrayal of the living, to expose a public treason against the
community not less than to correct a private wrong done to the good name
of those whom it is my right to defend.
Late in July, 1896, when I was in New York on business for the
Presidency, I received a telegram announcing the death of my brother,
Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. We had been companions all our lives; he had
been the nearest to me of our family, the dearest of my friends but even
in the first shock of my grief I realized that my father would have a
greater stroke of sorrow to bear than I; and in hurrying back to Salt
Lake City I nerved myself with the hope that I might console him.
I found him and Joseph F. Smith in the office of the Presidency,
sitting at their desks. My father turned as I entered, and his face was
unusually pale in spite of its composure; but the moment he recognized
me, his expression changed to a look of pain that alarmed me. He rose
and put his hand on my shoulder with a tenderness that it was his habit
to conceal. "I know how you feel his loss," he said hoarsely, "but when
I think what he would have had to pass through if he had lived I cannot
regret his death."
The almost agonized expression of his face, as much as the terrible
implication of his words, startled me with I cannot say what horrible
fear about my brother. I asked, "Why! Why--what has happened?"
With a sweep of his hand toward Smith at his desk--a gesture and a
look the most unkind I ever saw him use--he answered: "A few weeks ago,
Abraham took a plural wife, Lillian Hamlin. It became known. He would
have had to face a prosecution in Court. His death has saved us from
a calamity that would have been dreadful for the Church--and for the
state."
"Father!" I cried. "Has this thing come back again! And the ink hardly
dry on the bill that restored your church property on the pledge of
honor that there would never be another case--" I had caught the look on
Smith's face, and it was a look of sullen defiance. "How did it happen?"
My father replied: "I know--it's awful. I would have prevented it if
I could. I was asked for my consent, and I refused it. President Smith
obtained the acquiescence of President Woodruff, on the plea that it
wasn't an ordinary case of polygamy but merely a fulfillment of the
biblical instruction that a man should take his dead brother's wife.
Lillian was betrothed to David, and had been sealed to him in eternity
after his death. I understand that President Woodruff told Abraham
he would leave the matter with them if he wished to take the
responsibility--and President Smith performed the ceremony."
Smith could hear every word that was said. My father had included him
in the conversation, and he was listening. He not only did not deny
his guilt; he accepted it in silence, with an expression of sulky
disrespect.
He did not deny it later, when the whole community had learned of it. He
went with Apostle John Henry Smith to see Mr. P. H. Lannan, proprietor
of the Salt Lake Tribune, to ask him not to attack the Church for
this new and shocking violation of its covenant. Mr. Lannan had been
intimately friendly with my brother, and he was distressed between his
regard for his dead friend and his obligation to do his public duty.
I do not know all that the Smiths said to him; but I know that the
conversation assumed that Joseph F. Smith had performed the marriage
ceremony; I know that neither of the Smiths made any attempt to deny the
assumption; and I know that Joseph F. Smith sought to placate Mr. Lannan
by promising "it shall not occur again." And this interview was sought
by the Smiths, palpably because wherever the marriage of Abraham H.
Cannon and Lillian Hamlin was talked of, Joseph F. Smith was named as
the priest who had solemnized the offending relation. If it had not been
for Smith's consciousness of his own guilt and his knowledge that the
whole community was aware of that guilt, he would never have gone to the
Tribune office to make such a promise to Mr. Lannan.
All of which did not prevent Joseph F. Smith from testifying--in the
Smoot investigation at Washington in 1904--that he did not marry Abraham
Cannon and Lillian Hamlin, that he did not have any conversation with my
father about the marriage, that he did not know Lillian Hamlin had been
betrothed to Abraham's dead brother, that the first time he heard of
the charge that he had married them was when he saw it printed in the
newspapers!
[FOOTNOTE: See Proceedings before Senate Committee on Privileges and
Elections, 1904, Vol. 1, pages 110, 126, 177, etc.]
If this first polygamous marriage had been the last--if it were an
isolated and peculiar incident as the Smiths then claimed it was and
promised it should be--it might be forgiven as generously now as Mr.
Lannan then forgave it. But, about the same time there became public
another case--that of Apostle Teasdale--and as this narrative shall
prove, here was the beginning of a policy of treachery which the
present Church leaders, under Joseph F. Smith, have since consistently
practiced, in defiance of the laws of the state and the "revelation
of God," with lies and evasions, with perjury and its subornation, in
violation of the most solemn pledges to the country, and through the
agency of a political tyranny that makes serious prosecution impossible
and immunity a public boast.
The world understands that polygamy is an enslavement of women. The
ecclesiastical authorities in Utah today have discovered that it is
more powerful as an enslaver of men. Once a man is bound in a polygamous
relation, there is no place for him in the civilized world outside of
a Mormon community. He must remain there, shielded by the Church,
or suffer elsewhere social ostracism and the prosecution of bigamous
relations. Since 1890, the date of the manifesto (and it is to the
period since 1890 that my criticism solely applies) the polygamist must
be abjectly subservient to the prophets who protect him; he must obey
their orders and do their work, or endure the punishment which they can
inflict upon him and his wives and his children. Inveigled into a plural
marriage by the authority of a clandestine religious dogma--encouraged
by his elders, seduced by the prospect of their favor, and impelled
perhaps by a daring impulse to take the covenant and bond that shall
swear him into the dangerous fellowship of the lawlessly faithful--he
finds himself, at once, a law breaker who must pay the Church hierarchy
for his protection by yielding to them every political right, every
personal independence, every freedom of opinion, every liberty of act.
I do not believe that Smith fully foresaw the policy which he has since
undoubtedly pursued. I believe now, as I did then, that in betraying my
brother into polygamy Smith was actuated by his anger against my father
for having inspired the recession from the doctrine; that he desired
to impair the success of the recession by having my brother dignify
the recrudescence of polygamy by the apostolic sanction of his
participation; and that this participation was jealously designed by
Smith to avenge himself upon the First Councillor by having the son be
one of the first to break the law, and violate the covenant. I saw that
my brother's death had thwarted the conspiracy. Smith was so obviously
frightened--despite his pretense of defiance--that I believed he had
learned his needed lesson. And I accepted the incident as a private
tragedy on which the final curtain had now fallen.