THE UNIVERSITY OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS
We next take the Union Pacific Railroad, with its Columbia trustee for
chairman, and a Rutgers trustee and two Massachusetts Tech trustees and
a Hebrew Tech trustee for directors, two Equitable Trust Company
directors, two Guaranty Trust Company directors, and three National City
Bank directors; and find ourselves in Salt Lake City, in the domain of
another group of mining kings, working in alliance with one of the
weirdest religious organizations that have ever sanctified America, the
Church of the Latter-Day Saints. This is not a book on religion, so we
shall merely say that the Mormons are hard-working people, who have
heaped up enormous treasures, and have turned the control of these
treasures over to the heads of their church. So here is a group of pious
plutocrats, who run the financial, political, religious and educational
life of the State of Utah.
Also, of course, they run the state university. Mr. Richard Young, the
son of Joseph Young, was until quite recently chairman of the board of
regents of the University of Utah, and also trustee of the Brigham Young
University. He is a prominent stand-pat politician, and made it his
business to see that the professors of his university said nothing
impolite about the Copper Trust, or the Smelter Trust, or the Public
Utility Trust, or the Latter-Day Sanctity Trust.
Seven years ago his activities culminated in a violent row. Two
professors were fired without warning, and the resentment of the faculty
was so great that sixteen others resigned, and the control of the
university by the church and the corporations received a thorough
ventilation. It appeared that professors had been admonished and
punished for various strange reasons—such as mentioning the important
part played by the English church in English literature; making a
private criticism of a Mormon woman at a social gathering; or making an
impolite remark concerning the cuspidor shown in a painting of Brigham
Young, patriarch of the Mormon religion!
The two professors who had been fired were accused of criticizing the
university president; also, it was charged that one of them had remarked
in a private conversation: “Isn’t it too bad that we have a man like
Richard Young as chairman of the board of regents.” The witnesses who
told of the criticism of the president of the university were never
called, and the president was never required to name them. The regents,
in an elaborate public statement on the controversy, brushed this demand
aside by saying that whenever there was disagreement between the
president and members of the faculty, they would settle the issue by
deciding, not who was right, nor who told the truth, but who was the
most useful to the university!
This affair was investigated by a committee of seven professors,
representing the American Association of University Professors, who
issued an eighty-two page report, covering every detail of the
controversy. From this evidence it appears that the charges against the
professors were false; and it appears that the president was to be
numbered among those many university heads who do not always tell the
truth. A student at commencement had delivered an address, advocating “a
public utilities commission, and investigation into the methods of
mining and industrial corporations.” The interlocking directors were
furious over this, and the governor of the state set to work to find out
what professors had approved it. The president of the university denied
that the governor had engaged in any such activities; but the report
produces a mass of evidence, making it perfectly clear that the
president’s statement was untrue.
Also, it appears that the interlocking regents were not above evasion of
the truth. They denied knowing that the faculty of the university had
adopted a petition for redress of grievances—and this although full
details about the faculty action had been published in the newspapers
nine or ten days before the regents met! By keeping at it, the committee
of professors extracted a few admissions from these saintly plutocrats;
thus, they got Chairman Young to admit over his own signature “that the
president had warned a certain prominent professor that his activity in
behalf of a public utilities bill might injure the university; that he
advised an instructor against participating in a political campaign, and
enjoined a partisan rally on the campus.”
It must be a difficult matter, running a university in the capital of
the Latter-Day Saints. You have to know that your wealthy regents are
living in polygamous relationships, which differ from those maintained
by wealthy regents in other parts of the country in that they are crimes
under the United States law, but acts of holiness under the church law;
and you have to know in just what ways to know about these semi-secret
families, and in just what ways to be ignorant of them. Outside is all
the world, laughing at you; and naturally you are sensitive to that
laughter, and your professors are still more so. They cannot be entirely
unaware of modern thought; and so you have to summon them to your office
and plead with them, pointing out how certain regents object that they
“have been teaching against the experiences of Joseph Smith.” You have
to get them “to bring into class discussions and explanations of the
term God or deity, if they can conscientiously do so.” You have to
explain to them that unless they “can conscientiously do so,” the
legislature will withhold appropriations, and they will not get their
salaries.
And then, when the Latter-Day Grafters put pressure upon you, you have
to remove a competent professor from the head of your Department of
English, and put in a bishop of the Mormon church, the distinguished
editor of “The Juvenile Instructor, a monthly magazine devoted to the
interests of the Sunday Schools of the Mormon church”; also author of
“The Restoration of the Gospel, a volume of Mormon apologetics,
consisting chiefly of lessons prepared for the Young Ladies’ Improvement
Association, 1910-1911, with an introduction by Joseph F. Smith, Jr., of
the Quorum of Twelve Apostles, 1912.” And when your professors object to
things like this, your interlocking regents retire you, and put the
brother of the Mormon bishop into your place!
That is what happened at the University of Utah; Mr. Richard Young,
grand saint of the board of regents, put in as president of his
institution Mr. J. A. Widstoe, M. A., author of “Joseph Smith, the
Scientist,” in which he proves that the Mormon founder anticipated all
modern science—excepting only Darwinism, which is taboo by the Church!
Now Mr. Richard Young has gone to his eternal reward as grand saint, and
his place is taken by Mr. Waldemar Van Cott, attorney for the Rio Grande
Railroad and the Utah Fuel Company, and the most active agent in the
attack on the liberal professors. President Widstoe has been promoted to
“apostle” of the Church, and his place as head of the university has
been taken by Dr. George Thomas, professor of economics. What kind of
economics they now teach at the university is summed up for me by a
lawyer of Salt Lake City, who was formerly on the faculty of the
institution. He says:
“Let it be noted that the Mormon church is a business institution. It
owns and controls properties, banks, commercial institutions and
industries. It is conservative. It is a foe of all doctrines and plans
that might weaken property rights. Also, let it be noted that the
organization of the Mormon church is perfect and that those who hold
power depend upon the doctrines of the church for their tenure upon
power and influence.”
And then I take up the catalogue of the university, to see what they are
teaching their three thousand students, and I find that they are
catholic in their tastes. As courses leading to university degrees, they
include commerce and finance, commercial art, business bookkeeping and
stenography, auto mechanics, carpentering and plumbing! Three professors
at the university write me that conditions under the new administration
are greatly improved. One professor asserts that there is now complete
freedom. I trust he will not think me unduly skeptical if I say that I
would attach more weight to his experiences if he were teaching, say
economics, instead of “ancient language and literature.”