The First 100 Years: A History of The Salt Lake Tribune 1871-1971 by O.N. Malmquist

19 Give 'Em Hell Politics Again WHEN EX-SENATOR Thomas Kearns returned from his four-year term in the Senate his political allies were licking wounds inflicted the previous November and preparing for revenge in the Salt Lake City election to be held the next year. The Smoot investigation was still in progress in Washington supplying ammunition for the American Party to use in the forthcoming campaign. The Mormon Church, apparently in response to the disclosures being made in the Smoot investigation and in Kearns' farewell speech in the Senate, was cracking down on members who still refused to comply with commitments of the Woodruff "Manifesto" and the reiteration of t h a t document by President Joseph F. Smith at the April, 1904, annual conference.

The Salt Lake Tribune was being operated under the management of Joseph Lippman, a lawyer who was associated with Kearns and The Tribune intermittently over a long period, and was apparently making a modest profit. But in October, 1905, Lippman was replaced by Frank I. Sefrit, who served in the role of publisher and general manager for the following six years.

Frank J. Cannon was the chief editorial writer, but the executive in charge of the news and editorial departments was Colonel William Nelson, a Civil War veteran of imposing appearance whose career with The Tribune spanned thirty-two years.

The Colonel, like some Tribune editors and publishers who followed him, had an aversion to personal publicity in the organ 244