History of Salt Lake City, Part 50

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company
Number of Pages: 1194

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As a necessary result of these operations, our merchants not only redeemed the community from social destitution and converted a rural town into a com- mercial city ; but they brought Utah into an importance abroad and greatly re- formed the Eastern mind concerning the "strange people" who inhabit these distant Valleys. As all know, in the earlier days the Mormon community was esteemed by the good folks in the Eastern States as a monstrous society which had grown up in America. The exaggerated stories told of the Mormons by the ex- Federal officers, together with the existence of the institution of polygamy, had given them an unenviable notoriety; while their exoduses, the Utah war, and other unique incidents of their history, attached to them a peculiar distinction as a troublesome little nation of modern Israelites which had hidden itself in the solitudes of the Rocky Mountains. But our Utah merchants made the community more comprehensible. The people abroad could not understand the theology and peculiar institutions of this Mormon Israel ; but they could appreciate the impor- tance of the Utah trade ; and when at length the grand commercial organization of the Z. C. M. I. was formed, the financial potency of the community was greatly enhanced. The business men of New York, Chicago, Boston and St. Louis have become deeply concerned in preserving the Mormons, and in the gen- eral prosperity of Utah. The mission of Mormonism has been an enigma in the age, but the purchase in New York of millions of dollars' worth of goods by the Mormon merchants was a record easily read by the commercial men of that city, years ago; and the subsequent history of Z. C. M. I. has financially established the community in all the great business centres of America. Our Utah merchants have now long been esteemed as sound-headed, enterprising, honorable men ; and this is equally true of those who have gone out of the Church, as of those who re- mained inside and became the pillars of Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution.

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The foregoing sketches of our commerce and commercial men have prepared us to comprehend the vital importance of the Church preserving within herself this vast monetary and mercantile power. Herein was nascent the wisdom of the co- operative idea, and in it resides the original justification of President Young's energetic efforts to so preserve the financial power by the construction of some order of mercantile communism applicable to the Church. The President was at the onset abundantly reproached for his co-operative movement or-as some worded it-compulsory mercantile combination ; and several of those who had been his staunchest adherents up to that period left his side in consequence. The impartial historian, however, cannot but justify Brigham Young as the head and guide of Mormon society. The truth is that in 1868-9 the Mormon Church was brought face to face with implacable necessities which seemed about to weaken her ; and these necessities were of a commercial and financial character. She had to subdue or be subdued,-a point on which the dominant will of a man like Brigham Young could decide in a moment. The issue of those times was-should she hold her temporal power or loose it ?- Should the vast money agencies which had so grown up among her own people, in the country which she had settled, at length overwhelm her; or should she, by combinations of her own, place those agencies at her back and preserve her supreme potency? Brigham Young answered those vital questions in the organization of Z. C. M. I.

At the time referred to, these financial and mercantile issues were, after Presi- dent Young, chiefly held in the hands of three men, namely; William Jennings, William H. Hooper and Horace S. Eldredge. The subject, then, at this stage, grows so suggestive of the existence of Z. C. M. I. as the neccessary commer- cial handmaid of the Church that we must dwell awhile on a circumstantial expo- sition.

Early in our commercial history, there grew up a conflict between the mer- chants and the Church. To become a merchant was to antagonize the Church and her policies; so that it was almost illegitimate for Mormon men of enterprising character to enter into mercantile pursuits ; and it was not until Jennings, Hooper and Eldredge redeemed Utah from this conflict by resigning to the Church their own basis that Utah commerce developed into proper forms and became inspired with the true genius of mercantile enterprise. To-day there is no such commer- cial war as existed in 1868 and out of which Z. C. M. I. was evolved ; and yet when Mr. T. B. H. Stenhouse wrote his Rocky Mountain Saints the salient part of the commercial record of his book was all concerning this " irrepressible conflict " between the merchants and the priesthood. The firm of the Walker Brothers is described as the head and front of this conflict on the merchant side, as Brigham Young was on the side of the Mormon Commonwealth. But the Church was too powerful to be subdued ; and the merchants were desirous at one moment to give up the fight. Says Mr. Stenhouse :

" With such a feeling of uneasiness, nearly all the non-Mormon merchants joined in a letter to Brigham Young, offering, if the Church would purchase their goods at twenty-five per cent. less than their valuation, they would leave the Ter- ritory. Brigham answered them cavalierly that he had not asked them to come

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into the Territory, did not ask them to leave it, and that they might stay as long as they pleased.

"It was clear that Brigham felt himself master of the situation; and the merchants had to 'bide their time' and await the coming change that was antici- pated from the completion of the Pacific Railroad. As the great iron way ap- proached the mountains, and every day gave evidence of its being finished at a much earlier period than was at first anticipated, the hope of what it would ac- complish nerved the discontented to struggle with the passing day."

Here is at once described the Gentile and apostate view of the situation of those times, and confined as it is to the salient point, no lengthy special argument in favor of President Young's policies could more clearly justify his mercantile co- operative movement. It was the moment of life or death to the temporal power of the Church ! When it be also considered that the organization of Z. C. M. I. not only preserved this power in the hands of the community, but that it re- deemed the Territory from this irritating commercial conflict, it is evident that the scheme was both potent and wise. The historian has nothing to do with the argu- ment of the conflict at issue in any of its forms, but simply with the fact of its ex- istence and the necessities of the Mormon community at that time. The point that stands boldly out in the period under review is, that the organization of Z. C. M. I. at that crisis saved the temporal supremacy of the Mormon common- wealth.

But the co-operative idea and genius originated not with the merchants. Co- operation, indeed, is the true offspring of the Church. It was not conceived in the spirit of the world but in the spirit of the gospel ; and it was begotten early in the Mormon dispensation, though it was not successfully applied to the community until 1869.

Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Latter-day Saints, was the Prophet of a co-operative system designed to be applied not only to this Church but ultimately to all society. It was the means by which a universal social re- demption was to be brought about, and in this result was the beginning of a Mil- lennium for the race. Without social redemption, no millennial reign was possible ; so taught the Prophet Joseph and such apostles as Parley P. Pratt, Orson Pratt and John Taylor fifty years ago. These men were the teachers of a co-operative sys- tem, based on gospel principles, to the disciples of the last generation, whose children scarcely dream that their fathers were inspired by such a philosophy and spirit or that they believed that in the success and spread of a true communistic gospel over the whole earth the reign of righteousness was to be brought in as the consummation of the Latter-day mission. But such was original Mormonism ; and it was Joseph Smith who was the Prophet of this communistic gospel in which was to be evolved the best methods of a co-operative commonwealth inspired by the spirit of the broadest social benevolence. This system was styled the " Order of Enoch," and it signified simply and truly a society based upon a perfect co-op- erative order, practically worked in all its affairs by co-operative principles and in- spired by the spirit of a universal Christ-like benevolence. It was, in fine, the order of the Kingdom of Heaven to be established upon the earth in the last days. Its peculiar style-the " Order of Enoch" -signified to the Mormon understand-

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ing that such a perfect communistic system existed in the earliest patriarchal age among Enoch and his people. Thus socially considered, we may form a pretty lucid and comprehensive idea of what Enoch's walking with God in the early age of the world signified ; and from the revelations given by the Prophet Joseph his- torically of Enoch and his people, it appears that their supreme social boast was that there were " no poor in Zion." Such a Zion was to be established in the last days; and in the consummation of a social system which would truly and most perfectly realize Zion, according to the conception of the Prophet Joseph, was the grand socialistic aim of the Mormon mission. Co-operation is as much a car- dinal and essential doctrine of the Mormon Church as baptism for the remission of sins ; and every Mormon Elder who understands the philosophy of his own system could affirm that without co-operation society cannot be saved. Further- more, it has been the ambition of the Mormon leaders to evolve their own social system. Hence their wonderful " gatherings"-the emigration of a hundred and fifty thousand converts from Europe; their founding of hundreds of cities and settlements under a temporal Priesthood of Bishops, and hence also their patri- archal and polygamic institutions. We are not, however, in this chapter, about to treat of the strange religious and social system of the Mormons; but to speak of the efforts of Brigham Young in 1868-9 and '70 to transform this people into a grand co-operative community and afterwards to perfect them as the " United Order of Enoch."

The co-operative exposition, then, shows us that early in his day, Joseph Smith attempted to found a communistic church,-not after the order of the French Communists and sceptics, nor even after that of the more reverent Robert Owen ; but such a communistic church or social and religious brotherhood as the great English socialist believed Jesus and his apostles attempted to establish on the earth as the pattern of things in the heavens. Apostasy and persecutions, however, prevented the Mormon Prophet from consummating this grand " design of the Heavens" to found, through him, a socialistic-religious brotherhood on the earth ushering in the earth's Millennium. But the Mormon apostles and the elders generally believe that all this would be ultimately consummated in their mission. At home and abroad this splendid ideal-which Robert Owen, in his latter moments especially, would have reveled in as a vision of New Jerusalem- often formed the subject of the most inspired sermons of the elders. Thus it continued as an ideal in the Mormon faith for nearly a quarter of a century after the death of the Mormon Prophet, before Brigham Young vigorously attempted to carry the plan into execution.

The reasons of this delay were-first, the extraordinary and unfavorable cir- cumstances of the Mormon people during that period. There was the exodus from Nauvoo and then the peopling of these numerous valleys with the tens of thousands of destitute emigrants from Europe. They had also to convert the desert into a fruitful field. The law of their condition might have been well ex- pressed in Lincoln's homely injunction-" Root, hog, or die." This period, there- fore, was not the one to establish the order of Zion-for such the " Order of Enoch " is-nor to open effectively a probationary and preparatory period with some prudent co-operative plan upon which the moneyed men of the country as well as the people could unite.

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HISTORY OF SALT LAKE CITY.

According to these views of the true genius of the Mormon commonwealth and the proper socialistic aims of the Church, a Zion's Co-operative plan is most legitimate. Upon it, Mormon society must sooner or later be completely and per- fectly constructed or the Church will fail to embody her own social philosophy. This communistic gospel of the Mormons thirty years ago attracted the attention of the great socialistic apostles of England and won their admiration. It did so with George Jacob Holyoak and his class; and the famous and learned socialist, Brontier O'Brian, in one of the most powerful and discriminating editorials ever written upon the Mormons and their commonwealth, said in Reynolds' Newspaper that the Mormons had " created a soul under the rib of death !" It was a matter of supreme astonishment to these great apostles of socialism to find a Christian Church in this age working abreast of themselves in social reforms; and they boldly and justly proclaimed that the Mormons were the only people in Christen- dom who were building upon the true social base-work as exemplified in the early Christian Church. And what made the Mormon movement, in its socialistic as- pects, so singular and interesting to these men was the fact that the Mormons were working out a new social order harmonious with the co-operative and communistic plans of a Robert Owen, yet with God in their system and a mighty faith in their people inspiring them to a great social reconstruction. They frankly confessed that in this respect the Mormon apostles had the advantage of all other reformers of the social system.

The Mormons as a community were about to test the strength of their tem- poral bulwark. They were also, for the first time in their history, to meet an adequate trial of the communistic genius of their Church, at once in its potency in the sense of a community's aggregated force and in the adhesive and the pre- serving qualities of that genius in the sense of a communistic power of resistance. But we must return to the historical narrative of the period, that we may review the salient points of the situation during the years 1868-69-70. Early in 1868, the merchants were startled by the announcement " that it was advisable that the people of Utah Territory should become their own merchants; " and that an or- ganization should be created for them expressly for importing and distributing merchandise on a comprehensive plan. When it was asked of President Young, " What do you think the merchants will do in this matter; will they fall in with this co-operative idea?" he answered, "I do not know, but if they do not we shall leave them out in the cold, the same as the Gentiles, and their goods shall rot upon their shelves."

This surely was implacable ; but, as already observed, Brigham Young and the Mormons as a peculiar community had in 1868 come face to face with impla- cable necessities. They had, in fact, to cease to be a communistic power in the world and from that moment exist as a mere religious sect, or preserve their tem- poral cohesiveness. The Mormons from the first have existed as a society, not as a sect. They have combined the two elements of organization-the social and the religious. They are now a new society-power in the world and an entirety in themselves. They are indeed the only religious community in Christendom of

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modern birth. They existed as such in Ohio; in Missouri, in Illinois, and finally in Utah ; and to preserve themselves as a community they made an exodus to the isolation of the Rocky Mountains. They intend forever to preserve themselves as a community ; that was the plain and simple meaning of Brigham Young's an- swer concerning the merchants in 1868. It was not an exodus which was then needed to so preserve them, but a Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution. The subsequent history abundantly shows as much ; many times since, as we shall find by tracing the lines of the Mormon financial influences abroad, Z. C. M. I. has moved the commercial world everywhere to the preservation of that peculiar community of which it has become the temporal bulwark. There was, therefore, at once the extraordinary sagacity of a great society organizer as well as genuine Mormon fidelity in President Young's answer. If the merchants do not fall in with Zion's Co-operative movement to preserve herself intact " we will leave them out in the cold, the same as the Gentiles." President John Taylor or George Q. Cannon would have answered precisely the same. Indeed, this was the united decision of the Apostles upon the co-operative necessities of the times, and it was a co-operation among the mercantile and financial class of the community ·that was so essentially required in 1868-69-70. To appreciate the radical necessity of such a combination of the Mormon moneyed classes at that time will be to sociologically understand the birth and subsequent history of Z. C. M. I. and the immense service which three or four of the chief commercial and moneyed men of the Territory did to the community in resigning their own base-work to a Zion's Institution, thus setting the example to the lesser mercantile powers throughout the Territory.

The co-operative plan having been sufficiently evolved in the mind of Presi- dent Young and his apostolic compeers, the President called a meeting of the merchants in the City Hall, October, 1868. It was there and then determined to adopt a general co-operative plan throughout the Territory to preserve the com- merce and money resources of the people within theniselves, and thus also to preserve the social unity. As yet, however, the methods of co-operation were not perfected nor the idea of a Z. C. M. I. completely evolved. It was necessary for the merchants themselves to work out the idea into practical shape, it being their special movement, though inspired by the Church from the very impulse of her own genius. To be true to the integrity of history, it must be confessed that of themselves the merchants never would have re-constructed themselves upon a co-operative plan. The inspiration of the moment was from the Church, while its success was in such men as Jennings and Hooper and Eldredge and Clawson ; but especially was the commercial basework of Mr. Jennings, with his Eagle Em- porium, required for the foundation of an Institution colossal enough to represent a community. Brigham Young was wise enough to know the necessary parts of the combination.

The initial movement of co-operation having been made, meeting followed meeting ; a committee was appointed to frame a constitution and by-laws, and, without seeing the end from the beginning, their part of the programme was car- ried out, and an institution formed on paper ; subscriptions were solicited, and cash fell into the coffers of the Treasurer pro tem. This was during the winter

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months of 1868. With the turn of the year a committee was appointed to com- mence operations. They waited upon the President for advice, who, in his quiet but decided way, said : " Go to work and do it." After a little conversation, the question was again suggested : "What shall we do?" With the same sen- tentious brevity, the reply came, "Go to work and do it." "But how?" the questioners continued ; " we haven't enough money ; we haven't the goods ; we have no building; we haven't sufficient credit." "Go to work and do it, and I will show you how," was the President's finality to those who came to seek counsel.

To some minds these sententious answers of Brigham Young will be merely illustrations of a despotic resolve to force into existence a mercantile co-operation by the power which he held over the Latter-day Saints in all the world. That universal dominance of the head of the Church is admitted ; and in 1868, before the opening of the Utah mines, and the existence of a mixed population, there was no commercial escape from the necessities of a combination. But while the imperativeness of President Young's resolve may be frankly confessed, his sagacity was as strongly illustrated as the absoluteness of his purpose. Indeed, these fam- ous replies of Brigham, which were current in the public conversations of Salt Lake City at the time, may be considered, with their significance brought out, as fine tributes to the commercial power and capacity of three or four men, easily named, who could " go to work and do it" better than he could advise them. The co-operative genius evolved in the gatherings of the people into a community in Ohio, Missouri, Illinois and Utah, had already manifested itself. To fail in Mor- mon cooperation was, therefore, something that Brigham Young could not under- stand.

To sum up, then, the people possessed the genius of co-operation, and Brig- ham Young possessed the will ; while around him there was a small circle of men who, for commercial energy and honor, instincts for great enterprises, and finan- cial capacity generally, would be esteemed as pre-eminent in any commercial state in the world.

Thus considered, Brigham Young's famous words, " Go to work and do it," have an extraordinary commercial weight. They signified, in the strongest possi- ble brevity of expression, first, perhaps, faith in himself ; next, faith in the peo- ple; and, lastly, confidence in the organic capacity and financial power of a few men whom he had clearly defined in his mind. Those who have repeated with any other meaning these words of Brigham Young-words which are as types ot the period-have but poorly appreciated the historical import of his mighty in- junction.

Review the commercial and financial combination as defined in Brigham Young's mind at that moment. There was, perhaps, first, the Hon. William H. Hooper. He had served the people faithfully in Congress ever since the " Utah War," and the President esteemed him as the keystone of the commercial arch. As a far-seeing, watchful politician, also William H. Hooper could perfectly com- prehend at once the political and commercial complications of the times and fore- see that, as the people's Delegate, he would soon have to grapple in Congress with the same essential problem that Brigham Young had to grapple with at home.

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This was, to preserve the community intact and sufficiently resistive toward all an- tagonistic forces ; and scarcely a year had passed ere the Hon. William H. Hooper fully realized this in his defence of the Mormons against the Cullom Bill. He, therefore, in the crisis of 1869-70-the date now reached-could well appreciate Brigham Young's words, "Go to work and do it ! "

There was, probably, next in the President's mind, Horace S. Eldredge. He had been with the people in their troubles in Missouri and Illinois, had conducted their emigrations and was one of the commercial founders of the Mormon com- monwealth in Utah. Therefore Horace S. Eldredge was a proper foundation- stone of Z. C. M. I.

The third-and in some respects the most important man defined in the President's mind-was William Jennings. In 1869, he could have carried a mil- lion dollars to either side in means and credit. He had the goods at that moment in Salt Lake City ; he had built his Eagle Emporium, which was quite worthy of Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution to open business in, and he had abun- dance of commercial credit either East or West to sustain the president in his great design.

After these three first named, came John Sharp, Feramorz Little, Henry W. Lawrence and William S. Godbe; besides H. B. Clawson, who was Brigham Young's son-in-law and late business manager, and at this time in partnership with Horace S. Eldredge. Undoubtedly, President Young was depending upon all these above named.

The combinations thus reviewed, reconsider the conversations of the occasion when that committee waited on President Young, for the record is given with historical exactness :

" Go to work and do it."

" But how ?"

" I will show you -- " substantially implying : "you have plenty of money ; you have buildings; you have abundance of goods; you have sufficient credit."

The President was right ; and the merchants realized that there was no get- ting around his solid views.

To the everlasting honor of William Jennings be it said, he did not betray the President and the people in their co-operative movement. Mr. Stenhouse treats his act as a shrewd piece of business policy : but the true historian can only consider it as an act commensurate with the needs of those times. William Jen- nings resigned his business basis to Z. C. M. I., sold his stock to it for over $200,000, and rented his Eagle Emporium for three years to the institution at an annual rental of $8,000. Eldredge & Clawson also sold their stock and resigned their business basis to Z. C. M. I., and other leading firms followed the example.

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History of Salt Lake City, Part 50

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock Publication date: 1886 Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company Number of Pages: 1194

Author: Tullidge, Edward Wheelock
Publication date: 1886
Publisher: Salt Lake City, Star printing company
Number of Pages: 1194