Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 41, Number 3, 1973

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH,

Editor

G L E N M . LEONARD, Managing

Editor

MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y , Assistant

Editor

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER, Provo,

1974

M R S . I N E Z S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1975 S. GEORGE E L L S W O R T H , Logan,

1975

DAVID E. M I L L E R , Salt Lake City, 1976 L A M A R PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1974 R I C H A R D W. SADLER, Ogden,

1976

HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1975 J E R O M E S T O F F E L , Logan,

1974

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Utah's history. T h e Quarterly is published by t h e U t a h State Historical Society, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102. Phone (801) 328-5755.

Members of the Society receive the Quarterly a n d the bimonthly Newsletter upon payment of the annual dues; for details see inside back cover.

Single copies, $2.00.

Materials for publication should be submitted in duplicate accompanied by return postage and should be typed double-spaced with footnotes at the end.

Additional information on requirements is available from the managing editor. T h e Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

T h e Quarterly Social Science

is indexed in Book Review Index Periodicals and on Biblio Cards.

to

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, U t a h .

ISSN 0042-143X

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H I S T O R I C A L QUARTERLY

S U M M E R 1973 / V O L U M E 41 / N U M B E R 3

Contents IN THIS ISSUE

219

BRIGHAM YOUNG'S OUTER CORDON— A REAPPRAISAL

EUGENE

UNIONISM, COMMUNISM, AND TFIE GREAT DEPRESSION: THE CARBON COUNTY COAL STRIKE OF 1933 . . . .

HELEN Z. THE LOGAN TABERNACLE AND TEMPLE

LEONARD

E.

CAMPBELL

220

PAPANIKOLAS

254

J.

ARRINGTON

MELVIN A. LARKIN

301

BOOK REVIEWS

315

BOOK NOTICES

324

RECENT ARTICLES

327

HISTORICAL NOTES

334

T H E C O V E R Riders head into Genoa, Nevada, site of the Mormons' Carson Valley Mission.

This is one of several color plates which accompanied the published report of Capt. James H. Simpson's 1859 expedition. H. V. A. von Breckh was the expedition's artist, and J. J. Young made the finished watercolors. Courtesy National Archives.

IN T H I S ISSUE The grenade-equipped national guardsman was filmed by J. Bracken Lee. Courtesy Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah. The Logan Temple is from the Widtsoe Collection and Fort Bridger from the Charles Kelly Collection, both at Utah State Historical Society. © Copyright 1973 Utah State Historical Society

W H E E L W R I G H T , L O R I N F., and W'OODBURY,

LAEL J., EDS., Mormon Volume

Arts,

I

GIBBS M. SMITH

O L S O N , SHERRY H., The Depletion

315

Myth:

A History of Railroad Use of Timber

.

.

.

.

RORABACHER, J. ALBERT, The

J A M E S L. CLAYTON

316

American

Buffalo in Transition: A Historical and Economic Survey of the Bison in America, and M C H U G H , T O M , The of the Buffalo

Time .

.

M E R R I L L G. BURLINGAME

317

F O W L E R , D O N D., and F O W L E R , C A T H E R I N E S.,

EDS., Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880

WICK R . M I L L E R

318

Books reviewed

H I N E , ROBERT V., a n d LOTTINVILLE, SAVOIE, EDS.,

Soldier in the West: Tetters of Theodore Talbot during His Services in California, Mexico, and Oregon, 1845-53

.

.

.

.

T H O M A S F. A N D R E W S

F O L K M A N , DAVID I., J R . , The Route

.

ZUNI PEOPLE:

The Zunis:

.

.

.

Nicaragua J O H N HASKELL KEMBLE

320

Q U A M , ALVINA, TRANS.,

Self-Portrayals

.

S H U I G H I NAGATA

HARSTAD, PETER T., ED., Reminiscences

Oscar Sonnenkalb,

Idaho

ELLIOTT, R U S S E L L R., History

321

of

Surveyor

and Pioneer

Nevada

319

A. J. SIMMONDS

322

ELBERT B. EDWARDS

323

of

In this issue The construction of Utah's architectural landmarks has been accomplished with persistence, sacrifice, and determined effort. Each carefully hewn stone in the religious shrine, each straightly laid brick in the worker's home, each roughly chopped log in the pioneer's cabin contributed to the evolving image of the man-made landscape. The building of the Mormon temple in Cache Valley produced a lasting impact on the community religiously, aesthetically, and economically. The effort itself is described in one of the articles in this issue along with an analysis of important spinoff projects and influences.

Not unlike the combining of quarried blocks into the religious edifices at Logan, events in Carbon County accumulated to form an unforgettable landmark in the pages of Utah labor history. One of several workers' protests, the 1933 coal strike exhibited characteristics peculiar to the period of radical union movements and flirtations with communism. A detailed retelling of the events in this Quarterly adds one event upon another and builds toward a helpful understanding of human needs and social realities in the unionization of miners.

A building toward climax is also apt in describing the process which led to the essay on the well-known outer cordon colonies established during Brigham Young's reign over Utah's settlement process. It was gradually over a period of years that the evidence fell into place dislocating mistaken assumptions about the peripheral ring of Mormon colonies. Such scholarship is changing our view of Utah history, just as tumultuous events make history, and construction projects create historical landmarks.

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Brigham Young's Outer Cordonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; A Reappraisal

BY E U G E N E E. C A M P B E L L

were considered in the preparation of this paper. An early favorite was "Brigham Young's Outer Cordon: Planned Empire, Millennial Mistake, or Historian's Pipe Dream?" A more moderate caption ended with "Outposts of a Planned Empire or Haphazard Colonizing Failure?" But after hours of contemplation, the term "reappraisal" seemed safer and easier to defend.

All this is simply an introduction to the thesis of this paper, namely, that the idea of an outer circle of colonies being established by Brigham Young and the other Mormon leaders for the purpose of controlling the trails leading into the Great Basin and securing a huge empire within the. area encircled by the colonies is a concept of questionable validity. A second concept closely associated with the first, that this colonizing program failed because of the invasion of Utah by the United States Army in 1857-58, is similarly inaccurate.

It is the author's contention that the so-called outer cordon colonies were established for a variety of reasons other than the encirclement concept and that most had failed or were in the process of failing by the time of the approach of the army. If it were a planned empire, it was conceived on a small scale, executed in a haphazard manner, and abandoned without the usual heroic efforts that characterized Mormon enterprise. It just doesn't seem like Brigham Young's style.

S E V E R A L MORE EXCITING TITLES

Map

indicates

early boundaries

and

settlements.

Dr. Campbell is professor of history at Brigham Young University. This paper was presented as a lecture in the 1972-73 series sponsored by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at BYU and is printed here with the generous permission of the Redd Center and of BYU Press which will publish the lecture papers in a monograph.

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ORIGIN OF T H E C O N C E P T

There is no question concerning Brigham Young's desire to create a Mormon empire in the Great Basin region. Four days after his arrival in Salt Lake Valley he stated that "he intended to have every hole and corner from the Bay of San Francisco known to us." 1 Later, in March 1849, he wrote, "We hope soon to explore the valleys three hundred miles south and also the country as far as the Gulf of California with a view to settlement and to acquiring a seaport." 2 The extensive territory included within the boundaries of the State of Deseret in 1849 is ample evidence of the plans to acquire control over an area where "scores of thousands will join us in our secluded retreat." 3 It is also apparent that colonies were established at San Bernardino, Fort Supply, Fort Bridger, Fort Limhi, Las Vegas, Elk Mountain, and Carson Valleyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;all far from the headquarters in Salt Lake Valley.

With such developments it seemed logical to assume that these outlying colonies were established to secure the region for further Mormon colonization. And so the outer cordon concept was developed.

Andrew Love Neff was the first to use the term. Earlier writers of Utah history such as Orson F. Whitney, B. H. Roberts, and Levi Edgar Young mention the founding of the colonies but do not assert that they were part of a plan to encircle and control the Great Basin region. But Neff was very explicit on this point when he wrote: Significant expansion movements between 1851 and 1857 disclose the ambition of the Mormon Church to appropriate all the advantageous agricultural regions and key points ringing the central desert and to secure and control for the protection and accommodation of the inner group all the strategic points along the line of advance into the Intermountain regions.

T h e dream of an outer cordon of settlements became measurably realized with the founding of the San Bernardino colony, the Carson Valley mission, the Elk Mountain experiment, the Limhi mission, the settlement of Las Vegas, the establishment of Fort Supply and the purchase of Fort Bridger. These key positions constituted a nucleus for a chain of settlements to bridge the caravans of Saints, and to keep down Indian uprisings.

Clearly it was the hope and expectation of the empire bulding genius of the Church to strive at the occupation of the entire Intermountain region. These movements, then, were not born of the 1 Wilford Woodruff Journal, July 28, 1847, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, hereinafter referred to as LDS Archives.

2 "Journal History of the Church," March 9, 1847, LDS Archives.

3 Ibid., April 6, 1850.

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

223

Cottonwoods shelter part of the old Mormon Fort at Las Vegas.

The building now contains a small museum display and caretaker's quarters. Courtesy Dickinson Library, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. spontaneous and unrelated action of individuals, seeking their personal fortune and exercising individual prerogative, but rather were the carefully thought-out designs of the astute leaders. Efforts to colonize in these remote localities occasioned serious inconvenience and discomfort, and called for a high sense of duty and allegiance to secure the necessary membership for the execution of the project.

Especially does this out-lying cordon of settlements and posts, strategically placed, admirablv reflect the plan and design to dominate and control the destiny of the empire between the Sierras and the Rockies. T h e sagacity manifested in the conception and comprehension of these vital projects bespeaks the ability and talent of Mormon leadership. T h e irresistableness of purpose, the thoroughness and deliberateness with which the leaders planned their respective moves command admiration. 1 4 Andrew Love Neff, History of Utah, 1847 to 1869 (Salt Lake City, 1940), 217-18.

Neff seems to be the originator of this concept, although there is some problem in identifying this responsibility because of Leland H. Creer's role as editor and annotator of History of Utah, published four years after Neff's death. Creer credits Neff with most of the material in the book, including the first eight chapters which were based on Neff's doctoral dissertation written at the University of California in 1918. However, the outer cordon concept is found in chapter 12 which Creer lists as one that included "some material of his own research."

An examination of Creer's later publication, The Founding of an Empire: The Exploration and Colonization of Utah, 1776-1856 (Salt Lake City, 1947), reveals that Creer has included the outer cordon concept but has not elaborated on it to the extent found in Neff's work.

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Milton R. Hunter, who published an article entitled "The Mormon Corridor" in 1939 and his important book Brigham Young, the Colonizer in 1940, must be considered as a possible originator of the concept of encirclement for control although he does not use the terms inner and outer cordons. But since Neff's work had been completed several years earlier, it seems more likely that Hunter accepted the concept and helped to popularize it when he wrote: After establishing "Deseret," Brigham Young strengthened the weak spots in its geographic outline by building Fort Supply and Fort Bridger in Wyoming as controls over the eastern entrance to the Basin and as stations on the Mormon trail where the immigrating Saints could replenish their exhausted supplies preparatory to the last 125 miles of difficult mountain and canyon traveling. Carson Valley, Nevada, at the foot of the passes over the Sierra, was settled by Mormons. It served as a midway station between Salt Lake City and San Francisco on the northern route to the sea. Colonists were also sent to Moab, Grand Valley, at an opening in the south-eastern boundary; others were dispatched far northward of the Mormon empire to the Salmon River in what was then Oregon and is now I d a h o ; and over 400 Saints settled at San Bernardino, California in 1851. Thus within eight years after arriving in the Great Basin, Brigham Young had his commonwealth surrounded with control settlements.

T h e fact that Governor Young established San Bernardino, California in 1851, Las Vegas, Nevada (Territory of New Mexico) in 1855, and Limhi on the Salmon River in Idaho (Oregon Territory) in 1855 â&#x20AC;&#x201D;all founded outside U t a h after Congress had reduced the size of the "State of Deseret"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;is evidence that he intended not to be thwarted in his plans to control by colonization as extensive a country as possible in the Great West. But this control he intended to achieve through a legitimate, peaceable method of land settlement."'

It should be noted that Hunter used the term "control settlements" and stressed the fact that this had been accomplished within eight years after the arrival of the Mormons in the Great Basin.

More recent writers of Utah history, including Gustive O. Larson, David E. Miller, Everett L. Cooley, and Leonard J. Arrington, have apparently taken the outer cordon concept as an established fact. For example, Arrington wrote the following: Mormon colonization during the years 1847-57 went through two phases. T h e first phase was the founding of what has been called â&#x20AC;˘> Milton R. Hunter, Brigham Young, the Colonizer, 3rd ed. (Independence, Mo., 1945), 66-67. The puzzling thing about Hunter's attitude is that he was aware of the failure at Elk Mountain and of the fact that the church had nothing to do with the settlement of Carson Valley until 1855, and yet he still fosters the outer cordon concept.

Br'wham Yountfs Outer Cordon

225

"the inner cordon of settlements." In addition to the settlement of the Salt Lake and Weber valleys in 1847 and 1848, colonies were founded in Utah, Tooele, and Sanpete valleys in 1849; Box Elder, Pahvant, Juab, and Parowan valleys in 1851; and Cache Valley in 1856. Settlements in all of these "valleys" multiplied with additional immigration throughout the 1850's. T h e second phase was an expansion beyond the immediately available cultivatable valleys with a view to ringing the commonwealth with colonies located at strategic points of interception â&#x20AC;&#x201D;all of them far distant from the central bastion. Carson Valley, Nevada, was settled during the years 1849-1851; San Bernardino, California in 1851; Las Vegas, Nevada in 1855; Moab, in south-eastern U t a h in 1855; Fort Supply and Fort Bridger, Wyoming in 1853 and 1856; and Limhi, on the Salmon River in northern Idaho in 1855. T h e area encompassed within this outer cordon embraced almost a sixth of the present area of the United States. It was 1,000 miles from north to south, and 800 miles from east to west. 0

In these accounts it has been assumed that since these colonies were established in strategic locations far distant from the initial settlement and that since it is known that the Mormon leaders planned to control and dominate this huge area, these colonies were part of a master plan to secure the region by forming an outer cordon of "control settlements." However, a detailed study of the origin and development of each of these colonies reveals no such plan. On the contrary, they were established for a variety of different reasons and with varying degrees of church approval and support. One of the colonies survived for less than three months without any real attempt to save it. Those that survived until the coming of Johnston's army were abandoned without any real need. In Neff's words, the army afforded "a legitimate excuse for the abandonment of obviously failing endeavors."

An interesting parallel may be found in the case of Andrew Jackson and so-called Jacksonian Democracy. Regarded by many as the first great champion of democracy in the United States, Jackson has given his name to the movement which greatly increased the involvement and interest of the common people in politics. After all, he was the first of our presidents to be born in poverty and to fulfill the American dream by gaining the presidency. And didn't he stand for the people against the Bank of the United States that favored the aristocratic few against the many? Yet when historian Thomas P. Abernathy made a careful study of Tennessee politics during this period, he found Jackson consistently on the side of wealth and privilege. "Not only was Jackson "Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), 84-85.

History of the

Latter-day

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not a consistent politician, he was not even a real leader of democracy," Abernathy wrote. "He had no part whatever in the promotion of the liberal movement which was progressing in his own state. . . . His advisors and friends were conservatives of the old school who opposed rather than assisted the new movement." In conclusion, Abernathy wrote, "Jackson never really championed the cause of the people, he only invited them to champion his." 7 Other studies such as Edward Pessen's analysis of the New York working man's vote and Bray Hammond's study of the bank episode bear out this conclusion. A more detailed analysis of the concept by Lee Benson revealed that the term Jacksonian Democracy was misleading and assumed a strong causal relationship "between Andrew Jackson's real or symbolic role in politics, and the progress of movements dedicated to equalitarian and humanitarian ideals or objectives. . . . No matter how the concept is defined," wrote Benson, "as I read the source materials and analyze the data, its underlying assumptions are . . . untenable." 8 The point of the comparison is that it is dangerous to make assumptions even in such obvious situations as Andrew Jackson, the democrat, and Brigham Young, the colonizer. Detailed studies using primary sources must form the basis of historical conclusions.

THE

SALMON RIVER M I S S I O N

The most obvious exception to any kind of a planned cordon of colonies around the Great Basin is Fort Limhi, established by the Salmon River missionaries in 1855. It was almost four hundred miles north of Salt Lake City and well beyond the boundaries of the Great Basin. It did not command any trail leading to or from the region, and therefore was not in a strategic location. It just doesn't fit any of the outer cordon concept requirements.

One of my graduate students, John D. Nash, became interested in the subject when he visited the site of Fort Limhi and read the inscription on the historical marker which quoted Brigham Young as saying: "Go into the Salmon River Country, Oregon Territory. Many tribes converge upon that area to fish and hunt. Choose an appropriate location and found a mission. Teach them the arts of husbandry and peace according to our Gospel plan." 9 7 Thomas P. Abernathy, "Andrew Jackson and the New Democracy," in James L. Bugg, Jr., ed., Jacksonian Democracy (New York, 1962), 60-61. s Lee Benson, "The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy," in Eight Issues in American History, ed. by David Potter and Curtis Grant (Glenview, 111., 1966), 55-56.

9 Copied from the front plaque of the monument at Fort Lemhi, Idaho. (Current maps spell the fort with an " e " : Lemhi.)

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

227

He wondered why President Young had chosen such an uninviting, out-of-the-way place. In the course of his detailed study of the colony, he discovered that when Brigham Young had visited the settlement in May 1857 he had criticized them for going so far north. He asserted that they should have stopped at a point near the Blackfoot River just north of Fort Hall and settled there so as to be nearer their brethren in Salt Lake. When President Young returned to Salt Lake City he carried a bleak impression of Fort Limhi and in a public sermon criticized the general locale as well as the exact location. He said that Limhi Valley made other bleak valleys such as Malad look beautiful in comparison.

Puzzled by the apparent contradiction in Brigham Young's call as recorded on the monument and his reaction to the location after visiting it, Mr. Nash wrote to one of the leading historians in Idaho asking if he knew the documentary source for the quote on the marker.

He was informed that there was no such statement in Brigham Young's journal, but that "the statement attributed to Brigham Young was written by me in the manner of 'poetic licence' for placement upon a plaque at the Salmon River monument. I think it conforms nicely with the spirit and intent of the mission call."10 A wonderful quote but very misleading. One is led to ask, "If you can't trust a historian, whom can you trust?"

The truth of the matter seems to be that the twenty-seven missionaries were called as a part of a larger Indian missionary program in the 1855 spring conference of the Mormon church. One group of missionaries had already been called to the Santa Clara region in October 1853 and had set out on their mission the following April. In the 1855 conference, groups of missionaries were called to Las Vegas, Elk Mountain (Moab), and Millard County near the present UtahNevada border,11 as well as the Limhi group whose original destination was apparently given in rather general terms such as "the Rocky Mountains." John V. Bluth, who wrote the first significant history of the mission, maintained that they were instructed "to settle among the

10 Letter to John D. Nash, July 25, 1966. Copy in author's possession. Mr. Nash's article on "The Salmon River Mission of 1855" {Idaho Yesterdays, Spring 1967) is the source of much of the information on Fort Limhi.

11 Missionaries were also assigned to tribes in what is now Oklahoma, and the colonizing missionaries in Carson Valley and Fort Bridger were instructed to do missionary work among the Indians. An expedition was sent to the White Pine area near the present U t a h - N e v a d a border, but no attempt was made to establish a mission there.

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Fort Limhi, Idaho, site of Mormon mission on the Salmon River.

Nicholas G. Morgan Collection, Utah State Historical Society.

Flathead, Bannock or Shoshone Indians, or anywhere the tribes would receive them."12 The Fort Hall region would have been a logical stopping place if a "control colony" had been planned on the Oregon Trail. However, when they arrived at Fort Hall, the missionaries apparently came under the influence of Neil McArthur, ex-Hudson's Bay Company man, who had spent the previous winter on the Salmon River and who recommended the valley as an excellent place for missionary work among the Indians.

It was only after spending- the winter in the region that the missionaries sought permission to return to Salt Lake for their families with the intent of colonizing the valley. There is strong evidence that President Young had decided to make it a permanent colony after his visit in May 1857. He promised to send more settlers and encouraged the building of a new settlement two miles from the fort. Fields were divided into individual plots whereas before the missionaries cultivated a common field.

12 John V. Bluth, "The Salmon River Mission," Improvement October 1900), 803.

Era, 3 (September and

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

229

The principal problem concerning the Salmon River Mission as well as the other Indian missions is the reason for their establishment.

Was their sole purpose to convert and civilize the Indians, or was this activity only a preliminary to the colonizing program? There is conflicting testimony on the subject, especially as participants wrote their memoirs and gave their understanding of the motivation behind the mission. Brigham Young's clearcut instructions to the southern Indian missionaries in 1854 may add some light to the problem. He said: You are not sent to farm, build nice houses and fence fine fields, not to help the white men but to save red ones, learn their language, and this you can do more effectively by living among them as well as writing out a list of words, go with them where they go, live with them, and teach them as you can, and being thus with them all the time, you will soon be able to teach them in their own language. 1 3

It seems reasonable to believe that such instructions were given to other missionaries sent out at the same time.

The colony continued to survive, despite considerable discouragement, until unexpected events led to its abandonment. The approach of the U.S. Army and the Mormon resistance to it led to widespread apprehension among the whites in the Limhi region, and these attitudes had their impact on the Indians. The burning of the government supply trains by Mormon raiders led to fear that Mormons in the Limhi region might engage in similar activity. One group of mountaineers reported that the Limhi Mormons were in high spirits over these activities and were saying that Brigham Young would save the Republic and would be made president of the United States.

Relationships with the Indians deteriorated until on February 25, 1858, an estimated two hundred Indians made a raid on the fort, driving off the cattle and killing and wounding some of the defenders.

Messengers were sent to Salt Lake for help, but they were instructed to abandon the colony. One hundred fifty men were sent to rescue the colonists, which they did on March 23. The exodus began immediately, and the Salmon River Mission came to an end. It certainly wasn't part of a carefully planned empire.

13 Juanita Brooks, ed., Journal of the Southern Indian Mission: Diary of Thomas D. Brown (Logan, 1972), 29-30. It should be noted that the missionaries at Limhi, Elk Mountain, and Las Vegas felt compelled to build forts and fence in their fields in order to survive and that these actions led to antagonism on the part of the Indians. It may also have led to the idea that these missions were intended to he colonies.

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Quarterly

MOUNTAIN

The other Indian missions had somewhat similar experiences.

Forty men were called during the April 1855 conference to begin the Elk Mountain Mission among the Indians at the Colorado River crossing where Moab, Utah, is now located. Following parts of the Old Spanish Trail, as well as Gunnison's route, the missionaries finally reached the Green River where they met some Indians. President Alfred Nelson Billings told them that "our business was to learn them the principles of the gospel and to raise grain." 11 They had difficulty getting their cattle across the Green River in a little boat which President Billings had brought along as his wagon box. "We worked nearly two days in trying to swim our cattle and only got twenty-five over. (They had 65 oxen, 16 cows, 2 bulls and 1 calf). We then took two at a time and towed them over with the boat, many of them would not swim a stroke, and some swam back." 15 One large fat ox broke its leg which O. B. Huntington thought was a good thing because they needed beef. After a twenty-day journey, the group reached the Grand (Colorado) River. After selecting a place for a fort, they held a meeting and then retired to the river to be rebaptized.

They experienced some opposition on the part of the Indians who couldn't understand why they were building a fort if they intended to be their friends. A few days later the Ute chief Arapeen came into their camp carrying mail for the missionaries. He also preached, speaking first the Ute and then the Navajo languages. Other Indians spoke in favor of the Mormons, and within a week fourteen males and one female were baptized, each being given a new name such as Nephi, Lehi, Samuel, and Joseph.

An August 19 letter from Brigham Young to President Billings instructed the missionaries to travel and live with the Indians, except for a few to defend the fort. This message, which is similar to that given to the southern Utah Indian missionaries, was read to the Indians and made a favorable impression on them.

Despite their success in baptizing many of the natives, the missionaries were unable to convince them that they should not steal. By September 20, President Billings reported that the Indians had taken 14

Alfred N. Billings Diary, p. 3, holograph, Clark Library, Brigham Young University,

15

Deseret News, August 1, 1855.

Provo.

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

231

all the beets, part of the turnips, part of the potatoes, all the squash, and all the melons. The corn had already been cut and hauled into the fort in an effort to save it. Three days later some Indians attacked the fort, ultimately killing three missionaries, wounding President Billings, and setting fire to their winter supply of hay and corn. The decision was made to abandon the mission, and after some harrowing experiences the survivors made their way to the Mormon settlements.

The mission had lasted just three months, and no attempts were made by the church leaders to reorganize or reclaim it. Such an effort hardly seems like a plan "to control the only other accessible entrance to the Great Basin country, that via Denver and New Mexico, along the route of the Old Spanish Trail" as asserted by Neff.lfi 10

Neff, History of Utah, 236.

Rock ruins are all that remain of the Elk Mountain Mission to the Indians near the site of present-day Moab. Historic Preservation Collections, Utah State Historical Society.

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LAS VEGAS

The April 1855 missionary call included the names of thirty men chosen to establish an Indian mission at Las Vegas Springs. This was certainly a strategic location on the route to southern California and would have been a logical part of a plan to "have a continued line of stations and places of refreshment" 17 between Salt Lake City and San Bernardino. Yet, San Bernardino had been founded in 1851, and no effort had been made to establish such a colony. George Washington Bean said that he understood the purpose of the mission was to "teach those wild Piede Indians the blessings of peace and industry and honesty and kindred principles." 18 Isaac Haight, president of the Cedar City Stake, after visiting with the missionaries enroute to Las Vegas, wrote to Erastus Snow: From the knowledge that I have of most of the men who compose that mission, I feel sanguine that much good will be done to better the condition of these poor and degraded sons of the desert, not only their temporary condition, by teaching them how to plow, plant, sow, etc., and raise their own living without depending upon the precarious means of subsisting on the little game that exists in the sterile regions, and of killing the cattle and horses of travelers, but also in their spiritual condition, by delivering them from the gross superstition of their fathers and bringing them to a knowledge of the covenants that the Lord made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with Lehi, Nephi, and Moroni. . . .1(1

This suggests that the work with the Indians seemed uppermost in the missionaries' minds, or at least this was what impressed President Haight.

Enroute they met President Rufus Allen and four members of the Southern Utah Indian Mission who had been sent to explore the Colorado and were waiting at the Muddy River for the missionaries in order to cross the desert with them. Bean reported that members of Allen's group were baptizing Indians by the scores and hundreds and giving them new names such as Thomas, Rufus, and Isaac. 20 After arriving at the springs and choosing a location for a fort, the men built a bowery and held their first Sabbath meeting. President Bringhurst said that he hoped the elders would feel the responsibility of their mission and would remember "to set an example before the 17

Latter-day Saints Millennial Star, July 15, 1851. " F l o r a D. B. H o m e , comp., Autobiography of George Washington Bean and His Family Records (Salt Lake City, 1945), 115.

10 Wesley R. Law, "Mormon Indian Missionsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;1855" (MS thesis, Brigham Young University, 1959), 43 .

20 H o m e , Autobiography of George Washington Bean, 118.

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Lamanites of sobriety and industry and in short, everything requisite to civilize and enlighten the degraded sons of promise."2 The failure at Elk Mountain led Brigham Young to write to the Las Vegas missionaries counseling them to be patient with the Indians and asserting that he would prefer abandoning the mission than to pursue "such a course as will lead to angry and hostile feelings at every little annoyance caused by their folly, theft, etc. . . ."22 This does not sound like instructions he would give to a group sent to colonize and hold a strategic location.

The church leaders decided to strengthen the mission by sending twenty-nine additional men who were called at a special conference, February 4, 1856. The circumstances leading to the call were related

by Heber C. Kimball in a letter to his son William: T h e r e has [sic] been courts in session here for weeks and weeks, and I suppose that one hundred and fifty or two hundred of the brethren have been hanging a r o u n d ; with the council house filled to the brim.

This scenery continuing for a long time, one day brother Brigham sent T h o m a s Bullock to take their names, for the purpose of giving them missions, if they had not anything to do of any more importance. So brother Brigham counseled me to make a selectionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for Los [sic] Vegas some thirty . . . another company of forty eight to go to Green River . . . thirty-five or so to Salmon River . . . These are all good men but they need to learn a lesson. 23

In addition to the calling of somewhat reluctant missionaries, life at Las Vegas was further complicated by the arrival of some leadmining missionaries under Nathaniel V. Jones. Jurisdictional disputes between Jones and Bringhurst broke the spirit of the mission and finally led to the disfellowshipping of President Bringhurst. The miners were successful in smelting only about nine thousand pounds of lead, being handicapped by lack of water and food, threatening Indians, and the presence of some substance in the ore that made it very hard.

Brother Grundy, the smelter, suspected that the substance was silver, which suspicions were verified later when the rich Potosi Silver Mines were discovered in the region.

The mining missionaries started for home on February 18, 1857, and the Indian missionaries were informed that they were free to return home on February 23. Some stayed on until September when 21

Law, "Mormon Indian Missions," 46.

Ibid., 55-56.

23 Ibid., 61. One of the complaints of the Godbeites in 1868 was the church policy of calling people on missions to punish or discipline them.

22

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Old Mormon Fort, right, is seen in relationship to the main house of O. D. Gass's Las Vegas Ranch. Courtesy Dickinson Library, University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

it was decided that the "mission should be dropped on account of the thieving disposition of the Indians."24 While it is true that the latter two Indian missions were located at strategic places, the evidence seems to be that they were so located because of the presence of Indians rather than because of the desire of Mormon leaders to control travel to and from the Great Basin.

Forts were built and crops were planted in order to survive, but when the missions failed, the colonies were abandoned.

Why the sudden outburst of missionary- activity among the Indians?

The usual answer is that the Walker War shocked the Mormon leaders into the realization that a greater effort needed to be made to civilize the Indians, resulting in the appointment of Indian farmers and Indian missionaries. While this may be true, other factors may also have contributed to these proselytizing missions.

The year 1853 was not only the year of the Walker War but also the time of the dedication of the cornerstone of the Salt Lake Temple which set off a wave of millennial fervor that carried over into the Mormon Reformation of 1855-56, the Utah War, and even the Civil Law, "Mormon Indian Missions," 79.

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War. One aspect of this millennial concept was expressed by Orson Pratt: T h e Latter-day Saints in these mountains can never have the privilege of going back to Jackson County and building u p that city which is to be called the new Jerusalem . . . until quite a large portion of the remnants of Joseph [the Indians] go back with us. 25

Mormons believed that the conversion of the Indians would be a sign of the impending millennium and that the native would play a vital role in assisting the Saints to redeem the Center Stake and in building the temple and the city of the New Jerusalem before the Lord's return. 20 It may be that the plan for the Great Basin Empire was diminished by the millennial fervor of the middle 1850s in Utah.

But these Indian missions had not been instituted until 1855. What about the older colonies such as Carson Valley, San Bernardino, and the Green River colonies at Fort Bridger and Fort Supply? Do they fit the outer cordon concept?

CARSON VALLEY M I S S I O N

Situated near the eastern slopes of the massive Sierra Nevada at a point where the principal passes that led through the mountains to the Sacramento River Valley were located, Carson Valley was in a strategic position to control travel to and from that part of the Great Basin. Mormons had been through the region regularly, beginning with Samuel Brannan and Captain James Brown who rode through the area in August 1847 accompanied by eight or nine companions. Brown's group was the first to make a round trip through the valley when they returned with the mustering-out pay of the Mormon Battalion sick detachment. Returning members of the battalion visited the valley in September 1847, while others came through the area in the early summer of 1848.

Despite this regular contact with Carson Valley and its strategic location, especially after the discovery of gold just over the mountains in California, the Mormon church leaders made no effort to colonize the region. It was included within the boundaries of the proposed State of Deseret and was part of the area designated as Utah Territory 25 Orson Pratt, February 7, 1875, in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 185486), 17:301.

28 Louis Reinwand, "An Interpretive Study of Mormon Millennialism during the Nineteenth Century" (MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 1971), 43.

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in 1850, but the Mormon leaders made no effort to acquire or control the region. During the summer of 1850 a small trading post known as Mormon Station was established on the Carson River where the city of Genoa, Nevada, is now located. But the name Mormon Station was misleading, because it is doubtful that any of the seven partners who established the post were active Mormons, and if they were they had left the Salt Lake region against the wishes of Brigham Young.

The seven men who founded the post were part of a group of eighty men who left for the California gold fields in April 1850 with Abner Blackburn as guide. Blackburn had been with Captain Brown in 1847 and had gone back to the gold fields with his brother Thomas in 1849.

It seems likely that he was a Mormonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;at least his parents wereâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; and he was a member of the Mormon Battalion. However, he was out of harmony with Brigham Young's policy and was certainly not acting for the church when he helped to establish Mormon Station.

When trade dwindled the partnership dissolved, with some going to California, while the two Blackburns and Hampton Beattie decided to go to Salt Lake by way of Fort Hall, driving the horses they had acquired at Mormon Station. They arrived in Salt Lake City late in October 1850 and spread the word about the attractiveness of Carson Valley, including Abner Blackburn's story that there was gold in the area. This information interested Mormon merchants John and Enoch Reese, who made plans to set up a trading post in the valley. Arriving at Mormon Station in June 1851, Reese bought out a Mr. Moore who had acquired it from the seven partners a few months earlier. John Reese prospered but became apprehensive when he heard that the Mormon leaders planned to set up a civil government in the region, and he actively promoted the annexation of the valley by California.

The lack of Mormon influence in the area may be seen in a letter printed in the Deseret News in July 1853 by a Mormon visitor, Edwin D. Wrooley, who reported: . . . it is the most God-forsaken place that even I was in, and as to Mormonism, I can't find it here. If the name remains, the Spirit has fled. I have my doubts whether Mormonism can exist in the country as far as I have been. 27

It wasn't until 1855 that the Mormon leaders showed any active interest in Carson Valley, and by that time it was too late for Mormons 27

Deseret News, July 30, 1853.

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to become the original settlers since numerous non-Mormons had occupied the area. Carson County had been created in January 1854 by the Utah territorial legislature but was attached to Millard County for "election revenue and judicial purposes."28 The act authorized Brigham Young to appoint a probate judge, and on January 17, 1855, he wrote to Orson Hyde, asking him to take the position and to serve as ecclesiastical leader of the Mormon community as well.

Hyde, accompanied by ten colonizing missionaries, arrived at Mormon Station in June 1855 and was very favorably impressed by the Reese establishment. He wrote to Brigham Young that "this country has been neglected quite long enough if Utah wishes to hold it. It is a great and valuable country."29 It was Hyde who was responsible for the Mormon effort to colonize the valley. He also recommended the establishment of a strong settlement in Ruby Valley as a halfway base which would enable the Mormons to control the area and encouraged the exploration of the valleys to the north and east.

Hyde indicated that he felt that someone like him should stay in the valley through the winter and agreed to do so if Brigham Young would send him a wife.

But if I do stay, I want a wife with me. Either Marinder or Mary Ann or someone else, say sister Paschallâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;I will leave it to you to determine. . . . If you think it not wisdom for anyone to come to me from the Lake, may I get one here if I can find one to suit . . .?

T h e chances to get a wife here are not very many even if a m a n wanted to get one in this country. W^omen are scarce here a n d good ones are scarcer still! 3 "

One of Orson Hyde's wives, Mary Ann, joined him in Genoa for the winter and helped him to establish a homestead. Later he proposed to leave Mary Ann "here with her sister, having taken up a good ranch that will do for both, and not knowing what my future destiny may be."31 Hyde also established a mill and became involved in other economic enterprises, both for himself and in behalf of the church. He became convinced that the only way the Mormons could survive in the 28 Albert R. Page, "Orson Hyde and the Carson Valley Mission, 1855-57" (MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 1970), 22.

29 Hyde to Young, June 19, 1855, in ibid., 36.

30 Ibid., 44.

31 Ibid., 64.

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region was to gain a balance of power politically and urged Brigham Young to send colonizing missionaries to achieve control. Young responded with the call of about one hundred missionaries and their families at the April 1856 conference. The colonizing groups, numbering approximately two hundred fifty, left for Carson Valley in the middle of May, and most had reached their destination by July 2.

Their arrival increased the apprehensions of the non-Mormon settlers who had already expressed their opposition to Mormon dominance by petitioning that the region be annexed to California. Matters became worse when the Mormon officials became involved in trying to help John Reese collect debts from the non-Mormons and were resisted Main Street of Genoa, Nevada, an early Mormon colony fostered

by Orson Hyde. Courtesy Nevada Historical Society.

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by force of arms. Hyde felt that Reese's claims were questionable and urged him to cease litigation. When Reese continued to "refuse counsel" he was later excommunicated from the church.

Hyde seemed to have learned little from his past experience with Mormon-Gentile antagonisms. On October 16, he wrote to Brigham Young:

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T h e old citizens, that is a portion of them have become highly mobocratic. They are going to regulate all matters. They are going to lynch the assessor a n d collector till he pays back any taxes that he may have collected and cost that have been paid in any law case must be refunded. No m a n that is a Mormon can live who has more than one wife, everything must be regulated; and to this end they are said to be enlisting the Indians. They already have from six to ten, and they say they intend to bring 300. This is the talk. 32

Hyde's solution was for the Mormon leader to send more men, but when he received a letter authorizing him to appoint a new probate judge and to return to Salt Lake City, he quickly settled his affairs and left the valley on November 6, 1856, never to return.

His successor, Chester Loveland, was instructed in a letter sent January 3, 1857, to be "wise and prudent" and was counseled to try to live in peace and without contention, but if that were impossible, the missionaries should dispose of their property and return to Salt Lake.

President Young made it clear that he did not intend to send any more missionaries to the region. 33 A period of uncertainty followed filled with rumors that the mission would be called home soon. A letter sent on June 3 by Brigham Young informed Chester Loveland that "you were not and are not recalled from your mission, only as in all places and at all times if there be any who would rather not stay, let them return to this place." 34 T h e letter was not received until August, and by September 5 the missionaries received word that they were all recalled due to the approach of the U.S. Army.

So ended the Carson Valley Mission. It seems obvious that it does not fit the outer cordon concept. It was not colonized initially under Mormon direction despite knowledge of its strategic location. Church leaders became involved only when the political situation obligated them to act. Orson Hyde was responsible for the effort to gain control of the county in 1856. T h e people were opposed to Mormon control before Hyde was appointed, and they became more antagonistic when missionaries were sent to hold the region.

It appears that President Young was ill-advised to try to take over the region after it was already inhabited and that he recognized his mistake when he heard of the violent resistance to actions of elected Mormon officials. He counseled wisdom and prudence which would 32 Ibid., 90.

"Ibid., 99.

34 Ibid., 107.

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lead to peaceful relations or withdrawal of the mission and refused to strengthen the colony by sending more missionaries. If it were a part of an outer cordon plan, it was characterized by a late start and a weak finish.

SAN BERNARDINO

The San Bernardino colony seems to fit both the "Mormon Corridor" and the outer cordon concepts. It was to be the terminal point of a line of settlements leading to the Pacific Coast and would be in a strategic location to control the southwestern route leading into the Great Basin.

The founders of the colony, Amasa Lyman and Charles C. Rich, had been sent to California in 1849 to look after the interests of the church there. Lyman had been in California several months when Rich arrived with a letter from Brigham Young instructing the two apostles to investigate Sam Brannan, collect tithes, receive donations for the Perpetual Emigration Fund, and to . . . take into consideration the propriety or impropriety of continuing to hold an influence in western California by our people remaining in the region, and if so, to gather them into healthy locations in communities together, that they might be able to act in concert and receive instructions with facility; otherwise, to gather u p all that are worth saving and return to the valley with all speed. 3r '

Elder Lyman was also instructed to obtain all information possible in relation to good locations for a chain of settlements from Salt Lake to the Pacific Coast. After spending several weeks contacting members in the gold fields, Lyman reported to the First Presidency that "the only suitable place for a colony of the brethren is in the southern part of the state. . . ."36 Historian Andrew Jenson stated that Brigham Young had received many suggestions as to the desirability of establishing a colony in southern California but had resisted because he desired all the Saints to gather in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. He finally yielded the point and waived his objections. On February 23, 1851, a number of missionaries were called to various missions, including Lyman and Rich to southern California.37 35 Eugene Edward Campbell, "A History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in California, 1846-1946" (Ph.D. diss., University of Southern California, 1952), 144.

36 "Journal History," September 30, 1849.

37 Andrew Jenson, "Introduction to the Journal History of the San Bernardino Mission," vol. 1, manuscript, LDS Archives.

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President Young recorded a number of reasons for such a colony in his journal: Elders Amasa M. Lyman and C. C. Rich, with some twenty others, having received my approbation in going to southern California, they were instructed by letter to select a site for a city or station, as a nucleus for a settlement, near the Cajon Pass, in the vicinity of the sea coast, for a continuation of the route already commenced from this to the Pacific; to gather around them the saints in California, to search out on their route and establish, as far as possible, the best locations for stations between Iron County and California, in view of a mail route to the Pacific; to cultivate the olive and manufacture olive oil, and also to cultivate grapes, sugar cane, cotton and any other desirable fruits and products; to obtain information concerning the "Tehuantepec route" or any other across the Isthmus, or the passage around Cape Horn with a view to the gathering of the saints in Europe: to plant the standard of salvation in every county and kingdom, city and village, on the Pacific and the world over, as fast as God should give the ability. 38

The colony got off to a bad start as far as Brigham Young was concerned when the colonists gathered at Peteetneet Creek (Payson) in preparation for the journey. President Young, who came to bid farewell to approximately 20 pioneers, was so upset when he found 437 "Saints running to California, chiefly after the God of this world" that he was unable to address them.30 Disappointment awaited them in California, for when Lyman and Rich arrived at Isaac Williams's China Ranch which had been offered for sale at a very reasonable price they found that Williams had changed his mind and refused to sell. In desperation, they finally agreed to pay the Lugo brothers $77,500 for the Rancho Del San Bernardino. They traveled to contact the Mormons in the gold fields to secure a down payment and agreed to pay an extremely high rate of interest on the balance. This burden of debt plagued the apostles for the next six years until they were recalled by Brigham Young and succeeded in passing the burden to Ebenezer Hanks.

Despite the inauspicious beginning and the heavy indebtedness the community prospered, attracting many of the group that had migrated to San Francisco with Sam Brannan as well as men of the Mormon Battalion and a few from the gold fields. By 1856 it was estimated to have a population of over three thousand which made 38 39

"History of Brigham Young," March 23, 1851, manuscript, LDS Archives.

Ibid.

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it the second largest Mormon colony, exceeded only by Salt Lake City, and was considerably larger than Ogden or Provo.40 Judge Benjamin Hayes, a non-Mormon from Los Angeles, visited the settlement in 1854 and gave the following report: This city continues to flourish steadily. It is certainly one of the best, if not the very best tract of land in California; well-wooded, with abundance of water, and the soil adapted to every species of culture.

This year the wheat was raised in a common field, amounting to near 4,000 acres, and averaging thirty-two bushels to the acre. They have a fine flouring mill in operation and the streams from the mountains might turn the machinery of the largest manufacturing town in the whole world. This rancho alone would comfortably sustain 100,000 souls and the neighboring ranchos as many more. At least one hundred new buildings have been put u p within the last four months, principally adobeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;some of them very fine. We noticed particularly the mansion of President Lyman and the new hotel of our excellent host, Bishop Crosby. Already about two-thirds of the city lots have been sold. T h e r e is a great demand for mechanics, particularly carpenters, whose wages are $3.00 per day. Very soon they expect to begin building with brick. 41

Despite this prosperity, Brigham Young continued to discourage Utah Saints from going to California. In a letter to John Eldridge of Fillmore in July 1854 President Young said "if it so be that nothing else can satisfy your feelings but to go to San Bernardino, why goâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and do the best you can, and do not complain if you see the day that you wish to return to this country more, and are less able than now."42 In March 1855 Brigham Young made one attempt to relieve the brethren of the burden of debt by trying to organize a cattle drive in Utah: CIRCULAR T o the presidents, Bishops, their Counselors, and all the brethren in the Various Branches of the Church in the Vallies of the Mountains: DEAR BRETHREN Having received information concerning the situation of our brethren, AMASA L Y M A N , C H A R L E S C. R I C H , and those who located with them at San Bernardino, in relation to their circumstances as regards paying for, and securing the title to that place, we feel to lay the matter before you, and ask your aid therein.

They purchased the ranch when times were considered good, and agreed to pay therefore seventy-seven thousand dollars, some fifty-two 40 The 1860 Census listed Salt Lake City with a population of 8,100; Provo, 2,030; and Ogden, 1,463. San Bernardino had only 567 which raises some question about the accuracy of the Western Standard estimate of 3,000 in 1856 and the percentage of Mormons who refused to return to Utah in 1857-58.

"Joseph S. Wood, "The Mormon Settlement in San Bernardino, 1857" (Ph.D. diss., University of Utah, 1967), 116.

42 Brigham Young Letter File No. 1, July 1854, pp. 468-69, manuscript, LDS Archives.

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Utah Historical Quarterly thousand of which has been paid including the interestâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;leaving a balance of thirty-eight thousand which has to be paid the ensuing season, or they will lose the place together with all they have paid.

Owing to the scarcity of money in that country, and the hardness of the times, our brethren have no prospect of being able to meet this debt in time to save the ranch, we have, therefore assumed to help them raise the required amount.

It is to this end that we address this circular to you, that we may receive your assistance to accomplish this object.

We propose to drive sufficient cattle to California in order to obtain the means that we cannot raise in this Territory, and make up the deficiency the brethren of the ranch cannot supply; and we wish the brethren to let us have money, cows and oxen as they can spare, either on tithing or as a loan until the property of the ranch be made available to refund it.

It is required of all the aforesaid authorities to collect and forward to the Trustee in Trust.43 Campbell, "A History of the Church in California," 244-45.

Drawing of San Bernardino, 1852, was published in L. A. Ingersoll's Century Annals of San Bernardino County, California in 1904.

T f c

SAN BERNARDINO, 18S2

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Apparently there was little positive response to this request, for there is no record of such a drive being made or of any follow-up on the project by President Young. The debt remained as evidenced by the call at the June conference in San Bernardino of elders to go "to every county in California and preach the Gospel and to raise $35,000, the amount yet due on the mortgage."44 By this time, the colony was suffering from other problems that became so serious that Brigham called his apostles home and wrote the colony off as a failure several months before he became aware of the approach of the United States Army. These difficulties included the loss of over half of the land purchased by a California court ruling, troubles with squatters on the land they retained, apostasy within the ranks primarily because of the theocratic political practices, difficulties in their relationship with the Indians, and anti-Mormon sentiment in the region because of polygamy, among other things.

Brigham Young, in addressing the April 1857 conference of the church in Salt Lake City, gave his estimate of the situation: We are in the happiest situation of any people in the world. We inhabit the very land in which we can live in peace; and there is no other place on earth that the Saints can now live without being molested.

Suppose for instance, that you go to California. Bros. Charles C. Rich and Amasa Lyman went and made a settlement in Southern California, and many were anxious that the whole church should go there. If we had gone there, this would have been about the last year any of the Saints could stay there. They would have been driven from their homes.

Were he here to tell you the true situation of that place, he would tell you that Hell reigns there, and it is just about time for himself and every true Saint to leave the land.45

Prior to making this prediction President Young had informed Lyman and Rich that they had been called to serve the church in Europe and were required to wind up their affairs in San Bernardino.

No leader was sent to replace them; and a few months later, when word was received of the approach of the army, orders were sent to "forward the Saints to the valleys as soon as possible," thus ending the official church connection with the colony.

This was a particularly tragic loss to the church because a considerable number of the colonists refused to obey the call, and an estimated five percent of those who obeyed the church leaders returned to San Bernardino within a year or two including Stake President 41

Ibid., 226.

"Deseret News, April 8, 1957.

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Seeley. These people were regarded as apostates and no effort was made to reclaim them.

T h e colony fits the outer cordon concept as to location, but there was something strange about Brigham Young's relationship to it. H e was apprehensive about the project in the beginning and approved it against his better judgment. When it began to fail, his conference address seemed to convey an " I told you so" attitude. It would not be fair to say that he wanted it to fail, but he did not give it financial support; he never visited it even though it wTas the largest Mormon settlement outside of Salt Lake City; and he recalled both of the leaders at the same time without replacing them. If he had any real plans for including southern California in his empire, he must have abandoned them long before the coming of Johnston's army made it seem mandatory. Perhaps he finally realized that Mormonism required isolation or dominion in order to survive.

FORT BRIDGER AND FORT

SUPPLY

T h e acquisition of Fort Bridger and the building of Fort Supply seem to fit the outer cordon concept more closely than any of the other colonies with the possible exception of San Bernardino, but even this case presents some problems.

Hunter's assertion that "after establishing Deseret, Brigham Young strengthened the weak spots in the geographic outline by building Fort Supply and Fort Bridger in Wyoming as controls over the eastern entrance to the Great Basin" 40 is of very questionable validity: first, because Fort Bridger was not built by the Mormons but acquired by purchase after a Mormon posse had forced Bridger from his domain and, second, because Fort Supply was built only as an emergency measure when a handful of Mountain Men who were occupying Fort Bridger when the Mormon colonizers arrived refused to give up the post.

Fort Bridger on Black's Fork, the third outpost the old mountaineer had been involved in, was built in 1843 in partnership with Louis Vasquez. Chittenden maintained that it was the first trading post built beyond the Mississippi for the convenience of emigrants, and was second only to Fort Laramie in importance as a stopping place on the Oregon Trail. 47 It became very important to the Mormons when they determined to settle in Salt Lake Valley and chose to follow the Hastings Cutoff 46 47

475.

Hunter, Brigham Young, 66-67.

Hiram M. Chittenden, The American

Eur Trade of the Far West (New York, 1935),

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Portion of the old Mormon wall at Fort Bridger, Wyoming.

Charles Kelly Collection, Utah State Historical Society.

in order to get there. Fort Bridger was the takeoff pointâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;exactly one hundred miles from Salt Lake Valley. Mormon immigrants stopped at the post from 1847 until it was destroyed in 1857.

Mormon relations with Bridger, though friendly at first, began to deteriorate early when Brigham Young became convinced that Bridger was stirring up the Indians against the Mormons and was violating the law by selling arms, ammunition, and liquor to them.

These difficulties culminated in the attempted arrest of Bridger by a Mormon posse of one hundred fifty men which arrived at the post early in September 1853 only to find Bridger gone. He returned in November, made a survey of his claims which later were filed in both Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C, and then moved his family to settle in Jackson County, Missouri.

In an apparent attempt to consolidate their gains in the Fort Bridger area, the Mormon leaders called Orson Hyde as leader to establish a permanent settlement at Fort Bridger with the aid of thirtynine other missionaries. They organized themselves as the Green River Mission in January 1854 and set out for Fort Bridger under the direction of Captain John Nebeker. Orson Hyde remained in Salt Lake in order to recruit an additional company of fifty-three men which left

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Salt Lake City just three days after the first company had arrived at Bridger. Finding Fort Bridger occupied by about a dozen angry Mountain Men and learning that there were others in the vicinity, the missionaries decided not to try to settle in an occupied region and wandered through the snow about twelve miles southwest of Fort Bridger where weather conditions forced them to stop on Willow Creek.

They were joined here by the second group and together they built Fort Supply. Apparently the location was not too attractive, for Hosea Stout stated: It is the most forbidding and godforsaken place I have ever seen for an attempt to be made for a settlement and judging from the altitude I have no hesitancy in predicting that it will yet prove a total failure but the brethren here have done a great deal of labor . . . Elder Hyde seems to have an invincible repugnance to Fort Supply. 48

However, despite the questionable location and the difficulty of raising crops at such a high altitude, the Mormon leaders tried to secure the post by calling more families to the settlement. About twenty-five families responded, arriving during the last part of April 1856.

Shortly after the founding of Fort Supply Orson Hyde followed Brigham Young's instructions by organizing part of his company to do missionary work among the Indians. The young men among the colonists were instructed to marry the native girls, if the Indians would permit it, and to choose the young daughters of the chief and leading men.40 Very few followed this counsel, however. The missionaries had some success, for during the Twenty-fourth of July celebration some converted Indians marched in the parade bearing the banner "We are becoming white and delightsome." But there is the usual story of thieving and malicious destruction of Mormon crops. Isaac Bullock summed it up when he wrote: I wish much you would say whether a city would be better at Fort Supply or a fort? Also give us your suggestions as to the proper size. Most of the brethren seem to prefer a city, but to your council I am sure they will yield a winning obedience. 50

48 Frederick Ross Gowans, "A History of Fort Bridger from 1841-1858" (Ph.D. diss., Brigham Young University, 1972), 111.

19 Ibid., 125.

"Ibid., 118.

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Cordon

Plans were made to change Fort Supply into a permanent colony, and a site was laid out in June 1857 some three miles north of the fort and thus closer to Fort Bridger. Some fifteen or sixteen houses were built by late summer of 1857, but the project was ended by the coming of Johnston's army.

In the meantime Lewis Robinson, acting for the church, had reached an agreement with Bridger and Vasquez for the purchase of For Bridger and completed the transaction on August 3, 18 55. After purchasing the post and occupying it the Mormon leaders did try to control the route into the Great Basin by directing non-Mormon groups to the several shortcuts to Fort Hall, hoping to use the limited supplies at the fort for the benefit of immigrant groups. They were also interested in the Indians and made considerable headway in their efforts with the Shoshoni under the leadership of Washakee. Robinson wrote: . . . as a matter of course they were very hungry. I killed a beef for them and gave them some flour and other things. They were anxious to have me meet them at Plat River at the mouth of Sweetwater to trade this coming winter. They say next year they are coming to the valley with their big chief to see the President. 51 51

Ibid., 172.

Fort Supply, site of the first Mormon settlement in Wyoming, a few miles from Old Fort Bridger. Drawing by Merritt D.

was located Houghton.

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When news of the approaching army was received, Brigham Young was of the opinion that it wouldn't get past Fort Laramie before winter set in and so informed the people at Forts Bridger and Supply. However, by September 16, 1857, the missionaries were advised that part of the army was at Hams Fork and must not be permitted to come any further. Less than two weeks later the families were sent to Salt Lake and on October 3, 1857, both Fort Bridger and Fort Supply were set on fire by the Mormon colonists, and the Green River settlements came to an end.

The occupation of Fort Bridger had been motivated by a desire to control the area as well as to serve as a base for Mormon immigration and missionary work among the Indians and as a way-station for transportation and communication enterprises between Salt Lake City and the Missouri River. Missionary work among the Indians seemed as important a motivation as control of a strategic area. Most important, Fort Bridger was a resting and supply station for the steady stream of Mormon immigrants before they made the last one-hundred-mile trek through the Wasatch Mountains to the Mormon Zion, and this was achieved for a short period.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

Was there such a thing as an outer cordon of colonies? The colonies were there, of course, but did they form an outer line of a planned empire? Were they designed to be outposts guarding the entrances to a vast region to be inhabited only by the Mormons? The detailed analysis of each of these colonies reveals no such plan. Even if such a plan existed secretly in the minds of the Mormon leaders, the execution was extremely ineffective. There can be little doubt that they hoped to gain control over the vast region when they first entered the Great Basin. Statements by Brigham Young and other leaders reveal such desires, and the boundaries of the State of Deseret confirm the hope. But all of the colonies listed as part of the outer cordon were established after the State of Deseret had been rejected by Congress and the greatly reduced Territory of Utah created. San Bernardino, the earliest of the colonies, was within the boundaries of the State of Deseret and could have been part of such a plan. But the failure of Brigham Young to support the colony, his early decision to recall the leaders, and his "I told you so" attitude in 1857 bring the whole concept under suspicion.

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

251

The Green River settlementsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Fort Supply and Fort Bridgerâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; seem to fit the concept of the outer cordon, but the execution of the plan seems very weak indeed. Fort Bridger would have to be the key post in an outer cordon plan because it commanded the entrance to the Great Basin empire most likely to be used by non-Mormons moving westward. Yet the first colonizers let themselves be frightened off by a handful of Mountain Men and settled in an unattractive spot where they spent their entire effort trying to establish an agricultural base and attempting to convert the Indians.

Carson Valley, also a very strategic spot in any outer cordon plan, did not receive official Mormon attention until political troubles required action. This attempt to gain control by calling missionaries to colonize the region came too late to be effective and was based on the personal feelings and ambitions of Orson Hyde. It created the same type of antagonism that the Mormons had experienced in Missouri and Illinois and would have been withdrawn even if the approach of the army had not made it seem imperative.

The Indian missions appear to have been designed primarily for the purpose of converting the natives. Fort Limhi's location can only be explained on such a basis. It gradually became a colonizing venture and might have become a permanent settlement if the Utah War had not occurred. Its location, however, certainly makes a distortion in any outer line of colonies.

The Elk Mountain Mission certainly occupied a strategic spot, but the brief attempt to locate there without any follow-up rules out any serious plan to control the area. Las Vegas, too, was a strategic location, and one wonders why the Mormons left it, despite the mining failure and Indian backsliding and antagonism. The failure to establish a permanent colony there brings into question the whole "Mormon Corridor" concept. The fact that the missionaries were recalled before the coming of the United States Army casts a cloud of doubt over the empire concept. It was so important as an oasis in the desert and a halfway station on the California trail that it should have been colonized no matter what the cost in any kind of an empire scheme. Minor difficulties with the Indians and personality clashes in the leadership led to the abandonment of the project, hardly a serious effort to establish and hold a most strategic spot.

My conclusion of the matter must be that the outer cordon concept, while it may have been part of an early dream of the Mormon leaders,

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was executed only in the minds of historians. It is a historical assumption without a careful investigation of the facts.

But was there something of a millennial mistake also? Were the Indian missions organized because of a sense of impending doom and judgment? These are hard questions with no easy answers. There seemed to be perfectly practical reasons for sending missionaries to convert and "civilize" the Indians. The Walker War must have enhanced the desire for peaceful relations with the native inhabitants.

Religious and humanitarian feelings must have prompted the leaders and missionaries to try to help their "benighted brethren." But why the all-out effort right at this time? Was there a millennial fervor pervading the atmosphere?

The dedication of the cornerstone of the Salt Lake Temple in 1853 did result in millennial prophesying, and the Mormon Reformation beginning in 1855 had a millennial emphasis. It is quite possible that the preaching was more of an attempt to stimulate more righteous living than an actual warning of the impending millennium. Orson Pratt's statement in May 1855 concerning Christ's Second Comingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; to the effect that he would give it as his opinion based on revelations that "this event is nearer than this people are aware of"52â&#x20AC;&#x201D;does not seem too explicit.

SIGNIFICANCE OF T H E

STUDY

This study may seem like sort of a tempest in a teapot. What does it matter whether Brigham Young's outer cordon was a planned empire that failed or a dream that was never really tried, even though usually reliable historians have asserted that it was. What difference does it make? Perhaps not much in the eternal scheme of things, but it is an exercise in historical criticism and points up the need for a careful examination of every historical concept that forms the basis for our opinions, feelings, and judgments if we want those attitudes to be based upon truth or at least a closer approach to the truth.

It may also help us to see Brigham Young, the colonizer, in a different light. He was also a man with his dreams and visions who was forced to modify or abandon them when confronted with the realities of geography, politics, lack of resources, personality conflicts 05

Orson Pratt, May 20, 1855, in Journal of Discourses, 3:13.

253

Brigham Young's Outer Cordon

and limitations, and the opposition of other forces. It may be that the failure of most of his outer colonies and the Utah War which justified his recalling those that were still functioning was a blessing in disguise.

It gave him the opportunity to make a new start in colonizing the regions nearer to the headquarters and establishing his Mormon empire on a more sound and realistic foundation that was able to survive and grow despite overwhelming opposition. Certainly his great record of colonizing achievement will survive this study of a few failures.

Log and wood structure at Genoa in Carson Valley was built the Mormon settlers. Courtesy Nevada Historical Society.

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Quarterly

1933, IN T H E DEPTHS OF T H E economic Depression that was to last throughout the decade, two unions competed to unionize the vast, bituminous coal fields of Carbon County, Utah. One was the United Mine Workers of America that had been active there, but unsuccessful, since the beginning of the century. 1 Aligned against it was the National Miners Union, an unfamiliar organization whose officials were strangers. 2 The race for the miners' membership, strikes, and the armed response of elected officials marked the end of an era of courageous, illegal, and thwarted struggles by labor. The events of 1933 changed forever the character of unionism.

AN

THE

UNION

MOVEMENT

Labor conflicts in Carbon County and the strikes of 1901, 1903-4, and 1922 were carried on under conditions that were characteristically American. Against a background of Protestant individualism, employers in no other Western country fought trade unions as viciously with the aid of civil, judicial, and army authorities. 3 It was a common conviction of employers that "God in His infinite wisdom has given [us] control of property interests in the country" 4 and that coal could not be mined without machine guns.5 In the sparsely inhabited terrain of the American West, management was given even greater power. The settling of disputes by violence, a legacy of the recent frontier past, was a regular expediency.

Mrs. Papanikolas is a member of the Board of State History and author of Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek Immigrants in Utah which was issued as volume 38, number 2 of Utah Historical Quarterly in Spring 1970.

The following tape-recorded interviews made by the author (and other interviewers as noted below) for the American West Center, University of Utah, were used in preparing this article: Mr. and Mrs. Mike Dragos, August 16, 1972; Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hinich (with Joseph Stipanovich), September 24, 1972; Gust A. Kouris, May 19, 1973; Melba Georgelas Kouris and Mrs. Pete Georgelas, July 26, 1973; Nick Kalikas, June 16, 1970; Steve Kelaidis, March 22, 1973; Stella Ligeros Pappas, June 10, 1972; Harry G. Metos (with Theodore Paulos), January 7, 1972; Frank Stevenson, April 10, 1972; Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Toson and Caroline Toson Tomsic, March 16, 1973; Rolla E. West (with members of the American West Center), May 21, 1970 and January 17, 1973; Mrs. George (Milka) Smilanich, December 17, 1972; Marion Bonacci Lupo, May 22, 1972. Additional tape-recorded interviews made by Joseph Stipanovich were also used: Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hinich, June 22, 1972; Mr. and Mrs. Mike Dragos, June 19, 1972; Katie Star, February 12, 1973; Marko Yelenich, February 11, 1973; and with residents of Spring Glen and other Carbon County towns. These taped interviews and transcripts are now in Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

1 Allan Kent Powell, "Labor at the Beginning of the 20th Century: The Carbon County, Utah, Coal Fields, 1900 to 1905" (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1972), 92-93 and chap. 6; Lynda B. Gibbs, "The History of the United Mine Workers of America in Carbon County, Utah, up to 1933" (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1968), chap. 2.

2 An early union by the same name had collapsed in the 1870s.

3 J. David Greenstone, Labor in American Politics (New York, 1969), 19.

4 Philip Taft, Organized Labor in American History (New York, 1964), 178-79.

5 McAlister Coleman, Men and Coal (New York, 1943), 134-35.

Carbon County Coal Strike

257

This inclination and the cry of mine operators that strikers were dangerous anarchists who required military force placed the state in its role on the side of management. No strike escaped this western justice from small ones to the infamous Ludlow Massacre of Colorado and the Coeur d'Alene battles where President William McKinley's sending in of federal troops destroyed the syndicalist Western Federation of Miners in Idaho. In the Carbon County strike of 1903-4, the Bingham strike of 1912, and the Carbon County strike of 1922, all or part of the National Guard was called in.6 The great influx of unskilled immigrants intensified labor's problems. The conflict between craft (skilled) and industrial (unskilled and semi-skilled) unions began here. The skilled workers were "an aristocracy of labor. They tend[ed] to work with the employers against the great mass of unskilled immigrants." 7 By the second decade of the century, immigrant laborers in Carbon County, predominantly from Italy, Greece, Yugoslavia, and Austria, were greater in number than the native born. In 1933 immigrants formed the larger bloc of miners; their sons were coming of age and entering the mines.

Some of the Italians had been boys and young men in the strikes of the 1900s. They had been herded into bull pens near the Price railyards where they cooked spaghetti in coffee cans and danced around bonfires at night. Many immigrants had come directly from the mining towns of southern Colorado, ruled by the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company dynasty. A great number of them had taken part in the bitter Carbon County strike of 1922. A Greek striker and a deputy sheriff were killed; several miners and deputies were wounded. Forced out of company houses, families suffered in tent colonies through winter weather. Governor Charles Mabey called out the National Guard, and the United Mine Workers were almost obliterated in the state.

Lesser insults to the miners' dignity were commonplace. Superintendents told their workers how to vote. Several of them owned interests in automobile agencies and miners had to buy from these dealers or lose their jobs. There were also superintendents who exc J o h n H. M. Laslett, Labor and the Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881-1924 (New York, 1970), 241, 249; Vernon H. Jensen, Heritage of Conflict (Ithaca, N. Y., 1950), 86; Powell, "Labor at the Beginning of the 20th Century," chap. 6; Helen Zeese Papanikolas, "Life and Labor Among the Immigrants of Bingham Canyon," Utah Historical Quarterly, 33 (Fall 1965), 89-315, and Toil and Rage in a New Land: The Greek Immigrants in Utah, ibid., 38 (Spring 1970), 167-75.

7 Bertrand Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom: Socialism, Anarchism, and Syndicalism (New York, 1919), 75-76.

258

Utah Historical Quarterly

pected the men to "contribute" toward large purchases such as cars.

To insure jobs, gifts and money to foremen and to strawbosses were part of the laboring system. Constricting the whole of the miners' lives were the law enforcement officers on company payrolls.8 In 1933 a catalyst was added to the unstable combination of management's sovereignty, the West's special traits, and the large number of immigrant miners: the immobilizing Depression that followed the stock market crash of 1929.

During the decade of the 1920s, national union membership had decreased, except in the building trades that had been spurred by a building boom. The half million union members of 1897 had risen to 5,110,800 by 1920. Within three years the virulent anti-unionism of employers had cut membership to 3,780,000. In Utah the Open Shop (the American Plan) campaign organized by Utah Associated Industries left unions powerless, their membership depleted into insignificance.9 In 1930, 1931, and 1932 union membership continued to decline as unemployment rose. Four and a half million Americans were unemployed in 1930, thirteen million in 1933. Industrial workers, the unskilled and semi-skilled, were the most greatly affected.10 Although union membership always declined with industrial depressions (an exception was the rise of the Knights of Labor in the West),11 newly formed ethnic organizations, Unemployed Councils, International Labor Defense Leagues, farmers and workers organizations agitated for unionism.

As the Depression deepened, Carbon County mines began to close; others worked half shift. Whistling steam locomotives clipped less often from thirty mines in juniper-covered mountain draws and out of the Price and Helper railyards. Mine company houses were boarded up and families became migrants.

8

4-23.

Interview with J. Bracken Lee, January 16, 1973; Gibbs, "United Mine Workers,"

9 Milton Derber and Edwin Young, editors, Labor and the New Deal (New York, 1972), 7; Leo Wolman, The Growth of Trade Unions 1880-1923 (New York, 1924), 3 3 ; and Dee Scorup, "History of Organized Labor in Utah (M.A. thesis, University of Utah, 1935), chap. 5.

10 Derber and Young, eds., Labor and the New Deal, 7, 83. John E. Maher, Labor and Economy (Boston, 1965), 54, places union membership in 1933 at 7% of the work force, or less than 3,000,000. He cites the 1933 unemployment figure as 11,842,000. The number of unemployed fluctuates from this figure to 14,000,000 given by Robert G. Goldston, The Great Depression: The United States in the Thirties (Indianapolis and New York, 1968), 5 7 ; and 15,000,000 reported by Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker (Boston, 1960), 506.

"Laslett, Labor and the Left, 243.

Carbon County Coal Strike

259

Carbon County coal towns cluster around major power centers at Price, the county seat, and Helper where recent immigrants seemed to hold sway.

We moved constantly, from Mutual to Rains, to Hiawatha, to Colorado, Wyoming, and back to Utah. Every rumor of work and we moved. 12

Hunger was widespread in the mining towns. In the summer months when coal was not needed for household furnaces, more miners were laid off and compelled to leave company houses. The Carbon County Commission voted for a twelve-thousand-dollar relief fund, part of it to be raised by public subscription. Many elected officials, imbued with the Americanâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and more recent westernâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;spirit of individual responsibility, were against this expenditure of public funds to alleviate destitution.13 The dilemma of where to find money to continue the relief work was inadequately solved by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

Established in 1932 during President Herbert Hoover's last year in 12

Pappas interview.

Rolla E. West, typewritten manuscript on the Carbon County Strike of 1933, p. 30, American West Center, University of Utah. Referred to hereafter as the West MS. 43

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office, the public assistance program paid small sums of money in return for work performed. In Carbon County half of the money was issued in scrip for buying in local stores. The relief projects included cleaning canals, spading their banks, cutting trees and willows, and grading and widening streets.14 The alloted money had to be spread over thousands of families. It was meager and the miners looked to the new president for help.

In the 1932 presidential campaign Franklin D. Roosevelt had said nothing about trade unions' right to organize and to bargain collectively.

Only the United Mine Workers, ravaged and in "shambles," worked for the right to organize with legal guarantees. Roosevelt, however, promised federal relief, unemployment insurance, and other reforms.

Under the influence of labor leaders and of Senator Robert F. Wagner, Roosevelt drafted collective bargaining into his recovery bill.15 Several weeks before the bill was sent to Congress the first organizers of the National Miners Union came to Carbon County. It was the spring of 1933. Within days of Paul Crouch's arrival, he and his wife mimeographed sheets of paper announcing their presence and the aims of their union. The papers were distributed in the towns and mining camps of the county. The strangers, soon followed by Charles Guynn, Charles WTetherbee, and their wives, sparked curiosity. Crouch, tall and slender, was especially distinguished; Guynn wras dark and therefore "looked foreign."

The organizers began a concentrated campaign in the mining towns around Helper, where dispirited men stood outside of pool halls and company stores hoping for a call from the mines. The South Slav miners in Spring Glen, a small farming community two miles south of Helper, were their most attentive listeners. Crouch held his first meeting with them in Millerich Hall, a Serbian-owned building. Behind him was a red banner with hammer, sickle, and sheaf of wheat. 16 Millerich Hall became the headquarters for the union. Dances were held there to raise money for expenses, and meetings were conducted in the hall and at the Helper park after Sunday baseball games.

One of the few diversions of the Depression years were the games of the semi-professional Utah Industrial Baseball League. Many spectators 14

San Advocate (Price), Dec. 9, 1932, January 19, April 13, 1933.

Irving Bernstein, The Turbulent Years 1933-1941: A History of the American Worker (Boston, 1970), 3, 4 1 , 26-36.

10 Spring Glen interviews. The words Slav and Slavic in this article pertain to the Yugoslavians, the South Slavs.

15

Carbon County Coal Strike

261

stayed after the games to hear the organizers and an increasing number of local miners recount indignities, privations, and the need to organize.

As a true industrial union the NMU invited all workers involved directly or indirectly with mining to join, not only miners to whom the United Mine Workers restricted its membership. Among the principles of the NMU, listed in the membership book, were: T h e National Miners U n i o n is founded on the principles of the class struggle of the exploited masses of the working-class against their capitalist exploiters. Its ultimate aim is to participate in the struggle for abolishing the capitalict [capitalist] system and replace it by socialism. 17

Few of the immigrants could read English well enough to understand the ideology of the NMU. They were not concerned with the government's being capitalist or socialist. They were concerned with work and wages.

An incident at the Standardville mine came at an opportune time for the NMU organizers. In defiance of Reconstruction Finance Corporation rules, the management had cut wages for day miners. The NMU called a strike that showed surprising strength. In the middle of May the strike ended with restoration of the men's wages and a concession to reduce rent on company houses in the summer months when coal production was at its lowest point.18 The small victory gave the organizers authority in the eyes of the miners, but county officials, many of them American Legion veterans, became suspicious of the organizers' "un-American" talk.

On May 28, 1933, the National Miners Union officially organized in Helper. A spy for the National Guard infiltrated the meeting and estimated the number of people as "probably 500 present, mostly foreign men. About a fourth of the crowd were enthusiastic."10 Charles Wetherbee of American Fork presided. A miner from Tintic spoke on the old complaints: high rent on company houses, shortage of weights, low wages, and slow payment. The next speaker, 17 National Miners Union Membership Book (Women's Auxiliary, Book No. 2724), South Slavic Archives, Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

18 Helper Journal, May 19, 1933.

19 National Guard reports on the National Miners Union meetings for May 28, June 4, 11, 18, 25, August 6, 13, 1933 and other material pertaining to the strike were salvaged from National Guard files by a son-in-law of Varro C. Jones, secretary of the U M W A in Kenilworth during the strike. Photocopies, donated by Rolla E. West, have been placed in Western Americana, University of Utah. National Guard reports on N M U meetings of August 31 and September 1, 1933, are included in Governor's Correspondence, 1933, Utah State Archives. Two of the reports are signed, "Cavenah" and "Reese." T h e reports will be cited hereafter as N M U meeting, with date.

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Paul Crouch (called Krautz in the report), spoke against President Roosevelt's New Deal programs. The government showed, he said, by lowering wages to a dollar a day, that it was again on the side of employers. (Crouch did not explain that this was the pay for reforestation youths.

Carbon County's quota was seventy-three men, each to be paid thirty dollars a month. Of this sum the men were expected to make substantial allotments to dependents.) The reforestation program [of the Civilian Conservation Corps] was a ruse, Crouch said, to put young men in uniform, with guns whenever the government wanted them.

He did not only spoke in a communistic manner but in a very radical one, he referred slur[r]ingly to the Republican president, Hoover, and in a very unloyal manner about President Roosevelt.

M. P. Bayles, a representative of the International Labor Defense League, was "very radical in his speech and used profane language."

Bayles spoke of lynching and the electric chair awaiting Negroes who objected to

Frank Bonacci, third from left in the back row, was a delegate to the UMWA convention held in Helper June 1919.

Carbon County Coal Strike

The UMWA was not successful in its attempt to organize Carbon County mine workers until after the coal strike of 1933.

Photograph courtesy Marian Bonacci Lupo.

263

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Utah Historical

Quarterly

white men "taking" Negro women. "This apparently was said because of the presence of a few Negroes . . . the word 'comrade' was used often by all speakers." Bayles exhorted the miners to organize to prevent their daughters from resorting to prostitution and their sons to murder for something to eat.20 Five local people were named to head the organization in the county, including Tony Bonacciâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;unrelated to Frank Bonacci, United Mine Workers official. Wetherbee ended the meeting with a promise to fight for a reduction in company house rent; a raise in wages; payment every two weeks; all back wages to be paid in full and in cash, not scrip; a miners' check weighman; the recognition of a miners' grievance committee; and permission to remain in company houses after being laid off.

The meeting set the tone for the subsequent weekly gatherings.

Accounts of the proceedings were published in an N M U newspaper, the Carbon County Miner. The small-sized newspaper was printed in the Helper Journal office and sold for two cents an issue. Local and national N M U activities were reported, including the successes of Women's Auxiliaries, the organizing of Youth Sections, and Charles Guynn's instalments on militant strikes in the eastern United States.

Helper restaurants, grocery stores, pool halls, and other businesses advertised in the newspaper.

"Americans" of the county became alarmed. Nationwide labor troubles, bread lines, and actual starvation were regular radio and press news. The words, Reds, Communists, Wobblies, anarchists, Bolsheviks, that had reached a fanatical apogee in the early 1920s, were revived.

Unskilled labor was again "un-American;" people of immigrant background were again suspected of disloyalty and were believed to be following orders from Hitler, Mussolini, and vague "radical" and "communistic" Slavs.

C O M M U N I S M AND T H E DEPRESSION

Native Americans in Carbon County had long resented old-country customs, the speaking of foreign languages, immigrant newspapers, native lodges, and Greek coffeehouses. To be of immigrant stock and to favor unions was the ultimate in un-Americanism. The anti-immigrant campaign after World War I, led by the American Legion, and the 1922 strike when Greek, Italian, and Slavic miners paralyzed 20

Sun Advocate, June 1, 1933, NMU meeting, May 28, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

265

the coal industry were forerunners of the Ku Klux Klan attacks of 1924.21 A view prevailed in the country that East European and Mediterranean immigrants held radical ideas.22 There was no support for this notion in any of the Utah strikes before 1933. Miners who asked for wage and work reforms were conveniently called anarchists and radicals.

The native attitudes of Mediterranean and South Slav immigrants toward authority have been only superficially investigated. T h e Slavs with whom John Mitchell, president of the United Mine Workers (1898-1905), had problems because of their militancy were almost all Poles, Slovaks, and Hungarians, not South Slavs.23 Yet in the large crowds at the N M U meetings, Price city officials and the American Legion saw the influx of communism and the erosion of American ideals. Mayor Rolla E. West of Price inquired about the union at the Utah Federation of Labor headquarters in Salt Lake City.

Mayor West, a veteran of World War I and active in the American Legion, belonged to the A F L Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners, among the "aristocracy of labor."

T h e president of the U t a h that the National Miners propagated by the Soviet happening in the southern as their information none Justice. 24

Labor Federation passed him the information Union was a Communist front organization, Union a n d the sponsor of the troubles then Illinois a n d Kentucky coal fields. They gave other than the United States D e p a r t m e n t of

The Communist charge was correct. T h e National Miners Union was founded in 1928 after a four-year struggle within the United Mine Workers. John L. Lewis's inability to deal with the burgeoning pressure brought by high production of coal in unorganized mines caused an eruption that ended with his expelling the Communists on the Save the Union Committee. T h e Communists immediately formed the National Miners Union, a full-fledged dual organization, intent on invading the U M W A ' s jurisdiction and competing for members. 25 21 Helen Zeese Papanikolas, " T h e Greeks of Carbon County, Utah Historical Quarterly, 22 (April, 1954), 143-64.

22 T h e assassination of President William McKinley by Leon Czolgosz and the Sacco and Vanzetti case spread the idea of the compatibility of immigrants with anarchism. Andrew F. Rolle, The Immigrant Upraised: Italian Adventurers and Colonists in an Expanding America (Norman, 1968), 312-13, repeats Oscar Handlin's view that Italians turned to radicals during crises because they were ignored elsewhere.

23 Taft, Organized Labor, 170, 172-73; Victor R. Green, The Slavic Community on Strike: Immigrant Labor in Pennsylvania Anthracite (Notre Dame and London, 1968).

24 West M S , 43.

25 Taft, Organized Labor, 395; for dual unionism in the West see pp. 281-89.

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Steadfastly, however, the NMU organizers in Carbon County denied they were Communists. The hammer and sickle banner was not displayed again. The first task for Crouch, Guynn, and Wetherbee in making themselves known in Helper and the nearby camps was to establish their union's identity and to make certain they were not confused with the UMWA. Any UMWA officials coming into the district, Crouch said, "would be very quick to . . . pick off the tar and feathers."26 There had been a long rivalry between the two main towns of Carbon County: Price, the county seat, and Helper, seven miles north, the nucleus for the majority of the mining towns. Price was the "coal operators' town" and the "old-timers' town" where the native American population exceeded that of the immigrants. Helper was the "miners' town" and the "foreigners' town." Business life in Helper was dependent on the surrounding mining camps. Many of its elected officials were naturalized Americans from the Balkans and the Mediterranean. At the time of the NMU's entrance into the county, a large portion of Helper businesses were owned by immigrants who had risen from the laboring class.

Yugoslavian immigrants, called "Austrians" because of AustroHungary domination of part of their country before World War I,27 rushed to enroll in the NMU. Mainly Croatians, Serbs, and Slovenes, they joined with bitter enthusiasm as did many Italians. Slavic families in Spring Glen formed the center of proselytizing activity. Besides Millerich Hall, the Rat Race, a bar on the south edge of Helper that served bootleg beer, was another active, noisy meeting place.

Rumors that Slavic and Italian language newspapers and immigrant lodges were fomenting subversion deluged the county.2S To native Americans the NMU organizers were dangerous agitators who were leading incipiently radical "foreigners" into anarchy.

A Serbian leader of the strike, Mike S. Dragos, says: We would have joined any union that would give us our rights, except a company union. We had to clean the coal of rocks and waste and if we didn't finish in time, we got no pay. W7e had to roof up the coal before we could begin with the pick and shovel and we propped up the 26

NMU meeting, June 4, 1933.

After World War I South Slavic lands were named the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes. In 1929 King Alexander attempted to ease tension among the Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Montenegrins, Bosnian-Dalmatians, and Voivodinans, by changing the name to Yugoslavia.

L. S. Stavrianos, The Balkans Since 1453 (New York, 1966), 628.

28 West MS, 38, 86.

27

Carbon County Coal Strike

267

timber as quick as we could to get started. That's how accidents happened. We had to pay for our dynamite and supplies. If John L. Lewis came to Carbon County, they would call him a Communist. 2 9

The dormant United Mine Workers, long ignored by coal operators, now came to life, spurred not only by the new legal sanctions of the National Industrial Recovery Act but by the swelling successes of the National Miners Union. In June Frank Bonacci left his mine job at Little Standard to become field worker for the United Mine Workers District 22 that was comprised of Utah and Wyoming. Intermittently working for the union and renouncing it temporarily under yellow dog contracts during extreme economic necessity, Bonacci was the spirit of the United Mine Workers of Carbon County.30 With Nick Fontecchio, newly arrived national UMWA organizer, Bonacci and other local union officials worked to counteract the NMU's growing influence. The UMWA was in a posiPrincipal street in Helper, the town dependent upon "miners' " and "foreigners' " trade. tion that it could not Courtesy Utah State Road Commission. have foreseen the previous year. For the first time in the state a union, the UMWA, had the sanction and help of county officials. Fontecchio was welcomed to Price by Mayor West himself. The Price Sun Advocate was favorable to the UMWA. The Helper Journal supported unionization, claimed neutrality, but championed the NMU. The ~° Paraphased from Dragos interview, August 16, 1972.

30 Yellow dog contracts gave employment with the stipulation that workers would not join unions and would repudiate membership if they had. Lupo interview on the life history of her father, Frank Bonacci.

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Wyoming Labor Journal, official publication of U M W A District 22 at Cheyenne, Wyoming, was influential among miners and printed news of Communist aims and infiltration methods through the N M U .

T h e American Legion of Price was the U M W A ' s greatest asset.

Although Legion members belonged to both unions, the smaller number affiliated with the N M U were looked upon as traitors. The U M W A had the further advantage of having been allied with "the American labor movement [that] had been among the most militantly anti-Communist forces in the nation." 31 Several factors had changed the climate of labor and management relations in the country and given the U M W A its new status.

The infamous "government by injunction" had culminated in 1932 with the passage of the Norris-LaGuardia Bill that gave protection against this reprehensible form of antilabor activity and mitigated the power of yellow dog contracts. The severe measures of industrialists were beginning to be questioned. Employers were seen now as not all-powerful: they could not cope with the Depression. Their enormous prestige was lost.32 The most important development of all was the National Industrial Recovery Billâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;creating the National Recovery Administration ( N R A ) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; t h a t the Roosevelt administration sent to Congress on May 17, 1933. The right to join unions and the collective bargaining aspects of the bill were innovations in United States political history and gave great vitality to union activity everywhere. Employers saw no stemming of the rush toward unionization and hoped to retain control of labor by establishing company unions or at least unions that were not dominated by Communists. Apprehensive at the spectacular growth of the N M U in Carbon County, mine management hastily supported the U M W A . Hiawatha managers continued their old policies, however, and the first appeal to their miners was made by Varro Jones in the junipers surrounding the town. Columbia also would not allow U M W A meetings on company property. 33 T h e competition between the two unions became intensely hostile.

Italians, particularly, were rallied against each other: those with Frank Bonacci and the U M W A against those with Tony Bonacci and the N M U . The most militant and vociferous were the Slavic miners who put aside centuries-long, old-country dissensions based on varied languages, religions, and politics and collectively drew toward the N M U .

31 32 33

132.

Derber and Young, eds., Labor and the New Deal, 143.

Ibid., 7.

Interview with Rolla E. West, January 25, 1973; Scorup, "Organized Labor in Utah,"

269

Carbon County Coal Strike

T h e Greeks no longer made up the largest part of the county's labor force. Leaders of the 19 13 Membership B o o k 1922 strike, in which they believed they h a d SA.j Name .. O L A I>-JUNT) not been fully supported State. . Sr*&!#r.'.; Dbtrict.C^MSfep by the entire U M W A , they assumed a passive County ..LL/iy^LiU Q\Xy.M*M%$.. attitude, although ostenSection (A.I), or W a r d ) . . . ? . ; . ^ . ' . ^ ^ . . sibly for their union. A cj, V""">* t > U - fCcL^jLiA. r.Aff^ r^....1f. few joined the N M U .

N M U meetings in the Helper park were drawing greater crowds.

Wives and daughters of immigrants, especially xik I- M . I I . I iinlcwn k l.u. ta)ii[..«l UilTfuH. the Slavs, became in,«*«•* creasingly active. They roasted lambs and chickens they had raised for picnics, cooked for strikPhotocopy of a portion of Paul Crouch's Communist Party Membership Book. ers in jail, and gave money they needed for their families to pay court and attorneys' fees. Their cultures assigned women to subordinate roles, repressed and powerless, 31 but at confrontations with mine and county authorities the women ranted and jeered with the approval of their men. Several of the women became well known as hecklers, and officials always expected trouble when they appeared.

Communist Party of t h e II. S. 1

N°

272G3

fc

T h e N M U organizers, Paul Crouch and Charles Guynn, were experienced speakers and easily aroused audiences. Their public criticism of the government awed the immigrants. Guynn's wife, Rae, was as important to the campaign as her husband. She was articulate and also wrote simple, persuasive articles for the Carbon County Miner.

With Crouch's wife, Sylvia, she visited in the houses of strikers to strengthen the women's new convictions and to instruct them in strike 34 Dinko Tomasic, Personality and Culture in Eastern European Politics (New York, 1948), 22, 58-74.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

techniques. One of these taught girls and women to place themselves between strikers and deputies to give NMU men an opportunity for escape.

The Communist affiliation of the NMU was not generally known to the miners at first: In 1929 the radical's influence on American workers and unions was at a very low ebb. T h e temper of the times which came with the Great Depression, however, was such as to encourage American workers to experiment with "new" ideas and to put more trust in radical leaders . . . [The Communists'] revolutionary political philosophy was frequently deliberately concealed and their subservience to control from Russia did not become generally obvious to other than sophisticated observers til the onset of World War II. 3 5

The NMU organizers in Carbon County tried to handle the Communist stigma carefully. In the June 11 meeting there was between 400 and 500 people present, mostly foreigners some of whom had their families with them. Few American people were to be seen. . . some remarks were made by listeners in the audience that his [". . . apparently a foreigner, although possibly American born . . ."] reference to them as "comrades" was not relished.

In the June 18 meeting Guynn made the principal speechâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the word comrade unsaid. He refuted UMWA organizer Nick Fontecchio's claim that the NMU was of Russian origin and its aims dictated by Russia.

[Guynn] stated that they had not hoisted any red flag, that they w-ere not being run by communists, that they were not a Communistic organization and that he did not know how many, if any, Communists belonged to the union. H e said leaders would be selected according to their ability, be they Communists or what not. 36

As the weekly meetings progressed, denials of Communist affiliation continued and attacks on government programs and on the United Mine Workers increased. The government was constantly presented as "run by the rich" who had no interest in the poor. General Hugh S. Johnson, administrator of the NRA, and Frances Perkins, secretary of labor, were castigated, Johnson for paying "income tax on nine million" and Miss Perkins for her "only worry . . . figuring out how she was going 35 Derber 30

and Young, eds., Labor and the New Deal, 112-13.

NMU meetings, June 11, 18, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

271

to beat her chauffeur out of his month's salary." "It doesn't look good when they put in millionaires to do things for the poor people, it doesn't look sincere."37 The Reconstruction Finance Corporation was the organizers' main target. Charles Guynn brought a petition to Utah relief authorities asking adherence to RFC stipulations that money, not scrip, be paid for work performed.38 Denouncing of coupons had psychological impact.

Payment in scrip that had to be used at higher-priced company stores had been a constant grievance of miners since the beginning of the country's industrialization. A law against such coercion had been passed by the Utah State Legislature in 1901 but had no effect on the practice.

Crouch harrangued that the UMWA was a company union and guilty of a "sell-out" to mine management. Superintendent Oliver Sutch of Mutual and R. R. Kirkpatrick, "notorious super of Standard," were accused of conspiring to bring the UMWA into the mines. The United Mine Workers were denounced as having been strikebreakers since 1922 and failures at unionization. Frank Bonacci answered Crouch in the Price Sun Advocate with a history of the 1922 strike. He recounted the great financial drain on the UMWA to bring in tents and food for the strikers' families, the miseries endured, and the onslaught of the National Guard with machine guns on every tipple.30 That the UMWA was strong enough after the 1922 strike to have any effect on coal mining in the county and that members worked as strikebreakers since that time were false, but persuasive, accusations to the immigrant workers for whom many of the events of the period were inexplicable.

The NMU's contention that company unions were being organized with mine superintendents at their head incited the miners. Employers were rapidly installing company unions to ward off the NRA's sanction of the right to unionize. In November 1933 a sample survey revealed 400 out of 623 company unions in effect had been organized since the NRA's enactment.40 In this they were emulating the company unions of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., organized in the Colorado Fuel and Iron coal mines after the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. The company unions "manifested a more benevolent approach [than hostile anti-union "Ibid., August 6, 1933. â&#x201E;˘ Sun Advocate, June 15, 1933; Carbon County Miner (Helper), June 28, 1933.

39 Carbon County Miner, June 28, 1933; Wyoming Labor Journal, (Cheyenne), June 30, 1933; Sun Advocate, July 27, 1933.

40 Bernstein, Turbulent Years, 40.

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tactics]. Whether belligerent or benevolent, employers gained strikingly similar results." 41 The race for the miners' membership accelerated. Frank Bonacci and Fontecchio were gaining among the native American miners in all of the mining camps. "Pawns of the coal operators," Guynn said of them and denounced the employment of eleven guards by the Independent Coal and Coke Company of Kenilworth. The appearance of guards was always, he said, the prelude to violence. The N M U claimed that railroad men sympathized with the miners as they had in the 1922 strike, and if a strike were called, they would not move coal even if strikebreakers mined it. A new element now entered N M U talk: the general strike, the traditional aim of syndicalists who championed labor union control of industry and government. 42 TRADITION AND P R O T E S T :

THE

1933

STRIKE

By the end of June the N M U reported that the Mutual Mine had been organized one hundred percent, bringing their total membership to twelve hundred. 43 Organizing was given impetus by an unexpected incident. The annual Fourth of July parade, that alternated each year between Price and Helper, was to be held in Price. The American Legion of Price, sponsors of the celebration, refused an N M U request to march in the parade. Tony Bonacci reported at the July 2 N M U meeting that Mayor West told his committee "they were red communists . . . and given two minutes to leave town." Mayor West called the N M U organizers "three skunks . . . [with] red stripes down their backs. They are commonly known as communists." 44 West soon was accompanied by day and night bodyguards. A Slavic woman, Margaret Nemanich, one of the fearless hecklers, said, "If we are bolshevics, so are our children and we will not allow them to parade and play in the Price [Carbon County High School] band on the Fourth." Mrs. Nemanich was to prove herself the equal of martial "Big Mary" Septek of the 1897 anthracite coal strike. 45 Carbon County residents had a unified enthusiasm for their marching school bands. T h e refusal of Price officials for N M U participation " J e r o l d S. Auerbach, Labor and Liberty: The La Toilette Committee and the New Deal (Indianapolis and New York, 1966), 22.

42 N M U meeting, June 25, 1933; Russell, Proposed Roads to Freedom, 6 2 - 6 8 ; Laslett, Labor and The Left, 257; and John Graham Brooks, American Syndicalism: The I.W.W. (New York, 1969), chap. 10.

43 Carbon County Miner, June 28, 1933.

44 Sun Advocate, July 20 1933; see also Carbon County Miner, July 22, 1933.

46 Greene, Slavic Community on Strike, 143-44.

Carbon County Coal Strike

273

in the parade and the retaliation of NMU members by withdrawing their children from the band was the complete break between the two towns. The band had just returned from the Chicago World's Fair with first place honors.

Mayor Frank R. Porter, an engineer on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad whose unconditional support of labor had earned him the title of "radical," invited the NMU to hold a Fourth of July parade in Helper. Price held its scheduled parade followed by an outing in the park; UMWA cars, decorated with colored crepe paper, were cheered.

The Helper parade mixed diverse Mayor Rolla West of Price was a major community elements: Charles figure in the 1933 strike action in Carbon County. Courtesy Mrs. Rolla West.

Wetherbee was the marshal; the Helper Junior High Band, the Greek American Progressive Association, and fifteen hundred members of the NMU, their Women's Auxiliary, and Youth Section marched.46 The Helper Journal chided Mayor West for "recognizing one union and denying the other." The deteriorated relationship between Price and Helper and the increasing hostility of the two unions induced the Helper Chamber of Commerce to attempt a pacification meeting. Both unions were invited to meet with the chamber, but the UMWA did not appear.47 The July Fourth parade forced many uncommitted miners to take sides. The Kenilworth Mine was completely UMWA, but all others had miners representing both unions. Eight hundred people attended the July 9 meeting of the NMU and heard that the general strike was Helper Journal, July 7, 1933; Sun Advocate, July 6, 1933.

Helper Journal, July 7, 1933.

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set for Labor Day. The NMU insistently harangued on the inequities of government agencies, particularly the RFC, and assured their members that railroad men would not transport coal in a general strike.

The UMWA, meanwhile, projected a fervid patriotism.

During the first two weeks of August NMU miners at Mutual went on strike twice. In the first strike they demanded recognition of their union, and in the second they protested the hiring of "men from distant farming communities" rather than "men living in camp and waiting to be put on."48 This was a tactic of mine managementâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; asking Latter-day Saints church authorities to supply men during labor troubles. The rounding up of thugs as guards and strikebreakers by detective agencies was implemented in earlier Utah strikes with immigrant labor agents recruiting large numbers of recently arrived, unemployed men and by the LDS church's call to farm areas for help.40 Superintendent Oliver Sutch maintained the strikes were called because he did not accede to NMU demands that he discharge miners who had recently joined the UMWA. Recognition of the union was refused, and a large number of women and children joined the picket line. Both unions accused each other of threatening to harm their members and families. Because an abundance of coal was on hand, the mine was shut down. Sheriff Marion Bliss was "keeping an eye on the property."50 The strikes were quickly settled without NMU recognition but with assurances that precluded management's bringing in outside labor.51 At the August 13 meeting of the NMU, Charles " J a c ^ " Guynn said the general strike would take place as planned unless the mines agreed to an NMU mining code. "He is . . . the head organizer and who we also learn is an Austrian." From then on Guynn was called "Guynnovitch" by NMU enemies. Being not only an agitator but "foreign" made Guynn even more menacing. (Yugoslavians involved in the strike say Guynn was not "Austrian.")

As NMU rantings against government relief programs continued, many NMU miners and their families publicly announced their support of communism. Robert H. Hinckley, state director of public relief, told a meeting of county commissioners that "unless the vicious attacks made 4g

Ibid., August 4, 1933; N M U meeting, August 13, 1933.

Powell, "Labor at the Beginning of the 20th Century," 157-58; Papanikolas, and Rage, 109, 127-28. â&#x201E;˘ Helper Journal, August 4, 11, 1933.

49

Toil

Carbon County Coal Strike

275

against the President and the National Recovery Act in Carbon County were discontinued government action would be taken."' 2 Reaction came quickly. "This is probably the most open move in the direction of a Fascist dictatorship ever made by a public official in this country," the Carbon County Miner said.53 Businessmen of Helper held an emergency meeting for "immediate discontinuance of such alleged anti-government remarks which might be injurious to the good name of Carbon County." 54 Inspired by the partial success of the Mutual strikes and bombarded

by Crouch, Guynn, and Wetherbee's eroding attacks on the RFC and the NRA, 215 miners refused to wait for the Labor Day general strike and struck the Spring Canyon Mine on August 23. The U M W A miners remained at work, but since a large supply of coal was on hand the superintendent closed the mine. 55 Immediately county commissioners and Sheriff Bliss asked the governor for troops. Bliss called the strike a "political uprising, . . . a communist movement . . . the strikers do not deny they are communists."

He would need five hundred men, Bliss said, but he would not get them from the United Mine Workers, "because it would result in pitched battles." Governor Henry H. Blood hesitated; he was relying on the adoption of the NRA coal code to settle the strike. In a telegram to General Hugh S. Johnson, he asked that "all consistent speed be used in promulgating the code." The governor then sent O. F. Shane and William M. Knerr, chairman, of the Industrial Commission to mediate the strike. Wetherbee informed the two men that picketing would be peaceful: "If any trouble is created, the responsibility will lie with Sheriff S. M. Bliss and his deputies." Mine guards, he said, were U M W A members armed with pick handles. 56 When the strike was called, five N M U machinists were working the afternon shift and were unaware of it. Their wives heard that U M W A men, wielding new pick handles from the company store, were waiting for their husbands to emerge from the mine portal. With a three-hundred-pound miner's wife leading them, the women walked through the cordon of United Mine Workers and "brought their men out.""

51

Ibid., August 11, 18, 1933; Carbon County Miner, August 19, 1933. â&#x201E;˘ Helper Journal, August 18, 1933.

Carbon County Miner, August 19, 1933. ** Helper Journal, August 18, 1933.

"Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1933; Helper Journal, August 18, 22, 1933.

58 Salt Lake Telegram, August 19, 1933; Salt Lake Tribune, August 19, 1933.

57 Tomsic interview.

M

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Quarterly

Gordon Creek town of Consumers was photographed in 1936

by Dorothea Lange.

View shows company housing.

Courtesy Library of Congress.

Knerr remained in Helper and worked for a truce. He repeatedly warned against the need for the National Guard and maintained that reports of violence were rumors and that picketing was, as had been promised, peaceful.5S U M W A locals met twice in the American Legion Hall in Price and voted for resolutions to show appreciation of the "efforts of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, General Johnson and all concerned in the NRA declaring war on depression." They asked the governor to remove 58

Salt Lake Tribune, August 20, 22, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

277

Communist leaders "from our midst" who were "recruiting people for their party, largely irresponsible, of a bad repute, and enemies of our government."50 By this time a considerable number of native Americans and immigrants had joined not only the NMU but also the Communist party.

The strike spread to the three Gordon Creek mines: Consumers, National, and Sweet. Sheriff Bliss gave the number of men leaving work as two hundred fifty. National was just inside the entrance of Gordon Creek Canyon; a half mile into the canyon was Consumers, and another half mile beyond was Sweets. NMU pickets at National, inflamed by reports of the National Guard coming into the county, stopped cars and trucks and searched them for guns and ammunition.

"Ingress and egress of the workers at the other two mines is somewhat limited as a result of the picketing," the Salt Lake Tribune reported.60 Knerr went to National to explain Utah laws governing picketing, particularly on highways. He asked the miners to return to work while grievances were adjudicated, but Guynn convinced the men that, unlike the UMWA who were willing to wait for the NRA code, the NMU saw advantages in winning concessions before the code adoption.

Fontecchio's claim that pay scale would be $6.72 was a lie, Guynn said.

Scale would be $4.46 under the code.61 Mine managers now put greater pressure on Governor Blood for the National Guard. The president of the Sweet Coal Company wrote him that the NMU had taken men off freight trains to take possession of the company's property. "The situation in Carbon County is liable to result in bloodshed unless the power of the law is asserted."6 The Helper marshal sent Governor Blood a copy of the Communist Young Worker taken from Paul Crouch's rented car.63 NMU headquarters were raided and Communist literature was found.

Mine managers continued their demand for the National Guard.

Governor Blood held a meeting with them and Carbon County, Salt Lake City, and state officials. The mine operators insisted that all, or at least part, of the Guard was needed. Mayor West, Commissioner Reid, and Sheriff Bliss retracted the commission's earlier appeal that the 69 Helper Journal, August 18, 1933. Resolution no. 1, Western Americana, University of U t a h ; Resolution no. 2, Governors' Correspondence, 1933. m Salt Lake Tribune, August 23, 1933. Local residents refer to the mine as Sweet, the town as Sweets.

91 Ibid., August 24, 1933; N M U meeting, September 1, 1933; Carbon County Miner, July 15, 1933.

"2 Governors' Correspondence, 1933. â&#x20AC;˘ Ibid.

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Guard was needed and convinced the governor that Carbon County could handle any problems arising from the spreading strike.64 Rumors that the National Guard was coming to the county aroused the people of Helper who had lived under martial law during the strike of 1922. The N M U sent two petitions to the governor, one signed by 251 people who claimed the strike was peaceful and the Guard not needed, the other signed by 619 people with an added remonstrance that the $45,000 for which citizens of Carbon County would be bonded was an economic hardship that "could result in the loss of their houses."65 The petitions were signed by businessmen, railroad men, students, and the greater number by miners and their wives. In pencil, the labored signatures gave testimony to the great immigrant force that had come to a new country for a better life.

The Helper Journal commended Governor Blood and Industrial Commissioner Knerr's rebuff for the National Guard request: A n d t h u s is answered the plea for an a r m e d invasion of C a r b o n C o u n t y â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a m o v e m e n t w h i c h m i g h t precipitate a n o t h e r L u d l o w M a s s a c r e â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a n d w h i c h a t least w o u l d subject t h e residents of o u r county to h u m i l i a t i o n a n d insult from a b u n c h of thoughtless kids a r m e d w i t h a rifle a n d general orders left to their individual i n t e r p r e t a t i o n . T h e r e still a r e m a n y in H e l p e r w h o recall t h e military rule of 1922. 6 6

The mine managers, however, continued to beseige the governor for troops. Although maintaining that Carbon County could solve its problems, Governor Blood sent Preston G. Peterson, a member of the State Road Commission, to Price. Peterson was authorized to appoint County Commissioner Reid as his assistant and Mayor West as chief deputy sheriff of Carbon County with the authority to organize and direct deputy sheriffs to "resolve the troubles of the county." 67 West p r o c e e d e d to organize a d e p u t y force, w i t h t h e advice a n d h e l p of Commissioner Peterson, C o u n t y Commissioner R e i d a n d Sheriff Bliss, a n d C a p t a i n [L.L.] Fryer a n d his [state] H i g h w a y Patrol. A riot s q u a d was available from t h e U t a h N a t i o n a l G u a r d a n d t h a t patrol, fully e q u i p p e d , was sent to C a r b o n C o u n t y at once. GS

Frank Bonacci and Nick Fontecchio telephoned the coal camps; in quick response U M W A men came in large groups to offer their services.

64 05 m 67 88

West MS, 55-60.

Governors' Correspondence, 1933.

Helper Journal, August 25, 1933.

West MS, 60-63.

Ibid, 62-63.

Carbon County Coal Strike

279

By Friday, August 25, Mayor West and Sheriff Bliss had deputized nearly three hundred men.60 Among those deputized were a Mormon bishop, a Helper school principal, and a Spring Glen school principal.

Two detachments of National Guard troops with equipment arrived while the deputizing of the UMWA was proceeding: the first on Thursday evening, August 24, was led by Lt. Col. Albert E. Wilfong of the 22nd Field Artillery, chief of Ogden police; the second on Friday morning was in charge of Lt. Harry A. Randall of the 145th Field Artillery. Lieutenant Randall's men were a riot squad trained in using tear gas. The convoy of army trucks, driven by state highway patrolmen, also brought three hundred rifles, a large number of gas masks, and tear gas bombs.70 On Friday Adj. Gen. W. G. Williams of the Guard, "acting as a citizen and not in his official capacity," told the deputies to use their guns only as a last resort. A relative few, he said, were intimidating American workmen.71 Hearing of the activities in Price, NMU strikers blockaded the Gordon Creek road with railroad ties, mattresses, and a truck. State Road Commissioner Peterson and six state patrolmen drove to the canyon and told the pickets the highway was part of the state road system and had to be kept open. The strikers immediately removed the barricades. County attorney Walter C. Gease also drove to Consumers and gave the strikers the same message.72 NMU activity had been especially intense among the Slavic strikers in Consumers. They were extremely hostile to the superintendent of the mine, David Parmley, who was also chairman of the Carbon County Commission. At four in the morning, Saturday, August 26, the deputies, each with a lunch, got into state road trucks, old white GMC World War I surplus, "to clear the road" at Consumers. Eight national guardsmen with grenades and tear gas equipment accompanied them.73 While the cars lumbered slowly up the canyon road, young attorneys of the county, accompanied by Sheriff Bliss and Commissioner Reid, drove past. The attorneys, fearing a clash would result between the deputies and pickets, were driving to Consumers to "explain the National Miners Union background to the strikers," many of whom m

Ibid., 65, and Helper Journal, September 1, 1933. ''"Deseret News (Salt Lake City), August 25, 1933.

Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1933.

72 Ibid.

73 West MS, 69-84.

11

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were clients of theirs, and to advise them of their rights.74 Commissioner Reid, a devout Catholic, hoped to sway his fellow Catholics. All Slavs, however, had turned violently against him.

Rolla West stopped his men at a section house four miles from Consumers to await the outcome of the attorneys' mission. The men waited for hours. The August sun was hot and Gordon Creek, where they had expected to find water, was dry. Several hours later, David Parmley came down the road followed by "6 big Austrian women."

They had thrown him to the ground, taken his revolver, and "peed on" him. 75 West told his men to put the kicking, shouting women into a small room of the section house. Armed guards were placed at the doors and windows. "West arrested themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;not in Dave Parmley's behalfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; but because he recognized them as notorious hecklers and knew they had come down to heckle the deputies." 76 In the late afternoon the lawyers drove back down the canyon; their mission had been unsuccessful. The deputies got into the trucks and were driven to the entrance of Consumers where Mayor West placed the four companies in military formation. (Mayor West had given each man who had served in World War I the same rank in his deputy force.)

A crowd of shouting N M U pickets, including women and children, stood about the entrance to the mine. The deputies marched toward the portal. When the pickets did not move, the riot squad threw four tear gas bombs at them. Choking, eyes watering, the pickets ran into ravines leading off the mine entrance and others into the mine. Those caught were forced into the road trucks. The deputies then continued their march into Sweets and National. 77 Sixty-eight pickets were arrested on a charge of rioting, including Sylvia Crouch. She was held incommunicado until nine in the evening when J. H. McKnight of Salt Lake City, one of the attorneys for the strikers, succeeded in having her released. She went at once to the Spring Canyon picket line and told the strikers to defend themselves when the deputies came to disperse them. 78 74

ibid. ibid.

76 ibid.

11 Sun Advocate, August 31, 1933.

78 Helper Journal, September 1, 1933; Deseret News, August 28, 1933.

75

Carbon County Coal Strike

281

T h e first battle for Carbon County in 1933 ended . . . the only injuries . . . were 3 young no-name-o-viches with fat lips awarded them by a Mormon bishop. 70

The next day plans were made to enter Spring Canyon the following morning.80 To keep the deputies from "spitting cotton for the entire day" Brigham H. Young, the county clerk, was asked to get twelve dozen empty pint whiskey flasks that would be filled with water. (A controversy was being fought in the state at the time over the legalization of 3.2 beer, yet whiskey was readily available.)

In Spring Canyon the picket camps were high on the mountain slopes among boulders and junipers. An early frost had broken records, and camp fires burned continuously at night to warm the strikers. Four hundred men, women, and children "derisively greeted" the deputies when they arrived at the mine. Eight hand bombs and three rifle grenades were thrown at the pickets. Screaming invectives, women sprang at the deputies and threw pepper into their eyes.81 Rolla West's account of the deputies coming over the mountains and descending on the camp describes six hundred NMUs milling about the mine entrance and within minutes mixing in with the deputies. West ordered the deputies to put the men into the state trucks. "The deputies were just a little hesitating" until an Italian boy "tried to take a rifle away from" a former infantry man who broke his arm. This spurred the deputies to march the men, women, and children a half mile to the Peerless Mine where the men were put into the trucks.82 As the Helper Journal described it: Early Monday a fleet of trucks hauled armed guards into the Spring Canyon district where after a hurling of hand and rifle grenades and tear gas bombs and the "accidental discharge" of one rifle "in the hands of an asserted school kid deputy sheriff," 210 picketeers were loaded up, taken to Price and placed in bull pens at the ball park and in an empty Price business building. 83

Harold Huff, the particularly obnoxious West, handcuffed, and him the "opportunity" 79 S0

local president of the NMU, who "had been with the NMU that summer" was arrested by put into a boxcar. Later in the day West gave to leave town and not come back.

West MS, 83.

Ibid., 84-103. "^Deseret News, August 22, 1933; Sun Advocate, August 31, 1933. s2 Salt Lake Tribune, August 29, 1933. yt Helper Journal, September 1, 1933.

282

Utah Historical

Quarterly

After news of the men's arrest went out, a group of marchers gathered at the outskirts of Helper on the Spring Canyon road. Hearing this (there were spies on both sides), deputies drove down to meet a group of men led by "maybe 30 or 40 women. The front row of marchers [two of them carrying American flags] were very pretty young ladies, apparently Austrian, about 18 or 20 years old." The marchers stopped when they saw the deputies. West sent two "older" deputies ahead "to accost these women with the idea that they could refrain from using excess force better than the younger men." The strikers behind the front row of women ran back toward Helper. Deputies broke off to chase them, but the women threw pepper into their eyes and they floundered, their vision blurred. West ordered the women put into state road trucks and taken to the sheriff's office in Price where there was no space for them. They were left to return to their houses, many in Spring Canyon sixteen miles away, as best they could.84 On the march of the protesters, the Helper Journal reported that armed deputies hurled tear gas bombs at the gathering; a girl, carrying an American flag, was struck with the butt of a rifle; and women were slapped in the face. "High-handed tactics," the Journal described events, "in the name of law and order" and "a rather general charge of communism has been placed against the entire city of Helper."

The paper commended the strikers for not destroying mine property. 85 The Price Sun Advocate said, "It was necessary to use 8 bombs before the crowd dispersed." 86 REVERBERATION S

The strikers held in the bull pens were forgotten. They had not been given water or food for twenty-four hours or blankets to sleep on.

By noon of the second day a local restaurant, under West's orders, brought the men food and coffee. N M U women came daily with home-canned fruits, vegetables, and cured meats. Each visit was accompanied by shouting and swearing at the guards. Several women shocked the deputies by exposing their breasts and offering "suck to make humans" of themâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an old Slavic act of hostility.87 The deputies 84

West M S , 99.

Helper Journal, September 1, 1933. m Sun Advocate, August 31, 1933.

87 Tomasic, Personality and Culture, 62.

85

Carbon County Coal Strike

283

agreed that they had successfully broken up the concentration of "Wobblies". But they said, "Where were their leaders, where were Guynnovitch and Crouch? Where was Wetherbee and Tony? In two long days drive, no one even saw a one of them. . . Wre'll just have this job to do all over again if we don't get those agitators behind bars. 88

In a "comic, semi-climax to the local disturbances," six or seven truckloads of deputies converged on the Carbon Hotel in Helper and arrested Guynn and Wetherbee on a charge of rioting. Expecting something ominous, the faces of the organizers were "an ashen, yellowish green."80 After four hours in jail, they were released on $5,000 bail. That evening at an NMU meeting, they demanded that the general strike set for September 4 take place.00 The deputies gathered, angry at the freeing of the NMU organizers.

They had thought that once the men were jailed, their influence on the miners would wane, and they could go back to the mines. Also, "the United Mine Workers were having satisfying conferences with the mine operators. The mine operators, however, seemed to feel the NMU issue should be disposed of."01 The deputies told West, "We know where to find them tonight.

We don't figure to let them need any bail this time." At a meeting that evening in the Price Savoy Hotel to formulate their plans, Mayor West was able to deter the men. After taking a last drink of whiskey, they returned to their houses.02 Some of the strikers were let out on bail on condition they return to work and "maintain the peace," but approximately two hundred were left in the bull pens unable to pay the $1,000 bond. Some were transients who had joined the picket lines for something to eat. One hundred thirty of the men were aliens, and deportation proceedings were begun immediately.03 The men refused to eat "the cold food thrown to us like dogs" until they were given a stove and a cook.04 Prominent citizens visited the men and tried to convince them to forsake the NMU because it was a Communist union. Among the visitors was Joseph Barboglio, president of two banks, who had been one of the Italian strikers held in the bull pens in the 1903 strike.05 ss

West MS, 107.

Helper Journal, September 1, 1933; West MS, 117. ''"Salt Lake Tribune, August 30, 1933.

91 West MS, 114.

K Ibid., 119-23.

93 Sun Advocate, August 31, September 7, 1933; Deseret News, August 28, 1933.

94 Toson interview.

96 West MS, 106; Powell, "Labor at the Beginning of the 20th Century," 168.

89

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Roads leading into the county were patrolled to prevent shipments of guns and ammunition rumored expected by the strikers. Guards were stationed on all roads, bridges, and tunnels. "Wobblies" and strike sympathizers were turned back at the county lines.06 Under tight surveillance, the strikers could not carry out the general strike planned for Labor Day. A week after Guynn's arrest on riot charges, Sheriff Bliss and a squad of deputies arrested him again for criminal syndicalism. The following day Wetherbee was arrested on the same charge. Neither was able to pay the $10,000 bail and remained in custody. The basis for the charge was inducing strikers to block the Spring Canyon road on August 23 "to prevent men not affiliated with the NMU from going to work," teaching anarchy, and urging NMU members to go on a general strike.

An uproar followed the second jailings; NMU men in Helper caught Virgil Miller, a deputy, and beat him severely. The Helper City Council quickly passed a resolution prohibiting meetings of three or more people. Several days later Guynn and Wetherbee's wives were arrested on an open charge. Crouch persisted in eluding deputies. Warrants on criminal syndicalism counts were drawn up for him and for Harold Huff.07 Deputies continued to guard mines, protect UMWA miners on their way to and from work, and walk the streets of Helper to obstruct NMU meetings. The NMU met across the Duchesne County line to plan strategy. They mimeographed bills calling for a meeting in the Helper park and had them dropped on the mining towns from a small airplane. Strikers made their way through ravines and Italian farms; their wives and daughters tricked deputies with excuses; and a large number of NMUs converged on the park. Sheriff Bliss arrived and attempted to warn the crowd that they were breaking the law by holding the meeting.

"Kill him! Lynch him!" the crowd shouted. Men and women climbed onto the platform and pushed him off it. A leader of the Serbian women, Mrs. Mike Dragos, who had received bruises in the Consumers conflict and used this "reason" for needing to buy alcohol at a Helper drug store, pulled Bliss from the crowd. A figure of authority 96 Deseret News, August 28, 1933. Sun Advocate, September 7, 1933; Utah Highway Patrol report, September 1, 1933, Governors' Correspondence, 1933.

91 Salt Lake Tribune, September 7, 8, 1933; Helper Journal, September 8, 1933; Sun Advocate, September 7, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

285

during the strike because of her fearlessnessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the only basis for respect given a woman by rural Slav menâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;she was allowed to escort Bliss out of the park.08 The NMU then called for a march to the Price county courthouse as a protest against the imprisonment of their leaders. Eight were still in custody. The strike committee maintained that following the meeting, they telephoned Sheriff Bliss that the NMU were coming "peacefully and he answered, 'All right.' "00 West instructed Chief of 118 Rebecca West, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, 2 vols. (New York, 1941), concerns herself often with the role of Yugoslavian women in their male-dominated society; see specifically 2:766; Sun Advocate, November 30, 1933; Dragos interviews; Helper Journal, September 15, 1933; Tomsic-Toson interview.

00 Carbon County Miner, Oct. 7, 1933.

Mike Dragos, left, and his wife, right, served as wedding attendants to Mr. and Mrs. Leo Telich.

The Dragoses were active participants in the strike.

Utah Historical Quarterly

286

Trucks deliver protesters to Price for NMU against the imprisonment of their leaders.

march

Police Vernon Davis of Price to deputize all male city employees and any other citizens he needed.100 The deputized United Mine Workers had gone back to the mines; farmers in Wellington, five miles south of Price, were immediately recruited.101 Several frightened high school boys were among them. They had been told they were to go to the aid of Mormons who "were being driven out of the county."102 On Monday, September 11, four hundred men and women, including several wives of prominent Helper citizens, arrived at the entrance to Price in cars and trucks. Led by Lawrence Mower of Helper, chairman of the strike committee, and Ephraim Towne, NMU leader at National, they formed twelve and fifteen abreast and marched down the main street of the town toward the courthouse. Although word had been'sent out by deputies that citizens should stay away from Main Street, the streets were lined with people, almost all of them men. Onlookers crowded together at the windows of two-story buildings.

At the First East intersection Sheriff Bliss stopped the marchers and told them to return to their cars. The National Guard Riot Squad 400 West 101

MS, 108-114.

Varro C. Jones to Rolla E. West, undated, Western Americana, University of Utah; Kalikas102 interview.

Toson-Tomsic interview.

Carbon County Coal Strike

Uniformed policemen almost seem part of march until confrontation begins. All four photos are frames from a motion picture made by J. Bracken Lee. Courtesy Western Americana, University of Utah.

with tear gas equipment and the Price City Fire Department with hose stood behind him. The Price police were stationed on the west side of the intersection, Mayor West and his deputies on the north side of Main Street, and Commissioner Reid and his men on the south side of it. The state and local highway patrol kept traffic away from the street.

Towne and Mower answered Bliss: "We're going through." National guardsmen then discharged tear gas toward the marchers.

Struggling they stood their ground. Water shot out of the fire hose.

A motion picture film of the confrontation taken by J. Bracken Leeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; whose long political career includes two terms as governor of Utah and three as mayor of Salt Lake Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;shows the force of water passing over the marchers, women in long cotton dresses and overalled men.

They sway like wheat in the wind.103 Two Price deputies attempted to arrest Crouch at Rolla West's direction. NMU women converged about the deputies, shouting in their various languages obscenities "worse than men." In the melee Crouch slipped away. The Sun Advocate reported that when NMU followers surrounded the officers to prevent Crouch's arrest "a number of deputies

J. Bracken Lee film, Western Americana, University of Utah.

288

Utah Historical Quarterly

charged the mob. Numerous hand to hand combats ensued, the officers being compelled to frequently use the butts of their rifles as clubs . . . some of the grenades . . . [were] thrown back by the demonstrators."104 In Lee's film rifle-carrying deputies smile as they follow the marchers up the railroad tracks west of Main Street to their cars. Young national guardsmen look as if they are enjoying an outing.

Sylvia Crouch, Tom Corak, and Dan Laner, who was hit on the head with a rifle butt, were arrested. Forty years later former NMU members insist that the blows broke Laner's neck and he died of it.

Neighbors say he emerged from jail "funny," unlike his former self, and committed suicide the following March.105 Immediately following the march Adjutant General Williams and Maj. H. Arnold Rich of the National Guard met with county authorities. To bring an end to "the agitating and inciting to lawless acts by the NMU organizers," they suggested "something like martial law with civilian instead of military personnel." County lawyers warned against this proposal.106 Word flashed through Helper that houses were to be searched and all NMU pamphlets and papers should be burned. Smoke rose from hundreds of backyard fires.107 The following night a hundred deputies drove into Helper and rampaged through thirty boardinghouses, hotels, and private houses "to enforce county wide civilian martial law." The search, without warrants, failed to uncover Crouch. It is remembered as a night of terror: several of the deputies had "whiskey on their breath;" children cowered and screamed as their parents were knocked down.108 Fifteen NMU members were arrested for having taken part in the Price "uprising" and put in the fairgrounds' bull pen.100 The NMU attempted to hold a protest meeting but were prevented by eighty guards patrolling the park and streets. They quickly mimeographed sheets of paper calling for another meeting to organize "defense squads to squash martial law."110 ZlSun Adv?cate\ September 14, 1933; Salt Lake Tribune, September 12, 1933 .

Dragos interview, August 16, 1972; Spring Glen interviews. Several newspaper accounts have spelled Laner's name Leaner and Leonard. The official death certificate on file with the Utah Division of Health (which lists the cause of death as "Gunshot wound of left chest: suicidal") gives his name as Daniel Laner, Sr 106 West MS, 125.

107 Toson interview.

108 "Stenographic Report of Meeting of a Protest Body on the Carbon County Labor Problem at^ the First Congregational Church, Salt Lake City, Utah, September 15, 1933, 7:30 p.m.," typescript, carbon copy at Western Americana, University of Utah.

109 Sun Advocate, September 14, 1933; Salt Lake Tribune, September 13, 1933; West MS 126.

1,0 Sun Advocate, September 14, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

289

Ordinances were passed by the Carbon County Board of Commissioners and the city councils of Helper and Price banning public meetings and dances. The Helper council asked for deputies to enforce the "civilian-martial law." The N M U ' s children's strike against the Helper deputized school principal was called off. Baseball championship games were transferred from Helper to Provo. T h e N M U established relief stations for the unemployed and put up tents for those forced out of their houses. Crouch, Guynn, Wetherbee, and five strike leaders were ordered to stand trial on September 16.111 The International Labor Defense and the Unemployed Council of Salt Lake City advertised mass meetings in Sandy, Provo, American Fork, Midvale, and Salt Lake City to protest "women and children brutally beaten up in Carbon County," the threatening of handcuffed men, drunkenness (filling the whiskey flasks with water had been a mistake), and "trying to force miners to work under slave conditions by using guns, tear gas, and grenades." 112 Murray E. King, vice president of the Utah Farmers and Workers Congress, continued drives he had begun during the Spring Canyon strike to collect farm products for the strikers' families.113 Belle Taub, organizer for the International Labor Defense, who had come to Utah when the strike was called, made plans for a mass meeting in the Salt Lake City Congregational Church.

Protest letters and telegrams from Unemployed Councils, workers and farmers organizations, International Labor Defense chapters, and National Committees for the Defense of Political Prisoners streamed into Governor Blood's office. Numerous ethnic organizationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Lithuanian, Russian, Greek, Hungarian, Negro, Finnish, and Polishâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sent telegrams. Years later, during Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's red hysteria, many of these organizations were brought before the UnAmerican Activities Committee. 111 Individuals, including the poet Lincoln Steffens and the novelist Theodore. Dreiser, also sent telegrams and letters to the governor. 11 ' The governor answered a Utah citizen: "Although petitioned by offi1,1

Helper Journal, September 8, 15, 1933.

N M U handbills, Labor Archives, Western Americana, University of Utah. '"Helper Journal, August 25, 1933; West MS, 85.

114 Governors' Correspondence, 1933; U. S., Congress, House, Committee on UnAmerican Activities, Communist Political Subversion, Part I: Hearings, 84th Cong., 2d sess., 1957. ' " Former University of Utah Dean of Women, Myrtle Austin, recalls that Dreiser was in Salt Lake City during the N M U march down Price Main Street. "They should have their throats slit," he said of the deputy sheriffs.

112

290

Utah Historical Quarterly

cials of Carbon County, I declined to send the National Guard into the Carbon coal fields." Governor Blood maintained throughout the campaign against the NMU that the labor troubles were being handled locally.

T H E AFTERMATH

While the NMU was embroiled with authorities, the UMWA was holding regular meetings with mine officials and progress was being made toward a coal code adoption. During this time Monsignor (later Bishop) James Edward Kearney of San Francisco, the well known Catholic chaplain of World War Fs famed Rainbow Division, came to Carbon County. He upheld Commissioner Reid with whom he had served in France and spoke out against the NMU, reminding the Italians and Yugoslavian Croatians and Slovenes that as Catholics they could not belong to a Communist organization. A few Catholics began to withdraw their support after the monsignor's admonition, but a majority considered their church's stand an unwarranted interjection of religious authority.116 The International Labor Defense meeting in the First Congregational Church in Salt Lake City on September 15 drew six hundred people. The press, especially the Salt Lake Tribune, was accused of not telling the "whole truth of what happened down in Carbon County . . . still part of the state of Utah." NMU members told of being tear gassed and assaulted. Belle Taub repudiated reports that the International Labor Defense was Communist, and M. P. Bales declared the Bill of Rights had been denied the strikers. He condemned the NRA's forcing labor to agree not to strike thereby losing its only weapon and called the United States a capitalistic dictatorship.

If you will just sit and sit we [the government] will solve all your problems for you. Why you have already sat on the seat of your pants so long that if you sat on a dime you could tell whether it was heads or tails.

He then read a resolution asking that Adjutant General Williams be removed from office for his activities in the strike and that a committee be appointed to investigate conditions in Carbon County.117 A week later the report of the committee members, appointed at the request of the International Labor Defense, was printed in the 110 Sun Advocate, September 21, 1933; West MS, 127-28; West interview, January 1973; Spring Glen interviews; Helper Journal, September 22, 1933.

117 "Stenographic Report of Meeting . . . September 15, 1933," Western Americana.

291

Carbon County Coal Strike

Progressive Independent, a liberal newspaper published in Salt Lake City. Under the headline "Chaos Reigns in Carbon," Wilford Owen Woodruff decried Governor Blood's "general apathy and persistent procrastination." The terrorizing of women and children, he said, were reminiscent of the territorial days of LTtah and the acts of United States marshals. B. H. Roberts, president of the First Council of Seventies of the LDS church, who died a few days after giving his views on the strike, said there had been no mob, but a "peaceful march of people under consent of county authorities and without arms absolutely, International Labor Defense handbill advertises meeting of September 15, 1933. to make petition for the release of men, leaders of the unfavored section from unjust imprisonment." Alfred Sorenson protested the use of deputies as young as fifteen years of age and called the Carbon troubles "a case of vigilantes seen under the guise of necessity (which necessity did not exist only in the fears of the officials.)"118 CarWhat are Our Constitutional Rights? bon County officials denounced Is an armed attack on a peacethe report claiming county offiful group of men, women and cials had not given permission children, intending-not to storm for the march in behalf of a jail-but to petition the County prisoners, that the men were not Commission with their greivances held without charges, that the in accordance with their constitutionalrightsor riot? majority of the deputies were "not youths," and that the riot In Virmt Coii|tiMM|«««ional Church l'ir»« South and Fourth Kami was touched off when Crouch F r i d a y , S e p t . 1*%, TsSO P . M . and his sympathizers resisted his For the purpose of informing the Salt Lake public about the real conditions and to rally ail liberty-loving, liberal-minded and freearrest.110 thinking people ina protest agaiut the brutal attacks on the miners and againt the suppression of all GWil and Constitutinnal rights.

These points were argued §PEAKERS: J. H. McKnight, Attorney for the Miners, during the months of trials Warwick Lamoreaus, Member of State Legislature.

M. P. Bales, Repr. lnt'l Labor Defense. ahead. The county insisted that Alf Sorensen, of American Civil Liberties Union will act as Chairman.

Sheriff Bliss had not given perALSO EYE WITNESSES from the Mine Fields. mission for the march and that

What's Going —ON

In Carbon Co?

Mass «-<*•< Meeting

118

Progressive Independent (Salt Lake City), September 22, 1933.

1,9 Sun Advocate, September 21, 1933.

COME and H E A R the T R U E STORY of a part of Utah ruled by a band of Armed Gunmen and not by Law and Order.

I n t e r n a t i o n a l I^abor D e f e n s e

292

Utah Historical Quarterly

its purpose was to "forcibly release the strikers." Attorney for the strikers, Harry G. Metos, refuted this by reading an unsigned letter sent to Sheriff Bliss advising him of the march.

Testimony was given that the marchers were unarmed under direction of their leaders. The defendants testified they surrounded Crouch to protect him from a menacing situation.

On October 5 the trials of Guynn, Wetherbee, Crouch, Lawrence Mower, Tony Bonacci, Tom Corak, and Dan Laner began. While the hearing on the riot charge against Crouch was in progress, Dan Black of Salt Lake City, who had brought Crouch to court, was taken from the steps of the Price NMU defense attorney Harry G. Metos was harrassed and threatened during City Hall, driven to the desert trial. Courtesy Mrs. H. G. Metos. east of Green River, and beaten.

An eastern photographer who was filming the large number of deputy sheriffs on the streets had his film confiscated. Walter Gease, county attorney, said the assailants of Black were law officers outside the county; Sheriff Bliss dismissed the kidnapping as a hoax. Black said his abductors interrogated and beat him by turns trying to force him to reveal where a cache of guns and ammunition was hidden.110 Although forbidden, a mass meeting was scheduled for the following Sunday at the Helper park to protest the "civilian martial law" and the kidnapping of Black.121 The attempt of the defense attorneys, J. H. McKnight and Harry G. Metos, to bring out Black's kidnapping met with the court's unconcern. During the hearing, the defense attorneys and Irvin Goodman, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney from Oregon, brought ad120 Carbon County Miner, October 7, 1933; Sun Advocate, October 12, 1933; Helper Journal, October 13, 1933.

121 Carbon County Miner, October 7, 1933.

Carbon County Coal Strike

293

mission from Sheriff Davis that, despite denials of Governor Blood, Utah highway patrolmen and national guardsmen were in Carbon County. 122 (Approximately thirty were on duty in the county.)

A defense witness, Raymond Toson, reported that the jury foreman, R. L. Loveless, was a deputy sheriff during the strike. Judge George Christensen stated that "nothing could be done at that stage," and Metos's motion for a mistrial was denied. 123 Metos was harrassed and threatened throughout the months-long trial.

Guynn was judged guilty. Metos appealed the case to the Utah Supreme Court on the strength of admissions by Loveless while a jury was being impaneled to hear the case against Paul Crouch. As a prospective juror Loveless admitted under questioning that he had been a deputy under Sheriff Bliss and that he had expressed opinions on the N M U "lots of times"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;called them "a bunch of reds who ought to be run out of the country"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;but that he could "fairly and impartially pass upon the evidence in this case." T h e judgment of conviction was set aside and the case remanded to the district court for a new trial. 124 With N M U strength diffused, the U M W A was freely completing unionization of the mines and continuing code meetings with mine managers. N M U members were bitter and disgruntled; their children were hungry. Guards were everywhere. A small, low-flying airplane patrolled the mining camps and Helper and dropped tear gas bombs on congregations of people. A Deseret News editorial reported seventeen or eighteen agents from the Department of Justice in Washington, D. C , disguised as ranchers and farmers, had come into Carbon County.

T h e city editor of the News, Alfred P. Reck, had spent a week in the county making an investigation for the paper. " T h e facts . . . will be presented in a series of articles starting . . . tomorrow," he said. "They will astound you with the gravity of the situation, stir you by the drab pathos of miners' conditions and cause you to ponder over one of the most serious situations this state has faced." 125 The articles never appeared. T h e day following the editorial, a few lines, gave a tenuous explanation: trials were still to be held [this was known six weeks before the editor's visit to Carbon County] and the U M W A ' s working with the coal operators "it is hoped will promote industrial peace in that troubled county."

122

Ibid.

Pacific Reporter, State v. Guynn, no. 5597, Supreme Court of Utah, September 7, 1935. Toson is misspelled Tuscon.

121 Ibid. â&#x201E;˘ Deseret News, October 17, 1933.

123

294

Utah Historical Quarterly

The organizers' trials on rioting wore on through winter and into late spring and summer. They crushed the NMU. Criminal syndicalism charges were later dropped on condition the men leave the county; riot counts against the local NMU men were dismissed.126 Guynn's first trial on October 5 was significant. "The National Miners Union succumbed to a withering end . . . with barely enough hard core Communists to post the Red Flag at the Rat Race on Lenin's birthday, October 5."127 Several NMU members sued county officials for alleged mistreatment, for searching their houses without warrants, and for beatings.

Only one case was brought to court. After a disruptive trial that included jury-tampering accusations, a verdict was brought against the plaintiff.128 At the end of October the Wyoming Labor Journal hailed the victory of the United Mine Workers in Carbon County: "United Mine Workers Utah Producers Near Agreement."129 The coal operator's Mining Review was restrained; it had not printed a word concerning the 1933 year of coal strife in Carbon County, although indignant over Utah's refusal to ratify immediately the repeal of the Prohibition Amendment.130 From the day the UMWA and management signed their agreement, Carbon County ascended in union affairs. Headquarters were moved from Cheyenne to Price and the UMWA went on unionizing western mines. Pay scale was $6.80 for an eight-hour day.131 On November 10, 1933, the Wyoming Labor Journal reported a great moral victory: Rockefeller's company unions in Colorado were "killed," and the UMWA was voted into the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company mines.

Immigrant Slavs, Italians, and a few Greeks who had looked to the NMU in desperation began joining the UMWA. Wetherbee advised them to forget their animosities and to unite for the improvement of their lives. Work was denied the former NMUs for months. Owner Terry McGowan of Consumers was the first to take them back.132

126

Sun Advocate, October 5, 1933.

West MS, 143. â&#x201E;˘Sun Advocate, November 9, 30, 1933; Julian [Julia] Anselmi v. Rolla West, no.

4183, Civil Division, Docket no. 8, 91.

129 Wyoming Labor Journal, October 20, 1933.

130 Mining Review (Salt Lake City), 1933-34.

131 Wyoming Labor Journal, December 1, 1933.

132 Helper Journal, September 29, 1933; conversation with William S. Lines and Floyd A. O'Neil, January 12, 1973.

127

Carbon County Coal Strike

295

As mine managers attempted to regain their former control, the Helper Journal carried headlines accusing them of threatening workers with discharge if they were seen buying in Helper stores. The editor suggested that Helper businesses refuse to pay their taxes in retaliation and printed figures listing the unpaid taxes of Carbon County mines. 133 The cultural fatalism of the immigrants helped them to adjust, but many of their children, particularly the young American-born Slavs, remained unappeased. A few openly spoke of themselves as Communists. Other former N M U followers registered for the Works Progress Administration as Communists. 134 A tight band closed around the organizers and their wives as they tried futilely to bring defecting N M U members back into the union. Their last public demonstration was on communism's May Day. Spearing relief hams and bacon on rods and sticks, they paraded down Helper's Main Street shouting that the meat was "green and rotten," and "not fit for dogs to eat." 135 Mrs. Nemanich thrust a ham under Mayor E. F. Gianotti's nose and told him to "take a whiff." A fight erupted and she was put in jail. 136 CONCLUSIONS

Four years after the strike a young priest, Father Jerome Stoffel (now Monsignor), was assigned to the Price parish. He found resentment still deep in the children of immigrant strikers. T h e humiliating treatment of their parents and themselves combined with the depressed economy to keep their faith in liberal causes strong. Their Catholic tradition, however, stirred ambivalent feelings toward their Communist convictions. When World War II brought an abundance of jobs with good wages, zeal for communism was tempered; but the old enmity has not completely dissipated. In dissensions former N M U men remind their fellow U M W A s that they had once carried guns against them. 137 Frank Bonacci continued his work for the U M W A in Utah and surrounding states. In 1936 he was elected to the Utah State Senate; the predominately Democratic county returned him for five additional 133

Helper Journal, September 22, 1933.

Conversation with Mary Pappas Lines, who was secretary, Carbon County WPA office, in 1933.

13 '"' Sun Advocate, May 3, 1933; Metos, Lupo, and Toson-Tomsic interviews; and interview with J. Bracken Lee, January 16, 1973, by Joseph Stipanovich and author.

130 Helper Journal, May 4, 1934.

137 Interview with Monsignor Jerome Stoffel, Logan, September 1972; and Toson interview.

134

296

Utah Historical Quarterly

terms. His foremost accomplishment was leading the drive for funds to establish the College of Eastern Utah in Price.

On one of Bonacci's many visits to John L. Lewis's office in Washington, D. C , he met Charles Guynn. Lewis's practicality would not allow the waste of talent, and Guynn had become an organizer for the UMWA.138 From this incident a myth arose in Carbon County that John L. Lewis sent Guynn and the NMU into the coal fields there to force management to choose the UMWA over the Communist union.

Paul Crouch rejected communism within a few years. At twentyfive dollars a day he became a government witness against his former comrades, and a number of them were subsequently deported under the Smith Act. "Professional stoolie," "renegade," "favorite stool pigeon of the Justice Department," Communists called him.139 Crouch described his Utah sojourn as Communist organizer for the years 1933 and 1934 to the House Un-American Activities Committee.140 Included in his testimony was a Daily Worker photograph of himself wearing a Red Army uniform, taken during his indoctrination stay in Russia.

The attorney for one of Crouch's victims, Jacob Burck, a Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, exposed him as a colorful liar.141 The turning to communism in the Depression years was a final despairing act for a great number of professional people, intellectuals, and workers. No organization sought to help the millions of hungry, destitute unemployedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;except the Communists. Unions backed away from the suffering and gave only token resistance to wage cuts and opposed strikes as well. Railway union leaders introduced and enforced a "voluntary" ten percent wage cut. "The communists brought miseryout of hiding in the workers' neighborhoods." They fought eviction orders; organized the jobless; marched on city halls; and demanded more relief in cash and jobs, hot lunches for children, and the end of discrimination against Black Americans, the greatest sufferers of the Depression.

T h e y f o u g h t in t h e w a y m o s t o p e n t o t h e dispossessedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;by r a i s i n g hell to force concessions from t h e rulers. . . . I n d o i n g this, t h e c o m m u n i s t s

138 West MS, 144. Guynn had been convicted of criminal syndicalism charges (later reversed) in Ohio before coming to Utah and had been arrested on a similar warrant during N M U unionization attempts in Gallup, N. M., while out on bail on the Carbon County charges. Sun Advocate, November 23, December 7, 1933, February 22, 1934.

139 Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings, 7229, 7369.

140 Testimony of Paul Crouch before the Committee on Un-American Acivities, U. S., House, Hearings, 81st Cong., 1st sess., May 6, 1949, p. 182.

141 Willard Shelton, "Paul Crouch, Informer," New Republic, 131 (July 19, 1954), 7-9.

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didn't fail to emphasize that capitalism was proving a lousy system, a n d should be replaced. I t might surprise their grandchildren to know how m a n y Americans agreed during the Great Depression. 1 1 2

In the early 1930s the Slavs of the county were well aware of the rise of communism among their ethnic people in the East. Speakers and their foreign language newspapers brought liberal and radical propaganda to them.143 Still, Carbon County Slavs were only vaguely familiar with Louis Adamic, Slovenian-born, anti-Stalinist liberal, a leading American writer who was murdered for his views.

Italian immigrants were also subjected to totalitarian journalism.

Mussolini, though, was anathema to many of them. The constitutions of their lodges specifically charged members with loyalty to the United States.144 If the accusation that Italians and Yugoslavs were "receiving orders" from their homelands through their lodges were true, pandemonium would have been createdâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so diverse were the factions in their native countries. The Serbs and Croatians were traditional antagonists in Yugoslavia. The Serbs favored the present central government formed by combining the various partitions; the Croats wanted separation into federal states. Yet almost every Slav joined the NMU in Carbon County. As factions among Greeks and among Italians had put aside their old-country animosities during the Ku Klux Klan attacks of 1924 and presented a united defense, the Slavs joined the NMU and some became Communists in a common fight against the poverty and degradation of the Depression.

"It was the hard times that made Slavic people listen to the Communists in those days," says Mrs. Milka Smilanich, secretary of the Serb National Federation of Utah for fifteen years.115 County officials who set out to destroy the NMU, proceeded under a philosophy of Protestant American individualism no longer tenable in the United States. Many residents sympathized with the miners initially, but the disclosure of communism frightened them. The justifiable grievances of the strikers were forgotten. They were treated as nuisances who were disturbing the peace of the community.

1,2

Len De Caux, Labor Radical (Boston, 1970), 162-63, 170.

Spring Glen interviews.

Philip Frank Notarianni ( " T h e Italian Immigrant in U t a h : Nativism [1900-1925]," M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1972) reported to the author that Italian lodges in U t a h professed allegiance to the United States in their constitutions. "' Smilanich interview.

143

144

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Serbian funeral of George Zagorich. Courtesy Mike Dragos who is above and to left of coffin.

Utah Historical Quarterly

Carbon County Coal Strike

299 The strikers were never armed. Their blocking of the Gordon Creek road at news of the deputizing of UMWA miners that gave cause for the routing and jailing of them was a short-lived action. As soon as officials informed them of the illegality of blocking a county road, they cleared it.

The march down Price Main Street was what the NMU claimed it to beâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a protest against the imprisonment of NMU leaders. The contention that unarmed men and women could forcibly release their leaders in the face of a large contingent of armed deputies, assisted by the National Guard tear gas squad, is insupportable. The NMU strikers and their wives showed courage; they knew from experience what awaited them.

The National Miners Union, tenacious and bold, could well have been established in Carbon County in 1933 if it had foregone the unrelenting attacks on the Roosevelt administration. Scorn for the supreme efforts being made by the federal government turned away sympathizers and miners alike.

By the time of the 1933 strike the character of unions had already begun to change.

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The epic years of fighting against stolid opposition were fading. Labor's compassionate, stubborn Mother Jones said as she neared the age of one hundred: It is the pioneers who bear most of the suffering. . . . T h e early days of the labor movement produced great men. . . . They did not serve labor for pay. . . . Many of these pioneers died without even the gratitude of those whom they served. Their monuments are the good they did. 146

In the early 1930s labor was evolving painstakingly toward an era that promised power and respectability. The New Deal's legalization of unions hurried the day. Industrial unions became the equal of craft unions. Belatedly the nation recognized that not only industry but labor had a sovereignty. Yet laws did not automatically insure better working conditions and the disappearance of injustices. There were still militant struggles ahead. It was also a long way forward from the early strikes in the century. In 1903, one hundred twenty-five strikers walked through thirty miles of snow from Scofield to Castle Gate to ask the miners to go out on strike with them. The company guards kept them from warming themselves at night around the coke ovens; they were turned away from all boardinghouses, the Knights of Pythias Hall, and private houses because they were built on company land; and they were forbidden to go to the company store to buy overshoes for their numb feet. They could only walk up and down the county road.147 140

Autobiography of Mother Jones (New York, 1969), 239-40. '"Powell, "Labor at the Beginning of the 20th Century," 175, 90-92.

The Logan Tabernacle and Temple

BY LEONARD J. ARRINGTON AND MELVIN A. LARKIN

J. H E DOMINANT MOTIF OF PIONEER Mormonism was the yearning to build the Kingdom of God, to build a latter-day Zion. Everything was the church—the group—the society—what might be called "corporate Logan Temple prior to dedication. Courtesy Merrill Library, Utah State University.

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Mormonism." There was none of the existentialist philosophy which glorifies the individual person, his feelings, his hopes and fears, his strivings and achievements.

As one studies each community of Latter-day Saints, he gets the impression that the community was always in the process of building or creating some symbolic expression of its corporateness—its Zionic character—its communitarian single-mindedness. Sometimes these cooperatively produced creations were tangible, as in the case of buildings.

Others were organizations, attitudes, legends, and folklore. If we follow the history of each community, we find it going through several clearly defined stages.

The first stage in the life of a Mormon community was the cooperative laboring on three structures: a short diversion canal to provide water for homes, crops, and livestock; the community fort, which was an orchestration of log cabins or dugouts built as if each was part of one great, centrally planned residence; and a makeshift "meetinghouse" for community worship and recreation. At first the latter was a willow bowery which served in good weather. It was followed by a social hall, usually built of logs and with a dirt floor, which was the scene of community dances during the week and of preaching services on Sunday. Here were held the priesthood meetings, the relief societies, and young people's debate clubs.

The second stage in community life, occurring within two or three years after the community was founded, included the construction of longer diversion canals, adobe homes a little larger in size, and a tabernacle—an undertaking of such size and expense that only one was built for each nucleated group of settlements. The third stage saw the completion of high line canals, rock and frame homes, and a temple—a mammoth enterprise that required many years—a symbol of the unity of an entire region in the construction of a common project which was entirely spiritual in its purpose.

Logan—Cache Valley—went through all of these stages in a period of one generation, less than thirty years.1 Founded in 1859, Logan and Dr. Arrington, a Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, is church historian, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and director, Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University. Mr. Larkin teaches American history and government at Napa High School, Napa, California. An earlier version of this paper was presented by Dr. Arrington at the December 1972 meeting of Cornerstone in Salt Lake City.

1 The basic sources for this paper are: Leonard J. Arrington, "Life and Labor Among the Pioneers," in Joel E. Ricks, ed. The History of a Valley: Cache Valley, Utah-Idaho (Logan, 1956), 140-204; and Melvin A. Larkin, "The History of the L.D.S. Temple in

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other settlements in Cache Valley built short canals, forts, and social halls during the years 1859-62. The population continued to grow, particularly in Logan, and it became obvious that a larger structure for worship and instruction was necessary. Apostle Ezra T. Benson and associates held a meeting of the Saints on December 7, 1864 (five years after Logan was founded), to discuss a proposal to build a tabernacle. At this meeting, 175 persons subscribed a total of $26,450. All of these pledges were "in kind;" that is, in labor, team labor, timber, produce, and other supplies. Befitting his status as resident apostle in the valley, Elder Benson led the list of subscribers with a proffered donation of $1,200. Work on the tabernacle, located on the eight-acre central block of the town, began almost immediately. The diary of Ralph Smith shows him, on January 1, 1865, out with his brethren cutting timber and slide logs for the tabernacle. "A vast amount were got," he added.2 This work went on regularly during the cold month of January. For example, Henry Ballard recorded on January 9, 1865, that he was sliding logs for the tabernacle. He indicates in that entry that the structure was to be 60 feet by 106 feet and that it was to be built of rock.3 From other sources we learn that excavation for the basement and the construction of a cobblestone foundation were accomplished during the winter of 1864-65. And then the work was suspended until they put in crops. Why so little was done on the project during the ensuing seven winters is difficult to ascertain. Probably wards were building their own meetinghouses. Bishop William B. Preston was absent on missionary work, Apostle Benson died unexpectedly in 1869, and the presiding bishop of Cache Valley, Peter Maughan, died early in 1871.

In 1873 Brigham Young visited Logan, reviewed the construction project, and saw that much rock had been hauled for the tabernacle.

Noting the continuous increase in population, due primarily to immigration and the construction of new canals, he suggested that they tear out the old cobblestone foundation, enlarge it to 65 feet by 130

Logan, U t a h " (Master's thesis, Utah State University, 1954). Additional excellent accounts we have used are: Eugene E. Campbell, " T h e Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints," in Ricks, The History of a Valley, 2 8 2 - 8 8 ; and Nolan P. Olsen, " T h e Logan Temple," Logan Herald, July 24, 1951. After preparing this paper we learned that Joy Lynne Wetzel has prepared an interpretive essay on Mormon temple-building as part of her doctoral thesis in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

"Ralph Smith Journal, 1853-1896, holograph and typescript, Menll Library, Utah State University, Logan.

3 Henry Ballard Journal, 1852-1885, typescript, Merrill Library.

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An early view of the Logan Tabernacle.

Courtesy Merrill Library, Utah State University.

feet, and resume building immediately. During that year the Saints also completed, on a cooperative basis, the Utah Northern Railroad, which went from Ogden, through Cache Valley, to Franklin, Idaho.

When that was completed, in May 1874, several dozen individuals were put to work quarrying sandstone in Franklin and shipping it on the railroad to Logan, where it was carried to Tabernacle Square and dressed and used to lay up for walls. This process of rock and timber work continued throughout 1874, 1875, and 1876. On January 27, 1877, the basement story was dedicated, and later the main structure was completed. By August 1878 the upper story was opened, and quarterly conference was held there. Later the entrance and tower were built under the direction of George Cole, and the completed tabernacle, substantially as it appears now, was dedicated by President Wilford Woodruff in November 1891.

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In the meantime, Brigham Young announced in 1876 the organization of three temple districts to construct temples in Utah: one in northern Utah and southern Idaho, one in the Great Salt Lake region, and a third in central Utah. The first was to build a temple in Logan, the second to complete the temple in Salt Lake City, and a third to build a temple in Manti. Charles O. Card, who had been superintendent of construction on the Logan Tabernacle, was appointed to be superintendent of construction of the Logan Temple, and a number of those who had been more or less regularly employed on the tabernacle were then placed at work on the temple. The site for the temple was chosen in May 1877 when dedication and ground-breaking ceremonies were held. The materials were to be obtained from the valley and its adjoining canyons.

The temple was to be 171 feet long, 95 feet wide, 86 feet high to the square, with towers 165 feet and 170 feet, respectively. The structure enclosed forty-five rooms in its five stories. It was seven years in building and was completed in May 1884.

In anticipation of the announcement to build the temple, local authorities canvassed Logan in 1877 and at the end of one month received pledges of $37,000, of which $2,200 was in cash, $1,600 in merchandise, $8,200 in produce, and $25,000 in labor. This was, of course, while the tabernacle was still being built. Apparently this did not discourage them from building the temple which cost local residents about $70,000 a year for the seven years.

At the dedication of the temple site on May 18, Brigham Young had said: We require the brethren and sisters to go to with their might and erect this temple; and from the architect to the boy who carried the drinking water, to the men that work on the building, we wish them to understand that wages are out of the question. We are going to build a house for ourselves, and we shall expect the brethren and sisters, neighborhood after neighborhood, ward after ward, to turn out their proportion of men to come here and labor as they shall be notified by the proper authorities. 4

Committees were appointed for each stake, ward, and settlement to make sure that sufficient men were maintained at all times at each place of work. ' "Historical Items," ca. 1884, p. 48, in the manuscript collection, Logan Temple, Logan.

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For the purpose of constructing the temple, six temple industries were founded: 1. A sawmill was established in Temple Fork (Maughan's Fork) in Logan Canyon. Here they cut red pine (Douglas fir).

2. A wood camp was set up a few miles down the canyon. This provided firewood for the lime kilns and scaffolding for workmen, railroad ties for sale, and telegraph poles for their cooperative Deseret Telegraph Company.

3. A lime kiln was built in the mouth of the canyon. T h e firewood to provide fuel was floated downstream on the Logan River.

4. T h e main stone quarry was developed in Green Canyon, east of North Logan. Here they quarried the dark fucoid quartzite which is the main component of the exterior walls.

5. Another quarry in Hyde Park Canyon provided additional stone for the walls.

6. A third quarry northeast of Franklin supplied sandstone for the water tables, caps, and window ledges.

As with the other cooperative community enterprises which preceded itâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the canal system, the fort, the bowery, the Logan Social Hall, and the tabernacleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the temple on a grander scale was intermingled and entwined with the whole life of the community. Indeed, one can hardly distinguish the building of the tabernacle and the temple from the general building of the community. The network of temple industries not only supplied the temple itself but provided materials for the construction of homes, barns, and shops. Many of the temple employees received their pay in building materials produced by these industries which they used in erecting their own homes and business structures.

For example, the temple sawmill produced more than 2.5 million board feet of lumber of which more than 1.5 million board feet went to construction other than the temple. Large quantities of shingles and lath were also sold. Many railroad cars of lumber were sent to Salt Lake City to be used in the temple there and in the Assembly Hall.

In hauling this lumber from the sawmill to Logan a way was provided for Logan citizens to obtain lumber for themselves: hundreds of individuals carted lumber from the mill to temple block and took home as pay some of the lumber they hauled. The temple lime kiln produced 52,000 bushels of lime of which all but 18,000 bushels found its way into the local market. Some of its was shipped as far north as Blackfoot, Idaho.

Rock quarried for the temple was also used for other projects.

Five hundred tons from Green Canyon were used in building the first

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structure of Brigham Young College. Sandstone from Franklin was used in the Smithfield tabernacle. Other granite rock from Franklin was sold to James H. Brown and Sons who made gravestones and monuments for the valley. Many may be found today in the Logan cemetery.

Many of those who labored on the temple used this means of working out the accounts they owed to the Perpetual Emigrating Fund which had assisted them in coming from Europe. Others among the large force of volunteers helped raise funds for the temple by contracting for other construction projects and devoting part of the proceeds to the temple. For example, one group built the Cache County Courthouse, another built the Fifth Ward School House, another constructed the Logan Water Reservoir, still others built small structures: barns, Ground plan of the Logan Temple shows four circular staircases and central baptismal font. Courtesy Merrill Library, Utah State University.

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walls, culverts, coffins, etc. In essence the whole community was built as part of the process of building the templeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like the Chartres Cathedral that Henry Adams described so unforgettably. There were beef cattle drives to raise cash. Other ventures included a hundredacre farm in Mendon, railroad contracts of the Utah Northern Railroad extension in Idaho, contracts for the Great Northern Railroad in the Pacific Northwest, and contracts for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1883. The latter led to a "Cache Valley" settlement in Canada in the late 1880s, and the Cardston Mormon colony became a part of Cache Valley Stake.

The ledger book of the Logan Temple shows contributions of quilts, eggs, honey, books, shoes, garden sheds, vegetables, grains, meat, livestock, clothing, a threshing machine, a covered carriage, and even a Mason and Hamblin organ. Everything was accepted. Charles O. Card wrote to one person: "We shall be pleased to accept some fat sheep or anything else we can use, if it is the hide of a yellow dog, we can use that for many purposes."5 When they were near to completing the temple, and in debt, a drive was held in Salt Lake City wards in December 1883, the first held outside of Cache Valley. A Salt Lake correspondent of the Utah Journal reported: Last Sunday evening, at the ward meetings in this city, the subject of the Logan Temple was made the theme of discourse by the home missionaries. T h e people manifested a desire to help build the house of the Lord, and there is no doubt but what Salt Lake City will pour its mite into the "money box of the Lord" to bring about the mighty purposes of Jehovah! 6

There were contributions from England, Switzerland, and New Zealand, as well as from other places in the United States. All told, the contributions to Logan Temple construction were $607,000, consisting of the following categories: $30,000 30,000 71,000 93,000 380,000 3,000 5 6

in in in in in in

merchandise (5 percent) livestock (5 percent) produce (12 percent) cash (15 percent) labor (63 percent) wagons and teams

Card to W. F. Fisher, 1880, Logan Temple Letter Book, no. 4B, p. 202, Logan Temple.

Utah Journal (Logan), January 5, 1884.

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Of the above, 61 percent from temple district ($372,000) 36 percent from trustee-in-trust ($215,000) 3 percent from outside temple district ($21,000)

This was at a time when the labor of a person was valued at about $1.50 per man per day. About one hundred and fifty men and fifty teams were at work constantly on the temple and at the temple industries during the seven years of construction.

How well they built is suggested by the fact that when some new construction was authorized recently, sixty sticks of dynamite failed to blow out a small piece of masonry construction. It took two men with a jackhammer, working ten hours per day, a whole week to cut a doorway through one of the outside temple walls, sixteen feet thick.

T h e floor of the temple was carpeted by 3,600 yards of carpeting of which sixty percent was handmade by women in the Logan Temple district.

Construction of the temple served to develop skills of local workmen: upon the completion of the temple, the laborers began work on buildings of the Agricultural College of Utah and Brigham Young College in Logan. Among structures built at the Agriculture College (now Utah State University) soon after the completion of the temple were Old Main, the Forestry Building (originally a dormitory), and the Extension Building (now Information Services). These buildings utilized the same type of rock masonry as the temple. T h e Bear Lake Stake Tabernacle at Paris was similarly built after the completion of the temple with the same labor.

T r u m a n O. Angell was architect of the temple, and while he was directing its construction in Logan he used his skill to design other Cache Valley buildings: the Fifth Ward School in Logan, the Hyrum two-story rock school, the Cache County Courthouse, and the Logan City Fire Department. He also contributed his artistic talent by leading the Logan Amateur Brass Band.

In essence, the temple project was a means of redistributing income. Those of greater property and income supported craftsmen and laborers to work on the temple during the seven years of construction.

Since the materials were nearly all supplied locally, the money, labor, and materials were not lost to the community. Very little was expended outside the valley. In essence, those able to furnish resources did so,

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and the community economy thus was enriched.

In most frontier economies, surplus resources were used to build large homes for the wealthy. In Cache Valley, such large homes were products of the twentieth century when there were not projects as effective as the tabernacle and temple in utilizing surplus for the benefit of the entire community.

T h e p r o j e c t gave Cache Valleyans pride in their valley, a pride which expressed itself in many ways. In August 1883, for Truman O. Angell, pioneer architect and example, just before the brother-in-law of Brigham Young, designed the Logan Temple. Utah State Historical Society temple was dedicated, Lo- collections, gift of Mrs. Levi Edgar Young. gan invited the firemen of Salt Lake City and their wives and families to go to Logan to see the nearly completed temple. Approximately seven hundred persons went to Logan. As they arrived, they were greeted by the Logan Firemen's Brass Band, which ascended to the roof of the temple and played a concert which in the words of the Logan Journal "caused beautiful strains of music to float down over the city."7 Architecturally, there is more than a suggestion of military gothicism in the Logan Temple. Some visitors have compared it to a castle on the Loire. Phil Robinson, who visited it just about the time of completion in the 1880s, wrote: "The walls are of such prodigious thickness, and the windows so narrow and comparatively small, that the buildings [Robinson is speaking of the Salt Lake and Manti Temples as well] seem to be constructed for defence rather than for worship.

But once within, the architecture proves itself admirable. The windows gave abundant light and the loftiness of the room imparts an airiness

Ibid., August 25, 1883.

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that is as surprising as pleasing.'" Dale Morgan, writing in Utah: A Guide to the State, declares: "The temple at Logan . . . has from the darkness of its stone and its octagonal corner towers the gloomy aspect of a Norman castle." 9 On his tour of the West in 1938 Thomas Wolfe had written of the Salt Lake Temple: "The harsh ugly temple, the temple sacrosanct, by us unvisited, unvisitable, so ugly, grim, grotesque, and blah—so curiously warped, grotesque, somehow so cruelly formidable . . . enough, enough, of all this folly, this cruelty and this superstition." 10 By the time he had reached Cache Valley, however, Wolfe was overwhelmed by the physical evidence of what the Mormons could do.

In fact, he was almost ecstatic. He recorded a "sense of grandeur, sweetness and familiarity . . . cupped in the rim of bold hills, a magic valley plain, flat as a floor and green as heaven and more fertile and more ripe than the Promised land . . . the most lovely and enchanted valley of them all . . . a valley that makes all that has gone before fade to nothing—the very core and fruit of Canaan—a vast sweet plain of unimaginable riches—loaded with fruit, lusty with cherry orchards, green with its thick and lush fertility and dotted everywhere with the beauty of incredible trees . . . a land of peace and promises of plenty." 11 The overwhelming majority of Latter-day Saints will not accept Wolfe's image of the grim and ugly Salt Lake Temple, nor Dale Morgan's Norman castle. To Latter-day Saints, both temples are beautiful, whether in the evening when they are resplendently illuminated, or in the daytime, mirrored against the blue skies. Latter-day Saints see the grandeur and magnificence, the massiveness and durability of the architectural design, as stemming from the desire of the pioneers for a sanctuary, a refuge, a haven, a place where they could engage in undisturbed reverie, a doorway to heaven, a spiritual fortress where they could not be cuffed about and mauled, where they would not quake in constant fear of their homes being burned and their leaders imprisoned and assassinated. Robert Sloan understood this feeling,

s

Phil Robinson, Sinners and Saints: A Tour across the States, and Round Them, With Months among the Mormons (Boston, 1883), 139.

U.S., Work Projects Administration, Federal Writers Project, Utah: A Guide to the State, ed. Dale L. Morgan (New York, 1941), 184.

10 Thomas Wolfe, A Western Journal: A Daily Log of the Great Parks Trip, June 20-July 2, 1938 (Pittsburgh, 1951), 38.

11 Ibid., 40.

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referring to the Logan Temple as "an eternal sentinel to watch the peaceful habitations of men at its feet."12 The Logan Temple was dedicated after the Edmunds Act was passed (1882) and at a time when some of the provisions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act were being considered. These acts sought to eliminate the Mormon church as a temporal power in the West, and the key provision directed the attorney general to institute proceedings to take over all properties of the Mormon church. Presumably this "takeover" would include temples. To avoid the latter possibility, President Taylor's dedicatory prayer gave emphasis to study and to the need to become acquainted with good books, languages, governments, and laws. One portion of the prayer reads: May this house be preserved as a holy place wherein to worship Thee, and to administer Thine ordinances, to learn Thy laws, the laws of the universe, embracing this world and other worlds; for the instruction of Thy people in the higher branches of education in all intelligence, scientific, linguistic, natural and theological.13

Shortly after the dedication President Taylor wrote the northern Utah Saints, reminded them of the references in the prayer to education, mentioned the precedent in the Kirtland (Ohio) Temple where a temple school was established, and asked the people to organize themselves "to make it a house of learning as it also is a house of God."14 Under his direction wards and stakes held meetings and elected delegates to go to Logan where they formed the Logan Temple Association, a legal non-profit association. Officers were elected and articles of incorporation signed by seventy-four delegates; then President Taylor signed over the temple and grounds to this association, in whose hands it remained until 1912. Under President Taylor's direction the association founded the Logan Temple School of Science which included departments of theology, astronomy, mathematics, history, languages, laws, and natural science. (This was after Brigham Young College was established but before Utah State Agricultural College was founded). A library of about five hundred books was collected; these are still in the Logan Temple reading room. The following heads of departments were elected: "Robert W. Sloan, ed. and comp., Utah Gazetteer and Directory of Logan, Provo and Salt Lake Cities, for 1884 (Salt Lake City, 1884), 198.

13 "Historical Items," p. 109.

14 "Logan Temple Association Minute Book," p. If, Logan Temple.

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Logan Tabernacle and Temple Theology: James Z. Stewart Civil Government: Moses T h a t c h e r Languages: William H . Apperley History: James A. Leishman Domestic and Political Economy: Charles W. Nibley Natural Philosophy: John E. Carlisle

Classes were held from 1885 to 1900, with something like one hundred fifty students each season. The student was charged no tuition but had to carry a recommend from his bishop indicating his loyalty and worthiness. Lectures one hour in length were given at two thirty in the afternoon on the first Saturday of each month, after which a discussion ensued. Many of the lectures were later published in the Contributor, Deseret News, and as separate books by the Utah Journal Publishing Company.

The Mormons had always made a great deal of the security of the mountains. The mountains were a protection, a shield. Like the covenant people of ancient Israel whom they consciously imitated, they had fled from Babylon to inherit the chambers of the Rockies to build a kingdom in the tops of the mountains. Brigham Young wrote to Colonel Thomas L. Kane on May 9, 1852: Ourselves and our friends can find a place for many years to come amid these wild mountain regions, where surrounds the health inspiring atmosphere, and the clear cool mountain rivulet winds its way from lofty and rugged eminences, presenting a scenery bold, grand and beautiful, to some sequested vale, where downtrodden liberty shall feel exalting aspirations, and contentment find repose. 15 Logan Temple barn, built in 1877, housed construction equipment.

Courtesy Monsigneur Jerome Stoffel.

For the Mormons the mountains were sources of water and timber, of wild game, of granite for their temple, of protection and nourishment. Their settled valleys were isolated by lofty and majestic peaks. To quote Brigham Young again: 15

'"'^'^WmM

Young to Kane, May 9, 1852, holograph, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

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More specifically, Brigham Young said to the Saints in Wellsville: Learn how to apply your labor, build good houses, make fine farms, set out apple, pear and other fruit trees that will flourish here, also the mountain currant, and raspberry bushes, plant strawberry beds, and build up and adorn a beautiful city. 17

The temple was a kind of private mountain—a corporeal embodiment of their ideals—a formidable defender of the Saints' way of life, symbolically guarding the church from the threats of the larger society around them. It was also a symbol of their reaching out to God—of their closeness to God—a place to which the Savior would come to dwell with them. In many respects the temple came to be regarded almost in a mystical sense. In actuality, it was a more explicit formulation of the rugged and majestic mountains around them—a man-made sentinel, guarding their Promised Valley.

Today the Logan Temple can be seen from almost every part of the valley. It symbolically demonstrates the early settlers' belief that life is more than a struggle for physical survival. To the twenty-five thousand persons who built it and labored on it "without purse or scrip," it was a visual reminder of the omnipresence of eternity.

10 "Remarks of Brigham Young in Ogden, Utah, June 2, 1860," published in Deseret News, August 8, 1860.

17 "Remarks of Brigham Young in Wellsville, Utah, June 7, 1860, published in ibid., August 1, 1860.

Mormon

Arts,

Volume

I.

Edited by LORIN F. W H E E L W R I G H T a n d L A E L J. W O O D -

BURY. (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1972. vii + 88 p p . $13.95.)

Mormon Arts: Volume I deals with the important matter of the cultural impact of Mormonism. T h e book combines an introduction a n d six essays on the aesthetics of M o r m o n art

by Lorin F. Wheelwright, general editor, together with samplings of painting, sculpture, music, poetry, prose, drama, a n d photography selected from the past five M o r m o n Festivals of Art held at Brigham Young University.

Included are forty-five full color plates, eighty-two black and white illustrations, and a stereo recording of musical and dramatic selections. Interspersed throughout the book are statements by the artists whose work is represented.

By way of introduction, M r . Wheelwright raises the question "Is there a Mormon a r t ? " T h e answer, he feels, is that at present there is no unique or focused style expressive of M o r m o n ism because, the elements that could compose such a style are now diffused.

In keeping with the sanguine tone that permeates much of the book, M r .

Wheelwright feels optimistically that Mormon artists are about to bring the disparate elements together. M o r m o n culture, he feels, is on the "threshold of development" as a result of the growing awareness of the "spiritual power" of the M o r m o n religion to "inspire artistic endeavor."

T h e six essays that follow the introduction attempt to deal in a detailed and technical m a n n e r with the aesthetics of M o r m o n art. T h e quality of the essays, while coming from the

same writer, varies widely as does the subject matter touched upon. T h e essays range from an outline of the steps to be followed in seeking the aesthetic experience to appreciating the earth as natural art.

Mormon Arts: Volume I is essentially a call to actionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an appeal to M o r m o n artists to use the M o r m o n view of life as a base for serious artistic creation. While using M o r m o n artists as a focal point, the book also issues a clear challenge to all Mormons to give artistic expression to their beliefs.

Such a cultural call to arms bears a clear resemblance in tone to a similar effort made in 1837 by R a l p h Waldo Emerson who called for Americans to express America in art a n d to stop provincial copying of European taste.

It is ironic that in the years immediately after Emerson made his appeal in a speech at H a r v a r d University, Mormons on the frontier became a major force in native American cultural innovation. T a k e n together, pioneer artists like C. C. A. Christensen (whose work is represented in Mormon Arts), early M o r m o n achievements in domestic, public, a n d religious vernacular architecture, a n d perhaps most importantly the great social experiments practiced by Mormons in the West m a d e Mormonism, however unconsciously, a strong force in nineteenth century American cultural innovation.

This mid-nineteenth century cultural vitality was severely dampened late in the nineteenth century by the attempt

316 to accommodate Monnons to the main stream of middle class America. T h e continuing accommodation to middle class mores in the twentieth century has created an environment indifferent, if not hostile, to the arts.

Thus, it can be interpreted as a glad sign of developing maturity and confidence that Mormon Arts: Volume I has issued a call for Mormons in

Utah Historical Quarterly general to examine their way of life in terms of its aesthetic and cultural content and for Mormon artists to create a new cultural synthesis for the late twentieth century. One can only hope that it is now becoming possible for such a call to bear fruit.

G I B B S M.

SMITH

Kaysville

The Depletion Myth: A History of Railroad Use of Timber. By SHERRY H. O L S O N .

(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. xvii + 228 pp. $9.00.)

In 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt predicted that timber resources in the United States would be insufficient for future demand and proposed, therefore, that the United States begin to produce timber as a crop in order to increase its output. Roosevelt's advice was not taken; neither did we have a timber famine. How the United States was able to avoid a timber shortage and, by implication, how we might avoid shortages of other natural resources now in short supply is the subject of this timely monograph.

T h e book proceeds chronologically.

Railroad consumption of timber, sources of supply, and public anxiety over feared depletion of the forests are discussed first. Next, the attempts by the railroads to effect economies of scale by consolidation, by materials substitution, and by other methods are discussed, but little is really changed in the timber industry because the price of railroad ties did not rise significantly until the 1890s. Tree farms were established with only mixed success when prices for ties increased thereafter, but by 1910 the railroads were becoming increasingly disillusioned with the depletion theory advanced by the Forest Service. Instead, the railroads concentrated on better wood preservation, better road preparation, and substitutions for wood production.

During the 1920s railroad expansion tapered off, trucks began to compete with railroad shipping, and tie production increased dramatically, largely owing to new and faster-growing sprouts from previously cut stumps.

These developments essentially ended the fear of timber shortages. During the Great Depression there was a return to certain modified forms of the depletion theory, but after that depression was over "use" rather than shortages was emphasized.

T h e final chapter explodes the "myth" of timber depletion and suggests a moral to this story. T h e "myth" was caused by confusing physical supply with economic supply. T h a t is, we thought there would be a timber shortage because demand was greater than known supplies. But although the physical supply of trees was relatively stable, the economic supply was greatly increased by improved access to timber forests, mechanization of the cutting process, and reversion of large tracts of farm land to forests because of more efficient farming practices. These facts plus an increased substitutability of wood, particularly in bridge building, were the causes of our underestimation of forest productivity. T h e moral of this story is that we should not view our other natural resources as physically

317

Book Reviews and Notices limited so much as a finite product that can be better utilized.

In general this book is well researched, readable, and convincing. It is not a product of the new economic history, nor is it intended to be. Perhaps it would have been a better book if it were, but it would also probably have fewer readers. Some will perceive a mild bias in favor of corporations and a slight tendency to put down the Forest Service. Others will resist the

author's attempt to separate moral and aesthetic ecological issues from those discussed in this book. But on the whole Professor Olson has given us a valuable antidote to the widely held belief among the clerisy that business is generally more selfish and less enlightened than government.

J A M E S L.

CLAYTON

Professor of History University of Utah

The American Buffalo in Transition: A Historical and Economic Survey of the Bison in America. By J. ALBERT RORABACHER. (Saint Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1970 [1971].' xiii + 146 pp. $6.50.)

The

Time of the Buffalo. By T O M M C H U G H .

Inc., 1972. xxiv + 339 + xv pp. $10.00.)

These two books illustrate the points of similarity and divergence commonly found in the more recent treatment of the story of the buffalo. Long a familiar theme in western historical writing, Bison bison still attracts a publisher almost every year. Rorabacher's book is small, extensively and attractively illustrated, and written for rapid reading. His chief concern, as his title suggests, is the "decimation," and then rather belatedly, the "conservation" of the American bison. His subtitle, A Historical and Economic Survey of the Bison in America, is accurately descriptive. T h e book will serve admirably for school use and for the reader w-ho wants a short, fastmoving account of the destruction of the buffalo and the more recent movement to save it from extinction, together with oddments concerning its modern use for food and the future of "cattalo."

M c H u g h in The Time of the Buffalo presents a highly comprehensive and well-balanced account of the buffalo.

He is concerned with the "ancestors and relatives" of the animal, the extent of its range and the earliest reports

(New York:

Alfred A. Knopf,

of its existence. Major attention is given to the value of the bison to the Indians; their methods of hunting; its use for food, clothing, and shelter; and its value as a symbol in native American thought, folklore, and religion. T h e disaster which overtook the Plains Indians in both their economic and cultural life when the buffalo was so suddenly and completely destroyed is especially well portrayed.

Another major segment, and a valuable contribution to the lore of the buffalo, is the discussion of the biological nature of the animal. Extensive in-the-field research as a part of scientific academic research has enabled the author to contribute new information concerning the individual and group activity of the buffalo and to question a number of previously held theories of long standing. H e presents his conclusions quietly, but within the bison fraternity considerable discussion may arise. M c H u g h acknowledges the assistance of Victoria Hobson in the final presentation of a skillfully organized and readable book.

In his last chapters M c H u g h picks up the theme of extinction and return

318 which is the center of Rorabacher's book. Other than certain key men, laws, and refuges, the two accounts are widely divergent in the details which are used. They do not disagree, fortunately; they simply choose different incidents to illustrate the development. A reading of both books is useful at this and other points. Both writers have in mind the present emphasis upon conservation and write from a background of astonishment, as

Utah Historical Quarterly well as emphatic disapproval, that an animal so numerous, so hardy, and so important as was the buffalo could have been virtually exterminated within a decade. Both view with approval the vigorous movement by governments and private enterprise to conserve the buffalo for the use and enjoyment of future generations.

M E R R I L L G.

BURLINGAME

Professor of History Montana State University

Anthropology of the Numa: John Wesley Powell's Manuscripts on the Numic Peoples of Western North America, 1868-1880.

Edited by D O N D. FOWLER and CATHERINE S. FOWLER. Smithsonian Contributions to Anthropology, no.

14. (Washington, D . C : Smithsonian Institution Press, 1971. xiv 4- 307 pp. $3.25.)

John Wesley Powell's contributions to the study and exploration of the American West are many and varied.

Especially important was his field work with the aboriginal inhabitants. H e collected material when the aboriginal culture was still functioning, an opportunity not presented to the anthropological investigator of the twentieth century. Until the publication of this book, Powell's material was not readily accessible.

N u m a was the term Powell used for these people, a word which means "person" or "Indian." Today, they are normally referred to as the Numicspeaking peoples. They live in the Great Basin and surrounding areas, and belong to the far-flung U t o Aztecan language family. T h e r e are three divisions: Western Numic (Mono, Paviotso, Northern Paiute, Bannock), Central Numic (Panamint, Shoshoni, Gosiute, C o m a n c h e ) , and Southern Numic (Kawaiisu, Chemehuevi, Southern Paiute, U t e ) .

An introduction (pp. 1-34) provides a context for understanding Powell's anthropological work. It includes a short biography, along with information on his expeditions, field methods,

manuscripts, and informants. This is followed by a presentation of his material, arranged according to the three major divisions of the Numicspeaking peoples. T h e largest section is on the Southern Numic, reflecting his very intensive work with the Southern Paiute whose language he is reported to have spoken passably well. Three kinds of material are found: ethnographic, linguistic, and mythological.

T h e ethnographic material includes some of the first notes and observations on kinship terminology, ceremonialism, curing practices, subsistence, leadership patterns, and material culture. His linguistc material consists mostly of word lists written in an orthography that would not be considered adequate today but was surprisingly good for his day. It includes quite a number of terms that are difficult to collect today, such as the names for the months. His mythological material was unfortunately collected entirely in translation, edited and "cleaned u p " so as not to offend his nineteenth-century audience.

T h e book ends with several comparative word lists (including one of the related Hopi language), a twenty-

319

Book Reviews and Notices

anthropologist, ethnohistorian, linguist, and interested a m a t e u r will find useful for a n u m b e r of tasks.

page bibliography, a n d an index. Scattered throughout are a n u m b e r of useful maps a n d early photographs, including some of Hillers's.

T h e book is well organized a n d well put together. D o n a n d Catherine Fowler have done us a service by organizing this valuable material, which the

Soldier

in the West:

Mexico,

and

Letters Oregon,

LOTTINVILLE. ( N o r m a n :

W I C K R.

of Theodore 1845-53.

MILLER

Associate Professor Department of Anthropology Linguistics University of Utah

Talbot

Edited

by

during His Services ROBERT

V.

HINE

in

California,

and

SAVOIE

University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1972. xxvi + 210 p p .

$7.95.)

T h e year was 1845 a n d the frontier folk of the Ohio a n d Mississippi valleys fully sensed the expansive mood of the nation. Western travel narratives were in great demand, and the journals of Meriwether Lewis a n d William Clark, Zenas Leonard, T h o m a s Jefferson F a r n h a m , a n d J o h n Charles Fremont were "read a n d passed from h a n d to h a n d for information till worn out."

Some deliberated but others acted, a n d the n u m b e r of overland immigrants to Oregon a n d California reached into the thousands. T h a t spring as Fremont and his wife p u t the finishing touches to the narrative of his second expedition, the "indomitable young m a n of Benton's m a n u f a c t u r e " was already readying the m e n of the topographical corps for his third a n d , historically speaking, most significant overland crossing. Among those accompanying Fremont was T h e o d o r e Talbot, a rather shy young gentleman w h o looked to the United States Army for his profession a n d to the American West for his health. Nearly sixty of Talbot's letters, written from California, Mexico, a n d Oregon, are here published for the first time.

T h a t Talbot shared with his mother a n d sister the details of his frontier experiences is a stroke of good fortune for the historian. I n his lengthy and perceptive letters, spanning a period

of over seven years, T a l b o t depicts the preparations for the third expedition, the overland trek to California by way of Bent's Fort a n d the Great Salt Lake, the outbreak of hostilities within California, a n d his tours of duty in V e r a Cruz ("a dull town") a n d in Oregon Territory ("a genteel Botany Bay for Army Officers"), sandwiched around a delightful voyage to the Pacific. I n the course of his various assignments T a l b o t comments candidly about his acquaintances, a n u m b e r of w h o m were figures of importance in the history of the F a r Westâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;from F r e m o n t a n d Lieutenant J. W. Abert to Captain B. L. E. Bonneville ("a perfect old fogy"), a n d from Peter Skene Ogden to Christopher Carson a n d Joseph R. Walker ("the best m a n in the C o u n t r y " ) . T h r o u g h out, there is a refreshing objectivity to Talbot's observations, whether about persons or events.

T h e T a l b o t letters shed additional light on three questions of particular interest to the readers of this quarterly.

First, was California, from the beginning, the ultimate destination of the T h i r d Expedition? Talbot's letter of J u n e 4, 1845, written from Saint Louis nearly a m o n t h before departure, strongly suggests that it was. If Talbot, a civilian member of the expedition, knew they were going to "winter in California," then surely the enlisted

320 menâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;including the son of Fremont's commanding officer in Washingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; also knew. And, if young Abert knew, it would seem entirely unlikely that his father didn't. Second, exactly what route did Fremont follow between Bent's Fort and the Great Salt Lake?

Talbot's letter of July 24, 1846, supplies some helpful answers in tracing the journey across the various tributaries of the Grand and Green rivers.

Third, w-hat were the circumstances surrounding Lansford W. Hastings's decision to promote travel on the Hastings Cutoff in 1846? Again, Talbot's July 24 letter reinforces the importance of Fremont's March visit to the Sacramento Valley following the Hawk's Peak incident. This unscheduled encampment of the entire third expedition gave Hastings a chance to

Utah Historical Quarterly talk with the men of Talbot's party who had crossed the westernmost portion of the cutoff the previous fall.

From the moment of that visit Hastings set his sights on Fort Bridger and that year's migration.

T h e editors of the Talbot letters, Robert V. Fline of the University of California, Riverside, and Savoie Lottinville of the University of Oklahoma, are certainly no strangers to students of the American West. They merit our gratitude for their full but unobtrusive annotation. A minor flaw (p. 82) does not detract from a work that is important in scope and solid in scholarship.

T H O M A S F.

The Nicaragua Route. By DAVID I. FOLKMAN, J R . (Salt Lake City: of U t a h Press, 1972. xiv + 173 pp. $7.50.)

Between 1849 and 1868 the crossing of the Isthmus of Nicaragua was an attractive alternative to Panama for the California-bound traveler who sought the relatively speedy intercoastal journey which the isthmian routes offered. Although harrassed by international complications, filibustering expeditions, and local disorders so that it was almost entirely closed from 1856 until 1864, well over eighty thousand westbound travelers crossed Nicaragua and nearly as many used the route eastward.

David I. Folkman, Jr.'s book, The Nicaragua Route, is an outgrowth and something of a condensation of his master's thesis and doctoral dissertation at the University of Utah. In it he has succeeded in presenting the colorful and complex history of the route between 1849 and 1868 in excellent fashion.

T h e business connections and rivalries of Cornelius Vanderbilt,

ANDREWS

Associate Professor of History Pasadena College

University

Charles Morgan, Cornelius K. Garrison, and others; the filibustering activities of William Walker; the combinations and interrelations of business and filibustering; the rivalries of Great Britain and the United States in Nicaragua; and the ambitions and animosities of Nicaraguan and Costa Rican leaders all make for an unusually complicated set of events. Folkman has succeeded in handling these well and yet has not permitted them to obscure the basic story of the operation of the Nicaragua Route for the transportation of passengers, mail, express, and treasure. H e provides material on the construction and operation of steamers on the San J u a n River and Lake Nicaragua, the opening of a paved road for stage coaches between the lake and the Pacific, the establishment of repair and supply depots, and the provision of hotels for travelers. T h e operation and coordination of steamers between

321

Book Reviews and Notices New York a n d New Orleans a n d the mouth of the San J u a n River on the Caribbean as well as between San J u a n del Sur and San Francisco also receive his attention. H e presents fascinating accounts of the experiences of travelers on the route as well as data on costs and its attractiveness in comparison with Panama.

T h e book contains no bibliography, but the notes which are located annoyingly at the conclusion of the text show that Folkman has used a wide variety of sources from newspapers to printed and manuscript official records, correspondence, diaries, a n d standard secondary works. I n an appendix there is a listing of steamers sailing between New York, New Orleans, a n d San Francisco a n d Nicaragua with departure or arrival dates a n d numbers of passengers carried.

T h e volume is handsomely made and is well illustrated, although the splendid Squier m a p of Nicaragua which serves as endpapers is printed on so dark a background as to be

The

Zunis:

Self-Portrayals.

difficult to use. T h e r e are several unfortunate slips in the text such as the appearance of Point Arguello as "Point Arquilla" a n d the United States sloop-of-war Jamestown with a British commander.

James P. Baughman's Charles Morgan and the Development of Southern Transportation was published in 1968, a n d the author should have been able to cite it rather than Baughman's manuscript doctoral dissertation on the same subject which, by the way, is dated 1962 rather than 1862 as given in the notes.

These are minor flaws, however.

T h e book as a whole is a fine one a n d is a welcome addition to the literature of travel to a n d from California, the penetration of economic a n d polititcal influence from the United States into Hispanic America, a n d the history of American maritime enterprise.

JOHN

HASKELL

KEMBLE

Professor of History Pomona College Claremont, California

By the Z U N I PEOPLE.

Translated by ALVINA Q U A M .

(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1972. xvii + 245 p p . Cloth, $7.95; paper, $3.95.)

This book is a result of the efforts by the Pueblo of Zuni to record a n d translate into English a body of oral literature, consisting of the legends, myths, a n d history of the Zuni people with the aim of transmitting the traditions a n d experiences of the Zuni Indians to the younger generation of the tribe. Recording of the oral traditions began in 1965 with the cooperation of the Zuni storytellers, and, from 1968 until the publication of the present volume, Quincy Panteah a n d Alvina Q u a m recorded a n d translated the taped stories with the support of the Zuni tribe and the Duke Indian Oral History Project of the University of

Utah. Some of these translations had already been placed for use in the Zuni High School for educational purposes. T h e present volume consists of a selection of the translations made with the approval of the governor a n d the council of the Pueblo of Zuni a n d is accompanied by a foreword by Floyd A. O'Neil of the Duke Project a n d an introduction by Robert E. Lewis, governor of the Pueblo.

Publications of this nature are by no means rare. For the Hopi, one recalls Nequatewa's Truth of a Hopi, still an important work, and more recently The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters. An attempt to provide educa-

322 tional materials in the form of indigenous tales to the Indian children has also been done for the Navajo and the Hopi.

T h e book is divided into six sections with the headings of Society, History, Fables, Fables of Moral Instruction, Religion, and War and Defense. Apart from the fables, however, the tales collected in each section are not always homogeneous, and, in particular, those under Society contain myths, traditions, and accounts of individual experiences.

Some stories identify storytellers, while a majority do not. This is somewhat unfortunate because the book is illustrated with beautiful reproductions of the portrait photos of the storytellers.

These minor shortcomings aside, the book succeeds in creating a sense of immediacy between the reader and the storytellers who make their presence felt in the course of following the tales in the book. This is particularly the case with the tales of individual experiences which are told with almost Hemingwayesque economy and precision.

Unfortunately I am yet to listen to a Zuni storyteller, but the tradition and myths published here strongly reminded me of those evenings during the story-

Utah Historical Quarterly telling month in Hopiland.

After harvest, the Hopi old men invite the young children to a kiva, and in the cold of a night they surround a fire and the old man begins a story. As he tells, the children respond, "Oh-ui," and the story and response go on in an atmosphere of ritual communion.

Stories are sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious. It is the context in which the cultural values of the tribe are being transmitted. And so it is with this book.

If the manner of developing themes or the symbols employed in the tales are somewhat alien to those cultivated in the literature of larger American society, that should not discourage the wider reading public from appreciating the book. T h e peculiar style and apparent contradictions are the clues to Zuni culture, and for those willing to delve into them the riches of a unique and ancient American subculture will be opened.

S H U I C H I NAGATA

School of Comparative Social Science Universiti Sains Malaysia Minden, Pulau Pinang Malaysia

Reminiscences of Oscar Sonnenkalb, Idaho Surveyor and Pioneer.

Edited by PETER T. HARSTAD. (Pocatello: Idaho State University Press, 1972. vi + 68 pp. Free upon request from W. N. Harwood, Director, Idaho State University Press, Idaho State University, Pocatello, Idaho 83201.)

If any cultural item has been impressed upon Cisappalachian America, it is the Jeffersonian grids of townships, sections, and quarter sections of the federal land surveys. Farms are described, fenced, and hedgerowed by its metes and bounds; highways follow its meridians and ranges; towns are located at the crossings of its lines.

T h e fact that in most instances the federal surveys preceded or very shortly followed initial settlement meant that the stage upon which the pioneering

era of western history was acted had been set by the surveyors working with their professional implements and an arbitrary pattern developed in the library at Monticello. T h e story of the settlers has been recorded in at least outline form. T h e surveyors are less well known.

Reminiscences of Oscar Sonnenkalb, Idaho Surveyor and Pioneer, edited by Peter T. Harstad, professor of history at Idaho State University, is a valuable contribution to the history of the fed-

323

Book Reviews and Notices eral surveys in general and to Idaho history in particular. A veteran of the Prussian army, Sonnenkalb came to Idaho in 1881 to visit a friend, August Duddenhausen, registrar of the Federal Land Office at Oxford. Like countless others in Cache, Marsh, and Gentile valleys, he began ranching, homesteading, and preempting bottomlands for a headquarters and grazing his animals on the unclaimed mountain ranges. H e worked first as an agent making out papers for prospective settlers and then as deputy county surveyor of Oneida County. After the transfer of the land office from Oxford to Blackfoot in 1887, Sonnenkalb was appointed a deputy United States surveyor. Between then and 1904 he held twenty contracts for surveying in all parts of I d a h o : the mining districts, the timberlands in the panhandle, the agricultural regions in the south. A dispassionate observer, Sonnenkalb's many references to Mormon settlement in eastern Idaho are full of praise for and insight into the Mormon agricultural and social experience.

His Reminiscences written in 1925 provide a good view of the surveyor's

work; the multitudinous frauds associated with the Homestead, Desert Land, and the Timber and Stone acts; and a description of the country with enough passage of time between observation and recording to provide a valuable perspective. As a pioneer of the petty railroad junction which became Pocatello, Sonnenkalb's narrative is that of the urban pioneer, the boomtown entrepreneur whose works and speculations provided the crucial leaven of western settlement.

Professor Harstad's copious notes effectively illuminate the text and point the direction for dozens of studies in area history. His appendix on " T h e Oxford-Blackfoot Land Office Controversy" is an excellent essay on the causes of the decline of the one-time Gentile capital of Cache Valley.

T h e Idaho State University Press and editor Harstad are to be commended for this publication. May we hope to see more studies on eastern Idaho from these sources.

A.

Special

History of Nevada. By R U S S E L L R. ELLIOTT. Press, 1973. xii 4- 447 pp. $9.50.)

Dr. Elliott's History of Nevada is the first comprehensive history of the state to appear in the 108 years since the granting of statehood. W7hile publications on Nevada are increasingly common none has been presented in such depth and scope.

Dr. Elliott presents the best of qualifications. H e is a lifetime resident of the state and has been a student, teacher, and writer of Nevada history throughout his long career. H e takes advantage of the ever increasing quantity of research that has come from all fields of historiography for a well-ordered perspective view of the state from

(Lincoln:

J.

Collections Utah State

SIMMONDS

Librarian University

University of Nebraska

the prehistoric era to the current cultural revolution.

Emphasis is placed on the recurrent periods of boom and depression with the influences and contributions of each such cycle. T h e Comstock era so frequently overweighted in the total picture of the state's historyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;with undue play on the glamour of the lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is analyzed in detail in light of the engineering, economic, and social impact.

Significant attention is given to the corrupt and sordid political scene dominated by the mining and railroad interests. T h e depression period following the mining boom is a challenge to

324

Utah Historical Quarterly

the p e r m a n e n t resident to turn to the development of agricultural a n d water resources, a search for new mineral deposits, and a fight to maintain marketable values of silver.

T h e new century is ushered in with a return of prosperity occasioned by mineral discoveries at T o n o p a h a n d Goldfield a n d the opening of the great copper deposits of White Pine County.

T h e period was also highlighted by progressive influences on the political scene a n d the introduction of the highly important reclamation projects. Also featured in this period is the introduction of new and prominent personalities into the political field who were to dominate in state affairs through the first half of the century.

O n the social scene the company towns of the copper area, with their a t t e n d a n t foreign-born minority problems and related labor troubles, present an interesting study.

World W a r I was significant to N e v a d a in the greatly increased dem a n d s for metal a n d for the effect on the everyday life of the people.

T h e Great Depression struck Nevada

hard when the Wingfield banking chain was forced to close. T h e sagging economy was aided, however, by the construction of Boulder D a m and other government projects.

World W a r I I brought more development to the state with the construction of the giant Basic Magnesium complex, the establishment of air bases, a n d the subsequent development of the atomic research center at the Nevada Test Site.

T h e unprecedented N e v a d a boom, dominated by tourism, had a humble beginning with the legislation permitting gambling in 1931. T h e development of lavish entertainment by the large casinos, supplemented by the attractions Nevada holds for the outdoor sports enthusiasts, has resulted in unprecedented growth and activity.

Of special value to the student of Nevada history is the comprehensive bibliography with brief but sound evaluations of Nevada resource material.

A Guide to Eleven Tours of Utah Historic Sites. Compiled by S T E P H A N I E D. C H U R C H I L L . (Salt Lake City: U t a h Heritage Foundation, 1972. 43 pp. Paper, $1.00.)

For the traveler in U t a h , whether he be resident or tourist, this attractive booklet offers carefully planned minivacations to historic sites in all parts

of the state. I t is d r a w n from information on sites submitted for consideration of the Governor's Cultural a n d Historic Sites Review Committee and thus will take you to many sites privately owned a n d closed to the public.

But m u c h can be learned about the area's architectural heritage by looking from outside the fenceline, with this

E L B E R T B.

Member, Nevada

EDWARDS

Board of Trustees Historical Society Boulder City

Book Reviews and Notices guide furnishing brief historical sketches of hundreds of homes, churches, a n d public structures. Twenty-three of the sites are illustrated. T h e book gives information on mileage a n d the estimated time required for the circuit, and lists towns with overnight accomodations. I t is available in bookstores and from the publisher, a private, nonprofit organization interested in historic preservation, with offices at 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84102.

William Clayton's Journal: A Daily Record of the Journey of the Original Company of "Mormon" Pioneers from Nauvoo, Illinois, to the Valley of the Great Salt Lake.

Reprint.

(New York: Arno Press, 1973. vi + 378 p p . $18.00.)

This account of the first M o r m o n wagon train of 1846-47 by the company's official historian has long been recognized as a classic account of the trek. Meticulous by nature, William Clayton faithfully recorded miles traveled, described the topography, a n d observed the flora a n d fauna of the plains and mountains through which Brigham Young guided the pioneering exiles. Also plainly noted are the stresses and the routines of the trek, experiences which reveal the h u m a n ness of these traveling religionists.

I n recent years this journal, p u b lished by the Clayton Family Association in 1921, has become increasingly less available to interested purchasers.

Its republication as part of a fortyseven book series called the F a r Western Frontier will be welcomed even though this simple reprinting adds nothing in the way of needed annotation.

Arno Press, a New York Times company (330 Madison Avenue, N e w York 10017), invited western historian Ray Allen Billington to select the titles for this impressive series (the complete

325 package is available for $890). Of interest to U t a h n s are Our New West (1869; $24.00), by Samuel Bowles; Incidents of Travel . . . (1857; $18.00),

by Fremont's artist Solomon N . Carvalho; Westward

by Rail (1871; $19.00), which includes W. F. Rae's account of the Mormons at the completion of the transcontinental railroad; and other titles less directly related to U t a h history b u t which capture nineteenth-century views of fur traders, forty-niners, a n d frontier settlers who preserved their personal viewpoints of life on the far western frontiers of Texas, Oregon, a n d California.

The

National

Places,

1972.

Register By

the

of

ARCHEOLOGY AND H I S T O R I C

VATION.

(Washington,

Historic

OFFICE OF D.

PRESER-

C.:

De-

partment of the Interior, National Park Service, 1972. xiii + 603 pp. $7.80.)

T h e nation's most significant historic buildings, sites, a n d districts were identified under the Historic Sites Act of 1935 for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. U n d e r the Preservation Act of 1966 this register was greatly expanded to include historic properties of state a n d local significance. State liaison officers, cooperating with the National Park Service which administers the program, have thus far multiplied the National Register to more than thirty-five hundred entries.

This large book (8/2 by 11 inches) identifies each of the National Register sites in an alphabetical arrangement by state, county, a n d city. Brief entries relate the historical property's name, date, architect, a n d uses. Ownership (private, federal, state, or municipal) a n d accessibility are noted, along with information on the site's status as a National Historic Landmark, National Park Service site, or subject of study under the Historic American Building

326

Utah Historical Quarterly

Survey (HABS) or Historic American Engineering Record ( H A E R ) . Excellent photographs of representative places make this a handsome as well as useful reference work.

Carson Valley: Historical Sketches of Nevada's First Settlement.

By GRACE DANGBERG. (Minden, Nev.: Carson Valley Historical Society, 1972. p p $12.50.) Limited edition.

Castle Country: County.

A History

of Carbon

By RICHARD G. R O B I N S O N .

([Dragerton, U t a h : Author, P. O. Box 393, Dragerton 84520], 1973. iv + 140 pp. $3.50.)

Chronological Newspapers:

Tables of 1690-1920.

WARD C O N N E R Y L A T H E M .

American

By E D (Worces-

ter, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1972. 131 p p . $32.50.)

Early Mormon History: A Selected Bibliography, 1771-1847.

By DAVID J. WHITTAKER. (LOS Angeles, Author [843 No. Heliotrope Dr., Los Angeles 90029], 1973. 51 p p . Spiral, $1.50.) A mimeographed guide listing articles, appropriate sections of books, theses, and dissertations alphabetically by author under seven major headings ( T h e Writings of Mormon History; Mormon Beginnings; New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Nauvoo Periods; a n d Sources and Library Collections ) a n d topical subheadings.

From Adze to Vermilion: A Guide to the Hardware of History and the Literature of Historic Sites Archeology. By L. R. BAILEY. (Pasadena, Calif.: Socio-Technical Books, 1971. xviii + 237 p p . $12.00.) Lists alphabetically by author selected articles, reports, a n d books. Contains a subject index. Published in edition of 500 copies.

The Great Salt Lake.

By DALE L. MORGAN. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973. 432 p p . $3.95.) Reprint of 1947 edition published by Bobbs-Merrill Co. as part of the American Lake Series.

Lost America: From the Mississippi to the Pacific. Edited by CONSTANCE M. GREIFF. (Princeton, N. J . : Pyne Press, 1972. 256 p p . $17.95.) D e struction of historic buildings in the West, successor to an earlier volume, . . . From the Atlantic to the Mississippi. An excerpt, featuring a photograph of Saltair resort, appeared in Historic Preservation, 25 (OctoberDecember, 1972), 13-19.

Navajo Slave FRANK

Wars: Raids,

Military Campaigns, and Reprisals.

By

MCNITT.

(Albuquerque:

T h e University of New Mexico Press, 1972. xiii + 477 pp. $15.00.)

Phil Swing and Boulder Dam. By BEVERLY B O W E R

MOELLER.

(Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1971.

199 pp. $8.50.)

Register of the Joseph Smith Collection in the Church Archives, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

By J E F F E R Y

O. J O H N S O N .

Archives Register City: Historical Church of Jesus day Saints, 1973.

Church

No. 1. (Salt Lake Department, T h e Christ of Lattervi + 13 pp. $.50.)

The Saga of Frankie

and Johnny.

By

J O H N H E L D , J R . Foreword by CARL

J. WEINHARDT. (New York: Clarkson N . Potter, 1972. x 4- 50 p p . $4.95. ) Held's woodcuts, prepared about 1915, illustrate a saga known in many versions. T h e book was printed in a limited edition in 1930.

327

Articles and Notes The Seventh Annual Report of the National Endowment for the Humanities for Fiscal Year 1972.

(Washington, D . C : U . S. Government Printing Office, 1973. 132 p p . $1.75.) Available from the Superintendent of Documents at the G P O .

The States and Their Indian

By T H E O D O R E

W. TAYLOR.

Citizens.

(Wash-

ington, D. C . : Department of the Interor, Bureau of Indian Affairs, 1972. xxii + 307 pp. Paper, $2.25.)

Willard: ervation.

A Plan for Its Historic By

GERALD

TEDDY G R I F F I T H .

BROWN

(Logan:

Presand

Institute

for the Study of Outdoor Recreation and Tourism, U t a h State University, 1973. x + 80 p p . Spiral, $5.00.)

AGRICULTURE AND RANCHING Douglass, William A. "Lonely Lives under the Big Sky," Natural History, 82 (March 1973), 28-39. Basque sheepherders in the West from 1849 to present.

Roundy, Charles G. " T h e Origins and Early Development of Dude Ranching in Wyoming," Annals of Wyoming, 45 (Spring 1973), 5 - 2 5 .

"A Week with Utah's Chief Brand Inspector," The Utah Cattleman, 16 (April 1973), 10â&#x20AC;&#x201D;11. Logs routine travels and activities of a brand inspector.

Wood, Rhoda M . " T h e Dairying Colony in Cedar Canyon," The Pioneer, 20 (June-July 1973), 12-13. S U P award-winning pioneer story.

ARCHAEOLOGY Kerr, Walter. "A 1,100-Room Riddle," New Mexico, 51 ( M a y - J u n e 1973), 14-19.

Use of archeomagnetism to date an abandoned Pueblo Indian site near Santa Fe. Martineau, LaVan. " T h e Rocks Begin to Speak," Arizona Highways, 49 ( M a y 1973), 44-45. Brief report on deciphering Indian rock writing from book of same title.

Reilly, P. T . " T h e Refuge Cave," The Masterkey for Indian Lore and History, 47 (April-June 1973), 46-54. Hopis may have used cave in northern Arizona for ritualistic purposes.

Stokes, William Lee. "Cliff-wall Seepage Figures: Rock Art Prototypes?" Plateau, 45 (Spring 1973), 143-48. Barrier Canyon style of rock art m a y have been inspired by small patches of vegetation supported by water seeping from sandstone cliffs.

328

Utah Historical Quarterly A R T AND A R C H I T E C T U R E

"Charlie Russell: Cornerstone of Western Art," Persimmon Hill, 3, no. 2 (1973), 5-73. Six articles on the famous artist and his art plus a poem by him, a list of rare books he illustrated, and a sketch of his friend Jake Hoover.

Dippie, Brian W. "Charlie Russell's Lost West," American Heritage, 24 (April 1973), 4â&#x20AC;&#x201D;21, 89. Includes photographs of artist Russell as well as reproductions of paintings, drawings, and sculpture.

Goss, Peter L. "Utah's Architectural History." Utah Architect, no. 52, Spring 1973, pp. 14-17.

Hinton, Wayne K. "Mahonri Young and the C h u r c h : A View of Mormonism and Art," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 7 (Winter 1972), 35-43.

"National Academy of Western Art," Persimmon Hill, 3, no. 3 (1973), 4 - 4 1 , 5 0 - 8 1 .

Exhibiting artists, featured with photos and biographical sketches, include Utahns Clark Bronson and Edward J. Fraughton.

Rigby, Elizabeth. "Arnold Friberg: Distinguished American Traditionist," Arizona Highways, 64 (August 1973), 8-15, 44-45.

BUSINESS AND URBAN AFFAIRS Albrecht, Stan L. "Rural Development: Its Dimensions and Focus," Utah Science, 33 (December 1972), 115â&#x20AC;&#x201D;20. Attitudes toward community in urban western Salt Lake County and rural Wayne, Piute, and Beaver counties compared.

Brown, Jo. " T h e West's Enduring Entrepreneurs: Indian Traders of North America," Arizona Highways, 49 (May 1973), 36-43. Traders on the Navajo Reservation, including Francis Powell, former U t a h n , who manages the post at White Cone.

Dimas, Kay. " T h e Changing Face of Downtown Salt L a k e ! " Salt Lake Business, 8 (June 1973), 8 - 1 1 . Lists fifty-three building projects recently completed, under construction, or proposed in the city center.

Engerman, Stanley L. "Some Economic Issues Relating to Railroad Subsidies a n d the Evaluation of Land Grants," Journal of Economic History, 32 (June, 1972).

H a c h m a n , Frank C. " U t a h and the United States: A Discussion of Some Interesting Social and Economic Characteristics," Utah Economic and Business Review, 33 (January 1973), 1-6, 9-10. Based on information from the 1970 census.

Scamehorn, H. Lee. "John C. Osgood and the Western Steel Industry," Arizona and the West, 15 (Summer 1973), 133-48.

Stelter, Gilbert. " T h e City and Westward Expansion: A Western Case Study," The Western Historical Quarterly, 4 (April 1973), 187-202. Expansionist activities of Cheyenne, Wyoming, in the 1870s.

CONSERVATION Durrenberger, Robert. " T h e Colorado Plateau," Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 62 (June 1972), 211-36. Analyzes the environmental problems of scenic and energy development in light of the fragmented nature of landholdings.

Gibbons, Euell. "Stalking the West's Wild Foods," National Geographic, 144 (August 1973), 186-99.

Articles and Notes

329

McCarthy, G. Michael. " T h e Pharisee Spirit: Gifford Pinchot in Colorado," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 97 (July 1973), 362-78.

Anticonservationists and conservationists in conflict at the turn of the century.

McComb, John. "Southwest: Stemming the Flood at Lake Powell," Sierra Club Bulletin, 58 (April 1973), 21, 3 0 - 3 1 .

Murphy, Lawrence R. " T h e Great Arabian and American Deserts," The American West, 10 (May 1973), 3 6 - 4 1 . Compares geography, climate, and history of the two regions.

Runte, Alfred. " 'Worthless' L a n d s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; O u r National Parks," The American West, 10 (May 1973), 4 - 1 1 . Argues that parks were set aside because the land was considered economically useless.

E X P L O R A T I O N AND FUR TRADE C a m p , Charles L. "Jedediah Smith's First Far-Western Expedition," The Western Historical Quarterly, 4 (April 1973), 151-70.

Crampton, C. Gregory. "Standing U p Country," Arizona Highways, 49 (July 1973), 12-23, 26-37, 47. Excerpted from chapter 2 of Crampton's book, Standing Up Country.

Crampton, C. Gregory. "Grand Canyon Country," Arizona Highways, 49 (July 1973), 2 - 1 1 . Excerpt from chapter 1 of Crampton's recent book, Land of Living Rock.

Socwell, Clarence P. "Peter Skene O g d e n : Trapping, Exploration, and Adventure on the Canadian and American Frontiers," The American West, 10 (May 1973), 42-47, 61.

Smith, Matthew D. "Jedediah Smith's Elder Brother, Ralph," The Pacific Historian, 17 (Spring 1973), 53-60.

GOVERNMENT Cannon, Helen. "First Ladies of Colorado: Nellis Martin O r m a n , " The Colorado Magazine, 50 (Winter 1973), 5 7 - 6 5 . T h e wife of Colorado Governor James Bradley O r m a n was born in Salt Lake City in 1858, a daughter of Weber County farmer William Porter Martin.

Cheney, Lynne. "It All Began in Wyoming," American Heritage, 24 (April 1973), 62-66, 67. Enactment of women suffrage law in 1869 and the seating of women on juries.

Hillam, Ray C , ed. "J. Reuben Clark, Jr.: Diplomat and Statesman," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Spring 1973), 231-456. T h e complete issue is devoted to Clark's political ideas which are analyzed in eight essays, a panel discussion, and a brief review. A brief biographical sketch and an extract from the Clark memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine are included.

HISTORIANS AND H I S T O R I O G R A P H Y Clark, Thomas D. " T h e Heritage of the Frontier," West Virginia History, (October 1972).

Howard, Richard P. "Some Hazards in Writing Contemporary History," Saints Herald, 120 (April 1973), 37. "Since Yesterday" column.

330

Utah Historical Quarterly

Mosley, Eva. "Women in Archives: Documenting the History of Women in America," The American Archivist, 36 (April 1973), 215-22. Other articles in this theme issue discuss the role of women in archival and academic professions.

Sellars, Richard West. " T h e Interrelationship of Literature, History, and Geography in Western Writing," The Western Historical Quarterly, 4 (April 1973), 171-85.

Zangrando, Joanna Schneider. "W7omen in Archives: An Historian's View on the Liberation of Clio," The American Archivist, 36 (April, 1973), 203-14.

Women's history and historians.

H I S T O R I C SITES Berge, Dale L. "Archaeology at the Peter Whitmer Farm, Seneca County, NewYork," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 172-201.

Excavations at the site of the organizing of the LDS church in 1830.

Boak, Cada C. "Dedication of Lehman Caves National M o n u m e n t : Ascent and Perilous Descent of Mount Wheeler, August 1922," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 16 (Summer 1973), 100-1 111 Bray, Robert T. "From Beneath the Sod: Twentieth Century Resurrections at Nauvoo," Saints Herald, 120 (May 1973), 25. Excavation of the Red Brick Store.

Britsch, Lanier, and Jo Ann Britsch. "Beyond Temple Square: A Walking T o u r of Old Salt Lake," The New Era, 3 (May 1973), 6 - 1 1 .

"City and County Building: Weather Deteriorates Sandstone Face," Utah Geological and Mineralogical Survey Quarterly Review, 7 (May 1973), 1.

"Jackson Memorial Honors Explorer Powell," The Ohio Historical Society Echoes, 12 (June 1973), 3. John Wesley Powell memorial in Jackson, Ohio.

Schwieder, Dorothy. "Historic Sites in Council Bluffs," Annals of Iowa, 41 (Winter 1972), 148-52.

HISTORICAL

ACTIVITIES

"Archives Receive Historical Artifacts," Outlook: Utah State University, 4 (March 1973), 5. U S U receives painting of Logan done in late 1800s.

Billington, Ray Allen. "Tempest in Clio's Teapot: T h e American Historical Association Rebellion of 1915," The American Historical Review, 78 (April 1973), 348-69. Attempt to oust J. Franklin Jameson, editor of the Review, and Frederick Jackson Turner, of the A H A executive council, from their posts.

Glenn, Jerry L. " T h e Collection of Historical Documents a Citizens Responsibility," The Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society Quarterly, 1 (Fall 1971), 38-40.

"A New Life for Western History?" The Westerners Brand Book [Chicago], 29 (October 1972), 1-2. Reports talk presented by Lawrence W. Towner of the Newberry Library in Chicago, including mention of the library's Center for the Study of the American Indian.

Russell, Don. " O n the Reading and Reviewing of Books," The Westerners Brand Book, 29 (February 1973), 8 9 - 9 1 , 9 5 - 9 6 . ' Weaver, Glenn. " T h e Academic Historian and the Historical Society: A Modest Proposal," History News, 28 (April 1973), 77-80.

Articles and Notes

331 INDIANS

Haines, Francis, Sr. "Red Men of the Plains, 1500-1870," The American West, 10 (July 1973), 32-37. Challenges distorted image of buffalo-hunting nomadic Indians.

Jett, Stephen C. "Testimony of the Sacredncss of Rainbow Natural Bridge to Puebloans, Navajos, and Paiutes," Plateau, 45 (Spring 1973), 133-42.

Moore, Conrad T. "Communications: A Major Reason for Indian Grass Fires in the American West, 1535-1890," Proceedings of the Association of American Geographers, 5 (1973), 181-85.

Rogin, Michael. " T h e White Man's Aim Was to Destroy the Indian," Trolley ' Times, 3 (April 1973), 4 - 5 .

Russell, Don. "How Many Indians Were Killed? White M a n versus Red M a n : T h e Facts and the Legend," The American West, 10 (July 1973), 42-47, 61-63.

Walker, Helen. "Nevada's Mysterious Nomads," Desert Magazine, 36 (July 1973).

36-39. Discovery of important archaeological site in 1912 near Lovelock, Nevada, by two miners.

LITERATURE Espey, John. "Journey in Mythland," Westways, 65 (July 1973), 27, 75. T h e writings of A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Goble, Danney. " 'The Days T h a t Were No M o r e ' : A Look at Zane Grey's West," The Journal of Arizona History. 14 (Spring 1973), 62-75.

Lansaw, Paul. " T h e Big Skywriter," Westways, 65 (July 1973), 24-26, 75. A. B. Guthrie, Jr. Powell, Lawrence Clark. "Southwest Classics Reread: From Cattle Kingdom Come," Westways, 65 (April 1973), 30-35, 85. Novelist Eugene Manlove Rhodes, author of Paso por Aqui.

M I L I T A R Y AND L E G A L Jordan, Philip D. "Frontier Law and Order," North Dakota History, 39 (Winter 1972), 6-12.

Lindsey, David. " T h e Reign of the Vigilantes," American History Illustrated, 8 (June 1973), 22-35. Mentions Sam Brannan's activities with the vigilantes in San Francisco.

Utley, Robert M. "A Chained Dog: T h e Indian-Fighting Army," The American West, 10 (July 1973), 18-24, 61. Military strategy on the western frontier. . "General Crook and the Paiutes," American History Illustrated, 8 (July 1973), 38-42. Excerpted from the author's book, Frontier Regulars (1973).

M I N I N G AND LABOR Bailey, Clement F. "Gold in the American West," Coins, 19 (July 1972), 38-43.

Includes Mormon money.

"Big Pumps and Long Tunnels," The Rambler [Wasatch Mountain Club], March 1973, pp. 7-9. T h e Cornish p u m p at the Ontario Silver Mining Co. near Park City.

332

Utah Historical Quarterly

Peterson, Richard H. "Conflict and Consensus: Labor Relations in Western Mining," Journal of the West, 12 (January 1973), 1-17.

Sumner, David. "Wilderness and the Mining Law," The Living Wilderness, 37 (Spring 1973), 8-18. Wilderness Act of 1964 sanctions prospecting in primitive areas.

Thompson, George. "Gold in the Snake Range!" Deseret Magazine, 36 (January 1973), 30-31, 34. Shows Salt Lake City's financial interest in Nevada mining.

Wells, Merle W. "The Western Federation of Miners," Journal of the West, 12 (January 1973), 18-35.

NATURAL HISTORY Alford, John J. "The American Bison: An Ice Age Survivor," Proceedings of the Association of American Geographers, 5 (1973), 1-6.

Boynton, K. L. "The Great Horned Owl," Desert Magazine, 36 (May 1973), 18-20, 22-23. Study of the bird's adaptation to the desert land of Utah's Great Basin. . "King Cat," Desert Magazine, 36 (April 1973), 14-16. Food habits of mountain lions in Utah and Nevada.

De Young, Henry G. "The Bison is Beleagured Again," Natural History, 82 (May 1973), 48—55. Yellowstone Park bison affected by bacterial disease.

"Paid Hunting Nothing New to Texas Hunters," The Utah Cattleman, 16 (April 1973), 9. Looks at the economics and game management problems of European-style hunting.

RELIGION Bitton, Davis. "N. L. Nelson and the Mormon Point of View," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 157-71. Periodical published in 1904 by a BYU English professor.

Hartley, William. "The Priesthood Reform Movement, 1908-1922," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 137-56. Introduction of a systematic program in Mormon priesthood quorums.

Jenson, Janet. "Variations between Copies of the First Edition of the Book of Mormon," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 214-22.

Errors and corrections—mostly typographical—in copies of the 1830 edition.

Russell, William D. "James J. Strang: Sincere Religious Leader or Power-Hungry Charlatan," Part 4, Saints Herald, 120 (April 1973), 24-27.

PHOTOGRAPHY "North American Indians by Edward S. Curtis: A Portfolio of Photographs," Westways, 65 (February 1973), 40-48. A brief look at the career of Curtis who spent thirty years photographing Indians.

Padfield, Jan. "Frontier 'Picture-Takers' Contributed Much to Mormon Art," The Pioneer, 20 (March-April 1973), 9. Reports research of Nelson Wadsworth into the history of Utah-Mormon photographers.

Wittick, Tom. "An 1883 Expedition to the Grand Canyon: Pioneer Photographer Ben Wittick Views the Marvels of the Colorado," The American West, 10 (March 1973), 38-47.

Articles and Notes

333 SOCIETY

Christian, T h a d . "An Old Fashioned Christmas," The Trolley Times, 2 (December 1972), 1, 6. Salt Lake City 1847-51.

Hogan, Julia. "Those Were the Days," The Trolley Times, 2 (December 1972), 2, 9. Salt Lake streetcars, based on an interview with Walt L. Horrocks.

Kalisch, Philip A. "Rocky M o u n t a i n Spotted Fever: T h e Sickness and the T r i u m p h , " Montana, the Magazine of Western History, 23 (Spring 1973), 4 4 - 5 5 .

Frightening outbreak of spotted fever at the turn of the century in Bitterroot Valley triggers a long struggle to find a vaccine.

King, A r t h u r Henry. " T h e Idea of a M o r m o n University," Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 115-25 Address delivered at BYU J u n e 22, 1972.

Tullis, L a M o n d . "Politics and Society: Anglo-American Mormons in a Revolutionary L a n d , " Brigham Young University Studies, 13 (Winter 1973), 126—34.

Social problems, including communism, as they affect Mormons in Latin America. " W o m e n in the West," Journal of the West, 12 (April 1973), 193-334. Theme issue containing eleven studies of women in western history.

WESTWARD M O V E M E N T AND

SETTLEMENT

Andrews, T h o m a s F. "Lansford W. Hastings and the Promotion of the Salt Lake Desert Cutoff: A Reappraisal," The Western Historical Quarterly, 4 (April 1973), 133-50.

Bridges, Roger D., ed. "Lincolniana: T h r e e Letters from a Lincoln Law Student," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, 66 (Spring 1973), 79-87. Letters of Gibson W. Harris mention the M o r m o n evacuation of Nauvoo.

Christiansen, Alfred. "Scandinavians and the New Zion in the West," American Scandinavian Review, 60 (September 1972).

Henderson, Lucy Ann. "Young Adventure," ed. Ronald T h o m a s Strong, Nevada Historical Society Quarterly, 16 ( S u m m e r 1973), 67-99. T h e Hendersons traveled from Missouri to Oregon in 1846.

Meservy, O. K. "Historical Sketch of Wilford, I d a h o , " Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society Quarterly, 1 (Spring 1972), 76-78. Founding of town

by Mormons.

Miller, David E. " T h e Parting of the Ways on the Oregon T r a i l — t h e East Terminal of the Sublette Cutoff," Annals of Wyoming, 45 (Spring 1973), 47-52.

Rice, Loretta R. Child. " T h o m a s Sasson Smith and Fort L e m h i , " Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society Quarterly, 1 (Spring 1972), 8 0 - 8 5 . M o r m o n mission to Indians in Idaho.

Taylor, David G. "Boom T o w n Leavenworth: T h e Failure of the D r e a m , " The Kansas Historical Quarterly, 38 (Winter 1972), 389-415. Leavenworth in the 1850s as a supply center for the westward movement a n d the military.

Mentions U t a h and Mormons.

"Teton Valley Communities: Darby, Cache, Leigh-Clawson, H a d e n , Bates and Pratt," Upper Snake River Valley Historical Society Quarterly, 2 (Fall 1972), 44—46. Small M o r m o n towns.

S. George Ellsworth, professor of history at Utah State University, was given the title of Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society at Annual Meeting award ceremonies September 8. Dr. Ellsworth joins a distinguished group of thirteen Fellows who have received the award for outstanding historical research and writing. The Logan professor is editor of The Western Historical Quarterly and the author of a number of articles, book reviews, and Utah's Heritage, a textbook published in 1972.

Other members of the historical community who were honored by the Society include: Jack Goodman who was named an Honorary Life Member; Hermoine Jex, J. Grant Iverson Service Award; Lora Crouch, Service Award; LaMar Taft Merrill, Jr., Teacher Award; Glen M. Leonard, Dale L. Morgan Award; William A. Wilson, Morris S. Rosenblatt Award; and Ronald Walker, Golden Spike Award.

The Utah State Historical Society has announced a second year of competition for the Golden Spike Award (railroading in Utah in the nineteenth century) and the J. F. Winchester Award (the role of automotive transport, i.e., trucking, in Utah from statehood to the present). Each award carries a monetary prize of $300. Manuscripts should be unpublished, typewritten on 81/2-by-11 -inch plain white paper and double spaced. Footnotes should be in a separate section at the end. Railroading manuscripts should be five to seven thousand words in length, trucking manuscripts seven to ten thousand words. Deadline for submission is July 1, 1974. Winners will be announced at the Society's 1974 Annual Meeting. Send entries to Utah State Historical Society Awards, 603 East South Temple, Salt Lake City, Utah 84102.

Two rare books were recently acquired by the library of the Utah State Historical Society: Laws of Corinne City, Utah, and Wolfe's Mercantile Guide, Gazeteer, and Business Directory. The 32-page Laws of Corinne, published in 1883, contains the city charter and amendments as well as a chronological listing of the city governments from 1870 to 1883. The revised and consolidated ordinances of the well known railroad town comprise 19 pages of the volume.

Wolfe's 1878-79 directory served as a guide to businesses located in towns along the line of railroads in Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, and Dakota. In addition, Wolfe compiled general descriptions of towns, mining interests, agriculture, schools and churches, governments, and societies. Of the 362 pages, 88 are concerned with Utah.

Articles

and Notes

335

Records of the Manti-LaSal and Uinta national forests are now available for use on microfilm at the Society library. Included in the records are photographs of conservation, road building, and other activities in the national forest.

About a hundred photographs from Uinta were selected by the library for duplication and have been placed in the photo archives. Dixie National Forest records—one document case to date—have been xeroxed by the library and are ready for use. Important records of the Strawberry Water Users have also been microfilmed. The Strawberry Valley Project was Utah's first federal reclamation project. The collection includes about a hundred large photographs. The Willard City Council Minutebook has been microfilmed, and the later Willard City records—from 1920 to the present—have been xeroxed.

Two major collections of papers have been deposited with the Special Collections Department of the Merrill Library, Utah State University. The library has received the papers of Edgar B. Brossard, member of the United States Tariff Commission from 1925 to 1959. The collection contains approximately one hundred document boxes of manuscript material, several hundred photographs, and various papers and memorabilia from Dr. Brossard's civic, educational, and ecclesiastical careers.

From the family of the late Governor George D. Clyde, the library has received the original manuscripts of the governor's speeches and addresses from 1956 to 1964. The collection of holographs and annotated typescripts comprises some thirty-six looseleaf binders.

A variety of family papers, journals, correspondence, and published materials have been acquired by Western Americana, Marriott Library, University of Utah. The papers of George Zoumadakis and Henry Y. Kasai were added to the ethnic archives as were the ledgers of B'Nai Israel Temple (1859-89) and the business records of John Skerl of the Mutual Mercantile Company, Helper (1924-45). Other acquisitions include the missionary diary of John Hardie, 1867-68; "The History of Joseph C. Kingsbury Written by His Own H a n d ; " correspondence between historian Dale L. Morgan and his cousin T. Gerald Bleak; diaries, correspondence, and miscellaneous items of the Stevenson, Richards, Wilcox, and Noall families; correspondence, clippings, and other material of the Charles C. Rich and Edward Hunter families; an 1852 map of California and Oregon and Utah territories; Laws of Corinne City, Utah, 1870 to 1883; Ordinances of Ogden City, Utah, 1869-1881; letterpress book of Heyward and Flint, Ogden lawyers, 1897-1912; and minutes and other historical materials of the Women's State Legislature Council of Utah, 1926-65.

Four new collections are among the recent additions to holdings of the Church Archives, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The collection of Andrew Kimball, son of Heber C. Kimball and father of Spencer W. Kimball, includes thirty-three volumes of journals, 1884-1923,

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of the Arizona church and civic leader. St. George settler Charles L. Walker's collection consists of twelve journal volumes, 1854-99, which tells of the building of the St. George and Manti temples, the Utah War, Indian problems, and associations with church leaders. The Walker papers also include a copy of Vepricula, vol. 1, no. 1 to vol. 2, no. 5 (May 1864-July 1865), a southern Utah manuscript newspaper of which he was co-editor. The David D. Rust collection consists primarily of correspondence with such notable visitors to Utah as Theodore Roosevelt, Zane Grey, Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, Otis R. (Dock) Marston, and scientists from Harvard's Peabody Museum. Rust was mayor of Kanab and also a guide to the area's rivers and canyons. The papers of Helaman Pratt and his son Rey L. Pratt include diaries, journals, notebooks, and correspondence. Both Pratts served in various church capacities in Mexico.

The American Association of State and Local History has announced a major publishing venture in connection with the 1976 national bicentennial.

The project will consist of fifty-one booksâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a volume for each state and the District of Columbiaâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;offering insight into the local application of democratic principles. Each book will discuss such topics as how a state's addition to the Union aggravated or resolved national conflicts, how each state has stood on national issues, what each state has contributed to the understanding of democracy, and similar ideas. The series is tentatively entitled A Nation of Experiments: Bicentennial Histories of the States. Individual state volumes will be entitled America in Alabama, America in Alaska, etc. The books are not intended as chronologies of internal state history, according to the announcement. The aim is to analyze what it has meant, for relations with the rest of the nation, to be a Georgian or Rhode Islander or Utahn. The working premise of the series is that the states, far from being mere political subdivisions, were dynamic extensions of the xAmerican Revolution whose bicentennial observance belongs in that sense to all of them. The project is initially funded by a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Division of Department of Development Services BOARD O F STATE HISTORY M I L T O N C. A B R A M S , Smithfield,

1977

President D E L L O G. D A Y T O N , O g d e n , 1975

Vice President M E L V I N T . S M I T H , Salt Lake City Secretary MRS.

J U A N I T A B R O O K S , St. George, 1977

M R S . A. C. J E N S E N , Sandy, 1975 T H E R O N L U K E , Provo, 1975

CLYDE L. M I L L E R , Secretary of State

Ex officio M R S . H E L E N Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1977 H O W A R D C. P R I C E , Jr., Price, 1975 MRS.

E L I Z A B E T H S K A N C H Y , Midvale, 1977

R I C H A R D O. ULIBARRI, Roy, 1977

M R S . NAOMI WOOLLEY, Salt Lake City, 1975

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH,

Director

G L E N M . LEONARD, Publications JAY M . HAYMOND, Librarian IRIS SCOTT, Business Manager

Coordinator

T h e U t a h State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish U t a h and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; a n d maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past.

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the U t a h State Historical Society is open to all individuals and institutions interested in U t a h history.

Membership applications and change of address notices should be sent to the membership secretary.

Annual dues a r e : Institutions, $7.00; individuals, $5.00; students, $3.00. Life memberships, $100.00.

Tax-deductible donations for special projects of the Society may be made on the following membership basis: sustaining, $250.00; patron,' $500.00; benefactor, $1,000.00. Your interest a n d support are most welcome.