The Mormon leaders were now hurried down their chosen path of dishonor
with a fateful rapidity. A reform movement was demanding of Washington
the adoption of a constitutional amendment that should give Congress
power to regulate the marriage and divorce laws of all the states in the
Union. And this proposed amendment--partly inspired by a growing
doubt of the good faith of the Mormon leaders--gave the politicians
in Washington something to trade for Mormon votes, in the presidential
campaign of 1900.
The Republicans had lost the electoral votes of Utah and the surrounding
states, in 1896.
Utah was now Democratic, and its one United States Senator (who was
still in office) was a Democrat. Senator Hanna's lieutenant, Perry S.
Heath, came to Salt Lake City in the summer of 1900, to confer with
the heads of the Mormon Church. His authority (as representative of the
ruler of the Republican party) had been authenticated by correspondence;
and he was received by President Snow as royalty receives the envoy of
royalty.
Heath negotiated with his usual directness. In the phrase of the time,
"he laid down his cards on the table, face up, and asked Snow to play
to that hand." If the Mormon Church would pledge its support to the
Republican party, the Republican leaders would avert the threatened
constitutional amendment that was to give Congress the power to
interfere in the domestic affairs of the Mormon people. But if the
Church denied its support to the Republican party, the constitutional
amendment would be carried, and the Mormons, in their marriage
relations, would be returned to the Federal jurisdiction from which they
had escaped when the territory was admitted to statehood.
The sentiment of the country was known to be in favor of giving Congress
such power. A strong body of reformers was urging the amendment, and
the Church leaders had sent Apostle John Henry Smith and Bishop H. B.
Clawson to lobby against it. After consulting with my father, I had
written to President Snow pointing out the danger to the Mormons of
having a lobby opposing such an amendment--for I was not then aware of
the secret return to the practice of polygamy, after 1896. President
Snow replied to me (in a message of guarded prudence) that although
the Church inhibited plural marriage and did not intend to allow the
practice, he was opposed to the interference of Congress in the domestic
concerns of the other states of the Union!
He made his "deal" with Perry Heath. Church messengers were sent out
secretly to the Mormons in Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Montana,
Washington, Oregon, California and the territories, with the whispered
announcement that it was "the will of the Lord" that the Republicans
should be aided. Utah went Republican; the Mormons in the surrounding
states either openly supported, or secretly voted for McKinley; and the
constitutional amendment was "side tracked" and forgotten.
Utah elected a Republican legislature. Apostle Reed Smoot applied to
President Snow for permission to become a candidate for the United
States Senatorship, and obtained a promise that if he stood aside, for
the time, he should receive his reward later. President Snow had decided
that Thomas Kearns, already an active candidate, was the man whom the
Church would support--since Mr. Kearns' ability, his wealth and his
business connection promised greater advantages for the state and (under
cunning manipulation by the priests) greater advantages for the Church
than the election of any other candidate. And all this may be fairly
said without assuming that there was any definite arrangement between he
Church and any friends of Mr. Kearns.
Kearns was associated with Senator Clark of Montana and R. C. Kerens of
St. Louis in building a railroad from Salt Lake to Los Angeles, and the
Church owned some fifteen miles of track that had been laid from Salt
Lake City, as the beginning of a Los Angeles line. It was apparently
assumed by President Snow that Kearns' election to the Senate would
facilitate the sale of this Church railroad to the Clark-Kearns
syndicate. The Church had a direct interest in numerous iron and coal
properties in Southern Utah, and many members of the Church also had
private properties there, which the Los Angeles line would develop.
Some of Kearns' friends were negotiating for the purchase of Church
properties, and one of his partners was proposing to buy (and
subsequently bought) the Church's "Amelia Palace," a useless and
expensive property which Brigham Young had built for his favorite wife,
and which the Church had long been eager to sell.
My father had been in ill-health for some months and he was away from
Utah a large part of the time. President Snow took counsel of his Second
Councillor, Joseph F. Smith, and of Apostle John Henry Smith; and to
the Smiths, he indicated Thos. Kearns as the one whose election to the
United States Senate might do most to advance Snow's concealed purpose.
But the Smiths had other plans, that were equally advantageous to
the Church and more advantageous to the Smiths; they rebelled against
President Snow's dictation, and he ordered them both away on temporary
"missions."
As Joseph F. Smith was leaving the President's offices, in a rage, he
met an old friend, Joseph Howell, who (at this writing) is a member of
Congress from Utah, and was then a member of the Utah legislature. He
told Smith that President Snow had sent for him, and Smith, controlling
himself--without betraying any knowledge of the probable purpose of
Snow's summons to Howell--said affectionately: "Brother Howell, I want
you to make a promise to me on your honor as an elder in Israel. I want
you to pledge yourself never to vote in this legislature for Thomas
Kearns as Senator. I ask it as your friend, and as a Prophet to the
people."
Howell gave his promise, and proceeded to his interview with President
Snow. There he received the announcement that it was "the will of the
Lord" that he should vote for Kearns, and he had to reply that he had
already received an inspired instruction, on this point, from a Prophet
of the Lord, and had given his pledge against Kearns.
The incident became one of the jokes of the campaign, for Howell held to
his promise to Smith (and was subsequently rewarded by Smith with a seat
in Congress), and President Snow was compelled to waive the question of
conflicting "revelations."
Kearns was elected. But he had had a powerful political machine of his
own, and he had been supported by a strong Gentile vote. He immediately
showed his independence by refusing to take orders from the political
Church leaders. He declined, further, for himself and his financial
confreres, to engage with the Church in business affairs. Many charges
were made that he was breaking his agreement of cooperation with the
authorities, but there never has been produced any evidence of such an
agreement, and I do not believe (from my knowledge of Senator Kearns)
that the agreement was ever made.
The railroad into Southern Utah was later built by the Harriman
interests in combination with Clark and Kearns; but there, too, Snow was
disappointed. The expected development of the Church properties proved
far less profitable than had been supposed, and the financial prophecies
of the Seer and Revelator were not fulfilled.
By this time it was abundantly evident that some of the Church leaders
intended to rule their people in politics with an absolutism as supreme
as any that Utah had ever known in the old days. And for these leaders
to maintain their authority--despite the covenant of their amnesty, the
terms of Utah's statehood and the provisions of the constitution--and to
maintain that authority against the robust American sentiment that would
be sure to assert itself--it was necessary that they should have the
most effective political protection afforded by any organization in the
whole country. The ideal arrangement of evil was offered to them by the
men then in temporary leadership of the Republican party. The Prophets
were able to make the Republican party a guilty partner of their perfidy
by making it a recipient of the proceeds of that perfidy, and to assure
themselves protection in every religious tyranny so long as they did not
run counter to Republican purpose.
For the moment, the Church took more benefit from the partnership than
it conferred. The result of the presidential elections of 1900 showed
that the Republicans could have elected their ticket without any help
from the Prophets. But without the help of the dominant party the
Prophets could not have renewed the rule of the state by the Church
could not have prevented the passage of a constitutional amendment
punishing polygamy by Federal statute--and could not have obtained such
intimate relation and commanding influence with the great "interests" of
the country.
Throughout all these miserable incidents, I had a vague hope that
they would prove merely temporary and peculiar to the term of Snow's
presidency. He was now in his eighty-sixth year. My father was next in
succession for the Presidency, and he was seventy-three. He had remained
personally faithful to every pledge that he had made to the nation, and
though he had been powerless to prevent the breaches of covenant that
had followed the sovereignty of statehood, I knew that he had opposed
some of them and been a willing party to none. It is true that he had
become a director of the Union Pacific Railway and was close to the
leading financiers of the East; but his Union Pacific connection had
come from the fact that he had been one of the builders of the road
that had afterward merged in the Oregon Short Line; and his financial
relations had been those of a financier and not a politician. In all the
years that I had been working with him, I had never known him to have
any purpose that was not communistic in its final aspect and designed
for the good of his people.
Up to his seventieth year, he had shown no ill result of his early
hardships. Living the abstemious life of the orthodox Mormon, to whom
wine, tobacco and even tea and coffee are prohibited, he had seemed
inexhaustibly robust and untiring. But almost from the day of
President's Snow accession to office--deprived of the sustaining
consciousness of the responsibilities of leadership--his physical
strength gave signs of breaking. In the fall of 1900 he made a trip
to the Sandwich Islands, to recuperate, and to assist at the fiftieth
anniversary of the Mormon mission that he had founded there; but the
Utah winter proved too rigorous for him on his return, and in March,
1901, he was taken to California--to Monterey. In April the word came to
me in New York that he was sinking.
I found him in a cottage overlooking the beautiful Bay of Monterey and
its wooded slope; and the doctors in attendance told me that he had been
kept alive only by the determination to see me before he died. There
was no hope. He had still a clear mind, but with ominous lapses of
unconsciousness that foreboded the end; and in these intervals of coma,
as we wheeled him to and fro on the veranda in an invalid chair--in an
attempt to refresh him with the motion of the sea air--he would swing
his right hand upward, with an old pulpit gesture, and say "Priesthood!
Priesthood!" as if in that word he expressed the ruling thought of his
life, the inspiration that had sustained his power, the obligation that
had governed him in his direction of his people.
On the afternoon of the 11th of April, he was lying in a stupor on a
couch before an open window, with the sound of the surf in the quiet
room. One of the doctors entered, looked at him intently, and said
to me: "I can do nothing more here--and my patients need me in
San Francisco. He can't last long. He'll probably never recover
consciousness. If there's anything imperative--anything you must say to
him--any word you wish to have from him--you could perhaps rouse him"--I
said "No." We had never intruded upon any mood of his silence during his
masterful life; and I felt a jealous rebellion against the idea that we
should intrude now upon this last, helpless silence of unconsciousness.
The doctor left us. I summoned the other members of the family from
the veranda to the bedside. He lay motionless and placid, scarcely
breathing, his eyes closed, his hands folded. In accordance with the
rites of the Church, we laid our hands on his head, while my eldest
brother said the prayer of filial blessing that "sealed" the dying man
to eternity.
In the silence that followed the last "Amen" of the prayer, he opened
his eyes, and said in a steady, strong voice: "You thought I was passing
away?"
We replied that we had seen he was very weak.
With a glance at the door through which the physician had departed, he
said resolutely: "I shall go when my Father calls me--and not till then.
I shall know the moment, and I will not struggle against His command.
Lift me up. Carry me out on the balcony I want to see the water once
more. And I want to talk with you."
To me, it was the last struggle of the unconquerable will that had
silently, composedly, cheerfully fought and overcome every obstacle that
had opposed the purposes of his manhood for half a century. He would
not yield even to death at the dictation of man. He would go when he was
ready--when his mind had accepted the inevitable as the decree of God.
We sat around his couch on the veranda, and for two hours he talked to
us as clearly and as forcibly as ever. He spoke of the Church and of its
mission in the world, with all the hope of a religious altruist. From
the humblest beginnings, it had grown to the greatest power. From the
depths of persecution, it had risen to win favor from the wisest among
men. It had abolished poverty for hundreds of thousands, by its sound
communal system. In its religious solidarity, it had become a guardian
and administrator of equal justice within all the sphere of its
influence. It was full of the most splendid possibilities of good for
mankind.
With his eyes fixed on the sea--facing eternity as calmly as he faced
that great symbol of eternity--he voiced the sincerity of his life
and the hope that had animated his statesmanship. In an exaltation of
spirituality that made the moment one of the sublime experiences of my
life, he adjured us all to hold true to our covenants. I do not write of
his personal words of love and admonition to the members of his family.
I wish to express only the aspects that may be of public interest,
in his last aspirations--for these were the aspirations of the Mormon
leaders of the older generation, whom he represented--and they are the
aspirations of all the wise among the Mormons today, whatever may be the
folly and the treachery of their Prophets.
Ten hours later, he was dead.
I cannot pretend that I had any true apprehension, then, of what his
loss meant to the community. I had no clearer vision of events than
others. I felt that I had no longer any tie to connect me closely with
the government of the Church, and I was willing to stand aside from its
affairs, believing that the momentum of progress imparted to it would
carry it forward. The nation had cleared the path for it. Its faith, put
into practice as a social gospel, had been freed of the offensive
things that had antagonized the world. My father's last messages of hope
remained with me as a cheering prophecy.
At his funeral in the great tabernacle, President Snow put forward
a favorite son, Leroy, to read an official statement in which the
President took occasion to deny that my father had dictated the recent
policies of the Church: those policies, he said, had been solely the
President's. (He is welcome to the credit of them!) Joseph F. Smith
showed more generosity of emotion, now that his path of succession
was clear of the superior in authority whom he had so long regarded
enviously; and he spoke of my father, both privately and in public, in a
way that won me to him.
The shock of grief had perhaps "mellowed" me. I felt more tolerant of
these men, since I was no longer necessarily engaged in opposing them.
When President Snow died (October, 1901), I shared only the general
interest in the way Joseph F. Smith set about asserting his family's
title to rulership of the "Kingdom of God on Earth;" for, in effect,
he notified the world that his branch of the Smith family had been
designated by Divine revelation to rule in the affairs of all men, by an
appointment that had never been revoked. He has since made his cousin,
John Henry Smith, his First Councillor; and he has inducted his son
Hyrum into the apostolate by "revelation." This latter act roused the
jealousy of the mother of his son Joseph F. Smith, Jr., and the amused
gossip of the Mormons predicted another revelation that should give
Joseph Jr. a similar promotion. The revelation came. So many others have
also come that the Smith family is today represented in the hierarchy
by Joseph F. Smith, President, "Prophet, Seer and Revelator to all the
world;" John Smith (a brother) presiding Patriarch over the whole human
race; John Henry Smith (a cousin) Apostle and First Councillor to the
President; Hyrum Smith and Joseph F. Smith (sons) Apostles; George A.
Smith (son of John Henry) apostle; David S. Smith (son of Joseph
F.) Councillor to the presiding Bishop of the Church and in line of
succession to the bishopric; and Bathseba W. Smith, President of the
Relief Societies[4]. [FOOTNOTE: She has died since this was written.]
As Joseph F. Smith has still thirty other sons--and at least four wives
who are not represented in the apostolate--there may yet be a quorum of
Smiths to succeed endlessly to the Presidency and make the Smith family
a perpetual dynasty in Utah.
It is one of the fascinating contradictions of Mormonism that many of
the sincere people--who smilingly predicted the Divine interposition by
which this family succession was founded--accept its rule devoutly. "The
Lord," they will tell you, "will look after the Church. If these men are
good enough for God, they are good enough for me. I do not have to save
the Kingdom." And they continue paying their devotion (and their tithes)
to a family autocracy whose imposition would have provoked a rebellion
in any other community in the civilized world!
It is "the will of the Lord!"