The members of the Mormon hierarchy continually boast that they are
sustained in their power--and in their abuses of that power--"by the
free vote of the freest people under the sun." By an amazing self
deception the Mormon people assume that their government is one of
"common consent;" and nothing angers them more than the expression of
any suspicion that they are not the freest community in the world. They
live under an absolutism. They have no more right of judgment than a
dead body. Yet the diffusion of authority is so clever that nearly every
man seems to share in its operation upon some subordinate, and feels
himself in some degree a master without observing that he is also a
slave.
The male members of the ward--who would be called "laymen" in any other
Church--all hold the priesthood. Each is in possession of, or on the
road to, some priestly office; and yet all are under the absolutism
of the bishop of the ward. Of the hundreds of bishops, with their
councillors, each seems to be exercising some independent authority, but
all are obedient to the presidents of stakes. The presidents apparently
direct the ecclesiastical destinies of their districts, but they are, in
fact, supine and servile under the commands of the apostles; and these,
in turn, render implicit obedience to the Prophet, Seer and Revelator.
No policy ever arises from the people. All direction, all command, comes
from the man at the top. It is not a government by common consent, but
a government of common consent--of universal, absolute and unquestioning
obedience--under penalty of eternal condemnation threatened and earthly
punishment sure.
Twice a year, with a fine show of democracy, the people assemble in the
Tabernacle at Salt Lake, and there vote for the general authorities
who are presented to them by the voice of revelation. If there were no
tragedy, there would be farce in the solemnity with which this pretense
of free government is staged and managed. Some ecclesiast rises in
the pulpit and reads from his list: "It is moved and seconded that we
sustain Joseph F. Smith as Prophet, Seer and Revelator to all the world.
All who favor this make it manifest by raising the right hand." No
motion has been made. No second has been offered. Very often, no adverse
vote is asked. And, if it were, who would dare to offer it? These
leaders represent the power of God to their people; and against them is
arrayed "the power of the Devil and his cohorts among mankind." Three
generations of tutelage and suppression restrain the members of the
conference in a silent acquiescence. If there is any rebel among them,
he must stand alone; for he has scarcely dared to voice his objections,
lest he be betrayed, and any attempt to raise a concerted revolt
would have been frustrated before this opportunity of concerted revolt
presented itself. Being a member of the Church, he must combat the fear
that he may condemn himself eternally if he raise his voice against the
will of God. He must face the penalty of becoming an outcast or an
exile from the people and the life that he has loved. He knows that
the religious zealots will feel that he has gone wilfully "into outer
darkness" through some deep and secret sin of his own; and that the
prudent members of the community will tell him that he should have "kept
his mouth shut." If there were a majority of the conference inclined
to protest against the re-election of any of its rulers, the lack of
communication, the pressure of training and the weight of fear would
keep them silent. And in this manner, from Prophet down to "Choyer
leader" (choir leader) the names are offered and "sustained by the free
vote of the freest people under the sun."
During the days just before the American party's political agitation, a
young Mormon, named Samuel Russell, returned from a foreign mission for
the Church and found that the girl whom he had been courting when he
went away was married as a plural wife to Henry S. Tanner, brother of
the other notorious polygamist, J. M. Tanner. The discovery that his
sweetheart was a member of the Tanner household drove Russell almost
frantic. She was the daughter of an eminent and wealthy family, of
remarkable beauty, well-educated and rarely accomplished. Young Russell
was a college student--a youth of intellect and high mind--and he
suffered all the torments of a horrifying shock. Unless he should choose
to commit an act of violence there was only one possible way for him to
protest. At the next conference, when the name of Henry S. Tanner was
read from the list to be "sustained"--as a member of the general Sunday
School Board--Russell rose and objected that Tanner was unworthy and a
"new" polygamist. He was silenced by remonstrances from the pulpit and
from the people. He was told to take his complaint to the President
of his Stake. He was denied the opportunity to present it to the
assemblage.
Almost immediately afterward, Tanner, for the first time in his life,
was honored with a seat in the highest pulpit of the Church among the
general authorities. And Russell was pursued by the ridicule of the
Mormon community, the persecution of the Church that he had served, the
contempt of the man who had wronged him, and the anger of the woman whom
he had loved. One of the reporters of the Deseret News, the Church's
newspaper, subsequently stated that he had been detailed, with others,
to pursue Russell day and night, soliciting interviews, plaguing
him with questions, and demanding the legal proofs of Tanner's
marriage--which, of course, it was known that Russell could not
give--until Russell's friends, fearing that he might be driven to
violence, persuaded him to leave the state. Tanner is now reputed to
have six plural wives (all married to him since the manifesto of 1890)
of whom this young woman is one.
Similarly, at the General Conference of April, 1905, Don C. Musser (of
whom I have already written) attempted to protest against the sustaining
of Apostles Taylor and Cowley; but Joseph F. Smith promptly called upon
the choir to sing, and Musser's voice was drowned in harmony. In more
recent years Charles J. Bowen rose at a General Conference to object to
the sustaining of some of the polygamous authorities, and he was hustled
from the building by the ushers.
But the most notable case of individual revolt of this period was
Charles A. Smurthwaite's. He had joined the Church, alone, when a boy in
England, and the sufferings he had endured, for allying himself with
an ostracized sect, had made him a very ardent Mormon. He had become
a "teacher" in his ward of Ogden City, had succeeded in business as a
commission merchant and was a great favorite with his bishop and his
people, because of his charities and a certain gentle tolerance of
disposition and kindly brightness of mind.
Smurthwaite, in partnership with Richard J. Taylor (son of a former
President of the Church, John Taylor) engaged in the manufacture of
salt, with the financial backing of a leading Church banker. Along the
shores of Salt Lake, salt is obtained, by evaporation, at the cost of
about sixty cents a ton; its selling price, at the neighboring smelting
centers, ranges from three dollars to fourteen dollars a ton; and the
industry has always been one of the most profitable in the community.
In the early days, the Church (as I have already related) encouraged the
establishment of "salt gardens," financed the companies, protected them
in their leasehold rights along the lake shores, and finally, through
the Inland Crystal Salt Company, came to control a practical monopoly
of the salt industry of the intermountain country. (This Inland Crystal
Company, with Joseph F. Smith as its president, is now a part of the
national salt trust.)
After Smurthwaite and Taylor had invested heavily in the land and plant
of their salt factory, the Church banker who had been helping them
notified them that they had better see President Smith before they went
any further. They called on Smith in his office, and there--according to
Smurthwaite's sworn testimony before the Senate committee--the Prophet
gave them notice that they must not compete with his Inland Crystal
Salt Company by manufacturing salt, and that if they tried to, he would
"ruin" them. This proceeding convinced Smurthwaite that Smith had
"so violent a disregard and non-understanding of the rights of his
fellow-man and his duty to God, as to render him morally unqualified for
the high office which he holds." For expressing such an opinion of Smith
to elders and teachers--and adding that Smith was not fit to act as
Prophet, Seer and Revelator, since, according to his own confession
to the Senate Committee he was "living in sin"--for expressing these
opinions, charges were preferred against Smurthwaite by an elder named
Goddard of Ogden City, and excommunication proceedings were begun
against him.
Smurthwaite replied by making a charge of polygamous cohabitation
against Goddard; and after the April Conference of 1905, Don Musser and
Smurthwaite joined in filing a complaint in the District Court of Salt
Lake City demanding an accounting from Joseph F. Smith of the tithes
which the Church was collecting. Meanwhile Smurthwaite had been
"disfellowshipped" at a secret session of the bishop's court, on March
22, without an opportunity of appearing in his own defense or having
counsel or witnesses heard in support of his case; and on April 4, after
a similarly secret and ex-parte proceeding, he was excommunicated by the
High Council of his Stake, for "apostasy and un-Christianlike conduct."
His charges against Goddard were ignored, and his suit for an accounting
of the tithes was dismissed for want of jurisdiction!
From the moment of his first public protest against Smith, all
Smurthwaite's former associates fell away from him, and by many of the
more devout he was shunned as if he were infected. Benevolent as he had
been, he could find no further fellowship even among those whom he had
benefited by his service and his means. I know of no more blameless life
than his had been in his home community--and, to this, every one of
his acquaintances can bear testimony--yet after the brutally unjust
proceedings of excommunication against him the Deseret News, the
Church's daily paper, referred to "recent cases of apostasy and
excommunication" as having been made necessary by the "gross immorality"
of the victims. When a man like Chas. A. Smurthwaite could not
remonstrate against the individual offenses of Joseph F. Smith, without
being overwhelmed by financial disaster, and social ostracism, and
personal slander, it must be evident how impossible is such single
revolt to the average Mormon. Nothing can be accomplished by individual
protest except the ruin of the protestant and his family.
In the case of my own excommunication, the issues were perhaps less
clearly defined than in Smurthwaite's. I had not been for many years a
formal member of the Church; and yet in the sense that Mormonism is a
community system (as much as a religion) I had been an active and loyal
member of it. In my childhood--when I was seven or eight years of age--I
began to doubt the faith of my people; and I used to go into the orchard
alone and thrust sticks lightly into the soft mould and pray that God
would let them fall over if the Prophets had not been appointed by Him
to do His work. And sometimes they fell and sometimes they stood! Later,
when I was appalled by some of the things that had occurred in the early
history of the Church, I silenced myself with the argument that one
should not judge any religion by the crudities and intolerance's of its
past. I felt that if I were not hypocritical--if I were myself guided by
the truth as I saw it myself--and if I aided to the utmost of my power
in advancing the community out of its errors, I should be doing all that
could be asked of me. In the days of Mormon misery and proscription,
I chose to stand with my own people, suffering in their sufferings
and rejoicing with them in their triumphs. Their tendency was plainly
upward; and I felt that no matter what had been the origin of the
Church--whether in the egotism of a man or in an alleged revelation from
God--if the tendencies were toward higher things, toward a more even
justice among men, toward a more zealous patriotism for the country, no
man of the community could do better than abide with the community.
The Church authorities accepted my aid with that understanding of my
position toward the Mormon religion; and, though Joseph F. Smith, in
1892, for his own political purposes, circulated a procured statement
that I was "a Mormon in good standing," later, when he was on the
witness stand in the Smoot investigation, he testified concerning me:
"He is not and never has been an official member of the Church, in any
sense or form." I made no pretenses and none were asked of me. I was
glad to give my services to a people whom I loved, and trusted, and
admired; and the leaders were as eager to use me as I was eager to be
used in the proper service of my fellows. (Even Joseph F. Smith, in
those days, was glad to give me his "power of attorney" and to trust me
with the care of the community's financial affairs.) But when all the
hierarchy's covenants to the nation were being broken; when the tyranny
of the Prophet's absolutism had been re-established with a fierceness
that I had never seen even in the days of Brigham Young; when polygamy
had been restored in its most offensive aspect, as a breach of the
Church's own revelation; when hopelessly outlawed children were being
born of cohabitation that was clandestine and criminal under the "laws
both of God and of man"--it was impossible for me to be silent either
before the leaders of the Church or in the public places among the
people. I had spoken for the Mormons at a time when few spoke for
them--when many of the men who were now so valiantly loyal to the
hierarchy had been discreetly silent. I had helped defend the Mormon
religion when it had few defenders. I did not propose to criticize it
now; for to me, any sincere belief of the human soul is too sacred to be
so assailed--if not out of respect, surely in pity--and the Mormon faith
was the faith of my parents. But I was determined to make the strongest
assault in my power on the treason and the tyranny which Smith and
his associates in guilt were trying to cover with the sanctities of
religion; and I had to make that assault, as a public man, for a public
purpose, without any consideration of private consequences.
After I began criticizing the Church leaders, in the editorial columns
of the Salt Lake Tribune, my friend Ben Rich, then president of the
Southern States Missions, and J. Golden Kimball, one of the seven
presidents of the seventies, came to me repeatedly to suggest that if
I wished to attack the leaders of the Church I should formally withdraw
from the Church. This I declined to do: because I was in no different
position toward the teachings of the Church than I had been in previous
years--because I was not criticizing the Church or its religious
teachings, but attacking the civil offenses of its leaders as citizens
guilty against the state--and because I saw that my attack had more
power as coming from a man who stood within the community, even though
he had no standing in the Church. I continued as I had begun. After
the publication of an editorial (January 22, 1905), in which I charged
President Smith with being all that the testimony then before the Senate
committee had proven him to be, Ben Rich advised me that I must either
withdraw from the Church or Smith would proceed against me in the Church
tribunals and make my family suffer. I replied that I would not withdraw
and that I would fight all cases against me on the issue of free speech.
On February 1, 1905, I published, editorially, "An address to the
Earthly King of the Kingdom of God," in which I charged Smith with
having violated the laws (revelations) of his predecessors; with having
made and violated treaties upon which the safety of his "subjects"
depended; with having taken the bodies of the daughters of his subjects
and bestowed them upon his favorites; with having impoverished his
subjects by a system of elaborate exaction's (tithes) in order to enrich
"the crown" and so forth. All of which, burlesquely written as if to a
Czar by a constitutionalist, was accepted by the Mormon people as in no
way absurd in its tone as coming from one American citizen to another!
Because of these two editorials I was charged (February 21, 1905)
before a ward bishop's court in Ogden with "un-Christianlike conduct
and apostasy," after two minor Church officials had called upon me at my
home and received my acknowledgment of the authorship of the editorials,
my refusal to retract them, and my statement that I did not "sustain"
Joseph F. Smith as head of the Church, since he was "leaving the worship
of God for the worship of Mammon and leading the people astray." On the
night of February 24, I appeared in my own defense before the bishop's
court, at the hour appointed, without witnesses or counsel, because I
had been notified that no one would be permitted to attend with me. And,
of course, the defense I made was that the articles were true and that I
was prepared to prove them true.
Such a court usually consists of a bishop and his two councillors, but
in this case the place of the second councillor had been taken by a high
priest named Elder George W. Larkin, a man reputed to be "richly endowed
with the Spirit." I had a peculiar psychological experience with Larkin.
After I had spoken at some length in my own defense, Larkin rose to work
himself up into one of the rhapsodies for which he was noted. "Brother
Frank," he began, "I want to bear my testimony to you that this is the
work of God--and nothing can stay its progress--and all who
interfere will be swept away as chaff"--rising to those transports of
auto-hypnotic exaltation which such as he accept as the effect of the
spirit of God speaking through them. "You were born in the covenant,
and the condemnation is more severe upon one who has the birthright
than upon one not of the faith who fights against the authority of
God's servants." I had concluded to try the effect of a resistant mental
force, and while I stared at him I was saying to myself: "This is a mere
vapor of words. You shall not continue in this tirade. Stop!" He began
to have difficulty in finding his phrases. The expected afflatus did not
seem to have arrived to lift him. He faltered, hesitated, and finally,
with an explanation that he had not been feeling well, he resumed his
seat, apologetically.
That left me free to "bear testimony" somewhat myself. I warned the
members of the "court" that no work of righteousness could succeed
except by keeping faith with the Almighty--which meant keeping faith
with his children upon earth. I reminded them of the dark days, which
all of them could recall, when we had repeatedly covenanted to God and
to the nation that if we could be relieved of what we deemed the world's
oppression we would fulfill every obligation of our promises. I pointed
out to them that the Church was passing into the ways of the world;
that our people were being pauperized; that some of them were in the
poorhouses in their old age after having paid tithes all their active
lives; that by our practices we were bearing testimony against the
revelations which Mormons proclaimed to the world for the salvation of
the bodies and souls of men.
They listened to me with the same friendly spirit that had marked all
their proceedings for these men had no animosity against me; they were
merely obeying the orders of their superiors. And when we arose to
disperse, the bishop put his hand on my shoulder and said, in the usual
form of words: "Brother Frank, we will consider your case, and if we
find you ought to do anything to make matters right, we will let you
know what it is."
I returned to my home, where I had left my wife and children chatting at
the dinner table. They had known where I was going. They knew what the
issue of my "trial" would be for them and for me. Yet when I came back
to them, none asked me any questions and none seemed perturbed. And this
is typical of the Mormon family. I think the experiences through which
the people have passed have given them a quality of cheerful patience.
They have been schooled to bear persecution with quiet fortitude.
Tragedy sweeps by them in the daily current of life. A young man goes
on a mission, and dies in a foreign land; and his parents accept their
bereavement like Spartans, almost without mourning, sustained by the
religious belief that he has ended his career gloriously. Taught to
devote themselves and their children and their worldly goods to the
service of their Church, they accept even the impositions and injustices
of the Church leaders with a powerful forbearance that is at once a
strength and a weakness.
Two days later I was met on the street by a young Dutch elder, who could
scarcely speak English, and he gave me the official document from
the bishop's court notifying me that I had been "disfellowshipped for
un-Christianlike conduct and apostasy." I was then summoned to appear
before the High Council of the Stake in excommunication proceedings, and
after filing a defense which it is unnecessary to give here--and after
refusing to appear before the Council for reasons that it is equally
unnecessary to repeat I was excommunicated on March 14, 1905. No denial
was made by the Church authorities of any of the charges which I had
made against Smith. No trial was made of the truth of those charges. As
a free citizen of "one of the freest communities under the sun," I was
officially ostracized by order of the religious despot of the community
for daring to utter what everyone knew to be the truth about him.
For myself, of course, no edict of excommunication had any terrors; but
the aim of the authorities was to make me suffer through the sufferings
of my family; and, in that, they succeeded. I shall not write of it. It
has little place in such a public record as this, and I do not wish
to present myself, in any record, as a martyr. It was not I who was
ostracized from the Mormon Church by my excommunication; it was the
right of free speech. The Mormon Church deprived me of nothing; it
deprived itself of the helpful criticism of its members. No anathema of
bigotry could take from me the affection of my family or the respect
of any friends whose respect was worth the coveting. In that regard I
suffered only in my pity for those of my neighbors who were so blindly
servile to the decrees of religious tyranny that they turned their backs
on the voice of their own liberty raised, in protest, for their own
defense.
And it was not by the individual protestants but by the entire community
that the heaviest price was paid in this whole conflict. It divided the
state again into the old factions and involved it in the old war from
which it had been rescued. The Mormons instituted a determined boycott
against all Gentiles, and "Thou shalt not support God's enemies" became
a renewed commandment of the Prophet. Wherever a Gentile was employed
in any Mormon institution, he was discharged, almost without exception,
whether or not he had been an active member of the American party.
Teachers in the Church would exclaim with horror if they heard that
a Mormon family was employing a Gentile physician; and more than one
Mormon litigant was advised that he not only "sinned against the work of
God," but endangered the success of his law suit, by retaining a Gentile
lawyer. Politicians were told that if they aided the American party,
they need never hope for advancement in this world, or expect anything
but eternal condemnation in the world to come; and though few of
them counted on the "spoils" of the hereafter, they understood and
appreciated the power of the hierarchy to reward in the present day. The
Gentiles did not attempt any boycott in retaliation; they had not the
solidarity necessary to such an attempt; and many Gentile business men,
in order to get any Mormon patronage whatever, were compelled to employ
none but Mormon clerks.
The Gentiles had been largely attracted to Utah by its mines; they were
heavily interested in the smelting industry. Colonel B. A. Wall, one of
the strongest supporters of the American party, owned copper properties,
was an inventor of methods of reduction, and had large smelting
industries. Ex-Senator Thomas Kearns, and his partner David Keith,
owners of the Salt Lake Tribune, and many of their associates, had their
fortunes in mines and smelters; they were leaders of the American
party and they were attempting to enlist with them such men as W.
S. McCornick, a Gentile banker and mine owner, and D. C. Jackling,
president of the Utah Copper Company, who is now one of the heads of the
national "copper combine" and one of the ablest men of the West.
In 1904, in the midst of the political crisis, the Church newspapers
served editorial notice on these men that, on account of the smelter
fumes and their destructive effect upon the vegetation of the valley,
the smelters must go; and that if the present laws were not sufficient,
new laws would be enacted to drive them out. Men like Wall and Keith and
Kearns and Walker were not terrorized; but McCornick and Jackling and
the representatives of the American Smelting and Refining Company either
surrendered to a discreet silence or openly joined the Church in the
campaign. They were rewarded with the assurance that the Church would
protect them against any labor trouble and that no adverse legislation
would be attempted against them. Today Jackling, of the copper combine,
is a newspaper partner of Apostle Smoot, and he is mentioned for
the United States Senate as the Church's selection to succeed George
Sutherland. The Church has large mining interests; Smoot and Smith
are in close affiliation with the smelting trust; and this is another
powerful partnership in Washington that protected Smoot in his seat and
has been rewarded by the Church's assistance in looting the nation.