Chapter 20 - A Step Toward Accommodation

Chapter 20 - A Step Toward Accommodation

WHY, AFTER RE-IGNITING the "irrepressible conflict" four days before the end of his Senate term, did Thomas Kearns decide in late 1910 to change the tone of The Tribune in its coverage of political-ecclesiastical affairs?

On the basis of his past record, it was not because he lacked the stomach for a fight. He had waded into too many conflicts when the odds did not appear to be favorable to suggest such a conclusion. One supposition which gained considerable credence — that the change was more or less forced by the defeat of the American Party in the 1911 municipal election — is weakened by the time factor. The decision was reached almost a year before the election and at a time when there is no reason to believe that Kearns and American Party leaders were anticipating defeat.

The answer to the question is probably complex, involving many considerations rather than a single overriding one. On the testimony of Kearns himself one factor was the economics of newspaper publishing. A young business associate and confidant, James I vers, critically posed the question to Kearns some time after he had detected the gradual shift in policy. Kearns, striking a characteristic pose with chin on massive chest, grunted a few times and then called through an open door for an aide to bring in The Tribune account books "and show them to my young friend here." The books showed substantial losses for several prior years. Ivers nodded his understanding and the ex- senator then offered a few explanatory comments. He told Ivers, in substance, that he had been up and down Main Street contacting virtually every prominent gentile businessman; that they had all encouraged him to keep up the fight; but that none of them was willing to put up a single dime to finance it!

While the losses shown on the books were sizable, they were not unsupportable for the owners. But Kearns had been through enough battles to know that persons who urge another to fight, but are unwilling to make a commitment themselves, are unreliable allies and may turn out to be opponents when the going gets rough. He was perhaps more concerned about the attitude of those he would have to look to for support than the deficits of the newspaper.

Other considerations entering into the decision can be inferred or surmised from editorials published in The Tribune both before and after the decision to alter the policy. The Tribune had concluded from election returns that the American Party had, in its victories, been losing more non-Mormon votes to the opposition candidates than it had been gaining from the Mormons. The newspaper had noted also that gentiles were showing an increasing willingness to run on church-supported tickets. In brief, the intermingling of gentiles and Mormons in political contests indicated a growing desire on both sides to forget ecclesiastical orientation of politics. This, really, was what The Tribune had been fighting for. It may well be that Kearns had concluded, to use a phrase which Noble Warrum had probably picked up from McKay when discussing his agreement with Kearns on future editorial policy, that a new policy was needed "to conform to changing conditions and future prospects of the State."

That a change was taking place under the McKay management was conspicuously apparent in The Tribune's news coverage of the 1912 and 1914 election campaigns and editorial comments thereon.

In the 1912 presidential election year three major tickets were entered - Democratic, Republican and Roosevelt's Bull Moose. The Tribune supported the Republican ticket, primarily on the tariff issue. It cautioned that a Democratic victory would mean that Utah's wool and lead would become the first victims of the Democratic anti-protective policies. Allies of all three parties were covered with an impartiality which must have been a shock to partisan readers. Editorial comment on individual candidates opposed by The Tribune was, with only occasional exceptions, temperate, reasoned and directed at positions on issues rather than personal deficiencies. A candidate out of favor with The Tribune might be misinformed or lacking in comprehension but he was no longer a malicious liar. The harshest Tribune criticism was aimed at a Republican ally and journalistic competitor, the Herald-Republican. It was always referred to as the organ of Reed Smoot and his "federal bunch." Occasional jibes were taken at Mormon Church meddling in politics but these were wrapped in humor or gentle sarcasm rather than denunciatory spleen. In an editorial comment on a Democratic meeting The Tribune quoted, with evident pleasure, some remarks of Simon Bamberger, then a candidate for the State Senate and later governor of the state, about an editorial in the church's Improvement Era urging the reelection of William Howard Taft and signed by Joseph F. Smith, president of the church. "This editorial," said Bamberger, "shows that Taft has at least one friend in Utah who is working for him without having any intention to influence a single vote." The Tribune article noted that this remark produced an outburst of Democratic laughter.

In an election morning editorial, The Tribune refrained from predicting the reelection of Taft by a landslide but said:

... If faithful official service, well performed in the real interests of the people, is going to count for anything then certainly President Taft ought to be absolutely sure of re-election.

The next paragraph said:

Whatever the outcome is, however, we can all say with Cardinal Gibbons, whose sermon on Sunday was reported in full in yesterday morning's Tribune, that the country is safe; that the fathers so justly and evenly organized the three departments of government so that no one of them would bring ruin to the Republic; that whatever the result of the election, the Union will be preserved; the Nation will progress, and all will be well.

To readers of The Tribune, accustomed as they were to a "raw meat" type of political diet, this surely must have seemed a switch from the meat-ax to the feather duster.

The Tribune's candidate for president did not win. But Utah was one of the two states he did carry, aided no doubt by The Tribune's warnings as to what a Democratic victory would do to lead and wool and by Joseph F. Smith's editorial in the Improvement Era. In its post-election editorial, The Tribune philosophically accepted the result, noted that the returns verified the most extravagant pre-election claims made for Governor (Woodrow) Wilson, and attributed the Republican rout to the division created by Theodore Roosevelt. The Republicans carried Utah for all state and congressional offices, re-electing William Spry as governor, retaining Joseph Howell for a fifth term as representative in Congress and electing Jacob Johnson to the state's newly acquired seat in the House of Representatives.

In the 1914 election campaign, The Tribune took a stance between its placatory attitude of 1912 and its inflammatory aggressiveness of the pre-1912 days. But it remained much closer to the 1912 pattern than the earlier one. The reason for the shift in the direction of militancy was the candidacy of Reed Smoot for his third term in the Senate. This was the first election under the constitutional amendment requiring the selection of senators directly by the voters instead of by state legislatures, so the Senate seat was a direct rather than an indirect issue in the campaign.

Forsaking its Republican commitment with respect to this office, The Tribune opposed Smoot, but not with the strident voice it had customarily used in past campaigns. It focused its opposition on one central issue — that neither Smoot nor anyone else should simultaneously hold the offices of United States senator and apostle of the Mormon Church. In the light of Kearns' speech in the Senate just before his term ended, his newspaper could hardly have done less than this without appearing craven. So even a policy aimed at accommodation, upon which The Tribune had now embarked, could not justify silence on this issue.

In this particular instance The Tribune could oppose Smoot without in fact being anti-Mormon. Smoot's opponent was James H. Moyle, whose credentials as a solid, dedicated, loyal Latter-day Saint could not be questioned. In this respect Smoot outranked Moyle only in ecclesiastical position. And it was this position which The Tribune contended should make Smoot ineligible for the political position. Then too, The Tribune could oppose Smoot without indirectly supporting a candidate objectionable to Kearns. There are good reasons to believe that Kearns held Moyle in high personal esteem and refrained from directly and affirmatively supporting him only because of his commitment to Democratic policies which Kearns opposed. Moreover there were some similarities between the Moyle and Kearns positions on the church-state issue. From the time the Mormons were divided between the two national parties, Moyle had consistently reflected, and at times asserted, the position that while high Mormon officials had a citizen's right to seek political office and express political positions, they should be regarded and treated as citizens in their political roles and not as ecclesiastical authorities. The Kearns position was that the two roles should not be mixed in the same individual. Certainly, Moyle bitterly resented Tribune attacks on high officials of the church. His view was that when Kearns lost his seat in the Senate, "he used the full power of his paper to revile the Church and fan the fire of hatred already raging over the Reed Smoot situation." But his resentment over this issue apparently did not generate the personal animosity which characterized the period.

Kearns' attitude toward Moyle as a person was expressed at a dinner honoring the latter upon his appointment in 1917 to the position of assistant secretary of the treasury in the Wilson administration. Said Kearns, in concluding his brief speech: "Everybody knows where you stand on any question, and you never hit below the belt." To Moyle the dinner was ". . . an unforgettable occasion . . . not alone for such tributes spontaneously accorded him, but more so for the reconciliation here represented."

In its lead editorial the Sunday before the election, The Tribune took what before 1912 would have been a very "soft" position on the candidate it opposed.

What will Tuesday's verdict be? it asked. Will Senator Smoot be elected his own successor or will James H. Moyle be given the coveted honor? Were Senator Smoot not an apostle of the dominant church of the state there could be little doubt of the result. And, even recognizing the tremendous advantage Mr. Smoot's church position gives him, it is difficult to imagine how he can carry Utah, wedded though it is to high protection, in this year of grace, 1914.

The editorial then cited reasons why it opposed Smoot and argued that his defeat or his reelection by a close vote would be a victory for The Tribune's position.

When the first returns came in the Democrats were jubilant. Moyle carried Salt Lake County by 1,076 votes. But outlying counties changed the pattern and Smoot won by a margin of 3,152 votes. Democrats raised an uproar over suspected fraud in Weber and Washington counties. But Moyle declined to seek an investigation and a recount.

The Tribune's post-election editorial bore the caption: "Mr. Smoot's Rebuke."

Tuesday election is full of promise to the people of Utah. Its results were in effect a pledge by the people to themselves of independence in political affairs. If the outcome does not indicate a complete divorce of church and state, it assuredly must satisfy the most radical critic that a tremendous forward movement has been made in this direction.

On Sunday last The Tribune commented editorially on the outlook in this state and it indicated, in hope rather than expectation, the possibility of the thing happening that has happened. It pointed out the almost insuperable difficulty of dislodging a man like Senator Smoot, intrenched by his apostleship, and by it elevated in the minds of his co-religionists, above the ranks of his fellow citizens. The Tribune also indicated that, in the dozen years Mr. Smoot has occupied the senatorship, a strong sentiment has grown up against the elevation of a high church official to a lofty political position. The impropriety of one man's holding simultaneously two offices - one next to the loftiest in the American government — has been much commented on, and by none in stricter terms of reprobation than by Mormon Republicans, who nevertheless, were more than willing to accept Mr. Smoot in either capacity, but in one only. . . .

The Tribune, of course, could be accused of self-serving rationalization in interpreting a narrow-margin defeat as a victory. But it could reasonably argue that the close race in a state which two years before was one of the two in the entire union to stand firm for the Republican Party; in which the head of the dominant church had urged support of the Republican presidential candidate; and in which the major economic interests were strongly protectionist, did reflect a movement toward The Tribune's position.

As for The Tribune, its coverage of the 1914 campaign showed that 1912 was not a passing aberration but was intended as a continuing policy. It had covered the news events of the campaign objectively and impartially; it had opposed a candidate because of his ecclesiastical position without rancor, and without assailing his religion; it had sought to persuade with reason rather than inflame with invective; it had pursued a course designed to invite reconciliation rather than to provoke retaliation; it had begun implementing a policy conforming to changing conditions and looking to the future prospects of the state.