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UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY EDITORIAL STAFF MEI.VIN T. SMITH,
Editor
STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y , Associate J A N E T G. B U T L E R , Assistant
Editor Editor
Editor
ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER, Provo,
1980
M R S . I N E Z S. C O O P E R , Cedar City, 1978 S. GEORGE E L L S W O R T H , Logan, G L E N M . L E O N A R D , Bountiful,
1978 1979
DAVID E. M I L L E R , Salt Lake City, 1979 L A M A R PETERSEN, Salt Lake City, 1980 R I C H A R D W. SADLER, Ogden,
1979
HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt Lake City, 1978 G E N E A. S E S S I O N S , Bountiful,
1980
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 the U t a h State Historical Society, 307 West Second South, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84101. Phone (801) 533-5755 (membership), 533-6024 (publications). Members of the Society receive the Quarterly, Beehive History, and 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-space 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 is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, and Abstracts of Popular Culture. Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, U t a h . ISSN 0042-143X
HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
F A L L 1978 / V O L U M E 46 / N U M B E R 4
IN T H I S ISSUE
•.
335
PESTIFEROUS IRONCLADS: T H E GRASSHOPPER PROBLEM IN PIONEER U T A H
DAVIS BITTON and LINDA P. WILCOX
336
JOHN S. H. SMITH
356
SANPETE COUNTY BETWEEN T H E WARS: AN OVERVIEW OF A RURAL ECONOMY
IN TRANSITION
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF UTAH CLIMATE THE FINEST OF FABRICS: M O R M O N WOMEN AND T H E SILK INDUSTRY IN EARLY UTAH . . DIAMONDS IN T H E D U S T : CARLSON'S ALFALFA SEED RESEARCH
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MURPHY
369
C H R I S RIGBY ARRINGTON
376
DON
R.
J O H N W. VIRGINIA
C.
PARKER
397
BOOK REVIEWS
415
BOOK NOTICES
422
IN M E M O R I A M DAVID E. MILLER, 1909-78 T. EDGAR LYON, 1903-78 INDEX
SMITH
425
DAVIS BITTON
425
MELVIN
T.
427
T H E C O V E R The Green River area, settled in 1878 by Thomas Farrer and Matthew Hartman, is noteworthy for the produce grown there, as well as for the coal deposits which have become increasingly important. This homesite in the town was photographed by George Edward Anderson, famous for his scenes of Utah life. The five-by-seven glass negative is in the Utah State Historical Society collections, a gift of Mrs. L. H. Vincent.
© Copyright 1978 Utah State Historical Society
R A Y R . C A N N I N G a n d BEVERLY
B E E T O N , eds. The Genteel Gentile: Letters of Elizabeth Cumming, 1857-1858
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PAUL BAILEY. Holy Smoke: on the
Utah
War
A. R U S S E L L
MORTENSEN
415
W I L L I A M P. M A C K I N N O N
416
A
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.
Dissertation
T H O M A S G. A L E X A N D E R . A Clash of
Interests: Interior Department and Mountain West, 1863-96 .
F . A L A N C O O M B S 418
Books reviewed L A W R E N C E H . L A R S E N . The Urban West at the End of the Frontier R A F E G I B B S . Beckoning
Story of the Dawning H. LEIGH GITTINS.
Gold
Road
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D E A N L. M A Y
419
RONALD H. LIMBAUGH
421
the Bold:
of Idaho
Idaho's
In this issue When the Mormons brought permanent white settlement to the Great Basin in 1847, little was known of the region's farming potential. Intensive agriculture had not been undertaken there before, no weather data had been aggregated, and John Wesley Powell's Report on the Lands of the Arid Region was still more than twenty years in the future. Clearly, it would be a time for trial and error, for innovation and accommodation, for unexpected disappointments and heroic triumphs as the new settlers did battle with the elements in their quest for a quality life. It is a remarkable story, one that has come to loom large in Utah's literature, legend, and lore. Yet, strangely, many of the details have not been probed by historians and the dynamics are not fully understood. In response to the challenge of that lingering hiatus comes this issue. The first article examines the grasshopper problem in pioneer Utah. It confirms traditional notions in several particulars, differs from them in others, and represents as comprehensive a treatment as is likely to be done. From there the focus shifts sharply to the twentieth century and a radically different problem in Utah agriculture, one in which the invisible and often inexplicable factors of a complex national economy have replaced winged pests as the farmers' bane. Weather, always central to farming successes and failures, is scrutinized in the third selection; findings of that hundred-year survey are not only interesting by themselves but will also find value as a research reference for historians in the future. The final two selections return to the question of human persistence, audacity, and vision as ingredients in the ongoing drama of man versus environment. To the perceptive reader they will suggest a number of intriguing generalizations, each serving to enlarge slightly his range of experience and depth of understanding.
Pestiferous Ironclads: The Grasshopper Problem in Pioneer Utah BY DAVIS B I T T O N A N D L I N D A P . W I L C O X
and famous moments in Mormon history occurred in 1848 when the first crop in U t a h was threatened by a plague
\ J N E OF T H E MOST DRAMATIC
Davis Bitton is professor of history at the University of Utah. Linda P. Wilcox is a part-time historical researcher.
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of crickets. Fearing the loss of food needed for survival, the settlers fought the ravenous insects by every possible means. Then, when it appeared that all was lost, in answer to a prayer a white cloud of seagulls flew in and devoured the crickets. This miracle was told in the diaries and reminiscences of several of the pioneers who observed it. It became a faithpromoting tale that was often retold. The Seagull Monument on Temple Square is said to be the only monument in honor of a bird, and appropriately the seagull became recognized as the state bird of Utah. 1 Not so well known are the other attacks by crickets and far more frequent attacks by grasshoppers. Over and over again these insect invasions threatened the crops of the Mormons. This article proposes to detail what can be found out about the frequency of the grasshopper attacks, to make some tentative judgments about their economic impact, and to describe the reactions of the Mormon people to these unwelcome visitations. Significant to economic and agricultural history because of the subsistence nature of farming in the arid West, the grasshopper problem in pioneer Utah is also of interest as an example of how a religious community attempted to explain natural disasters and to cope with them. Frequent contact with grasshoppers, in sometimes overwhelming numbers, was a common experience in pioneer Utah. Often the first approach of the grasshoppers was signaled when swarms of them appeared in the air overhead—an awesome sight. Settlers described them as looking like a "heavy snowstorm" or snowflakes and so numerous as to cover the sky and darken the sun. The Deseret News reported one massive appearance in which "the grasshoppers filled the sky for three miles deep, or as far as they could be seen without the aid of Telescopes, and somewhat resembling a snow storm."2 These locusts were known to fly overhead several hours a day for a period of two or three weeks.3 When they landed they could be even more troublesome. Minerva Edmerica Richards Knowlton remembered a noonday buzzing and apparently the sun going behind a cloud. Also, something bumped against windows and doors. She went outdoors and found millions of Rocky Mt. Locusts all over the house, garden, yard etc. 1 O n the miracle of the gulls see B. H . Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 3 : 3 3 1 - 3 3 ; and James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), p. 251. Challenging some parts of the traditional story, particularly that everyone regarded the seagulls as providential, was William Hartley, "Mormons, Crickets, and Gulls: A New Look at an Old Story," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (1970) : 224^39. For some comments on the later memorializing of the event see Davis Bitton, " T h e Ritualization of Mormon History," Utah Historical Quarterly 43 ( 1 9 7 5 ) : 6 7 - 8 5 . 2 Deseret News, June 25, 1855. 3 Deseret News, August 2 1 , 1867.
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The family washing had been put out early that morning, and the "tobacco juice" (children call it) stained the clothing so badly that the home-made soap and boiling the clothes on the kitchen stove, each washing, never fully removed the stains.4
Worse, the grasshoppers did not depart as quickly as they came but often stayed on for weeks, even through disagreeable weather. Benjamin LeBaron, describing the visitation of 1868, reported that when it rained "they would gather on the tree trunks, fence poles and posts, and every other object that might afford shelter for them, until they literally covered all such things."5 Other observers echoed this feeling of the grasshoppers being ubiquitous. Alfred Cordon, the bishop of Willard, described his return from the funeral of Heber C. Kimball in Salt Lake in June 1868: "The air was full of Grasshoppers and the fields & Gardens were covered. We travelled through one continued stream of Locust untill we reached within four miles of home." 6 A month later Cordon recounted the cheerful festivities surrounding the July 24 celebration, adding, almost in an offhand way, "There was nothing to mar our peace only the thought that the Locusts were destroying our crops. The Locusts were very numerous. They eat our clothing as we sat in the Bowery."7 The picture of Willard citizens having their clothing nibbled at by grasshoppers seems hard to believe, but other reports about the voracious nature of these insects suggest that it may not have been a unique event. John Fell Squires described how the grasshoppers devoured everything green, "right down to window blinds and green paint." He went on to comment that "if a male or female appeared out doors dressed in green they would be driven to cover or uncover in less than no time. You must remember this, if they could eat all the bark from a shade tree which they did, it would not take them long to eat up a fellow's pantaloons when the color suited them." 8 The depredations of the grasshopper understandably engendered dread and discouragement. A Tooele resident, after describing in 1870 how they had wiped out all his vegetables and wheat and were now on his trees, muttered, "I presume it is right; but it is very unpleasant for a man to have his all taken by the miserable hoppers." Yet, the Mormon 4
George F. Knowlton to Davis Bitton, February 17, 1977. Benjamin LeBaron, " T h e Grasshopper War," typescript, Hurricane, U t a h , April 9, 1939, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City (hereafter referred to as L D S Archives). 6 Alfred Gordon Journal, June 26, 1868, vol. 8, p. 16. 7 Ibid., July 24, 1868, vol. 8, pp. 2 5 - 2 6 . 8 John Fell Squires Autobiography, L D S Archives. s
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settlers did not entirely lose a sense of humor in discussing their enemy. Comparing them to anti-Mormon legislation, Andrew Galloway wrote, "I dread them more than I do the Cullom Bill." And in 1877 the Deseret News described one of the occasions when grasshoppers interfered with railroad traffic: , T h e destroying angels are abroad! They are coming this way. They are armed and legged and winged—as orthodox angels should be—and fully equipped for war. Their maneuvers are not exactly according to the manual, but they act in concert and their march is irresistible. On the sand ridge between this city and Ogden they are out on parade. But the engine of the U.S. passenger train this morning dashed through their ranks with defiant snorts, and countless numbers were done to death. 9
Unfortunately the locomotive, limited to its track, could not pursue the enemy over roads and fields. When a special national commission was established to collate information and plan counteraction, the Mormon newspaper remarked that it was much like civil service reform: Some of the "peculiarities, habits and manners" of the festive grasshoppers are very striking, easily discernible and exceedingly bad manners, feeding upon the property of industrious people, without invitation, leaving little or nothing for the party to whom the provender belongs. They have a habit of commencing their meals at sunrise, and continuing to devour the whole day through. The office-holding class upon whom the principles of civil service reform are directed have instincts and proclivities in common with the grasshopper. Their appetites for the spoils of office are as voracious and insatiable. The average "anti-Mormon ringite" belongs to the same genus, the only difference being that those peculiarities are in him more intensified.10
The News went on to comment that the only cure for the grasshoppers was to kill them off; the same was true of officeholders who "cannot be cured by any system short of official decapitation." Later the same year the Deseret News published for the enjoyment of its Utah readers an essay from Josh Billings entitled, "The Grasshopper iz a Burden:" The grasshopper iz a flippant bug. He iz likewise a kuss. He iz green for color, and has several leggs, or more, i disremember whitch. They kan fli, hop, walk, sit still, or run, and are born ov eggs, a dozen from each egg, proberbly. They are an inch and a quarter in length, and are sumtimes a frackshun over. They are laid, hatchid out, git their manhood, and die 8
Deseret News, June 1, 1870; June 11, 1877. Deseret News, June 20, 1877.
10
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off in 75 days, this iz aktual bizzness, and shows enterprize, in a lofty degree. W h a t they are good for, haz been concealed from us, for wize reasons, but the evil they kan commit iz sumtimes equal to a famine. I hav seen every green thing on the flatz of the earth, for 50 miles in diameter, et u p bi them, and millyuns ov them besides starving to deth. I have seen the air filled with t h e m like a shower ov sand, and nothing but stone fences, and M c A d a m roads proof against their appetights. T o be et u p bi grasshoppers, to be consumed bi muskeeters, or mangled bi a mule, have allways been the three deths that i have voted against. But az much az i fear the dedly hopper, i had rather face a mile sqaure ov them, all alone, in the m o n t h of August, or i had rather cross the Neward marshes bi moonlite, in Juli, when muskeeters are in their consumate glory, or even fondle the sportive muel, than to have a nusepaper kritick, w h o writes for 8 dollars a week, git after me. 1 1
Humor could provide some relief, even from insect depredations. Grasshoppers, rather than the more famous crickets, caused most of the insect damage in pioneer Utah. Crickets were hardly noticeable in Utah after 1850, making only minor appearances (as far as is known) in 1855, 1860, and 1864-66.12 The real villain was the Rocky Mountain locust, a common type of grasshopper responsible for widespread damage in the western and southern states as well as in Utah. In its infant form the Rocky Mountain locust can only hop, but after four or five moltings, when it is capable of sustained flight, it can appear in swarms and darken the sky in a frightening way. Such locust flights occurred in the 1860s and 1870s in the Plains states as well as in Utah. Grasshoppers were essentially a spring and summer phenomenon. Rarely were they seen before April, but by May they were hatching out, and throughout the summer months they would feed on the unharvested crops. They might eat the second or even third sowings of some crops as well as the first. Visitations late in August or in September were usually too late to do much actual damage to crops but were mainly occasions for depositing eggs. Grasshoppers were likely to eat anything. Wheat was a favorite grain, but they enthusiastically tackled corn, oats, barley, lucerne, and clover— even grass. They ate almost all garden crops—potatoes, onions, peppers, rhubarb, beets, cabbages, radishes, turnips, tomatoes. One informant indicated that they seemed to prefer the strong or pungent vegetables.
1,1
Deseret News, January 9, 1878. T h e "Mormon cricket" looks like a cricket and is called a cricket but is technically a large, black, long-horned, wingless grasshopper. Real crickets have wings. See Frank T. Cowan. Life History, Habits, and Control of the Mormon Cricket, U.S. Department of Agriculture Technical Bulletin No. 161 (Washington, D . C , 1929), p. 3. 12
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They stripped orchards and vineyards, eating even the bark of the trees. "Even shawls or sheets thrown over plants or trees to protect them would be quickly destroyed." William Jennings observed, "They would be found among the skirts, under a muslin dress, eating and destroying everything."13 Grasshoppers "will eat clothing in preference to sorghum."14 Patterns of grasshopper appearances puzzled entomologists as well as laymen in the nineteenth century. Why did grasshoppers come in some years and not in others? A U.S. Department of Agriculture study in 1877 explained it in terms of breeding grounds—mapping out permanent or native areas where they were present all the time, semipermanent or native areas where they could perpetuate themselves for years at a time, and temporary regions (including Utah) where they would visit but usually disappear within the year.15 Another approach attributes the invasions to the hatching out of larger numbers of grasshoppers than the local food supply could accommodate. This imbalance was corrected by migrations (either hopping or flying) in search of new food sources.16 Grasshopper invasions may have been influenced by weather factors, especially drouth. The drouth of 1855 in Utah apparently forced the grasshoppers down into the valleys that year.17 In 1854 in Nephi and in 1859 in Cache County water was very scarce and grasshoppers were abundant.18 Conversely, in 1877 the wet weather was credited with destroying a large number of young grasshoppers and preventing some of the eggs from hatching.19 Nationally, too, drouth and grasshoppers made a joint appearance in Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado in 1895, suggesting a possible connection. Since grasshopper invasions were reported more fully as areas became settled, it cannot be known whether grasshoppers really increased in numbers or were just finally being noticed. However, there did seem to be a pattern of increased destruction in newly settled areas. Comment-
" Quoted by J. Cecil Alter, " I n the Beginning," p. 157, typescript, U t a h State Historical Society. 14 W. C. A. Smoot, First Annual Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the Year 1877 Relating to the Rocky Mountain Locust and the Best Methods of Preventing Its Injuries and of Guarding against Its Invasions (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1878), pp. 1 0 4 - 5 ; appendix, p . 258. " R a l p h H . Brown, Historical Geography of the United States (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1948), pp. 385-86. lfi Dorothy Childs Hogner, Grasshoppers and Crickets (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1960), p. 32. 17 Alter, " I n the Beginning," pp. 486-87. 18 Journal History of the Church, August 12, 1854, L D S Archives; Salt Lake Herald, May 28, 1879; Journal History, May 24, 1879. 18 First Annual Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, appendix, p. 258.
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ing in 1868 on a Department of Agriculture report about grasshopper devastation throughout the country, the Deseret News said: It is noticeable that the Report mentions that in many places their ravages were confined to new ground, that had undergone but little cultivation. Whether in the Rocky Mountains, these drawbacks to prosperity will disappear as population increases and the cultivation of the soil become more general throughout, is a problem that the future must solve.20
And, in fact, this seems to have been what happened. Although grasshopper invasions continued both nationally and in Utah far into the twentieth century, they dwindled in frequency and extent of damage as more and more of the country came under settlement. Utah Territory received its share or more of visits from the grasshoppers in the first thirty to thirty-five years of settlement. The report of the Entomological Commission of 1877 claimed that they had appeared in Utah every year since 1851 except for 1873 and 1874, explaining that "this Territory is liable to suffer more or less, especially in the northern portion."21 Our table of incidence of grasshopper appearances in Utah gives an idea of the places that were affected.22 The worst year, by any measurement, was 1855, when grasshoppers invaded the territory from the far north through Iron County, wiping out the third sowing of some crops in Salt Lake County, destroying all or nine-tenths of the grain in some Iron County towns, and denuding whole fields elsewhere. Following a trip throughout the territory in the spring of 1855, Heber C. Kimball wrote to his son William, describing the extent of the devastation: From this place south as far as we went, the grasshoppers have cut down the grain, and there is not fifty acres now standing of any kind of grain in Salt Lake Valley, and what is now standing, they are cutting it down as fast as possible. In Utah county the fields are pretty much desolate; in Juab Valley not a green spear of grain is to be seen, nor in Sanpete, nor in Fillmore. In Little Salt Lake they are still sowing, also at Cedar City, that county being so much later the grain is not yet up, but the grasshoppers are there, ready to sweep down the grain as soon as it comes up. In the north as far as Boxelder the scenery is the same. . . . and to look at things at this present time, there is not the least prospect of raising one bushel of grain in the valleys this present season. . . . I must say there is more green stuff in the gardens in G. S. L. City than there is in all the 20
Deseret News, August 5, 1868. First Annual Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, p. 54. 22 O u r study makes no claim to be complete. There may have been grasshoppers in some areas and years which d o not show up here. But a check of the Journal History and of the Deseret News has turned up no indications of grasshoppers for the years that are blank on the table. Table begins on p. 354. 21
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rest of the counties; still there is a great m a n y of the gardens in the city entirely ruined. Brother W m . C. Staines told me this m o r n i n g t h a t h e h a d 500,000 young apple trees come u p and they are all cut down to the ground, a n d many gardens where the peach trees were full of peaches, every leaf a n d peach are gone. 2 3
Twenty years later, it was still estimated that 70 percent of the cereals, vegetables, and fruits that year had been destroyed, making 1855 stand out as a year of crippling loss.24 What did the settlers consider as an "appearance" of grasshoppers? In some years it may have been nothing more than a few indigenous insects hopping around in the fields. On other occasions, swarms of them flew overhead for days at a time, but they did not necessarily do serious damage in the areas where they were sighted. In some years they were observed in the fall, depositing eggs that hatched out the following spring; but no damage was done during the year of the egg-laying. In some communities crops were wiped out several years in succession. In 1877 the Entomological Commission reported that northern Utah, especially Cache Valley, was visited by grasshoppers every year from 1854 to 1870.25 Yet, in response to a survey in 1875, the officers of the Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society reported the appearance of the "devastating Grasshopper" only in 1855 and 1866 through 1872, specifying that the 1866 appearance consisted only of depositing eggs. This indicates only six or seven years of grasshopper destruction severe enough to mention. In summary, research shows that the peak periods of grasshopper invasion and devastation seem to have been 1854-56 (with 1855 being the worst year of the century), 1867-72, and 1876-79. Utah was practically free from serious grasshopper problems the last twenty years of the century. Assessing the number of grasshoppers invading Utah is difficult. Appearances were described with such terms as "very numerous," "immense swarms," "by the millions," or "myriads." A more specific, though not necessarily exact, report from Tooele in 1855 claimed that there were about forty grasshoppers on every stalk of corn.26 A correspondent from Pleasant Grove described the grasshoppers there with perhaps a bit of hyperbole: I d o not think there were any more in Egypt in the time of Moses than there are now on my place, for the ground is literally the color of grass23
Journal History, May 29, 1855. Deseret Evening News, May 13, 1875. 25 First Annual Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, p. 103. 28 Deseret News, September 5, 1855.
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hoppers. We have to shut our doors to keep them out of our houses. T h e well, the cellar, the water ditches, everything is filled with the pests. 27
Some sense of how numerous the grasshoppers were can be gleaned from counts made "by the bushel." Collecting six bushels of the creatures per hour was considered an average catch from the streams that were diverted in order to skim the grasshoppers off the top.28 The Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society estimated that there were one hundred bushels of grasshoppers to the acre in some areas. A "notable local mathematician," probably Mormon Apostle Orson Pratt, estimated that "in one season, one and a half million bushels [of grasshoppers] were destroyed by lighting in Great Salt Lake and drifting on the shores, forming an immense belt."29 Another observer commented that "at one point they drifted ashore and piled up on the beach six feet high and two miles long." ° In one of the few exact numerical counts Taylor Heninger and John Ivie in Sanpete County, after checking the hay meadow for grasshopper eggs, noted that ". . . by actual count and careful average we found 118-28/54th eggs to the square inch of ground; making a total of 743,424,000 eggs to the acre, or a total of 2,973,696,000 to the four acre piece."31 Obviously, there is no way of calculating very closely the number of grasshoppers in Utah from year to year. But it is clear that, even allowing for some exaggeration, grasshopper appearances in Utah were not limited to slight or moderate numbers. Determining the extent of grasshopper damage presents difficulties also. Some settlements may have lost most or all of their crops several years in succession. For them, the grasshopper invasions were very destructive. But in the context of the entire territory, the damage from grasshoppers was probably rather slight in most or all of those years. Even within one county, the amount of damage varied considerably from settlement to settlement, and even from one farm to another. Nor can the influence of other factors be ignored. Crop losses in some years were also caused by drouth, frost, and other insects, so that sorting out the grasshopper damage becomes a complex task.
27
A. P. Madsen in Deseret News, May 27, 1879. Deseret News, May 20, 1868. 29 Deseret Evening News, May 13, 1875. 30 Henry Ballard, in First Annual Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, appendix, p. 256. 31 Deseret News, August 1, 1879. 28
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That a severe attack could so reduce grain production as to raise prices substantially is indicated by Lewis Barney's experience in Sanpete County in 1860: My stock continued dying until the last animal I h a d was gone, leaving m e in debt for the building of my mill, one h u n d r e d fifty bushels of wheat . . . which was worth one dollar per bushel at the time I agreed to pay it. T h e grasshoppers came and cut off the crops and wheat raised in price to five dollars per bushel, causing me to pay seven h u n d r e d dollars insted [sic] of one h u n d r e d fifty.32
There is a precise indication here of the impact of scarcity on prices, but the impression comes across most tellingly in human terms—what it meant to a person who had contracted a debt. Nine years later, in 1869, Barney wrote, "I found the country full of grasshoppers and every thing devoured by them, not a morsel of bread or anything else to be had to sustain life. Consequently we were under the necessity of going back to work on the railroad."33 Without minimizing the suffering incident to intensive attacks, it is important to maintain a balanced view. Barney indicated the kind of resiliency characteristic of the Mormon settlers: T h e next spring [probably 1855] I p u t in 18 acres of w h e a t and several acres of corn. But the grasshoppers took it as fast as it m a d e its appearance through the ground. This they continued to do until t h e ground was entirely destitute of every green thing. After the hoppers h a d cleaned the settlements of every vestige of vegetation they took wings and left. I then borrowed 2 bushels of wheat of Brother Mendenhall by promising to give him corn in the fall. This wheat I sowed on my city lot. I t was late in the season when it was sown. But it did m a t u r e so t h a t I got 105 bushels of wheat from it. I also discovered t h a t after the grasshoppers left there was a few spears of corn sprung u p from the roots that was to grow a n d spread so that in the fall I gathered from it 75 bushels of good sound corn. This m a d e 180 bushels of corn and wheat that I raised that season after the hoppers left. 34
In 1877, after several alarming announcements of devastations during the summer, the actual harvests in most localities turned out to be fairly normal.35 Indications of damage in certain years include the produce turned in to the LDS church as tithing. Here are some comparisons between crops produced in 1855, the great grasshopper invasion, and the following year: 12
Lewis Barney Journal, p. 87, typescript, LDS Archives. Ibid., p. 99. 34 Ibid., pp. 68-69. ""Deseret News, June 20, 1877; June 27, 1877; July 25, 1877; August 1, 1877; August 15, 1877; October 24, 1877; November 14, 1877. :a
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1855 3,998 bu. 1,902 104 568
Quarterly 1856 17,079 bu. 3,173 413 1,733
Clearly, for certain crops, especially grain, the grasshoppers in 1855 had been devastating. Three or four times as much wheat and oats came into the tithing office in 1856. It is unlikely that increased land under cultivation accounted for more than a 10 percent increase. Fewer potatoes were contributed in 1856, perhaps due to an early frost. Much depended on the particular crop and on the timing of the insect invasions. Some of the difficulties of comparison are suggested by a look at 1868, another grasshopper year. Coming into the tithing house were 10,092 bushels of wheat. Stopping there one would conclude that this was worse than 1856 but not nearly so bad as 1855. But of corn there were only 1,544 bushels—worse than in 1855, while in barley there were 543 bushels, better than either 1855 or 1856. Obviously, much depended on the crop that was hit by the pest and on the amount planted of different crops. When one looks at the overall cash value for the 1868 receipts, which came to $143,372, it is apparent that even considering the increase in population this was not a year of absolute catastrophe. T h e impact of a crop failure on communities and individuals can be assessed. Leonard Arrington has calculated that production of wheat per family in the Ogden area amounted to 30 bushels in 1855, increasing to 40 bushels in 1856, and 44 bushels in 1857. However, 1856 showed a substantial decrease in cattle production, perhaps because so many were slaughtered the previous year or died during the severe winter. Recorded wheat production for this community was 13,000 bushels in 1855. It increased to 21,000 bushels by 1857, but part of the increase was due to an extension of land under cultivation—a 20 percent increase from 1855 to 1857.36 It would be surprising if a people accustomed to seeing their experience in terms of a divine plan failed to discern the hand of Providence in the infestations. Like other trials through which the Latter-day Saints h a d passed, the grasshopper invasions were often looked upon as tests imposed by Providence—tests of their faith, preparedness, ability to call upon deity in prayer, dedication to the cause. Drawing from their biblical and Christian traditions, the Latter-day Saint leaders asserted that such 36 Leonard J. Arrington, "Historical Materials of U t a h in the LDS Church Archives," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the U t a h State Historical Society, September 13, 1972.
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trials were the means by which God reminded his children of their dependence on him, calling them back from their materialism, worldliness, and self-sufficiency. "The Lord chasteneth those he loveth"—this old theme had its Mormon counterparts. In the face of the grasshopper challenge the Saints were exhorted to have faith that they would receive help from the Lord. "Exercise your faith, brethren," said the Deseret News on April 25, 1855, "that the Lord may bless your crops, rebuke the destroyer, and bring your labors and exertions to a successful issue." The next month, on May 23, 1855, the newspaper remarked that "through faith and obedience they [the Saints] can prevail in the grasshopper war, at least as well as they did in the cricket war of 1848." They did not expect their faith always to bring about an end of the insect attacks, but there were dramatic examples of forces that did divert or greatly reduce the danger. The gulls did not come in force every year, but they did help destroy the crickets in 1848, the grasshoppers in 1855, and the crickets in 1860. "The gulls, which are exceedingly numerous," reported the Deseret News on May 30, 1860, "have of late commenced a war of extermination against the uncouth-looking pestiferous creatures, and the probability is that their works of destruction will soon measureably cease." Joseph E. Wheeler reported that gulls were of help in the Huntsville area after 1866 and occasionally even into the twentieth century.37 Less well known are the efforts of other animals in reducing the grasshopper population. Pigeons did away with some grasshoppers in Payson during the 1855 visitation. Chickens, too, were often helpful in eliminating insects in the gardens and to a limited extent on the farming lands. Perhaps most surprising, sheep were sometimes a valuable ally. One informant claimed to have known occasions on which 75 percent of the grasshoppers, before they took wing, were killed by sheep. As late as 1880, some settlers in Sanpete County were deliberately using sheep against the grasshoppers. John Swain attended a meeting to consider the best plans to deal with the grasshoppers. Several days later he wrote, "Assist kill Grasshoppers with sheep in the afternoon."ES On other occasions grasshoppers were reportedly felled by gnats, maggots, and grubs.
37
Joseph E. Wheeler Journal, LDS Archives. John Swain Journal, LDS Archives, May 3 0 - J u n e 12, 1880. Other information in this paragraph is from First Annual Report of the U.S. Entomological Commission, appendix, pp. 255-58. 38
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Another enemy of the destructive insects was the Great Salt Lake, which drowned them in great quantities. George A. Smith reported in 1855 that "a great portion" of the insects landed in that body of water, "which appears green at a distance and the shore is lined with their dead, from one inch to two feet thick and which smell exactly like fish."39 Just how the hoppers got to the lake is another question. They "landed" there sometimes. At other times they must have been blown in that direction. Whether blowing the insects into the lake or just blowing them away, a good stiff wind could be of great help. John A. Wakeham reported a providential wind in 1855 that blew the insects into the lake. After noticing the quantities of insects in the lake in 1868, Benjamin LeBaron wrote, "I consider this later deliverance from the grasshoppers just as great and miraculous as the former 1848 rescue from the ravages of the black crickets."40 These opposing forces were not always seen as miraculous—just helpful. Some saw the gulls in natural terms. And the parasite that killed the hoppers in droves in 1878-79 was ordinarily seen as a natural enemy: T h e grasshoppers—the dreaded scourge of this country, seem to have an enemy, which, though infitessimal [sic] in stature, is still m o r e powerful in their destruction t h a n m a n can be. Brother J o h n Daynes, of the 20th W a r d , called this m o r n i n g with a n u m b e r of pests t h a t had clustered together on the sprig of a currant bush, and were holding each other with a death grip. They were mere shells, the whole internal portion of their bodies having been gnawed away by an insect, which bores its way through the ironclad, outer covering and never leaves its prey until death ensues. Brother Daynes informs us that all the bushes in his lot are loaded with the dead hoppers, and we learn that the same thing may be seen in various parts of the country. And a pleasant sight it is. 41
The following spring the "hopper parasite" was described again. Due to it "the grasshoppers on the lake bottom and as far north as Pleasant Grove are dying off by the bushels."42 While the Latter-day Saints were gratified at unexpected help, whether gulls or parasites, and some of them at least interpreted such help as the result of divine intervention, it would be inaccurate to see their response primarily in such terms. The Mormons were pragmatists, interested in results. They subscribed wholeheartedly to the Anglo-Saxon practicality of "Pray to God but keep your powder dry." When preaching 39
Journal History, June 20, 1855. LeBaron, "The Grasshopper War." 41 Deseret News, September 25, 1878. 42 Deseret News, June 19, 1869. 40
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on standard Christian themes, they were not attracted to any kind of salvation without work. Faith without works was dead for the church leaders, and they urged their followers to exert themselves against the invading insect hosts and not rest content with praying or hoping for a miracle. But what could be done? Mainly it was a question of getting out in numbers and beating the insects to death. But there were ways in which the manpower could be more efficient. In 1855, for example, George A. Smith described men, women, and children organized into "squads of three or four each, well armed with willow bushes, and they were very busy sweeping the armies of grasshoppers into the small creeks where they place coffee sacks, and when they get them filled, they dig trenches, and bury their enemy."43 People turned out en masse, but it was not realistic to expect all of the people to be out fighting the enemy all of the time. Some organization was needed. So, in Salt Lake City they worked at the ward level. In 1868 the people of the Twentieth Ward turned out "and destroyed immense numbers of them, by catching them on sheets, driving them into straw and burning them; and driving them into the water . . . and trapping them as they were being carried down by the water."44 Organization of the "grasshopper war" was not merely by ward. Within each ward, in Salt Lake City at least, the ward or block teachers were appointed to superintend their own districts. In addition, a man was put in charge of each creek. Proud of their efficiency, A. P. Rockwood, who was chairman of a special grasshopper committee, remarked, "We can accomplish more in such a case than the people of other places now suffering from them, because we act more unitedly."45 Rockwood conducted experiments on "the best plan for destroying the locusts or grasshoppers." Beating them with brush worked fairly well on hard ground, but on soft ground where crops were planted it usually did not kill them. He tried traps in a stream and collected three pecks in sieves during half an hour.46 Driving the insects into the water of ditches, canals, and creeks, then screening them out at certain points, was a favorite method. Burning them with straw was tried at times. No example of the Mormon settlers paying a bounty for hoppers has been found, perhaps because in Minnesota where this method was tried "some of the 43
Journal History, May 3 1 , 1855. Deseret News, May 20, 1868. 45 Ibid. "Deseret News, May 13, 1868. 44
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farmers are so anxious to make 'an honest dollar' that they carefully nurse the hoppers so as to obtain the prescribed bounty for catching them, in the supposition that it is more profitable to grow grasshoppers than grain."47 Despite the many suggestions for fighting the invading insects, little real progress was made. A window- into the concerns and mentality of the times is provided by the minutes of the School of the Prophets held on May 14, 1870. After the opening song and prayer A. P. Rockwood recommended "a systematic, organized effort" to destroy the hoppers, otherwise there would be little raised that season. Wilford Woodruff noted that within his experience the best way of destroying them was "to get a large sheet, and a man at each corner to drag it through the grain, and when caught bury them." If, after trying this, the crops were still destroyed, Woodruff added, "we shall have the satisfaction of having done our duty." John Pack said he had never seen such destruction by the grasshoppers as this season. They had destroyed his wheat already. He planned to sow again on Monday. He also planned to plow the wheat under and not harrow it so that the first joint would still be under the ground. If the hoppers took the sprouting tips, it would shoot up again. If they took that, he would plant corn. After several other participants in the meeting had concurred in the need for organizing, Wilford Woodruff recommended that the bishops of the county get together and "devise some practical method for destroying them." Since there had already in previous years been many such discussions, one senses a groping faith (or hope) that some trick would be discovered. Daniel Cam said that if people would put axle grease on the trunks of their fruit trees, two feet high, the grasshoppers would not go near them. Milo Andrus had a more interesting suggestion: sprinkle whisky and water on trees and plants. The meeting terminated with a decision that the bishops meet and organize the fight in their respective wards. All in all, the meeting reflects well the mixture of concern and practicality of the period.48 Elsewhere in the country enterprising individuals were inventing grasshopper-killing machinery. The Utah people, too, came up with mechanical ideas. In 1871, A. W. Winberg, a blacksmith, demonstrated a machine: It consists of a frame drawn by two horses, having an apron extending forward close to the ground to scrape up the locusts, with a hood above it forming a box open in front. At the rear of the machine is a pair of rollers, geared together, the upper one driven by the carrying wheels of which it 47 48
Deseret News, April 18, 1877, June 27, 1877. Minutes, School of the Prophets, May 14, 1870, LDS Archives.
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forms the axle. Whatever may find its way into the front of the machine is obliged to pass between the rollers at the back, which being capable of being forced close together, are apt to completely demoralize the "iron clads." 49
Although the Deseret News recommended that people of the settlements pool their resources to purchase this machinery, it did not catch on. A few years later George Darling wrote to the Deseret News to recommend a device he had thought of several years earlier, a wooden machine on wheels that required the operator to brush coal tar on the rollers as they became covered with the insects.50 In 1867 William Tanner, of Leavenworth City, Kansas, wrote to Brigham Young asking for suggestions on how to combat the insects. Tongue in cheek, Young wrote the following response: Your favor of the 4th instant, on the subject of grasshoppers and the best remedy to prevent or check their ravages, has been received. We have suffered somewhat from them; but when we had a heavy visitation of them in this Territory, and the prospects were that we would be troubled with them again, I put in considerable of a crop on purpose for them to eat, hoping that my regular crops might be spared. The crop I put in for them suffered but slightly.51
One assumes that the insects had a hard time distinguishing the one marked "for grasshoppers only." "The only remedy that we know for them out here," the Mormon leader concluded, "is to exercise faith and pray the Lord to bless our land and our crops and not suffer them to fall a prey to the devourer, and to overrule circumstances that His purposes may be accomplished." This sounds like a counsel of futility, and perhaps Young was discouraged. He did have more positive advice to give, however, and it was not to merely "exercise faith and pray." In 1867, having noted the laying of grasshopper eggs, Brigham Young stoically said in a sermon in Tooele: According to present appearances, next year we may expect grasshoppers to eat up nearly all our crops. But if we have provisions enough to last us another year, we can say to the grasshoppers—these creatures of God—you are welcome. I have never yet had a feeling to drive them from one plant in my garden; but I look upon them as the armies of the Lord, and with them it is easy for Him to consume a great nation. We had better lay up bread instead of selling it to strangers, and thus avoid a great calamity that otherwise might overtake us.52 ,9
Deseret News, May 31, 1871. Deseret Evening News, April 25, 1877. 51 Brigham Young Letterbooks, February 21, 1867, LDS Archives. 52 Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (London, 1854-86) 12:121-22. 50
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In 1868, Young was giving a sermon in the Mill Creek Ward. Faith alone was never sufficient, he argued, for "those who manifest by their works that they seek to do the will of the Lord are more acceptable before Him than those who live by faith alone." Immediately, the Mormon leader was reminded of grasshoppers. Just a few days earlier he had returned from Provo and observed that "fields were stripped, young orchards were stripped of the leaves, and evidences of destruction were to be seen around." Some people had tried to exercise faith and ask God to remove "this destructive power," but Young did not see things in this way, not when he was preaching to the Saints. "Have I any good reason to say to my Father in heaven, 'Fight my battles,' when He has given me the sword to wield, the arm and the brain that I can fight for myself? Can I ask Him to fight my battles and sit quietly down waiting for Him to do so? I cannot."53 But what specifically did Young want the people to do? Was he urging more committees, more traps in the streams, special machinery, or special fields planted for the insects? One assumes that he was in favor of any procedures that would reduce the damages, but this was not his main message to the congregation at Mill Creek. We have had our fields laden with grain for years; and if we had been so disposed, our bins might have been filled to overflowing, and with seven years' provisions on hand we might have disregarded the ravages of these insects, and have gone to the kanyon and got our lumber, procured the materials, and built up and beautified our places, instead of devoting our time to fighting and endeavoring to replace that which has been lost through destructiveness. We might have made our fences, improved our buildings, beautified Zion, let our ground rest, and prepared for the time when these insects would have gone.
Borrowing from the experience of the shortage in the past and also from the biblical precedent of Joseph in Egypt, Brigham Young urged not a direct attack on the insect hordes but preparation that would enable the settlers to ignore the insects. In 1877 similar advice was put forth by the church newspaper, which urged the Saints to plant as much as they could. Then the News raised the question that must have been in the minds of many people: What will happen when the grasshoppers come and devastate the crops? What of that? Sow and plant enough for yourselves and the grasshoppers. If you only put in sparingly, maybe the grasshoppers will conclude that there is not enough for them and the people also, and the first law of nature, self-preservation, will impel the insects to take what they need. If 53
Ibid., 12:240//.
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there is little, they may take all. If there is much, they hardly will. Of late years, they never have taken all—they have left enough for the people, for greater breadths than ever have been sown and planted. If there is much grain sown, and the grasshoppers take their share of it, they will not be so likely to kill your fruit and shade trees, and your fruit shrubs and plants, as they would if there were no grain crops to bear a part of the burden. T h e Territory could better afford to lose half its grain crop than lose its fruit trees and shrubs. Grain can be replaced in one year, but it takes many years to replace fruit trees and shrubs. Therefore the manifest wisdom of sowing largely, more largely in a probable grasshopper year than in a year free from those pests. 54
Summing up, the newspaper said, "Better sow a large crop and save half of it, than a small crop and lose it all." In essence, this seems to have been the response of the farmers of Utah—planting as much as possible and trying to hold some food in reserve for bad years. There is no way of determining the extent of production beyond the minimum needed for subsistence, or the extent of the shortage, but even if pursued only haltingly such programs would have helped to soften the blow of the devastations. By the late 1870s, if not before, grasshoppers were becoming a problem across several states and territories. In 1875, at the Detroit meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Professor C. V. Riley, state entomologist of Missouri, read a paper on "The Locust Plague and How to Avert It." He recommended destroying the eggs and unfledged insects, exterminating the full-grown insects, encouraging their natural enemies, and preventing their ravages by artificial methods. He concluded that the best approach would be to "carry the war into Africa," that is to attack the insects in their native home, the Rocky Mountains, using federal troops for the purpose if necessary. To this the Deseret News replied, "That last would be a capital idea. Better than sitting down on their haunches in Corinne to prevent the people there from being frightened to death. Think of the soldier boys out on the benches, chasing the locust and following the grasshopper!"55 In 1877 Congress established a national entomological commission that solicited information from all parts of the country and then published its findings. Many Utahns supplied data about the frequency of the incursions in that territory. It is hard to know to what extent the Mormons drew upon this government publication for ideas, but there is ample evidence in the newspapers that they were interested in any findings or proposals.56 M
Deseret News, April 5, 1877. Deseret News, September 8, 1875. 88 A copy of the report was received by the curator of the Deseret Museum, Deseret August 21, 1878. 55
News
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For the quarter of a century during which their attacks were most frequent and most severe, the grasshoppers posed a considerable problem to the farmers of Utah. They challenged the strength of the Mormon settlers to battle a discouraging, imperfectly understood pest. Although there were individual variations, the community at large combined religious faith and pragmatism in coping with the "iron-clads." They prayed, they "exercised faith," they saw the hand of God in bird and wind and lake. At the same time, they exerted themselves to lay up grain in the storehouse, to fight the pests directly by every means at their disposal, and above all to plant larger crops while trying to resist discouragement. Through all of this the religious background was never far from the minds of the Mormons. How could it be? Their very planting of crops was in itself seen as part of the fulfillment of the prophecy that the desert would blossom as the rose. Yet, they retained their commonsense approach to life. In his journal William Moore Allred remembered that in 1872 or 1873 Joseph F. Smith had visited his settlement and had prophesied "that the grasshoppers would leave us if we would do right." Avoiding pride and self-righteousness but certainly pleased with the way things had turned out, Allred then added, "and we have had none since, altho I presume we have not done everything right."57 TABLE OF GRASSHOPPER
A P P E A R A N C E S IN TERRITORIAL
UTAH
This table indicates year by year the locations where grasshoppers are known to have appeared in noticeable numbers. It is by no means a complete listing, only a beginning. T h e information was drawn almost entirely from the Deseret News, the Journal History of the Church, and the First Annual Report of the United States Entomological Commission for the Year 1877 (1878). Only locations within the present state boundaries are included, despite changes in territorial boundaries. We have, however, listed locations in accordance with changing county boundaries. A county listing indicates either that a reference was made to that county (as a whole or in part) or that two or more locations within the county were affected. Single settlements or other areas (e.g., "Cache Valley") not within the boundaries of such counties in a given year are listed individually. Some towns are located by county in parentheses for general orientation purposes. T h e table includes all types of grasshopper appearances—flying in swarms, depositing eggs, and inflicting damage to crops or gardens—whether one or all occurred in a given year or location. It includes limited as well as widespread or long-lasting appearances and all types of damage from minor to severe. YEAR
LOCATION
1847- •50 1851 South Cottonwood (Great Salt Lake County) Ogden 1852 northern U t a h plains 1853 Great Salt Lake County 1854 Logan Ogden Davis County Salt Lake U t a h County Nephi
YEAR
1855
LOCATION
Box Elder Cache Valley Weber County Davis County Great Salt Lake County Tooele Valley U t a h County J u a b County Sanpete Fillmore Beaver Iron County
William Moore Allred Journal, p. 5, LDS Archives.
The Grasshopper Problem YEAR
1856
1857
1858 1859 1860 1861 1862 1863 1864 1865
1866
1867
1868
LOCATION
Box Elder County Cache Valley Ogden Salt Lake U t a h County Cache Valley Ogden Salt Lake Valley U t a h County Fillmore Cache Valley Ogden Cache Valley Ogden Salt Lake Cache Valley Ogden Cache Valley Ogden Cache Valley Ogden Cache Valley Ogden Cache Valley Ogden Salt Lake Cache Valley Ogden Payson Beaver Cache Valley Ogden Morgan County Summit County Payson Beaver Box Elder County Cache County Weber County Morgan County Summit County Great Salt Lake County St. John (Tooele County) Payson Nephi Beaver Cache County Weber County Morgan County Summit County Salt Lake
St. John
1869
Heber U t a h County Beaver Parowan St. George Farmington Cache County Ogden Morgan County Summit County Salt Lake St. John Payson Beaver Washington County Bellevue ( K a n e County)
355 YEAR
LOCATION
Farmington Cache County Weber County Morgan County Summit County Salt Lake County Tooele County Wasatch County Payson Springtown (Sanpete County) Millard County Beaver Iron County St. George Farmington 1871 Box Elder Canyon Cache County Rich County Morgan County Summit County Salt Lake Sanpete County Fillmore Sevier County Paragoonah (Iron County) Washington County Kanab 1872 Morgan County Summit County Nephi Paragoonah 1873- •75 1876 Box Elder County Cache County West Weber (Weber County) Croydon (Morgan County) Farmington Salt Lake St. J o h n 1877 Brigham City Cache Valley Bear Lake Valley Weber County Croydon Davis County Salt Lake St. J o h n 1878 Cache Valley Coalville Bountiful Salt Lake County Tooele Wasatch County 1879 Cache County Ogden Valley Pleasant Grove Chester (Sanpete County) 1880 Mona (Juab County) Sanpete County 1881--91 1892 Davis County Tooele County 1893 Box Elder County Weber County Davis County Salt Lake 1894-96 1870
The Sanpete Cooperative Saw Mill was one of the self-help projects established to combat the depression of the thirties. Utah State Historical Society collections.
Sanpete County between the Wars: An Overview of a Rural Economy in Transition BY J O H N S. H . SMITH
IJLACK THURSDAY, THE COLLAPSE of the stock market in October 1929, did not initiate economic decline in Utah. Because of sharply increased demands for agricultural products and nonferrous metals during World War I, the Utah economy had expanded in those areas and had begun to develop a moderate industry based on the processing of primary products. But the recession that followed in the early twenties dealt harshly with Utah, since raw material economies are particularly sensitive to what are technically known as "inventory" depressions.1 The main problem lay in the fact that the expansion of mining in Utah had, with its fluctuating prices and production cycles, wedded Utah to the inherent instability of eastern competitive capitalism. In agriculture, the local-market economy that had enabled Utah to survive previous depressions had been unwisely expanded in 1918 and 1919 in precisely Dr. Smith is a historian in the preservation research office at the U t a h State Historical Society. His article was prepared as part of a National Endowment for the Humanities lecture series focusing on Utah's regional distinctions and characteristics. ' R o l a n d Stucki, Commercial Banking in Utah, 1847-1966 (Salt Lake City: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of Utah, 1967), p. 4 1 .
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those areas of crop agriculture where U t a h products would be least competitive in the years of low demand and overproduction that lay ahead. This exploitation of expensively developed marginal lands was a fatal commitment to export agriculture. 2 Similarly, wool and sugar exports, profitable in the twenties owing to high tariff protection, were significantly reduced by the effect of the Great Depression on living standards in America's urban markets for those commodities. U t a h mining did experience some growth but never enough to make up for the general distress in agriculture or to absorb the increasing numbers of people on the job market. Economist Leonard J. Arrington attributes this failure to match employment opportunities with population increase and relocation to the distinterest of the eastern financiers who h a d assumed control of Utah's economy through their predominant position in the mining industry. As a result of this outside decision-making, Utah's economy became "peripheral to the core economy of the nation rather than being the core of its own regional economy. 3 Utah's unhealthy dependence on these two sectors of the economy, agriculture and mining, and the failure to provide for an increased manufacturing activity, would be the factors most responsible for the extent of the economic collapse during the depression. T h e signs of disaster in the field of agriculture were apparent before 1929. Banks that had fueled war-profit expansion, by making loans based on inflated land and commodity prices, found that the 1921 recession created a situation in which they were unable to recoup interest or principal or even to realize a portion of the original loan through foreclosure and forced sales. Even before the 1929 crash some 46 U t a h banks were forced to close their doors, most of them in rural areas. Another 63 would be closed between 1929 and 1933. 4 Statistics demonstrate Utah's plight in agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. Farms throughout the Beehive State declined from a product figure of $70,813,192 in the boom year of 1919 5 to a mere $29,541,000 in 1932.° Mining in U t a h was valued at $41,510,802 in 1919/ 2 Leonard J. Arrington, From Wilderness to Empire: The Role of Utah in Western Economic History. (Salt Lake City: Institute of American Studies, University of U t a h , 1961), pp. 16-17. "Ibid., p. 17. 4 Stucki, Commercial Banking, pp. 42-47. 5 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States: 1920 (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1923-24) vol. 6, part 1 pp 2 4 1 62. " W a y n e K. Hinton, " T h e New Deal Years in U t a h : A Political History of U t a h 19321942" (Master's thesis, U t a h State University, 1963), p. 5. 7 Fourteenth Census, vol. 2, pp. 216-22.
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rose to twice that in mid-decade, then slumped to $22,820,230 gross product in 1933.8 In 1919 some 1,160 Utah manufacturing firms employed 18,868 people and disbursed $27,135,482 in wages against a gross product of $156,933,071.9 In the year of the crash Utah had only 651 firms employing 15,601 wage earners receiving a total of $19,689,684 and produced goods with a gross value of $241,628,855.10 By 1933 the number of industrial employers had dropped to 440, employees to 10,213, wages to $9,298,801, and gross product value had fallen to $80,967,695." The full impact of the depression can be gauged by the drop in total personal income in the state from $270,000,000 in 1929 to $143,000,000 in 1932. Farm income dropped from $69,000,000 in 1929 to $40,000,000 in 1932. In that same year at the height of the depression some 36 percent of the state's labor force was out of work.12 In summary, prior to the crash, Utah as a whole experienced difficulties as a result of poor farm profitability, although the sugar and wool sectors of the agricultural economy actually grew in importance. The mining industry rapidly succumbed to the national economic situation in the early thirties and further aggravated the internal agricultural economics of Utah. Failure to create employment opportunities to satisfy the needs of an increasing population, especially in economy-broadening manufacturing industries, resulted in chronic unemployment and underemployment and eventually produced a net migration from the state. Expensively educated young people left to secure work and thus were unable to make a compensatory return to the state through taxable income.13 In the period between the two world wars, Utah endured what was, in total, a lull in her economic development. The groundwork was being laid for striking changes in her agricultural economy together with an explosive growth in service and manufacturing industries under the stimulus of World War II. But the between-wars preparatory period was painful. Statistics suggest that Utah suffered more intensely during the Great Depression that most of the other states of the Union. The extent
8
Hinton, "New Deal Years in U t a h , " p. 5. "Fourteenth Census, vol. 9, pp. 1485-1502. 10 U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930 (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1931), vol. 3, pp. 5 1 9 - 2 3 . 11 Utah Economy (Salt Lake City: Bureau of Economic and Business Research, University of U t a h , 1930), p. 53. 12 Arrington, From Wilderness to Empire, p. 17. 13 F. E. Hall, "Poor Little Rich State," Commonweal, February 9, 1940, p. 342.
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359
Sugar beets were one of the staple crops of Sanpete County. Utah State Historical Society collections.
and severity of the economic and social disruption was surpassed only in Oklahoma and Colorado.14 The task of this paper is to examine Sanpete County's experience relative to that of the state and the nation, to survey its reaction to the challenges of the period, and to provide an overview of the nature of the changes in the economic and social life of the county. The agricultural boom at the end of World War I spurred farming activities in Sanpete County. According to one observer: Money was plentiful and people acquired extravagant habits. . . . Farm lands in this vicinity went up to $225 an acre. Butter went up to 90^ a pound, eggs to 75^ a dozen, cattle and sheep went out of sight.15
As this quotation suggests, high prices for farm products prompted farmers to acquire new and often marginal lands to extend their operations. The actual number of farms in Sanpete County, according to available figures, did not change significantly over the decades of the twenties and thirties, but the land area under cultivation or devoted to nontrans34
Arrington, From Wilderness to Empire, p. 17. W. D. Candland in Mount Pleasant, ed. Hilda Madsen Longsdorf ( M o u n t Pleasant, U t . : Mount Pleasant Pioneer Historical Association, 1939), p. 320. 15
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humance livestock operations increased dramatically by 59 percent during this period.16 At the same time, farm ownership patterns changed from holdings relatively free of encumbrance to a fairly widespread debt situation. In 1910 an estimated 256 farms accounted for a total mortgage debt of $237,972, but in 1930 some 466 farms reported a mortgage debt of $1,557,673. This twenty-year period, therefore, saw a climb in the ratio of debt to farm value from 20.2 percent to 38.8 percent. The assessed valuation of lands used for agricultural purposes decreased from $7,574,285 in 1920 to $2,972,370 in 1938. Farms operated by tenants leapt from 151 in 1920 to 260 in 1935. The value of all farm lands and buildings declined from $16,493,284 in 1920 to $8,683,693 in 1935.17 Undoubtedly, the change from a local market economy to export agriculture accounts for the instability of crop and livestock farming in Sanpete County during the twenties. But the changing style of life in America suggests other reasons for the continually resurfacing inventory depressions. Some of these factors leading to the decline in farm prosperity were the changing dietary habits of the nation and the rapid disappearance of draft animals, which reduced wheat and cereal consumption and caused a lessening of demand for fodder crops. Women's clothes required substantially less cotton, wool, and other natural animal fibers, while newly developed synthetics, like rayon, compounded the problem by widening the choice of available fabrics. Finally, although large numbers of rural people migrated to the cities, improved farming techniques and mechanization took place at a faster rate. The inevitable result was too many people on the land working to raise bumper, yet essentially unsalable, crops.18 Sanpete County was certainly affected by some of these conditions and was additionally subject to the fact that the marginal nature of crop cultivation in the area was uncompetitive in the national and international market. Wheat and other cereals rapidly dropped from favor in the valley, and the farmers began to look around for more marketable items. In 1926 many in the Manti-Ephraim area joined in a pea-growing venture. This potential cash crop was greeted locally as an important step in diversification and hailed as a sign of the return of good times. The plan was to reclaim some swampland in the vicinity, as bottomlands were ™ Basic Data of Economic Activities and Resources in Sanpete County (Salt Lake C i t y U t a h State Planning Board, 1940), pp. 2 - 3 . " I b i d . , pp. 2 - 3 , 19. 18 President's Research Committee on Social Trends, Recent Social Trends in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1933), pp. 4 9 8 - 5 0 1 .
Tlie turkey industry is a major contributor to the agricidtural economy of Sanpete. Utah State Historical Society collections.
favored for that type of crop at that time.19 The project was never a great success, and the drained swampy area was eventually turned over to an equally disappointing celery and melon scheme. A pea cannery in Ephraim changed hands several times before it was finally closed by its last owners, the Hunt Food Company.20 The search for new crops was still going on as the depression was tightening its grip on the county. An editorial in Ephraim's local weekly newspaper suggested that farmers might investigate the possibilities of "succulent" watercress as a year-round crop that would find ready markets throughout the West. In the letters printed on the subject during the following month, reaction was mixed. Most seemed to find it incredible that anyone would wish to actually buy watercress.21 "Salt Lake Tribune, October 19, 1926. 20 Centennial Book Committee, Ephraim's First One Hundred Years, 1854-1954 (Ephraim, U t . : Centennial Book Committee, 1954), p. 73. 21 Editorial in Ephraim Enterprise, March 28, 1930. See also issues of April 1930 for additional comment.
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The importance of patronizing home industry and of finding new sources of agricultural revenue was a theme played on by all Sanpete County newspapers in the between-the-war decades. Turkeys would become one such success, but there were many other schemes that fell by the wayside. The level of misunderstanding of Sanpete's economic problems is best exemplified by an item in the Ephraim Enterprise: If E p h r a i m M e r c h a n t s expect to find the Pot of Gold of Increased Sales at the end of the Rainbow of Patronage by the H o m e People, they must, in turn, Patronize H o m e Industry and H o m e Labor, and Buy H o m e Products. Nothing so disgusts the average E p h r a i m Citizen as to hear an E p h r a i m merchant plead for home buying and then see that same m e r c h a n t go out of town for his labor to do some painting or other job, for his flour, printing or other materials manufactured in Ephraim, or for an automobile of the same b r a n d as sold by local dealers. Surely our town is badly in need of cooperation. 2 2
In that bag of atrocious metaphors was one significant idea that was being put into operation, for one of the most striking features of the economic scene in the county was the number of cooperative producers' associations. Wool, poultry, dairy, and grain organizations claimed extensive membership. The communitarian tradition of Mormonism was undoubtedly responsible for the high level of acceptance. These controlling agencies helped eliminate a great deal of profitless overproduction in the Sanpete Valley. The county fared better with its livestock and wool. Throughout the decade wool was the mainstay of the local economy, and Sanpete flocks were the largest in the state.23 Not only the size of the flocks but the quality was significant. In 1918, at the National Ram Sale in Salt Lake City, John Seeley of Mount Pleasant sold a two-year-old ram for the stillstanding record price of $6,200." This ram was one of a breed that Sanpete sheepmen had been instrumental in building up in the United States —the famous French Merino type known as Rambouillet. In 1920 Utah had the largest number of this breed in the United States and was a leader in supplying rams for flock improvement. The huge Rambouillets were not particularly good meat or good wool sheep; their value lay in the large frames they could impart to the smaller specialized breeds. Fleece yields from their progeny, for example, grew from six to about ten pounds
"Ephraim Enterprise, June 12, 1931. 23 Edward Norris Wentworth, America's 1948), p. 561. 24 Ibid., p. 231.
Sheep
Trails
(Ames: Iowa State College Press,
Sanpete County between the Wars
363
Rambouillets, significant for their breeding qualities, have been instrumental in associating Sanpete County with the sheep industry. Utah State Historical Society collections.
on the average.25 The importance of the Rambouillet to Sanpete, and to the United States' sheep business, is clearly evident in the estimate made in 1948 that "98% of the ewes west of the Mississippi River contain from 50 to 100 per cent Rambouillet blood."26 Sheep were the foundation of county prosperity, injecting fairly large amounts of cash into community circulation. Although a few breeders numbered their flocks in the thousands, the problems of obtaining grazing permits from the Forest Service encouraged many families to invest in small flocks of around twenty sheep that were then managed on a cooperative basis. Sociologist Lowry Nelson estimates that the two thousand people of Ephraim had an income, in 1925, of $125,000 from the sale of wool and breeding stock.27 Had other sectors of the local economy shared the fortunate conditions of the sheepmen, Sanpete would 25
Ibid., p. 229. Ibid., p. 95. 27 Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Pattern and Technique of Land (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1952), pp. 144-46, 151. 26
Settlement
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have never known recession in the twenties, although the sheep industry was to prove quite vulnerable to the economic disruption of the thirties. The wool prices of the period demonstrate the decline in local finances; in 1925 wool brought around 30 cents a pound,28 in 1930 it dropped to 14 cents, and in 1932 it was down to a mere 8 cents a pound.29 In 1930 Utah reached its peak in terms of the number of sheep within its borders —almost three million head""—and also the last year of relative prosperity for the sheepmen of Utah and of Sanpete County. The economic dislocations of the thirties had a dramatic effect on sheep ownership in Sanpete County. Large operators suffered severe financial reverses. When prosperity returned to the sheep business the ranks of the sheep magnates had been thinned considerably, and a new class of owners emerged that was drawn principally from among those who had formerly been in a small way of business as sheep operators. This financial upset is clearly related to the observation made about the way in which Sanpete banks had fueled speculation in sheep by being eager to make loans to sheepmen. It was said that to get a loan on sheep all you had to do was walk into a bank and say BAAA. . . .31 Actually, the banks of Sanpete County had been more fortunate than those in other areas of Utah. As severely strained by the 1921 recession as were most banks, the stability of the income from wool managed to keep them in business. Once the depression set in fully, however, wool prices slumped and the banks found the situation out of their control. On April 22, 1931, the Bank of Moroni closed its doors. Three months later, in July, two other county banks ceased doing business—the Mount Pleasant Commercial & Savings Bank and the North Sanpete Bank of Mount Pleasant.32 One other bank closed for a brief period, the Gunnison Valley Bank, but took advantage of the national bank holiday to set its affairs in order. It was also one of the first to reopen its doors for business, drawing favorable comment for its initiative from the Nation's Digest of New York, a prominent banking trade publication.33 Manufacturing establishments in the county tended to be supportive of agriculture; creameries, ice-making plants, saddleries, and packing and 28
Ibid., p. 146.
TT . , w M e r r i M , S\uc^> " A n Economic Study of Farmers' Cooperative Business Associations in Utah (Master s thesis, University of U t a h , 1933), p. 85. Nelson ,oc^x '"El3°y > Utah's Economic Patterns (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press 1956), p. 55. 31 Interview with Rudolph Hope, Spring City, January 27, 1972. i2 Stucki, Commercial Banking, pp. 4 4 - 4 5 .
„ 'J . G . u n " i s o n C e n t e n n i a l Committee, Memory Book to Commemorate Centennial (Gunnison, U t . : Gunnison Centennial Committee, 1959), p. 117.
Gunnison
Valley's
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365
processing ventures of various types predominated. In 1919 there were 41 plants of this nature, but by 1937 the number had fallen to only 11. In 1919 a maximum of 201 persons were engaged in manufacturing, falling to a low of 121 in 1931, and slowly rising to 185 in 1937. The average wage paid these workers declined from $767 annually in 1919 to $645 in 1937.34 One inexplicable growth was that of wholesale establishments, which grew from 9 in 1929 to 31 in 1935, with a corresponding growth in the number of employees but a decrease in total payroll. These puzzling statistics are explainable only in terms of individuals attempting to increase family income by engaging in product distributorship.35 Retail distribution in the county increased during the twenties, largely as a result of the growing local desire for some of the conveniences of urban living. Plumbing supply establishments, radio and electrical appliance stores, restaurants, commercial bakeries, furniture, ready-made clothing to replace home dressmaking, automobiles, farm machinery sales and repair, and gas stations—all spoke of Sanpete's acceptance of technological and social changes. But retailing proved to be particularly sensitive to the financial situation. In the early years of the depression the number of employees involved in retailing decreased from 181 in 1929 to 124 in 1933, and sales slumped by 46.5 percent in the same period. The average annual wage was 28 percent less in 1935 than in 1929.36 Among the new services offered to Sanpete County in this decade, those of the funeral directors were typical. They signaled not only a new type of enterprise but also a change in local folkways—in this case a radical departure from Latter-day Saint funerary customs. Where previously neighbors had washed and prepared bodies for burial, and the undertaker had been strictly a purveyor of coffins and hearses, now progress had brought the costly and up-to-date ministrations of mortuary science. A large advertisement in the Manti Messenger in 1930 heralded the imminent availability of "one of the finest funeral homes in the state," complete with "chapel, beautiful rest rooms, office, strictly modern preparation room, slumber rooms, display rooms"—everything a corpse could want. The advertisement went on to say that the home would be "furnished in a cheerful, colorful manner," and that "all slumber rooms would be furnished as modern bedrooms . . . of the latest design."37 There were other more sensible examples of progress during the period, howBasic Data . . . Sanpete County, p. 5. Ibid. Ibid., p. 14.
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ever; power generation capacity increased and culinary water was available even to fairly isolated farms.38 Public welfare in Utah before 1932 was purely local in character, and there was no state welfare organization until 1935. Before the Emergency Relief and Construction Act of 1932, public charity in the counties was the responsibility of one of the county commissioners. A very small portion of the county budget was usually sufficient to deal with the needy in rural areas like Sanpete, for charity was not much in demand. The records show that there were rarely more than fifty people receiving some form of aid at any one time during the twenties. Most of the people helped in this fashion were old, widowed, dependent, or physically handicapped persons. The help they received never amounted to more than ten dollars a month.39 The initial confusion in the operation of state and federal welfare and relief projects, and the reluctance of local individuals to partake of them, cause difficulties in reducing the Sanpete experience to statistics that accurately reflect events. For example, statistics relating to full and partial employment are quite unreliable without some mechanism to separate property-owning farmers attempting to supplement their farm income and workers with no resources beyond their labor for hire. The welfare assistance to Sanpete County, through various state and federal agencies, during the period 1931-35 was almost certainly greater than in the succeeding five years of the decade. Yet, the only reliable statistics cover this latter period and show a rise in welfare cases from 372 in 1936 to 779 in 1938, which, it should be recalled, was a recession year within the overall depression decade.40 The 779 county residents receiving welfare assistance, out of a total population of just over 16,000, amply reveals Sanpete's economic problem. Even among professions the money-tight situation provoked cuts in salary. South Sanpete district schoolteachers, distressed over reductions in income and dismissals of staff, met with school board officials to, as the Manti Messenger put it, "attempt to graft on parts of the heavy branches lopped off the Tree of Education," but to no avail.41 Occasionally, the distress in the county required fairly drastic relief efforts, as, for example, when 2,700,000 pounds of relief wheat and 600 37
Manti Messenger, April 18, 1930. Basic Data . . . Sanpete County, p. 4. ,!9 Information extracted from Indigent Records, 4 vol., a register of warrants issued, maintained by the Sanpete County Clerk's Office, Manti. 40 Basic Data . . . Sanpete County, p. 42. 41 Manti Messenger, April 29, 1932. 38
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County
between
the Wars
367
bushels of flour were distributed by the Red Cross in Sanpete County in t h e spring of 1932. Mrs. Spencer Moffitt, chairman of the county committee distributing the relief, announced that the committee had underestimated the need in the county and that another fifty-four railroad cars of relief wheat were being requested from the Red Cross. 42 Taxation provides a mechanism for the quick evaluation of a region's economic health through a survey of the statistics of assessed valuations. Real estate valuations in 1938 were only 40.9 percent of 1920. T h e valuation of livestock increased from $905,865 in 1910 to a high point of $1,400,000 in 1920, remained fairly stable at around $1,000,000 yearly until 1930, and then fell precipitously to approximately $400,000 in 1938. Valuation of all property in Sanpete peaked in 1920 at $17,336,861; but in 1938 after the shock of the depression years it was, at $9,137,616, only 53 percent of that 1920 peak. 43 T h a t the drought and depression period of the early thirties gravely affected income in Sanpete County is effectively demonstrated by the publication of page after page of tax delinquents in county newspapers— a grand total of 5,129 delinquents in 1932. This left the county in the desperate situation of being short $134,148.91 in tax collections, further limiting the county's ability to deal with local problems created by the national crisis.44 Chilling as these figures are, and with all the sad experiences endured by so many people during this depression decade, two events have been singled out to demonstrate that the spirit of directed group activity, of the special communitarian impulse that has always marked Mormon settlements, was alive and well. One of the many programs of the U.S. Department of Labor was the encouragement of self-help cooperatives. U t a h was the first state to create the legislative machinery to supervise self-help cooperatives and Sanpete County among the first to avail itself of state matching funds to create such enterprises. T h e Sanpete Self-Help Cooperative in Spring City— composed of units in Ephraim, Fairview, Moroni—operated a sawmill in Spring City employing, part-time, 65 people. T h e other two cooperatives were the M a n t i Self-Help Cooperative with 84 members that operated a lime kiln and a buying club, and the Mount Pleasant Cooperative F a r m with 18 members. None of these enterprises was very long-lived or totally 42
Manti Messenger, April 15, 1932. Basic Data . . . Sanpete County, p. 6. "Manti Messenger, January 8, 1932. 41
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successful, but the self-help impulse remains as a noteworthy comment on the people involved.45 Equally interesting is the Manti gardens program. Stimulated by an LDS seventies quorum project, the idea was to encourage Manti residents to grow vegetables and provisions in home gardens to help out family finances and to keep food on the table. The project was a resounding success, for with the establishment of a seventies model garden, the whole city became involved in vegetable-growing in the summer of 1932. The Manti Messenger noted that "more and larger gardens have been planted this year than ever before" and that "gardening in Manti and elsewhere has become a community project." Manti city officials went so far as to appoint a garden inspector, W. Lee Hall, who reported 458 gardens in Manti, giving grades A through D but reporting no failures. The garden inspector found but one lot in the city not under cultivation. As a response to the realities of hard times, Manti's garden project was a sensible and productive expression of self-help and community effort.46 However, the massively destructive forces of the depression were quite beyond any puny efforts, no matter how energetically pursued, of local people. In attempting to inject life into the Sanpete economy and to preserve some decent standard of life, the federal government spent $4,420,754 in relief and related activities in Sanpete County between March 4, 1933, and June 30, 1939. This included such payments as $200,506 in old age assistance and $32,554 in aid to dependent children. It does not include projects like CCC camps and work in the national forests that indirectly contributed to the Sanpete economy.47 In summary, Sanpete County, in comparison with the state as a whole, enjoyed better than average economic health during the twenties but statistically appeared in worse than average shape during the thirties. Against the statistics, however, must be measured the fact that most Sanpete residents had some access to food and family support generally not available to dwellers in urban areas. However, although survival through the depression years may not have been as grim an experience in Sanpete County as in some of the nation's cities, even someone whose knowledge of the decade is second-hand can only hope that nothing like it is ever experienced again. 45
"Cooperative Self-Help Movement in U t a h , " Monthly
Labor Review,
August 1936 pp
349-55. M
Manti Messenger, May 13. 1932; June 10, 1932: July 5, 1932. "Federal Expenditures, 1933-1939," in U.S., Office of Government Reports, Statistical Section, Report No. 10 (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1941), vol. 1, p. 1139. 47
One Hundred Years of Utah Climate BY D O N R.
MURPHY
A . s A CHILD MANY A U T A H N has probably sat at grandfather's knee and heard him tell stories of years past when he was a lad and the winters were much colder and the snowfall was much deeper than at present There may or may not be a basis for grandfather's claims because within Utah, and other midlatitude settings where economic activities and h u m a n responses are adjusted to great seasonal variations, comparisons can and often are made between the various summer or winter seasons. Thus, Utah's octogenarian and nonagenarian citizens are prone to recall certain winters as having had especially heavy snowfalls, certain Januarys with extremely cold temperatures, or certain summers that were especially hot or dry, or both. In attempting to recall climatic conditions of childhood days the senior citizen is apt to remember most those years of extreme conditions and having not experienced such extremes lately may conclude that Utah's climate is undergoing change. If Utah's climate is indeed changing, this change should be verifiable by referring to past monthly and annual temperature and precipitation statistics. 1 If the statistics indicate that no dramatic change has occurred, the misimpression of "rougher winters in the past" may be due to man's advancing technology that more and more helps us to overcome our physical environment. Such technological advances now allow us to travel in heated automobiles on well-maintained highways instead of open buggies along snow-drifted lanes or relax through hot summers in air-conditioned homes instead of spending such summers suffering through what seemed like endless hot days and sleepless nights. Dr. M u r p h y is professor of geography at Weber State College, Ogden. See U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of Commerce, Weather Bureau, Local Climatological Lake City (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1875-). 1
Data,
Salt
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In March 1874, monthly temperature and precipitation statistics began to be recorded for Salt Lake City with 1875 having the first full year of data. A one-hundred-year record is therefore available in which to note fluctuations, to observe which years represented extremes, or to detect changes in the climate of the Salt Lake City area, if indeed it is undergoing change. The site where these statistics were first recorded was within downtown Salt Lake City, but during 1928 the official weather station was transferred to its present site at the old Salt Lake airport. It may be suggested that such a shift in location could have resulted in an immediate, short-term variation in average statistics, but such a disruption would soon be absorbed when considering long-term averages.2 The Salt Lake City statistics are exclusively used for this investigation because of their long-term nature. However, past weather and climatic conditions for Salt Lake City are probably not representative for the entire state and may not even be representative for the entire Wasatch Front area. Thus, a reasonably dry winter in Salt Lake City may actually have been quite severe for some other community within the general region. Some regional trends, however, can be observed by reference to past Salt Lake City data. The statistics used in this investigation are mean monthly temperature and monthly precipitation figures for every month since January 1875. Mean monthly temperatures are derived by obtaining an average of the daily mean temperatures for a particular month. Daily mean temperatures are obtained by adding together the lowest and highest temperatures recorded during the 24-hour period and dividing that total by two (the number of observations). Thus, if on a particular date the lowest recorded temperature were 40 °F and the highest were 60 °F the mean temperature for that date would be 50° F. The daily means for a particular month would then be averaged to obtain the monthly mean temperature. Thus, for a particular July in Salt Lake City the monthly mean could typically be 77°F. However, this figure of 77°F does not reflect an especially hot afternoon's absolute temperature of 105°F, but it does give a realistic idea of average July conditions, and it is average monthly conditions that must be investigated in order to determine if climatic change is indeed occurring. Monthly precipitation figures are obtained by merely recording the total precipitation in inches of rainfall for a particular month.
2 A review of monthly temperature and precipitation statistics for the few years previous and following the move of the official weather station to the airport location shows no significant fluctuations which would be attributed to this move.
Utah Climate
371
Proper use of the available statistics can reveal several factors concerning the local climate. Present climatic conditions can be compared with the past, changing trends can be recognized, and land-use capacities can be suggested. In attempting to compare the present climate of Salt Lake City with the climate of a century ago caution must be exercised so that single extreme years will not present an unreal picture. For this study eight 30-year intervals have been compiled beginning with the interval 1875-1904, continuing with 1885-1914, and eventually ending with the interval 1945-74. To determine the present climatic condition for Salt Lake City the latest 30-year interval would be utilized. If the data for all 100 years were averaged, earlier conditions could possibly alter these averages and give a false picture of present-day conditions. Two 30-year climate charts are presented (see figure 1). The years 1875-1904 (figure la) compare favorably with the years 1945-74 (figure l b ) , suggesting that little climatic change has actually occurred along the Wasatch Front during the past century. The charts of the intervening six 30-year intervals (1885-1914, 1895-1924, 1905-34, 1915-44, 1925-54, 1935-64) appear to be very similar to those intervals shown in figure 1. However, these figures are for long-term averages, and a breakdown of the same 30-year statistics can reveal some interesting extremes and trends. Figure 2 shows a progression of mean temperature conditions for the various months through the various 30-year intervals. It should be noted that most months have demonstrated only minor change during the past
Inches
Degrees 90 "
nches 18
Degrees 90 80
16
70
14
60
12
50
10
40
8
30
6
20
4
I T I rmrmn
r\ 11 FPPrm
Jan Feb M a r A p r M a v J u n Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
b. 1945 - 1974
a. 1875 - 1904
Figure
I
THIRTY YEAR CLIMOGRAPHS FOR SALT LAKE CITY
2
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century. An exception is January which demonstrated a warming trend until early in the twentieth century, followed by a cooling trend. The January average for the 1895-1924 interval was 30.5째F, over 2째F higher than the 28.4째F for the 1875-1904 interval. Since the 1895-1924 interval the January average has dropped, reaching a low during the 1935-64 interval of 27.2째F. The averages, however, merely indicate trends, and a look at figure 3 will indicate that certain Januarys within those "warmer" spells were actually quite 1935 1945 1925 1905 1915 1875 1 8 8 5 1895 cold, with 1898 and 1917 1924 1954 1964 1974 1904 1914 1934 1944 Figure 2 being good examples. Note, THIRTY YEAR AVERAGE MEAN MONTHLY TEMPERATURES however, the extremely cold months experienced during the Januarys of 1937, 1949, and the threeyear cold snap of 1962-64. These cold winters falling within the 1935-
1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900
1905 1910
1915
1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945
Figure 3 MEAN 1ANUARY TEMPERATURES
1950 1955 I960
1965 1970 1975
373
Utah Climate
1875 1904
1885 1914
1895 1924
1905 1934
1915 1944
1925 1954
1935 1964
1945 1974
AVERAGE ANNUAL PRECIPITATION FOR THIRTY YEAR INTERVALS
64 interval have no doubt been instrumental in lowering the average January temperature for that period. December temperatures have also demonstrated some fluctuations, with a significant drop during the latest 30year period. However, the November and March C U r V e S
(the beginning and
end of winter) demonstrate a cooling trend through the years with a subsequent increase in temperature during the latest 30-year interval. July temperatures may also be significant. Note on figure 2 that the present July temperatures are nearly 2°F warmer for the latest 30-year interval than they were for the period 1885-1914 (75.3°F vs. 77.1°F). Briefly summarizing the changing monthly temperature conditions it appears that January temperatures presently average 2°F to 3°F colder than they did earlier in the twentieth century; July temperatures during the present century are 1.5°F to 2°F warmer than they were during the nineteenth century; and March and November temperatures have been
Figure .5 TOTAL ANNUAL PRECIPITATION: 1875-1975
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dropping through the years except for a slight rise during the latest 30year interval. This suggests that present Salt Lake City summers are slightly warmer and winters slightly colder than in the past. Precipitation through the continuous 30-year intervals has also undergone some fluctuations. Figure 4 reveals a significant drop in average precipitation beginning with the 1915-44 interval and ending with the 1935-64 interval. As suspected, this decrease is due to sparce precipitation during the 1930s—that period of the dust bowl in the Great Plains area. This is further supported by figure 5 which indicates actual annual precipitation for the various years during the entire 100-year period. The years 1931 to 1940 show a greater extended period of drought than any other 10-year period on record. However, figure 6 reveals some interesting and perhaps surprising seasonal precipitation trends. Monthly fluctuations in precipitation through the continuous 30-year intervals are marked by a continuous decrease in precipitation during the cooler months (see the curves for September through March on figure 6a) with the earlier cooler months (September through December) showing a slight increase during the last 30-year interval. However, the warmer months (see figure 6b), specifically April, June, July, and August, have actually shown an increase in average monthly precipitation since before the decade of the dust bowl. The month of May, however, does not fit this pattern because average precipitation for that month has been steadily declining throughout much of the twentieth century. Agriculturalists may tell us that for certain areas a continual drop in precipitation during the month of May, which is such an important time for crop growth, may be more significant than the slight increase in precipitation during the following warm months. The trend, however, seems to hold up. Through the years Salt Lake City has been experiencing slightly drier winters and slightly wetter summers. In total annual precipitation these two trends apparently balance one another. Further consideration should be given to figure 5. Significant yearto-year fluctuations in total annual precipitation is here indicated, but precipitation cycles also may be suggested. The suggested pattern is for a cycle lasting from 11 to 13 years in which precipitation drops from a 1- to 4-year wet period to a 1-, 2-, or 3-year drought period. Note the following cyclical wet years: 1875-76, 1884-86, 1896-99, 1906-9, 192023, 1944-47, 1957, 1968-71. These wet cycles average 11 to 13 years apart with the one exception being during the 1930s when an extended period
375
Utah Climate
y
\ S^£
A
\ \ \ Ji.VL
V
•' * • » . .
.
^
1
/
/ *
N
f
.—
^
/
—» """
1875 1904
1885 1914
1895 1924
1905 19 3 4
1915 1944
1925 1954
1935 1964
1945 1974
Figure 6a MONTHLY PRECIPITATION COOLER MONTHS
1875 1904
1885 1914
1895 1924
1905 19 3 4
1915 1944
1925 954
1935 1964
1945 1974
Figure 6 b MONTHLY PRECIPITATION WARMER MONTHS
of drought occurred. Significantly drier years always occurred between these wet peaks.3 The fluctuations as seen on figure 5 would anticipate a period of reduced precipitation during the latter half of the 1970s. The present climatic trend in the Salt Lake City area seems to be toward slightly cooler and drier winters with slightly hotter and wetter summers and with an 11- to 13-year cyclical pattern in precipitation fluctuations. This would not appear to support grandfather's claim to colder and wetter winters in the past, but it does not deny the fact that certain past winters may indeed have been extremely cold or extremely wet. These conclusions, drawn from the Salt Lake City weather station data, seem to support the belief of many climatologists that world temperatures have been dropping during the present century but with a recent slight increase occurring.4 Whether the present trends continue only the future will reveal. 3 See "What's Happening to O u r Climate," by Samuel W. Matdiews, National Geographic, November 1976, pp. 576-615. Note the remarkable similarities in precipitation fluctuation between Salt Lake City and the Corn Belt region of the American Midwest as charted on page 598 of Matthews's article. 4 Note the graphs on page 614 of Matthews's article which indicate a cooling trend between 1918 and 1962 with the years since 1962 demonstrating critical fluctuations. Also compare Matthews's graph for the 1960s with figure 3.
Drawing
from
the Utah
State
Historical
Society
collections.
The Finest of Fabrics: Mormon Women and the Silk Industry in Early Utah BY C H R I S RIGBY
ARRINGTON
\ y HEN ZINA D. H. YOUNG LOOKED at worms she felt a horror that came, in part, from a birthmark in the palm of her hand shaped like a curled-up worm. Considering this fear, it was one of the ironies of her life that she should be called by Brigham Young to be handmaiden to millions of silkworms, the fundamental basis of the silk industry in Utah. She accepted the call but felt revulsion each time she faced the wriggling hordes. After a day of handling the worms, her sleep was troubled with nightmares, and it was only with the firmest resolve that she could force herself each day to work with them again.1 A prominent leader among Mormon women in early Utah, Zina was not alone. Women who carried the burden of the silk industry found that Ms. Arrington, a writer, lives in New York City. She is grateful to Janet Daines Stowell and Leonard J. Arrington for tbeir assistance. 1 K a t e B. Carter, comp., "Silk Industry in U t a h , " Heart Throbs of the West, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City: Daughters of U t a h Pioneers, 1 9 3 9 - 5 1 ) , 11:84.
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there were many unpleasant things about it. Although the work was menial, time-consuming, and not a financial success, the silk industry was kept alive for about a half-century (1855 to 1905) by church leaders who wanted to develop home industries and by dedicated, ingenious women. Economic records of the industry are sparse; therefore, it is impossible to determine costs and revenues. A reliable paying market outside the Great Basin was never found. Some sales were made within the region and, intermittently, in California and the East; but the occurrence of these sales rose and fell dramatically. In 1886, before the industry's last big push, Gov. Caleb West reported to the secretary of the interior that an estimated 17,000 pounds of cocoons had been raised in Utah and sold for an average of one dollar per pound. West said, "a large percent of these have been reeled and worked up at home, the residue have been shipped east and west, almost invariably, I understand, at a loss to the producers." 2 Besides the major problem of having no steady, paying market, the silk industry in Utah was hampered by the difficulty of getting machinery to manufacture silk thread and cloth. Although several factories did make thread, handkerchiefs, and cloth at different times, none was financially successful enough to last. Coupled with a lack of machinery was a lack of skilled workers. A few European immigrants brought with them the knowledge of how to reel silk into thread, and the LDS Relief Society organized these veterans to teach the skills to others. The new students could not practice their trade without machines, however, and the skills were soon forgotten. Sericulture in early Utah, then, consisted mainly of the raising of silkworms in the home until the cocoons were spun. Although the silk industry was a financial failure, it was a phenomenon nonetheless. Several hundred acres of mulberry trees whose leaves fed the silkworms were planted in Utah, and families from Logan to St. George raised silkworms. According to one report, 28,000 pounds of cocoons were produced during the entire silk-producing period in Utah. 3 Silk was one of a series of home industries—launched to establish a diversified economy—that included breweries, tobacco growing, cotton growing, lace making, and the making of straw hats. These enterprises were an essential part of the cooperative economy the Mormons sought to establish in their promised land. More a necessity than a whim, home 2 3
p . 42.
Deseret News, October 20, 1886. H . L. A. Culmer, comp., Resources
and Attractions
of Utah . . . (Salt Lake City, 1894),
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industry was meant to keep money in U t a h rather than have it spent for costly imports from thousands of miles away. For their part in these industries, women acted out an age-old female role that placed them at the very center of the local economic structure. The household unit in society through the first millennium A.D. was responsible for about 90 percent of the total production of the city-states and empires. If we define as household production all that is produced inside and adjacent to the home, including courtyard and kitchen garden, family workshop and farm fields . . . then we may say that women have at the very least been equal partners in production through most of history.4
In Utah's silk industry women returned to a production role in home or cottage industry that was more characteristic of Europe and Asia than of contemporary America. U n d e r the aegis of the Relief Society, women organized themselves for this work. T h e U t a h silk industry had its roots in the silk mania of the eastern and midwestern states contemporary with the early years of Mormonism. Indeed, a silk boom of considerable popularity occurred during the 1830s, particularly in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois where many Mormons were settled. 5 T h e r e was a general revival of interest in growing silk while the Mormons were in Illinois in the 1840s. New England and New York, from which the largest share of early Mormons were recruited, were the centers in this revival. T h e Mormons left for U t a h just about the time that New Englanders were tiring of the silkworm's voracious appetite. T h e roots of the U t a h silk industry can also be found in the Mormon belief in self-sufficiency: ". . . let all thy garments be plain, and their beauty the beauty of the work of thine own hands." 6 Eliza R. Snow remembered hearing Joseph Smith say "that the time would come when the people would come to Zion to buy the finest of fabrics." 7 PLANTING T H E
SEEDS
I n Brigham Young's first speech in the Salt Lake Valley he declared, " T h e r e is silk in these elements." 8 Soon he was instructing companies 4
Elise Boulding, The Underside of History (Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1976), p. 9. See Arthur H. Cole, "Agricultural Crazes," American Economic Review 16 ( 1 9 2 6 ) : 622-39. T h e literature on the history of the silk industry in America includes L. P. Brockett, The Silk Industry in America (New York, 1 8 9 6 ) ; William C. Wyckoff, American Silk Manufacture (New York, 1887) ; Robert Rice, "Morus Multicaulis, or Silkworms Must Eat," Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly 45 ( 1 9 3 6 ) : 2 6 6 - 7 2 ; Elizabeth Hawes Ryland, "America's Multicaulis Mania," William and Mary College Quarterly Historical Magazine 19 ( 1 9 3 9 ) : 2 5 - 3 3 ; and Sidney Glazer, " T h e Early Silk Industry in Michigan," Agricultural History 18 ( 1 9 4 4 ) : 92-96. "Doctrine and Covenants, 4 2 : 4 0 . ''Deseret News, August 1, 1876. 8 Woman's Exponent, April 15, 1889; George D. Pyper, " T h e Story of a Silkworm," Improvement Era, November 1935, p. 666. 5
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migrating to Utah to bring mulberry seeds and silkworms. Several immigrants who had had experience with the industry did so, among them two from England, Elizabeth and Thomas Whittaker. In the late 1850s Thomas bought silkworm eggs in London and transported them to his new home in Centerville, Davis County, Utah. Although his crop of worms failed several times, he kept sending for more until he succeeded. He advertised in the Deseret News on June 4, 1862, that he had raised 1,400 healthy silkworms and would be glad to give some to anyone interested in raising them. Nancy Barrows of Ogden brought mulberry seeds and silkworms with her from the East in 1858. A year later she reeled silk and made the first dress out of Utah silk. Susannah Cardon and her husband, Paul, became involved in sericulture shortly after arriving in Cache Valley in 1860. Both had participated in the silk industry in their native Italy. They sent to France for mulberry seeds, and when the trees were high enough to produce leaves they sent for silkworms. Susannah became known later as the best silk-reeler in the territory. Octave Ursenbach and his wife, a one-time lacemaker for Queen Victoria, brought with them from Switzerland an interest in the silk industry. In 1861 they ordered half an ounce of eggs and a manual from a Parisian silk fancier—also a Mormon convert—named Louis Bertrand.10 Bertrand sent the manual in 1861 and the eggs in 1862. By 1863 the Ursenbachs were able to exhibit in Salt Lake City a basket of 3,000 cocoons and silkworms they had produced in one year from some two dozen worms. To establish the industry on a churchwide basis, groves of mulberry trees were needed. Brigham Young instructed George Q. Cannon of the European Mission to have Louis Bertrand send six or seven pounds of mulberry seed.11 The seed, which was probably purchased with monies of the Perpetual Emigration Fund, arrived in Utah with the emigration of 1865 and was planted on Young's experimental Forest Farm. Within a few years some fifty acres of mulberry trees had been planted in Salt Lake City and other towns. From his farm, Young gave free mulberry cuttings to anyone who wanted them. He spread the word about silk through Utah communities during an 1865 presidential tour, and he 9
Deseret News, June 4, 1862. Deseret News, December 7, 1868. 11 Ibid. 10
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personally directed the transplanting of about 100,000 mulberry trees by the spring of 1868.12 T H E LIFE AND DEATH OF A SILKWORM
The process of raising silkworms begins with hatching silkworm eggs. The worms then go through four moultings, between each of which they eat increasing quantities of mulberry leaves. Worms hatched from one ounce of eggs require three-fourths of a pound of fresh, chopped, dried mulberry leaves four times on the first day. By the last stage the same worms require eight daily feedings of one hundred and twenty pounds each. Room temperatures are supposed to be strictly controlled during these stages.13 After four moultings, the worms climb up sticks provided for them and spin cocoons of floss, silk, and gum. If allowed to live inside the cocoon, the larva emerges as a moth, ruining the cocoon in the process of getting out. To make silk, the larva is steamed or baked to death inside the cocoon. As it is steamed, the moth hums until dead. The cocoons are set out to dry for two months, after which they are said to last indefinitely. The next step, reeling, involves dropping cocoons into hot water to wash off the glue. The cocoons are then beaten with a small broom to loosen the ends of threads. The reeler gathers five or six lines together and threads them through an eye on the reeling machine. The machine pulls them through the eye, twisting as it goes. A good cocoon has lines a thousand feet long, and as one line plays out, another is added. Toward the end of the line, it becomes thinner, and the reeler has to know the precise moment to introduce a new line to make the final product uniform, rounded, and without knots.14 The thread is then woven into silk on a machine, warp and woof fashion. Sometimes the thread is bleached before being woven into cloth. The problems of raising silkworms in early Utah were many. The first was space. One sericulture handbook of the day proposed that the novice set aside a room 54 feet long, 22 feet wide, and 10 feet high in which to raise twelve ounces of eggs. The room should not be full of windows but "well-ventilated at the sides, near the bottom, and [have] a ventilator on the top."15 The second problem was temperature control. " C a r t e r , "Silk Industry in U t a h , " p. 5 3 : Journal History of the Church, March 30, 1868, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City. " D a n i e l Graves, A Treatise on Sericulture (Salt Lake City, 1880), pp. 35-36. " C h a r l e s V. Riley, " T h e Silkworm," in Department of Agriculture Special Report No 11 (Washington, D . C , 1879), pp. 24-25. 35 Graves, A Treatise, pp. 23-24.
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One handbook indicated that for hatching silkworm eggs a temperature of 63° or 64°F. "should be carefully maintained for two consecutive days, and on the third increased to 66, fourth to 68, fifth to 70," and so on.16 Although local sericulturists surely did not measure so carefully, eggs did hatch in Zion. Another difficulty was feeding. Leaves were supposed to be chopped into squares of between one-eighth and one-sixteenth of an inch. The leaves had to be dry, since morning dew was thought to cause disease. Age was also a factor, with young leaves thought to be best. Finally, sericulturists were warned to be sure their worms did not see lightning. If a storm approached, they were advised to hang black cloth over the windows. The shocking light was thought to harm the worms by stunting their growth.17 One faithful soul, Priscilla Jacobs of the Logan Fifth Ward, encountered some difficulties of her own. She threw herself into the work, starting by taking beds out of her new two-room house and moving out to the granary so she could fill her house with worms. She read that Oriental people warmed their eggs before hatching them by wearing them in a sack around their necks and sleeping with them under the pillow. So on Sunday she went to worship service in the Logan Tabernacle with her eggs around her neck. In the middle of the meeting, to her dismay, she felt the worms beginning to hatch. She ran out and hurried home to attend to her wriggling babies.1S Another woman, Helen Gould, wrote a poem called "The Silk Worm's Will" about difficulties from the worm's point of view. No doubt inspired by hours of chopping mulberry leaves into one-eighth-inch squares, she portrayed a worm of heroic proportions. O n a plain rush hurdle a silk w o r m lay, W h e n a proud young princess came that way; T h e haughty child of a h u m a n king T h r e w a sidelong glance at the humble thing, T h a t took with a silent gratitude From the mulberry leaf—her simple food— And shrank with half scorn and half disgust Away from her sister, child of dust; With m u t e forbearance the silk-worm took T h e taunting words and the spurning look;
19
Carter, "Silk Industry in Utah," p. 72. Ibid. 18 Ibid., pp. 80-81.
17
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And thus did she lay a noble plan. T o teach her wisdom and make it plain. T h a t the humble worm was not m a d e in vain ; A plan so generous so deep and high, T h a t to carry it out she must even die. " N o more," she said "will I drink or eat! I'll spin and weave me a winding sheet, T o w r a p me u p from the sun's clear light, And to hide my form from that wounded sight. W h e n she finds, at length, she has nerve so firm. As to wear the shroud of a 'crawling worm,' M a y she bear in mind that she walks with pride I n the winding sheet where the silk worm died." 1 9 S I L K A S S I G N E D TO T H E W O M E N
During the middle 1860s, when U t a h was attracting many European immigrants, official Mormon interest in sericulture grew. Utah's population increased from 11,380 in 1850 to 40,273 in 1860 and to 86,786 in 1870.20 Sericulture was seen as possible employment for women, children, the aged, the handicapped, and the uneducated. George Q. Cannon called these people "a class of labor with which we are likely to be well supplied." 21 Moreover, at the same time an irregular market for silkworm eggs and cocoons raised in U t a h could be found in Europe, which was experiencing widespread deaths of silkworms because of the disease pebrine. T h a t market dried up in 1875 when Louis Pasteur conquered the disease through improved selection of eggs. At any rate, Brigham Young urged his people to take up sericulture. In 1868 he sponsored a series of lectures on the subject in the School of the Prophets, an education system for selected church leaders, and at the April conference of 1868 he assigned the carrying forth of sericulture to the women of the LDS Relief Society. "If I cannot succeed in getting the sisters with their children to attend to this business," he said, " I shall be under the necessity of sending to China for Chinamen to come here and raise silk for us, which I do not wish to do." 22 In a contemporary publication, the United States Department of Agriculture reported that silk work was especially suited to women "who may have no other means of profitably employing their time." Moreover, women should do the work, because "reeling demands an acute and gentle 19
Woman's Exponent, June 15, 1877. U.S., Department of the Interior, Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United Taken in the Year 1900, vol. 1 (Washington, D . C , 1901), pp. xxii-xxiii. 21 Deseret News, March 25, 1868. "Deseret News, May 13, 1868. 20
States,
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touch found only in the hands of women.""1 The Deseret News added that a silk dress was "the desire of the heart of every woman" and would "provide the pioneer mothers with some of the finery that women by nature love."24 On a more practical level, the Woman's Exponent saw the work as a way for women to add a few dollars to their budgets. "From the breeding and sale of the eggs alone," one article said, "a handsome income can be secured with little trouble and less outlay."25 From another viewpoint, the silk industry was assigned to Mormon women because of their ability to carry out a difficult assignment. In the Relief Society the women had an organization that covered all the Mormon settlements. In the 1870s that organization was put to good use in partnership with the Deseret Silk Association. Zina Young was president of both the Relief Society and the Deseret Silk Association. Stake Relief Society presidents became county chairmen, and ward presidents who reported to them acted as local directors.26 The silk industry provided an opportunity for women to develop leadership skills and to demonstrate their perseverance. They held meetings to organize; they publicized their efforts; they traveled to various fairs to show their work. Among the many speeches they gave on sericulture was one given by Zina D. H. Young in October 1879.27 This appears to be the first talk given by a woman in the male-dominated Mormon General Conference. Ever praising their work in the silk industry, Brigham Young asked one woman wearing a silk dress to stand up at a meeting. He observed that she had made the dress herself and congratulated her on it.28 On another occasion, Joseph F. Smith said of the silk ribbons and shawls he saw at April conference, "This is as it should be—the beauty of the work of their own hands."29 Newspapers throughout the territory heralded the new industry, and when Brigham Young started on a trip to southern Utah, he was greeted at Spanish Fork by a group of people carrying a large banner inscribed, 23
Riley, " T h e Silkworm," p. 8; Culmer, Resources, p. 43. Deseret News, April 13, 1877. 25 Woman's Exponent, June 15, 1872. 29 Box Elder County Daughters of Utah Pioneers, History of Box Elder County, 1937 (n.p., n . d . ) , p. 73. 27 Deseret News, October 7, 1879. ^ M i l t o n R. Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak: A History of Weber County 1900 (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1945), p. 333. 29 Deseret News, April 8, 1879. 24
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1824-
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The silk factory at the mouth of City Creek Canyon used machinery, for silk manufacture, from the existing saw mill. Artist is Ed Deakin. Utah State Historical Society collections.
"Spanish Fork Silk." The letters were formed of cocoons and the border of raw silk.30 In 1868 Brigham Young ordered a cocoonery to be built on Forest Farm where his first mulberry trees had been planted. Completed on November 20, 1868, the cocoonery was 20 feet wide, 100 feet long, and 10 feet high, with a capacity for over 2,000,000 wrorms.31 Zina D. H. Young directed the work at the cocoonery the first year and was judged to have been "comparatively very successful."32 Louis Bertrand, who had immigrated to Salt Lake, ran the cocoonery in 1870. Though he filled the building with 800,000 worms, covering 62 hurdles and requiring 30 bushels of leaves per day, Bertrand, "through mismanagement, made a failure," and was thereafter referred to as "a questionable expert in the silk line."33 30
Deseret News, September 19, 1868. Smith to Carrington, November 4, 1868, and Young to Carrington, November 18, 11 both in Journal History; Deseret News, December 7, 1868. 32 George D. Pyper in the Contributor 2 (1881) : 115. 33 Ibid.; Salt Lake Herald, June 25, 1870. 31
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A Kentuckian named Wimmer took over the cocoonery after Bertrand's failure. He ran the operation for two years, "failing each year, and almost killing the enthusiasm—what little there was left—on the subject."34 Wimmer was also released, and the cocoonery was empty in 1874 because of the failures. The difficulties were thought to have resulted, in part, from the dampness around the cocoonery and from the fact that the building was made of adobe.35 Brigham Young momentarily lost interest in sericulture and advertised to give away his eggs and mulberry leaves.36 Then he turned his attention to a small cocoonery he had ordered built behind the Beehive House, near the Eagle Gate. George D. Pyper wrote about working at that small cocoonery. Along with five girls of the Young household, he spent thirty-five days in constant attendance upon the worms inside. He and the girls were able to raise "many pounds of first-class cocoons, and sixty-four ounces of the best silk worm eggs."37 The big cocoonery was reopened again in 1875 under Ann Dunyon. From eighteen ounces of eggs, she obtained almost 400,000 worms. She reeled some of the silk herself. At the end of the season, she told the Deseret News that silk raising was more successful on a small scale than in a big cocoonery. Brigham Young agreed and urged others to continue their efforts within their own homes.3S The small cocoonery remained in operation as a center for egg production until Brigham Young's death in 1877. It was then used as a silk experiment station and a center for information for another ten years. The building was pulled down in 1921.30 A reliable cash market for Utah's silk still had not developed and in hopes of finding one, George Watt sent samples of raw silk to two Mormon missionaries in the East. They showed it to silk merchants who pronounced it "very good but rather coarse."4" Nevertheless, little more is said about that possible market. In another attempt to find a cash market, Louis Bertrand sent eggs to a fancier in France who offered to pay gold for them. Bertrand was never able to get payment for the eggs, and other similar ventures usually failed. 34
Pyper in the Contributor, p. 115. Ibid. ;>G Woman's Exponent, June 1, 1874. '-"Deseret News, July 3, 1875. 38 Deseret News, August 17, 1875. 39 Deseret News, March 19, 1921. *" Deseret News, M a r c h 4, 1870.
35
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Along with the work in Salt Lake City, silkworms were being raised by Mormon women in Cache County, Fillmore, Gunnison, Mill Creek, Nevada City, Ogden, Pine Canyon, St. George, Santa Clara, Spanish Fork, and various other settlements.41 For several years, Spanish Fork was one of the leading centers of silk production in Utah outside of Salt Lake City. The first eggs hatched in Spanish Fork were brought from England by Bishop A. K. Thurber. By July 1870 a cooperative society was set up there, with shares sold at ten dollars each. Some twenty families (women and children) produced sixty ounces of eggs that year. These were valued at three hundred dollars, and a market was found for them in California. During the 1870 season, about fifty families in Spanish Fork engaged in silk culture, "nearly all with good success." The number of worms raised by each family varied from 1,000 to 40,000. To encourage this group, Brigham Young purchased thirty-two ounces of their eggs late in 1871. The Spanish Fork Relief Society made gloves, stockings, sewing silk, and other products out of this silk. Considerable pride was taken in their exhibits at the territorial fairs.42 The silk industry began in St. George and some nearby southern Utah communities in 1869 when a notice in the manuscript paper, Cactus, said, "Cuttings can be had at Salt Lake City, and Brother J. E. Johnson has a fine lot of mulberry seed for sale." Caroline Jackson planted a grove of mulberry trees in St. George, and others followed her example. Ultimately the production of silk proved less profitable than other commodities, however, and the silk industry limped along in southern Utah until it died in the state generally, just after the turn of the century.43 The people of Ogden were introduced to the idea of raising silk in 1869 when women were advised to set aside land for raising mulberry trees. A committee was named to further the industry, but at that point only a few citizens responded by raising silkworms on their own land.44 In Mill Creek Ward, southeast of Salt Lake City, a remarkable success was enjoyed by Margaret White in 1875. She went to Brigham Young's cocoonery where she was given some free eggs and lessons on silk raising once a week. With her eleven-year-old daughter to feed the 41
Deseret News, October 17, 1870, August 12, 1871. Deseret News, July 28, November 25, 1870, August 12, 1871; Salt Lake Herald, Tune 25, 1872. "Cactus, February 6, 1869; Andrew Karl Larson, "Agricultural Pioneering in the Virgin River Basin" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1946), pp. 187-88. 44 Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak, p. 331. 42
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worms, she raised more than 10,000 worms which spun thirty pounds of cocoons. 45 THE
D E S E R E T S I L K ASSOCIATION
T h e responsibility of the Relief Society for the silk industry was reemphasized in 1875 when Brigham Young again gave Zina D. H . Young the mission of forwarding the silk industry among the women. She began extensive canvassing, criss-crossing the territory to teach the proper method of feeding and caring for silkworms. After several suggestions were made in the Deseret News, an official silk association was formed in J u n e 1875. T h e Deseret Silk Association h a d as its object " t h e diffusion of information on the subject," and "encouraging the raising of cocoons and the reeling of silk here, instead of merely producing and exporting the eggs." Elected officers of the new organization were Zina D. H . Young, president; Anson Call, first vice-president; Mary J. H o m e , second vicepresident; Lelia Tuckett, secretary; M a r y Carter, corresponding secretary; Paul A. Schettler, treasurer; and Alexander C. Pyper, superintendent. Although some of the officers were men, the membership consisted almost solely of women. T h e association began to gather statistics on the silk business in the territory and to acquire machinery. O n e old loom was purchased for a hundred dollars and put in working order. 46 In the meantime, the Relief Society organized silk projects in nearly every one of its one hundred fifty local organizations. 47 As described in the Woman's Exponent, the presidents of every Relief Society unit were solicited to act as agents for this Association, to solicit donations from the brethren a n d sisters in their respective districts; and as Miss Eliza R. Snow is c h a i r m a n of this committee, please forward all donations to her address, Lion House. 4 8
While the Relief Society carried on its projects, the Deseret Silk Association began working to solve some of t h e industry's problems. In February 1876 the association announced it was prepared to buy cocoons for two dollars a pound with money earned from stock sales.49 Some twenty-five dollars of the stock money was used to buy a reel on which Susannah Cardon of Logan successfully reeled silk.50 In June, silk was "Deseret News, July 31, 1875. 46 Deseret News, May 25, June 14, July 7, December 1, 1875. 47 Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-Day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: H a r v a r d University Press, 1958), p. 254. 4S Woman's Exponent, September 15, 1876. 49 Deseret News, February 15, 1876. Alexander C. Pyper said the market prices for silk in early 1876 were: eggs, $4 per ounce with 20,000 eggs per ounce; cocoons, $2 per p o u n d ; and reeled silk, $9 to $10 per pound. Woman's Exponent, January 1876. w Deseret News, November 13, 1876.
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successfully reeled and twisted by machinery at the old beet sugar factory in the Sugarhouse Ward, and two months later, Zina Young received from England the model of a ribbon-weaving loom and prepared to make a full-sized version of it.51 Under the auspices of the assocation, Utah women sent a silk display to the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia, and they made an elegant silk fringe to ornament the new St. George Temple.52 Zina Young's silk campaign throughout the territory paid off. Some 5,000,000 silkworms spun cocoons in Utah in 1877, twice as many as in 1876.53 Though Zina devoted hours and hours to silk culture, she wrote to Brigham Young's son Willard that she was not going to let it control her: "I wish the Silk business success but do not intend overdoing for it. The soles [souls] of the children of men are of the greatest importance." 54 The Deseret Silk Association continued to organize new branches, and its ribbon loom was completed and put to work early in the spring of 1878. In August, Zina announced that all silk raisers should send her the season's silk, and the Association would arrange to have it reeled.55 Each ward was instructed to send one representative to Salt Lake City to learn to reel silk. That person would return home and train one other person. During this vigorous period, silk products were being made successfully in Utah. Delinda Robinson of Farmington raised and reeled a "fine specimen" of homemade silk, and Mrs. Dunyon exhibited thirty-six skeins of reeled silk produced at Brigham Young's cocoonery. Silk laces, veils, handkerchiefs, and scarves were worn and carried at the 1877 LDS General Conference. These items were sold at the Woman's Commission House along with sewing silk and floss. Grace Wignall of Payson made a pair of silk gloves, a pair of mittens, a veil, two neckties, and some skeins of spun silk in white, black, blue, purple, maroon, and straw color.56 A dress made of Utah silk was completed in April 1877. Silver gray in color, it was spun and woven in Farmington by Nancy A. Clark who donated this forty-five-dollar dress to the fund for building the Salt Lake Temple. It was purchased by a Mrs. Barrett who gave it to Eliza R. Snow, "Deseret News, June 9, August 23, 1876. Woman's Exponent, April 15, 1877. 53 Deseret News, July 10, 1877. 54 Zina D. H. Young to Willard Young, December 23, 1875, in Zina Card Brown Collection, box 2, folder 8, LDS Archives. 55 Deseret News, August 22, 1878. M Deseret News, December 1, 1875, January 24, 1876, April 12, 1878; Woman's Exponent, J u n e 15, 1877. 52
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Women and girls in the late 1800s engaged in silk manufacture in the St. George area. Utah State Historical Society collections.
general president of the Relief Society. Miss Snow wore the dress on many social occasions. It was one of a small number of silk dresses made in Utah.57 Problems came along with successes. For example, during the summer of 1877 grasshoppers made a raid on Paul Schettler's 4,000 mulberry trees "and completely denuded the branches of their foliage."58 During the existence of the Deseret Silk Association, many Utah women tried sericulture for the first time. In southern Utah, Ann Cannon Woodbury learned about silk in 1875 and "entered into it with my whole soul, determined to make a success of it."59 When two girls came down from Salt Lake City to teach silk reeling, Ann invited them to stay with her and teach her the art. Thereafter, she worked in silk for twenty-five years. Her house and barn were frequently filled with the worms. Although problems were not unusual, Ann had a unique difficulty one season: 5 ' Deseret News, April 13, 1877. Silk dresses were by no means common in U t a h , even during the most successful period of the silk industry. Only two others were discovered during this research, one made by Jane Wilkie Hooper Blood from her first group of cocoons and one woven by Margaret Cullen Geddes Eccles for herself. Although there were certainly others, the dresses were rare. 58 Deseret News, July 11, 1877. M Beatrice Cannon Evans and Janath Russell Cannon, eds., Cannon Family Historical Treasury (Salt Lake City: George Cannon Family Association, 1967), p. 181.
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We had 200 yards of silk woven: 100 yards by Sister Chidester and the other 100 by a m a n named Hoff. H e m a d e pretty good at first, but I went away for my health and he changed and filled it [the weaving machine] four times the amount it ought to have been filled. T h e reason he m a d e it coarse he said, was because a m a n wanted a suit to wear in the Temple. H e said he would destroy it if I compelled him to change. H e got all my machinery for weaving it.GI)
When Ann's daughter Eleanor had a baby, a neighbor convinced Eleanor to take a few small worms on a mulberry leaf into her little house. Eleanor did and was surprised when they soon required a square yard of her limited space. Her husband suggested in exasperation that she feed the worms to the chickens.61 As a girt in Farmington, Annie Clark Tanner, author of A Mormon Mother, frequently went with other young people to pick mulberry leaves. At first she thought it was a picnic, but soon she realized it was hard work, especially climbing the trees. She wrote, "How we scrambled for the easy job to pick from fallen branches." Even though there was a loom in Farmington, Annie never received the silk dress she wanted for that hard summer's work. She did, however, use some dyed silk skeins for art work. "These we put in suitable frames," she wrote, "so for years the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and 'God Bless our Home' were ever before us."62 When the Ogden Relief Society took a survey to find out wrho would join in the work, they discovered that Mariana Combe Beus, an Italian immigrant, already had an acre of mulberry trees, kept worms, had knit silk Stockings, and had nearly enough silk to weave two silk dresses. Jane S. Richards, president of the Ogden Relief Society, looked at silkworms for the first time and said she would rather wear cotton than handle the worms and wear silk. She overcame those feelings, however, and soon had a thousand worms living with her in her home.63 Another Ogden woman, Louise Harris, was surprised at how much space the growing worms could occupy. W e hardly had rooms to sleep in and very little time for sleep as they had ravenous appetites, eating continuously for the whole six weeks of their existence. They were fed the last thing at night, which would be about 11 or 12 o'clock, and at daylight in the morning. T h e mulberry trees were 00
Ibid., pp. 181-82. Carter, "Silk Industry in U t a h , " p. 91. *'- Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1973), p. 40. 63 Hunter, Beneath Ben Lomond's Peak, p. 332. 61
by Annie
Clark
Tanner
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almost stripped of leaves and small branches by the time they were ready to spin.64
Many mulberry trees were planted on Ogden streets during this period. Later, when their ripe sticky fruit fell on the sidewalks, some of them were cut down.65 T H E UTAH SILK ASSOCIATION
The Deseret Silk Association apparently was not as stable an organization as some wished. When an application for money to buy machinery was made to the territorial legislature through the Deseret Silk Association, it was turned down. Upon the urging of Eliza R. Snow, John Taylor decided to authorize the formation of a new organization.66 The Utah Silk Association was incorporated with capital stock of $10,000 on January 17, 1880. Its stated purpose was "to encourage silk culture in Utah by disseminating information, distributing silkworm eggs, and acting as a central board for the sale of cocoons and the manufacture of silk." Many local Relief Societies bought shares of stock at ten dollars each.67 Officers elected were William Jennings, president; Eliza R. Snow, vice-president; A. M. Musser, secretary; and Paul A. Schettler, treasurer. Again, there were male officers, although, in this case, men were not permitted to be members. The exclusion of males from membership was in keeping wdth the view that sericulture was the responsibility of women. Almost immediately the legislature appropriated $1,500 to help the association buy machinery. The water-powered equipment could reel silk into any strength or thickness and mix silk with cotton in any proportion.68 The new machinery was installed in a factory completed in August 1880 at the mouth of City Creek Canyon. Many, if not most, of the factory workers were women. Even this mechanization could not make the industry thrive. The City Creek factory operated for ten years and experienced some success, selling a considerable amount of reeled silk and various silk fabrics. Several other silk factories were also in operation in Salt Lake City in the 1880s. In 1890 the City Creek factory closed. Two years later it had reportedly become a "rendezvous for thieves and hard characters," and the city council ordered it demolished.69 04
Ibid., p. 335. Ibid., p. 334. 86 Woman's Exponent, January 25, 1878. 07 Carter, "Silk Industry in U t a h , " p. 60. Deseret News, January 17, 1880; U t a h Silk Association Stock Book, LDS Archives. <* Deseret News, February 6, 1880; Salt Lake Herald, August 22, 1880. 89 Deseret News, March 8, 30, 1892. 63
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Despite problems, U t a h sericulture in the early 1880s was fairly healthy. A census taken in 1882 by Daniel Graves found 45,727 mulberry trees growing in the territory, eighty-two people engaged in raising silk, 397 pounds of cocoons raised that year (not counting Salt Lake City), four ounces of eggs produced, and twenty ounces of eggs for sale. Graves said his count was not totally accurate, since not everyone h a d reported. H e thought there were twice as many mulberry trees in the territory as reported. 70 Gov. Caleb West reported to the secretary of the interior in 1886 that a hundred acres of mulberry trees were growing in U t a h and that seven silk looms were at work in the city. In 1887 Governor West reported that $1,000 was invested in the U t a h silk industry, that ten workers were employed, that ten looms were in operation, and that $5,000 worth of goods had been produced that year. His report did not include work being done in private homes. However, in 1889 the Ogden Standard reported, " T h e cultivators of the silk worm seem to have fallen off considerably during the past three years. A few years ago nearly every family in town h a d their mulberry trees and their cocoon spinners." Daniel Graves said machinery was lying idle and the industry was "almost at a stand still." 71 T h e next real revival of silk activity was in 1896. UTAH
SILK
REACHES
OUTSIDERS
Although the U t a h silk industry basically lived and died inside the Great Basin, its existence was made known to outsiders in several interesting exchanges in the 1880s and 1890s. I n 1880 President Rutherford B. Hayes and his wdfe visited Utah. Mrs. Hayes was presented with an elegant white collarette made of U t a h silk by Relief Society members. In M a y 1895 the U t a h Silk Association presented a silk gown to Susan B. Anthony for her eightieth birthday when she presided at the Intermountain Woman's Suffrage Convention in Salt Lake City. Ms. Anthony congratulated the women on their efforts in silk culture and said the dress was "made by women, too, who stand on a plane of perfect equality of political rights and privileges with the men of their state." 72 This was in reference to U t a h women having the vote. T h e most dramatic contact of Utah silk with the outside world occurred at the World's Fair of 1892. T h e Deseret News reported that the U t a h silk exhibit 70
Deseret News, 1 Deseret News, ''Deseret February ary 14, 1888. 'â&#x20AC;˘Deseret News,
May 11, 188? October 20, < 1886; Ogden Standard,
September 2 1 , 1889; Utah
September 7, 1880; Carter, "Silk Industry in U t a h , " p. 90.
Enaui
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was one of the features that attracted the greatest attention from visitors . . . . It was no easy task to make a creditable showing of an industry now but little attended to, if at all, but at least a number of U t a h m a d e silk dresses, shawls, scarfs, fringes, sewing silk and twists, as well as reeled silk and cocoons, were collected. A U t a h w o m a n was also engaged to reel and another to weave, using the primitive machinery of the early days of the Territory. . . . 73
One of the women who worked at the exhibit was Elise T. Forsgren of Brigham City. She was called by the LDS General Authorities on a four-month mission to the World's Fair, and she won a gold medal for the state for her reeling. T h e exhibit included a United States flag made from silk grown and woven in Provo. Also shown were a pair of silk portieres embroidered with a sego lily, the floral emblem of U t a h . T h e women of Davis County contributed seven pieces of furniture for the ladies' reception room in the U t a h building. T h e pieces were upholstered in sage green home-made silk brocaded with wild sage. T h e tops of the windows in the reception room were "festooned very artistically with cocoons." 74 T h e U t a h silk exhibit received medals and diplomas from the W'orld's Fair departments of manufacture and agriculture. T h e Woman's Exponent reported that the exhibit was received with surprise, since no one suspected so much silk was being raised in Utah. As a result of the fair, Emmeline B. Wells was asked to speak on sericulture to the National Council of Women. U t a h silk was also exhibited at the territorial fair in October 1894 and at the cotton exposition of 1895 in Atlanta, Georgia. 75 THE
U T A H SILK COMMISSION
T h e U t a h Silk Commission was established in 1896. Zina D. H . Young was elected as the commission's president, with the following people as members: Isabella E. Bennett, Margaret A. Caine, Ann C. Woodbury, and Mary A. Cazier. At the same time, "An Act for the Establishment of Sericulture" was passed by the state legislature. T h e main feature of the act was a bonus of twenty-five cents per pound for cocoons produced in the state. Because bounty payments to individuals and organizations might reach as much as $2,000 per year, production once more began in earnest. Reeling classes were held, more mulberry trees were planted, and the incorporation of local silk associations was renewed. 73
Deseret News, June 9, 1892. Carter, "Silk Industry in Utah," pp. 80, 88; Culmer, Resources. "'Woman's Exponent, February 1, 15, 1894; Deseret News, July 21, 1894, January 12,
74
1895.
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Many silk items were produced, including clothing used in Mormon temple ceremonies.76 While more non-Mormons were moving into the state by this time, sericulture was still tied to the Mormon church. This is demonstrated in the bylaws of the Willard Co-operative Sera-culture Society: Article 2. T h a t no person be admitted a member of this Society except they are in full fellowship in the [Mormon] Church. Article 4. T h a t the tithing be paid before the dividend be m a d e . Article 5. T h a t any member being disfellowshipped from this branch of the C h u r c h forfeit the proceeds of their stock in said Society before the next annual dividend being m a d e after being disfellowshipped, except they be restored to fellowship. 77
In Ogden a survey of mulberry trees was conducted. People who wanted eggs were given them free by the state and urged to hatch them when the leaves would be budding. In Salt Lake City the Ladies Republican Club formed a class in sericulture, raised a hundred pounds of cocoons, and received $25 in bounty. They calculated that $482 of expenses in the silk industry would bring them $900.78 The Utah Silk Commission's state prize for the best silkworms in 1897 was awarded to Ellen M. Humphrey of Sevier County, who reported: I sent a floursack full of cocoons into Salt Lake. They sent m e $5.00 and two skeins of silk thread. It was a beautiful colorâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;deep gold. T h e remaining cocoons were returned. They have been given to children and teachers until I have just a few left. 79
The next year Margaret Caine organized an exhibit of $10,000 worth of Utah silk products for the Trans-Mississippi Exposition at Omaha. The following year she presented a paper on silk culture at the International Council of Women held in London.80 Sixteen-year-old Isabell C. Brunson of Millard County was one of the many persons who had disheartening experiences with sericulture. As a member of a family with fifteen children, she took up worm raising "expecting to earn enough money to supply my daily needs and eventually make myself independent. . . . earning a little for my very own was a glorious thought to me." sl She fed one thousand worms three times a "'"Deseret News, August 17, 1899; Carter, "Silk Industry in U t a h , " pp. 5 8 - 6 1 . ''â&#x20AC;˘ Box Elder D U P , History of Box Elder County, p. 77. T h e society was organized on March 18, 1896. 78 Deseret News, September 30, 1898. '9 Irvin L. Warnock, comp., Thru the Years: A Centennial History of Sevier County ([Richfield, U t . ] : Sevier County Centennial Committee, 1947), p. 384. 80 Deseret News, May 10, 31, 1899. 81 Carter, "Silk Industry in U t a h , " pp. 8 2 - 8 3 .
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day all summer, never varying by fifteen minutes from the proper feeding times: 6 A.M., 12 noon, and 6 P.M. Her efforts resulted in a fifty-pound flour sack filled with cocoons. Unable to find a market for her cocoons, she finally destroyed them. T h e worms were very ravenous and required m u c h time and effort on my p a r t to supply their needs, and 1 was very disappointed on receiving nothing for my labor. However, I always figured that it was a good experience for which I had fully paid and that my having had this task to perform had perhaps kept me out of mischief. 82
Under the bounty system, the cocoon crop did grow. In 1897 and 1898, 4,769 pounds of cocoons were raised. That figure rose to 7,493 pounds of cocoons in 1899 and 1900, a crop that would have been larger had it not been for a salt storm in Box Elder County that destroyed most of the crop near the last moult.83 The crop went down to 6,479 pounds in 1901-2. Again, the crop would have been larger, but an outbreak of smallpox occurred, requiring fumigation in many homes where worms were growing. In 1903-4, the crop grew to 8,647 pounds. So, the cocoon crop had nearly doubled in seven years. Bounty money was paid to persons in Box Elder, Cache, Davis, Emery, Grand, Kane, Salt Lake, Sanpete, Sevier, Tooele, Utah, Washington, Wayne, and Weber counties. Although the industry obviously made progress, the financial burden of the bounty was judged too heavy by the legislators and was discontinued in 1905. In several areas, such as Utah County, the industry struggled on even after the bounty stopped. Silkworms continued to spin in Utah County until 1906 when Stake President David John "proposed that the Silk Association be dissolved as silk could be more reasonably purchased from China and Japan and from the East."84 A dedicated few sericulturists around the state held on in pockets that died out one by one. A woman at Rockville, Utah, stood off workmen with a rifle to prevent them from cutting down the eight mulberry trees fronting her property when they were trying to widen the road to Zion's Canyon in 1904. Slowly the munching stopped, however, and rooms dedicated to silkworms and silk reeling were filled once again with beds and washstands.
63
Ibid., p. 83. Ibid., pp. 65-66. 81 Emma N. Huff, comp., Memories That Live: Utah County Centennial History ([Provo, Ut.]: Daughters of Utah Pioneers of Utah County, 1947), p. 138. 83
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CONCLUSION
T h e silk industry appears to have been a mixed blessing for Mormon women. They made little money at it and were burdened with the kind of menial work that so often fell to women. Yet, they demonstrated resourcefulness and perseverance in a task that they struggled with for forty-five years. They used their own organization, the Relief Society, effectively, and they found a strengthened sisterhood in their effort. Part of the answer to the decline of the silk industry lies in the encroachment of the outside world into the Great Basin. T h e railroad arrived in 1869, the end of cooperative economics was signaled in 1890, and Utah became a state in 1896. Subsequently, Mormonism's communitarian economy could not remain unchallenged and isolated as it had been before. T h e turn of the century brought U t a h closer to the rest of the United States, and that had an impact on the Mormon ability to maintain industries like sericulture. Travelers through Utah can still observe groves of mulberry trees and sidewalks covered with rotting sticky-sweet mulberries. Some mothers still make j a m or stew from the fruit, and some youngsters still get sick from eating too many of the berries. At conference time today, inevitably some Mormon women sit on the tabernacle benches dressed in silk dresses and blouses. They listen to the men speak, unaware of the nibbling worms that manufactured their silk and disturbed the dreams of sisters from another era.
John W. Carlson
Diamonds in the Dust: John W. Carlson's Alfalfa Seed Research BY VIRGINIA C. PARKER
as the rose is a prophecy familiar to Utahns. The Utah desert did blossom, but not with roses. The humble alfalfa plant, whose Arabic name means "horse fodder," helped to create prosperity for the agrarian settlers. As narrative history, the dramatic story of the successful research to produce alfalfa seed in Utah has been confined to scientific literature. Yet, the significance of this plant in the state's agricultural history warrants a broader appreciation and acknowledgment of the economic impact of alfalfa seed production in Utah. John WTilford Carlson devoted most of his working life to alfalfa seed. His interest began on a dark winter day in Sweden in 1917 when as a young man he visited the university at Lund. He determined in cold,
/ V N D THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM
Mrs. Parker, a daughter of John W. Carlson, lives in Oroville, California.
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hungry, wartime Sweden that he would return to school and devote his studies to the search for more dependable agricultural products. John Wilford was the first of twins born May 11, 1891, in Logan, Utah, to Anna Lundstrom Carlson and John August Carlson. His twin was named Carl Hyrum. They were the third and fourth of the ten children in the Carlson family. Their parents had met aboard the immigrant ship on their journey from Sweden and were married November 10, 1886. The couple settled on what is called the Island in Logan, near cousins and families they had known in Sweden. In a pasture in the bend of Logan River, the Carlsons kept milk cowrs and maintained a garden that sustained the family. When the twins were four years old, they became ill with scarlet fever. John was left with a partial deafness that greatly affected his life. His position as the eldest son in a Mormon family became somewhat diminished in favor of the younger, more outgoing, and unimpaired brother. They would remain separated by one year in school due to the difficulty John had learning to read. But overcoming his handicap and compensating for it, John developed the personality and scholarly traits that motivated him in his later life. His impaired hearing also gave him a privacy for thoughtful and undistracted study. From early childhood, John preferred the out-of-doors. He enjoyed working in the hayfields. He became an enthusiastic mountaineer, spending much of his free time hiking and exploring in the nearby mountains. In 1894 the family moved to Smithfield where the father took over the blacksmith shop, a trade he had learned in Sweden. The blacksmith shop was sold in 1907, and the family moved to Logan so the children could attend the Brigham Young College. At the BYC the twins followed different paths. Carl studied business, and John pursued a course in manual arts, becoming a skilled carpenter. He received his degree from the BYC in 1911. Though he preferred farming, he worked at his trade until 1916 when he, like his father before him, accepted a call to serve in the LDS Swedish Mission. While in Sweden, John was caught by the British blockade of the North Sea to prevent German ships and submarines from gaining access to the Atlantic. Cut off from assistance from his family, John survived the war in Sweden primarily through the charity of the Saints in the mission and cousins still living in Vingaker. To pass the long winter nights, the young man turned to the study of Swedish literature and history. He was very proficient in the language, having learned it before English, and
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began to experiment with translations of Swedish poetry into English. While on a visit to the university at Lund, he became most interested in the poet Esaias Tegner, who like his family, had come from Sddermanland. John was enchanted with Tegner's Frithiofs Saga, a story of Viking Sweden. In the last years of his life he would return to his translations of Tegner's poetry. During his stay in Lund, John made the decision to continue his formal education when he returned to Utah. In the Lund library he saw a manuscript inscription by Tegner that he remembered and quoted on many occassions: "True wisdom is like a diamond, a crystal drop of heavenly light. And the purer, the greater its worth; and the more the light of day shines forth." John returned to Logan and in September 1919 enrolled at the Utah State Agricultural College. There his interest in forage crops developed very early. He received his bachelor's degree in agronomy in June 1922. Upon completion of school he and Ina Sorensen of Logan were married. They made their first home in an apartment on the third floor of the Plant Industry Building on the USAC campus. John began his graduate studies, continuing his work in agricultural research. He spent the 192425 academic year at Roosevelt High School, teaching agriculture, manual arts, and mathematics, and returned to Logan and the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station in summer. John and Ina were happy in Roosevelt. With their baby daughter, they moved into a small cottage and soon made friends. Ina found many opportunities to develop her artistic and social talents. John became more and more absorbed in the problems of growing alfalfa seed, the major crop of the Uinta Basin. John's intellect was challenged. His studies and research had prepared him for what lay ahead. The first authentic experimental work in alfalfa seed production in Utah was spurred by the urgent demand for seed because of the increasing use of alfalfa for forage throughout the United States and Canada after World War I. With demand for seed high, a proportionately greater acreage of alfalfa had to be left for seed. This change gave rise to a gradually increasing production of alfalfa seed in Utah that reached a peak in 1925. John Carlson did not think it an accident that alfalfa had its origin in the Middle East as had Christianity. He believed that plants, animals, and men were created and functioned according to divine laws that could be discovered and understood. He accepted Solomon's injunction "In all your gettingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;get wisdom." Throughout his writings and manuscript
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papers are quotations from what he called the three p'sâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the prophets, the poets, the philosophers. Truly believing his life to be a quest for "true wisdom, Which like the diamond is a crystal drop of heavenly light," he began his search for his particular diamond in the dusty loam of the Unita Basin. Eventually he would find it in the golden grains of alfalfa seed that grew there. When he began a field survey in 1924 to identify noxious weeds that threatened the alfalfa seed in Duchesne and Uintah counties, he did not dream that his search would last forty years and require his last full measure of devotion. The idea of an experimental farm for the Uinta Basin had been suggested at various times by those interested in the development of its agriculture. That it was to become an alfalfa seed experimental farm was due chiefly to the stimulus given to the growing of alfalfa seed in Utah for export beginning about 1921. At least two of the relatively few areas in the United States that were peculiarly adapted by climate for the successful growing of this crop were in Utah. The Uinta Basin was one of these areas. Alfalfa seed as a crop, together with honey from its blossoms, were the chief source of income for the Basin's farmers. With a profitable market for alfalfa seed, a new era of prosperity for the Uinta Basin began. Amid high hopes and ambitions, the first Annual Uinta Basin Industrial Convention was held at Fort Duchesne in 1923. The various problems of agriculture, homemaking, business, and industry that confronted the people of the Basin were discussed by experts from the educational institutions and by state officials. At this first convention, the problem of alfalfa seed growing was of foremost interest. The request for an experimental farm in the Basin was renewed. William Peterson, director of the Utah Experiment Station, indicated that if the local people would take action to secure the necessary funds, a branch of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station would be established. This promise appealed especially to Erastus Peterson, county agent, who with the help of F. O. Lundberg, A. T. Johnson, Ernest Eaton, and a few other farmers, kept pursuing the idea until the 1925 state legislature considered its implementation. The experimental farm was promoted by the Farm Bureaus of both Uintah and Duchesne counties, the Commercial Clubs, the bankers and businessmen of the Basin, the legislators from both counties, the Uintah and Ouray Indian Agency, and the Utah State Farm Bureau Federation. State Senator Thomas W. O'Donnell was instrumental in finally securing passage of an appropriation of $8,000 for an alfalfa seed experimental farm in the Unita Basin.
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Lealand Clark and Wallace Sorensen at experimental alfalfa farm, Fort Duchesne. All photographs in this article are courtesy of the author.
Accurate information on the proper methods of producing alfalfa seed was very meager. Prior to the establishment of the Uinta Basin farm no alfalfa seed experimental studies had been conducted anywhere. T h e proposed work of the farm included: first, seeking more reliable commercial methods of producing alfalfa seed; second, studying pollination and fertilization of the blooms of alfalfa as related to seed production; third, comparing the seed yielding qualities of known strains of alfalfa; fourth, searching for or developing by breeding new, superior strains of alfalfa for seed production. John Carlson was appointed as superintendent of the new farm and charged wdth the responsibility of making it a working reality while he continued his graduate studies at USAC. T h e establishment of the farm began on May 28, 1925, when director William Peterson, D. S. Jennings, D. W. Pittman of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, and the newly appointed superintendent arrived in the Uinta Basin to select a site. On the morning of May 29, the party from Logan, together with representatives of the Peppard and Occidental Seed companies, Roosevelt State Bank, Uintah and Ouray Indian Agency, and county agent Erastus Peterson, left from Fort Duchesne on an inspection tour of possible sites. Six sites in the vidinity of Roosevelt and Fort Duchesne were examined. Location and soil and wrater rights were considered factors of paramount importance. A forty-acre tract near Fort Duchesne was selected.
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On the evening of May 29, at a meeting at Fort Duchesne, Peterson reported on the farm site and discussed how the experimental work would be carried on. He made it plain that many of the experiments that to the average person would seem complete failures would be of the utmost importance to the researchers. It was just as necessary to know what to avoid as it was to know what to do. State Senator O'Donnell noted the funds available for the work and said that inasmuch as the Indians would also profit from results of the work, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs would be expected to match the state appropriation to assist in the work of the farm. At a regular staff meeting earlier in the year, the name of Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm had been adopted as the official name of the farm. A lease and contract for the farm wras executed on June 1 1925. According to its terms, the experiment station would have exclusive and uninterrupted use of the land for a period of ten years. The rental price was to be $8.00 per acre, or $320.00 annually. In addition, the state was to pay the water assessments.1 The new experimental farm wras located about midway between the two extreme limits of the alfalfa seed growing areas of the Uinta Basin. Full frontage on the Victory Highway (U.S. 40) made it highly accessible. The land was an Indian allotment of John Quip, who later worked on the farm as an unskilled laborer. The allotment had been leased by F. O. Lundberg who cleared it of its native growth and quickly seeded the west ten acres to common alfalfa. A year later, he seeded another ten acres to common alfalfa. The remaining twenty acres had been continuously cropped to small grains and was foul with poverty weed and wild oats. The land had demonstrated its value for alfalfa hay, but no seed crop of importance had yet been grown on the alluvial soil. The work of the farm was directed by superintendent John Carlson. He worked under the supervision of the director and agronomist of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station who outlined the general policy of the farm and initiated the experiments. Carlson commenced his official duties on June 1, 1925. Work on the farm began about June 20 and consisted, first, in the construction of a building to house seed, tools, implements, and a laboratory and workroom. The building was a frame structure, the heavier timbers being of 1 This material was adapted from an annotated copy of the 1926 Annual Report of the U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station, pp. 1-13, in the J. W. Carlson Papers, Special Collections, Merrill Library, Utah State University, Logan.
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Measuring alfalfa plant growth.
native lumber finished with Oregon fir. The superintendent assisted in the construction. Selected entries from Carlson's personal diary give some graphic details: June 20. I left at 7:20 A.M. for the farm at Fort Duchesne. Mr. (Peter) Anderson and son were there to work on the house. I got Mr. Lundberg's team and during the day hauled 3 barrels of water for the cement making, 2 loads of rock and 1 load of sand from the river. I also helped to place the rocks in the forms. Mr. Anderson Sr. had to leave about 11 o'clock to return to Roosevelt to build a casket. . . . June 22. The work is progressing nicely, the frame work of the shed was up today. June 23. 1 man was employed to dig trench. I worked at cleaning the place and making ready for the painters until dark, then visited Lundberg to get him to furrow out the old alfalfa. July 4th. Finished my work on screens and doors on the apartment at Fort Duchesne then got ready to go to Logan early in the morning to get my family. . . . July 23. I continued my work with Mr. Merckley to set posts for the fence at the farm (40 cedar posts) . . . . Fence consists of 32 inch wire . . . . Three gates of iron frames and woven wire.
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July 24. Observed day as a holiday. With Ina and the baby, I attended the Indian Sun Dance at Whiterocks. We then went to Whiterocks canyon for picnic lunch. I bought a fishing license.2
Living quarters for the superintendent and his family were secured at Fort Duchesne through the courtesy of F. A. Gross, superintendent of the Uintah and Ouray Indian Agency. The west half of the house known as Officers Quarters No. 10 had not been occupied for many years and was run-down. Repairs, which included cold-water plumbing and electricity, were accomplished cooperatively by the station and the Indian Agency. Decorated by Ina, the home became a pleasant dwelling. The first experiments on the farm originated in late March 1926 with actual planting begun on April 13, 1926.3 Establishment of the Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm created the opportunity for an extensive study of agricultural and management practices in relation to successful growing of alfalfa seed. The alfalfa was treated in different ways to determine the occurrence and frequency of variations in seed yields. Data collected during the first season at the farm were published as Carlson's master's thesis in March 1927.4 So new were the data that the thesis contained only one bibliographic citation to previous work. These early experiments had a two-fold purpose: 1) to study some of the basic agronomic principles that seemed to apply in the production of alfalfa seed; and 2) to gain a more complete knowledge of the effects of harmful insects to alfalfa. These objectives were later expanded to include the effects of weeds and destructive plant diseases. Still later, a study was developed to include pollination and seed setting in alfalfa. The first publication reporting the results obtained at the Uintah Basin Farm appeared in bulletin form in 1931.5 It gave a complete history of the early experiments. That bulletin was followed a year later by a station circular that featured the essential development in the experimental work and suggested a procedure for cultivation that seemed to have significance.6 Most alfalfa seed growers regard the alfalfa flower as a peculiar mechanism. At blossoming time, the main stem and each branch may 2 Diary of J o h n W. Carlson written at Fort Duchesne, from June 1, 1925 to June 30, 1935, J. W. Carlson Papers. 3 A detailed record of planting the plats for each experiment was reported in the Annual Reports, 1926-36, of the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, U t a h State University. 4 J o h n W. Carlson, "A Study of the Seasonal History of Alfalfa Flowers as Related to Seed Production," American Society of Agronomy Journal 20 (1928) : 542-56. 3 J o h n W. Carlson and George Stewart, Alfalfa Seed Production, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Technical Bulletin, May 1931. * John W. Carlson, Growing Alfalfa Seed, U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular 97, 1932.
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produce at least one cluster of pea-shaped flowers that are purple in common alfalfa. There are ten stamens, nine in a bundle and one alone. The pistil has a compound ovary, one part of which develops into the pod after fertilization. A large insect, such as a bumblebee, alighting on the flower "trips" it and effects pollination. As the pods develop, they become distinctly curled, forming a spiral of one or more complete circles, and bearing from one to eight seeds. High seed yields result primarily from conditions favoring effective pollination. In biological reproduction through germ cells, a whole organism derives from progressive division of the original cell, which is the zygote in the case of sexual reproduction, as in alfalfa seed production. Growth is a consequence of cellular multiplication. Another process of reproduction occurs from vegetative sprouts. Stems, leaves, and flowers may form directly from this method, but not seed. Seed production requires the usual sexual processes. The alfalfa plant is an example of this method; and for this reason successful growing of alfalfa seed becomes more complicated and exacting. In Utah, alfalfa seed has nearly always been taken from the second growth of the alfalfa during a season. But in the Uinta Basin, most of the seed produced was taken from the first growth of the plants. This practice may be one possible reason why the effects of harmful insects became more prevalent in that area. Prior to effective control of harmful insects in alfalfa by application of insecticides, spring and fall cultivation of alfalfa fields was a common practice as a means of controlling the known harmful insects, the alfalfa seed Chalcis-fly, weevil, aphis, and, in some cases, grasshoppers. The lygus bug was at that time unknown as a limiting factor in the successful growing of alfalfa seed. At the Uintah Basin Farm management treatments wrere varied in numerous combinations in the hope of meeting the problem of declining yields. Yet, yields continued to decline. Charles J. Sorenson, research entomologist for the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, was the first to identify lygus bugs as harmful to the alfalfa plant. He wrote, "Of all the insect pests infesting alfalfa in Utah, none has been found to be more injurious to the seed crop than the lygus bugs. This is because of their universal distribution in alfalfa fields, heavy population density and wide range of host plants."7 Lygus feed on scores of different cultivated 7 Charles J. Sorenson, Insects in Relation Experiment Station, Circular 98, 1932.
to Alfalfa-Seed
Production,
U t a h Agricultural
Utah Historical
406
Quarterly
Comparison of plants affected by lygus infestation with uninfested plants. Left, infested plants. Right, healthy plants grown during the same period but dusted five to seven times weekly.
and wild plants, native and introduced weeds. The principal cultivated host plants include alfalfa, sugar beets, cotton, tobacco, potatoes, beans, various garden plants, most deciduous and small fruits, and many ornamental plants. Foremost of the weeds, in Utah, are the Russian thistle and the halogeton weed. At the conclusion of the eighth year of work at the farm, Carlson wrote: If it were definitely known that alfalfa seed production would continue to be as difficult and uncertain as it has been in U t a h since 1925, the logical method for improving yields would be by breeding or finding strains t h a t are naturally better seeders u n d e r difficult conditions. Another way of meeting the difficulty, is by intensive seed production of areas which continue to return satisfactory yields with the present strains. Growers should realize the wastefulness a n d lack of economy in continued attempts to grow alfalfa seed in areas which previous experience has shown unsuitable for this crop. 8
In 1935 when the ten-year lease expired, the Uintah Basin Farm was closed. Its work had been a continued documentation of declining seed production without finding a solution for growing alfalfa seed successfully.9 Experiments were continued mostly at the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station Farm in Cache Valley. 8
Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Eighth Annual Report, 1932-33, p. 4. John W. Carlson, Alfalfa-Seed Investigations in Utah, Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 258, November 1935. 9
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407
Once John Carlson had identified the importance of lygus injury to the alfalfa plant, he determined to solve the problem of harmful insects, especially the lygus bug. He entered the University of Wisconsin as a doctoral student in agronomy to study plant breeding. In order to return to school, John had to leave his wife and children in Logan, a move that required courage and sacrifice. In Wisconsin he lived frugally on the stipend provided by his fellowship and what little Ina could spare from her meager income. Ina was both resourceful and ingenious in meeting the needs of her children. Most of the family's food was grown and preserved by her. She made all the family's clothes. Milk and meat were provided by John's parents and Ina's farmer brothers. She retired the family automobile and opened her home to a paying boarder. From Wisconsin, John wrote in November 1935: I think we are doing something this winter, which is molding our own life, and making it distinctly our own. I am sure it will bring us happiness later, so we can just make up our minds to be happy, and remember it is for a good purpose. I am sure you can make a happy group there at home, and perhaps you feel each day that it is bringing us nearer our goal and the time when I shall be coming back. . . . When I come home again, and get another job, I think we can plan on living a little more for enjoyment and life itself. Still there is the living to earn, and the children to educate, so we shall have to figure on keeping our nose to the grindstone for awhile yet. . . . I am certainly getting a finer insight into the mysteries of plant life through my studies. I am sure it will be an inspiration and a help to us in bringing our children to a fuller appreciation of the real meaning of life.
In early December, John attended a seed grower's meeting in Chicago, where he reported on his research: . . . I was detained after the meeting for about 45 minutes talking to those who came around and asked me questions and my opinions on certain points. The meetings are about 3 hours in length, so if they will hang around at all after them for the purpose of asking questions, they must be interested in what has been said. . . . I think 60 percent of the topics of the crops section dealt with grasses, clovers and alfalfa. Nearly every speaker stressed the need for an increase in alfalfa acreage and I would say that the future for the alfalfa crop is very good as far as the demand for seed is concerned. . . .
While in Chicago, Carlson learned that the Department of Agriculture was considering establishing three alfalfa seed districts in the United Statesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in the Uinta Basin-western Colorado area, Kansas, and Nebraska. The Utah-Colorado program w ould be in connection with the experiment station and Carlson would head it. To his wife he cautioned:
408
Utah Historical Quarterly (Do not say anything about this as we do not want it to get out in Logan through us!) . . . If I can only get a satisfactory salary and expense budget, this work would be very much to my liking, and somewhat of the kind I have been looking forward to.
Christmas was approaching. Ina wanted to take the children to her sister's spacious home in Kaysville, but John was anxious about her traveling in the winter. . . . I wish I could spend Christmas with you, but I think it best not to attempt to go home. We shall try and make up for it next year, if I land a job with the government. I won't mind spending the summers in the alfalfa seed and hay field again. I think they have given me more pleasure than anything else related to my work.
Carlson concluded his studies at the University of Wisconsin in June 1938. His doctoral dissertation related directly to problems with alfalfa seed production in Utah. It concludes: . . . Numerous observations made during survey studies to determine the cause of alfalfa seed-crop failures have shown serious damage to alfalfa to result more or less directly in proportion to the Lygus population of the seed fields. Lygus bugs are, therefore, regarded as an important cause of the major alfalfa seed-crop failures in Utah. The importance of Lygus as a factor affecting alfalfa seed production in Utah is evident also from the nature of the damage to the buds and flowers, and by the significant improvement in the yield of seed that is consistently obtained when Lygus bugs are controlled.10
Once more Carlson had completed his formal studies just as the opportunity developed to apply his particular skill. Returning to Utah he engaged in the cooperative research of plant scientists wdio uncovered a wide range of new techniques of seeding and seed bed preparation. They developed new cropping and management practices, evaluated strains and varieties of alfalfa of diverse origin, and discovered germ plasm of great value in the survival of alfalfa under adversity. By 1950 alfalfa had become the most important cultivated crop in the Intermountain Area and one of the most important forage crops in the nation. A stable supply of alfalfa seed was essential to maintain hay fields and pasture. Use of legume plants for soil conservation created an additional demand for seed. The seed supply for the entire nation was concentrated in a few areas where soil and climate were favorable. Utah was one of those areas. Yet, yield continued to fluctuate widely. 10 John W. Carlson, "Lygus Bug Damage to Alfalfa in Relation to Seed Production" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1938), published in Journal of Agricultural Research 61 ( 1 9 4 0 ) : 791-815.
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Harvesting alfalfa seed at experimental farm, Fort Duchesne.
To give more impetus to research, Congress had appropriated special funds in 1947 for establishment of the Legume Seed Research Laboratory at Utah State Agricultural College. The work of the laboratory was done cooperatively with the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station; the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering; and the Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine. By 1950, it was possible to summarize what had been learned and publish a guide for growers to which Carlson contributed. 11 Yields doubled the first year after the use of DDT. As control of harmful insects became possible, it seemed that there would be a brilliant future for the alfalfa seed growing industry in Utah. But this did not occur, primarily because the Utah farmer had traditionally considered seed a supplementary crop. As farmers in other seed-producing areas began to manage their farms to produce alfalfa seed as a separate crop, farmers in Utah continued to make the decision to harvest seed depending on the amount of available water and the need for hay.12 Growing
Alfalfa
for Seed in Utah. U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular 125,
1950. 12 Stanley Faber, " T h e Alfalfa Seed Industry in U t a h , " (Master's thesis, University of U t a h , 1967). C h a p t e r 2, p p . 2 1 - 3 5 , gives a good comparison of U t a h with other seed-producing areas in economic competition. C h a p t e r 5 discusses the problems encountered in the traditional agronomic practices of U t a h farmers in raising certified seed.
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Land plots and cages designed for lygus control experiments, Station, Logan.
Forage
Quarterly
Crops
During the period of comeback for seed production with the application of insecticides, research in Utah became absorbed with pollination studies. In the Legume Seed Research Laboratory, a division of opinion developed between the agronomists and entomologists. The entomologists grew increasingly concerned because the use of DDT appeared to diminish the population of bees believed to be necessary for pollination. At the USDA Legume Seed Research Laboratory in Logan, there were five federal researchers, mostly entomologists, whom Carlson referred to as "the bee men." They developed a theory that continued alfalfa bloom failure could be attributed to the failure of bees in fertilizing the alfalfa blossom. As the only agronomist in the group, Carlson stubbornly persisted in his theory that the principal cause of failure was injury to the flower bud by harmful insects, especially the lygus. Conflict of theories persisted. Those favoring the pollination theory set up their experimental plots at the South Farm in Cache Valley. To provide the conditions he believed necessary, Carlson purchased eleven acres of dry land in Petersboro where he would have ideal soil, moisture, and weather. It was isolated among wheat fields to prevent cross pollination with alfalfa grown for hay, and it provided a larger area than was possible in the small plots of the South Farm. He leased this
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John W. Carlson and Lawrence Graber at farm in Box Elder County, 1952.
land to the experiment station so he could conduct his experiments as he believed necessary. In the 1950s Carlson studied the possibility of growing alfalfa seed in dryland regions. It became necessary for farmers to divert large acreages from production of wheat that was in surplus supply. Alfalfa was also used for soil improvement and erosion control. Growing alfalfa seed would be more profitable to the wheat farmer than growing alfalfa for hay. During this period, experiments were extended to dryland areas of Bear River Valley and Box Elder County. In September 1958 a comprehensive review of forage and range research was held in Logan. The panel defined major problems and trends in Utah agriculture. Forage production accounted for the principal agricultural use of land in Utah. Rapid growth in industrialization and population threatened reduction of agricultural resources.13 13 "Report of the Comprehensive Review of Forage and Range Research at the U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station, Logan, Utah, September 3-6, 1958," J. WL Carlson Papers. John W. Carlson delivered two papers at that meeting which were not published, "Growing Alfalfa Seed in Dryland Regions" and "Improvement of Alfalfa Seed Production in Dryland Regions," J. W. Carlson Papers.
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Division of opinion grew. Carlson felt that the Legume Seed Research Laboratory had overlooked recommendations published in the Utah Agricultural Experiment Station's Circular 125 in 1950.14 In January 1961 he submitted a paper that summarized research and observations from 1925 to 1958.15 The dissolution of the Legume Seed Research Laboratory was imminent, and it coincided with the official end of forty years of alfalfa seed research. In a covering letter to the station director, D. Wynne Thorne, Carlson wrote: . . . T h e present study guide has been prepared for alfalfa seed growers in U t a h , and other western states, in recognition of the need for a substitute crop for diverted dryland wheat acres. T h e suggestion implies the initiation of a p e r m a n e n t study course in various departments concerned with the problem at the U t a h State University. T h e suggestion would be a fitting climax to the imminent dissolution of the Legume Seed Research Laboratory at the close of the present fiscal year. . . . I feel an urgent need for someone to continue the work to which I have devoted so m a n y years; and to preserve the traditional heritage of U t a h as a leading producer of alfalfa seed.
Carlson retired from the USDA in 1962, feeling that his work had been accepted by the USDA and in Wisconsin but not in Utah. Utah had become dependent for seed on California, Washington, and Oregon, states that had gotten their information and technique from Utah originally. Accompanied by his daughter, he made a return visit to Scandinavia in the summer of 1963. At the Plant Breeding Station at Svalof, Sweden, he was honored by the Swedish Seed Association which presented him a new edition of Tegner's Frithiofs Saga. This gift inspired him to resume his translations of Swedish poetry into English. Upon his return to Logan, he persuaded Brooks Roundy to join him in the intensive culture of alfalfa seed on the eleven acres he owned in Petersboro. There he continued his investigations freelance. This work done with Roundy was not authorized by the Experiment Station. It was Carlson's intent to teach Roundy all he could so he could carry on the work. On the eleven acres, and in other parts of Roundy's dryland wheat fields, Carlson developed a cultural procedure based on his experimental data. In 1972 Carlson and Roundy harvested 6,142 pounds of clean alfalfa seed from ten acres, for an average yield of 614 pounds per acre. The state 14 15
Utah Agricultural Experiment Station, Circular 125. John W. Carlson, "A Study for Alfalfa Seed Growers," J. W. Carlson Papers.
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413
average for 1972, estimated to be the highest yield ever, was 320 pounds per acre. The story of this harvest wras recorded in an oral interview in November just after the results were known.16 At the time of the interview Carlson, aged eighty, was still enthusiastic about his work; and he was filled with awe and respect for results which he attributed to careful application of scientific principles. I'm about worn out. I'm through now. But, I'm very grateful for the fact that I could harvest this last crop with its high yields. My last desperate action was to put the whole field in Uinta alfalfa. I tried for 1,000 pounds, but missed it by about 300 pounds. . . . I spent parts of every day out there watching the development of the lygus population threatening the maturing seed. At one point I thought it was lost. We treated the field again, and got the crop in. Yields of 600 poundsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;field run!
He agreed that insecticide was destructive to the bees as well as the lygus pest but said that some bees were ahvays left to pollinate the alfalfa. His study had taken so long, he added, because f worked alone the first eleven years. In 1941 the bee men came. They were experts on pollination. There were five of them set up experiments on the South Farm. They permitted me to do as I pleased on that land I owned.
The work on the Petersboro farm wras also reported to Ray Burtenshaw, Utah extension agent, for whom Carlson described his cultural practices: There are several factors which must be adhered to if an alfalfa seed crop of this magnitude is to be obtained. These include planting a high yielding variety, a good uniform stand, weed control, adequate moisture, pollination, proper fertilization, and insect control. In Cache Valley the first cutting must be left for seed, so that the crop will mature as much as possible before the early frost. . . . If all other conditions are met, and insects, such as alfalfa weevil and lygus bugs, are not controlled throughout the growing season, then the alfalfa bloom and seed curls "strip off." Other insects such as grasshoppers, armyworm, aphids, etc. are taken care of as the spraying is done to control the alfalfa weevil, lygus bugs and lygus nymphs. . . ,17
Carlson determined the time for application of insecticide by use of an insect net to obtain population counts of lygus. He walked at random 19
"Researching the Alfalfa Lygus Bug," interview with John W. Carlson by John Stewart, audiotape in voice library, U t a h State University. 17 Ray Burtenshaw, "John W. Carlson Applied Experimental D a t a to Obtain High Alfalfa Yields," Herald Journal, December 22, 1972. See also Burtenshaw's column "Newsworthy Ag Notes," Herald Journal, August 27, 1971, for a report of a visit to the Petersboro farm.
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in the field, sweeping the net lightly over the blossoms in five strokes. If he could count twenty-five lygus in the net, it wras time to spray again. Some seasons required as many as seven spray applications to protect the seed crop. At the end of the interview, John Stewart asked Carlson, "If you had your life to live over again, would you do this wrork?" "If I were a seed grower, I'd have as much confidence as I had thirty years ago. You never get perfect control, no matter what you do," he replied. Following the harvest in 1972, the field was plowed and seeded to barley for five years. After so many years devoted to the solution of a single problem, Carlson's quest for the "diamond, a crystal drop of heavenly light" was at an end. He was satisfied that he had found his diamond and the heavenly light that led him to a dependable agricultural staple.
The
Genteel
Gentile:
Letters
of Elizabeth
Cumming,
1857-1858.
Edited by R A Y R.
C A N N I N G a n d BEVERLY B E E T O N . U t a h , the M o r m o n s , a n d the West Series, no. 8.
(Salt L a k e City: T a n n e r Trust F u n d , University of U t a h Library, 1977. Xvi 4-111 pp. $12.50.) I t is nearly a quarter-century since I first "discovered" the Elizabeth C u m ming letters (if memory serves, through the courtesy of R a y C a n n i n g ) . I n the years that followed, a half-dozen of them were published u n d e r my editorship. It now comes as a happy fulfillment to see all eighteen of the letters published in one volume. Elizabeth C u m m i n g was the wife of Alfred C u m m i n g , w h o h a d been a p pointed in 1857 to replace Brigham Young as governor of the territory of U t a h . Earlier federal officials, particularly J u d g e W. W. D r u m m o n d of the territorial supreme court, h a d castigated the M o r m o n s for their disloyalty a n d treasonous conduct toward the national government. I n the squabbles during the early a n d middle 1850s with the carpetbag officials of the territory, M o r m o n complaints, both oral a n d written, did sound anti-federal government if not downright treasonous. T h e Mormons viewed themselves as defenders of the Constitution and therefore entitled to criticize officials w h o in the M o r m o n view were not loyal to the Constitution. All of this continued, and violent bickering led President Buchanan to believe that U t a h and the M o r m o n s were in rebellion against the government. T h e result was the formation of a posse comitatus to escort the new governor to his post, to p u t down the supposed rebellion, a n d to secure control of an integral part of the territory of the United States of America. T h e whole
business came to be called the U t a h W a r or, officially, the U t a h Expedition. T h e military escort turned out to be a significant part of the entire armed forces of the country. T h e U t a h Expedition, disparagingly referred to by the Mormons as Johnston's Army, was placed u n d e r the c o m m a n d of Col., later Brig. Gen., Albert Sidney J o h n ston. At t h e outbreak of the Civil W a r , Johnston left the territory, traveled to California, and finally m a d e his way to Texas and the South where he offered his sword in defense of the Confederacy. His defection to the South a n d his subsequent death, of a superficial wound at Shiloh, left n o mourners in M o r m o n Utah. Alfred C u m m i n g was from a prominent family in Augusta, Georgia. H e h a d had a rather significant career as sutler with Zachary Taylor's army in Mexico, mayor, a n d superintendent of I n d i a n Affairs, before a p p o i n t m e n t as governor of U t a h Territory. Elizabeth Wells Randall C u m m i n g was from an equally distinguished Boston family. She was a great-granddaughter of Samuel Adams of Revolutionary fame. Although of gentle birth, she accompanied her husb a n d over the rugged road to U t a h , including the winter e n c a m p m e n t in tents at C a m p Scott near Fort Bridger. I n spite of the bitter weather, she seems to have enjoyed the experience. I n the spring of 1858 she entered the valley of the Great Salt Lake, where she m a d e her home for the next three years.
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Even though her letters cover only the first year of her experiencesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;traveling to U t a h and life among the M o r m o n s â&#x20AC;&#x201D; yet, they are most interesting and revealing as a footnote to history. Unlike the vituperation spewed out by earlier Gentile observers of the M o r m o n scene, both male and female, her letters exhibit understanding, a sense of humor, and even enjoyment of her experiences. Her observations of M o r m o n social and religious customs, which she disliked, are still reported with sympathy and understanding as being matters of their own business. While at C a m p Scott in December, she describes the well-known salt episode: the gift of 800 pounds of salt to the army, which was so summarily rejected. H e r depiction of the "death like stillness" of the abandoned city, so recently deserted by the Mormons before the advancing army, is most descriptive and dramatic. T h e long m a r c h of the army through the city on J u n e 26 and the straggling groups of Mormons returning home in succeeding weeks are both chronicled succinctly but with feeling and emotion. T h e last of the eighteen letters is dated September 24, 1858. Unfortunately, there are no letters from that time on. Nearly three years later Elizabeth
returned to the national capital at the expiration of her husband's term of office. It would be most interesting to read what her observations would have been after a prolonged stay a m o n g the Mormons. T h e book is handsomely p u t together. Its mechanics are interesting. T h e dimensions are rather wider than vertical. T h e footnotes are really marginal notes placed parallel to the left side of the text of the letters. T h e r e is m u c h explanatory material in the notes. Each of the three sections is prefaced by a page of introduction. An adequate bibliography, containing the major works, both primary and secondary, on the U t a h W a r is included. T h e only major item missing is the diary of J o h n Wolcott Phelps, a captain of artillery. Originals are in the New York Public Library, with copies in the U t a h State Historical Society. T h e U t a h W a r is a m u c h told tale with many chroniclers, yet this h a n d some little book is a contribution to the literature on U t a h , the Mormons, a n d the West.
Holy Smoke: A Dissertation on the Utah Westernlore Press, 1978. 151 pp. $8.95.)
War. By PAUL BAILEY. (Los Angeles:
Visitors to Wheatland, President James Buchanan's Pennsylvania country mansion, will encounter mementos of Buchanan's interests in Great Britain, J a p a n , the Democratic party and local politics but nothing amidst the antebellum furniture to remind them of his attempt to resolve the " M o r m o n problem" by intervening in U t a h Territory during 1857-58 with one-third of the U.S. Army. Such also has been the focus of most recent analyses of Buchanan and his administration, as this reviewer lamented in 1977 ( " T h e G a p in the Buchanan Revival: T h e U t a h Expedi-
tion of 1857-58," Utah Historical Quarterly, Winter 1977). Now comes Paul Bailey, a veteran writer on nineteenth-century M o r m o n affairs, with the first full-length account of the U t a h Expedition to a p p e a r in nearly twenty years. T h e result is a straightforward account of the campaign's origins, prosecution, and resolution that will appeal more to the general reader than to the scholar. I n a sense, almost all of the principal events are covered in Bailey's book: the M o r m o n trek to the Great Salt Lake in 1847; growing conflict between Mor-
A. R U S S E L L M O R T E N S E N
Escondido,
California
Book Reviews and Notices mons and federally appointed territorial officials during the 1850s; the violent religious Reformation of 1856; Buchanan's early conviction t h a t a secession movement was afoot in U t a h ; his surprise decision to garrison the territory with a brigade of federal regulars; the M o r m o n military response with a nonviolent scorched-earth campaign that forced Col. Albert Sidney Johnston's regulars into an isolated bivouac during the winter of 1857-58; the feverish efforts to resupply and reinforce Johnston with a second brigade; and the negotiated settlement of the standoff by Buchanan's peace commissioners and Brigham Young during July 1858. Strangely, though, Holy Smoke lacks any reference to the M o u n t a i n M e a d o w Massacre, the campaign's principal atrocityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;an inexplicable omission in view of Bailey's own earlier book on the N a u v o o Legion. Perhaps even more disturbing is the book's lack of focus or interpretation coupled with a series of overstatements a n d inaccuracies. With respect to the former, Bailey announces in his first chapter, despite the passage of 120 years, that " W h o was wrong a n d who was right in the American incident of the ' U t a h W a r ' is a m a t t e r best left to time and evidence. W h a t is of concern is the marshaling of facts, the scrutiny of motives, and reconstructing a frame to this lively and entertaining segment of history." Lost in the process is another opportunity to examine the principal conspiracy theories that have for centuries lurked below the surface of the U t a h Expedition's origins and clung to its historiography without resolution. Bailey himself hints at two of these theoriesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;those that suggest that the campaign was designed to enrich Russell, Majors & Waddell or to divert attention from "bleeding" Kansasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;by commenting without elaboration that the U t a h Expedition "built freighting monopolies" (p. 10) and that " T h e r e were obscure political reasons for generating military
417 hostility in the far west to forestall the divisive states' rights ferment which was gripping the nation" (p. 9 9 ) . By leaving the motives of the Buchanan administration with hints, Bailey not only tantalizes the reader but lends credence to conspiracy theories that cry for indepth analysis rather t h a n heavier usage. I n somewhat the same vein, readers are apt to be intrigued by, but dissatisfied with, Bailey's unsupported assertion (p. 10) that the U t a h Expedition somehow "wiped a president out of the White House, overturned a political dynasty . . . affected drastically the course of the Civil W a r to immediately follow, and rechanneled the very course of history pertaining to America's West." Such premises have major, national significance but are not to be found in developed form in Holy Smoke. Equally vexing are the several noticeable inaccuracies t h a t occur in Bailey's book, several of which are repeated in the text of the dust jacket. O n page 10, for example, Bailey states t h a t Congress as well as B u c h a n a n dispatched the army to U t a h , although neither the House nor the Senate was consulted and, in fact, neither was even in session during the period M a r c h - N o v e m b e r 1857. Elsewhere in the same sentence, he describes Johnston's brigade as " a n army almost equal in size to that ragged M o r m o n populace," a ridiculous assertion in view of the probability that the Nauvoo Legion alone outnumbered the troops of the U t a h Expedition if not those of the entire U . S . Army. Similarly, we find twice (pp. 74 and 76) the comment that Brevet Brig. Gen. William S. Harney was "dismissed" from c o m m a n d of the Expedition, an observation that overlooks Harney's reassignment to K a n sas at the express request of Gov. Robert Walker as well as his subsequent promotion by Buchanan u p o n t h e d e a t h of Gen. Persifor F. Smith, an officer whose given n a m e Bailey misspells. O n balance, Holy Smoke is a worthwhile book for the general reader, but
418 the scholar or specialist may well view it, as does this reviewer, as a volume that fails to capitalize fully on a publisher's willingness to offer another entry on the U t a h Expedition. T h e last such offering was the Yale University Press publication in 1960 of N o r m a n Furniss's The Mormon Conflict, 1850-1859, the standard work in the field. Significantly,
Utah Historical
Quarterly
it is a book that is neither cited nor listed in the bibliography of Paul Bailey's Holy Smoke. I t m a y be decades before this subject is again addressed at length in print, and it is against "this background, in part, that Bailey's study should be assessed. W I L L I A M P.
Birmingham,
MACKINNON
Michigan
A Clash of Interests: Interior Department and Mountain West, 1863-96. By T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER. (Provo, U t . : Brigham Young University Press, 1977. Xii 4- 256 p p . $11.95.) If ever you have wanted to know w h a t learned professors mean when they speak of a "scholarly m o n o g r a p h , " this study of the activities of the U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of the Interior in three territories of the M o u n t a i n West ( I d a h o , U t a h , and Arizona) from the time of the Civil W a r through the second Cleveland administration will serve admirably as an example. T h e quantity and variety of sources t h a t T h o m a s G. Alexander, Brigham Young University history professor and associate director of the Charles R e d d Center for Western Studies, has employed in rendering this account is, to say the least, impressive. Although it began as a doctoral dissertation (Berkeley, 1965), it has obviously been u p d a t e d to take advantage of a n u m b e r of specialized works which have appeared in the last decade. There is no question whatsoever about the author's familiarity with his subject. As the title indicates, Alexander sees the administration of a n u m b e r of federal programs as foundering because of an essential "clash of interests" between the Washington establishment (most notably powerful members of Congress from the Midwest and eastern philanthropists) and the people w h o actually lived in the territories. I n the case of the business of the General L a n d Office, the nation's policymakers were obsessed with the threat of land monopoly and seemed to assume the avaricious nature of the settlers.
W h e n it came to I n d i a n Affairs, the motives that guided legislation such as the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887 were often benevolent, but the invariable assumptions of cultural superiority and the congressional habit of inadequate funding resulted in wretched conditions on reservations in the I n t e r m o u n t a i n area. T h r o u g h o u t , the federal government operated on the basis of a system of "pupilage," denying that the residents of the three territories u n d e r consideration, whether white or red, had the capacity or the competence to m a n a g e their own affairs. T h e unwillingness of the national government to tolerate local customs and beliefs when they were at variance with its own is most graphically portrayed in the author's examination of the E d m u n d s - T u c k e r Act, designed to eradicate polygamy in U t a h , and in the establishment with federal funding of the Industrial Christian H o m e Association of U t a h , an institution intended to provide safe haven for refugees from the horrors of plural marriage. T h e r e is, then, a great deal in this book to which scholars will need to pay attention. H o w m u c h it will appeal to the general reader is another m a t t e r ; the literary quality is uneven, and some suggestion of that dreaded phenomenon called "dissertation style" still lingers. Partly because of the subject matter, this is not an easy volume to read, and only a savant will w a n t to immerse himself in the details of the problem of land
419
Book Reviews and Notices surveying in the region. Although there are no illustrations, the publication is handsomely put together (if occasionally marred by typographical errors) and the appendices, tables, and maps in the back are both interesting and helpful. This reviewer has n o major quarrels with Professor Alexander's interpretations. His sympathies clearly lie with the territories rather than with their masters in Washington, and the roughest criticism is reserved not so much for federal agents in the field as for tight-fisted conservatives in Congress w h o often made it impossible for the Bureau of I n d i a n Affairs or General L a n d Office surveyors to operate effectively, and for Interior D e p a r t m e n t officials such as L. Q . C. L a m a r and William Andrew Jackson Sparks w h o attempted to discharge their duties with no real understanding of conditions in the West. T h e author concludes with a suggestion that decentralizationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;more local autonomy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; m a y still have its uses. In an age that has seen its own manifestations of topheavy federal bureaucracy and w h a t Daniel Patrick Moynihan has called " m a x i m u m feasible misunderstanding," it is easy to appreciate t h a t view, but there may be more to the picture than that. O n e wonders, for example, if Alexander fully comprehends the underlying impact of changing technology:
sometimes things h a p p e n just because they are possible, not because h u m a n intelligence plans it t h a t way. f n the early part of the period he has studied, there was a fair a m o u n t of decentralization and local autonomy because it was quite difficult for effective control to be exercised from the East. I n the years from 1875 to 1885, with the transcontinental railroad a n established fact and telegraph lines being strung, stronger centralized control was possible, but it preceded the knowledge of western conditions or needs required in the nation's capital for wise policymaking. By the late 1880s, the process of educating members of Congress and Washingtonbased bureaucrats had progressed, and in that period we may even be witnessing the first steps toward the more positive conception of the proper role of government that we identify with the Progressive E r a and the twentieth century in general. Be t h a t as it may, Clash of Interests raises a n u m b e r of questions that continue to be g e r m a n e in our own time. For that reason, as well as for the pieces in the puzzle of the M o u n t a i n West in the late 1800s that it fills in, it is an important contribution to the historical literature of the period. F. A L A N C O O M B S
University
of
Utah
The Urban West at the End of the Frontier. By L A W R E N C E H . L A R S E N . (Lawrence: T h e Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Xiv + 173 p p . $12.50.) Professor Larsen has here undertaken an ambitious and most promising labor. H e has aimed at nothing less than a comprehensive view of life in all urban centers west of the Mississippi as defined by the census of 1880. T h e most obvious model for such a study is Carl F. Bridenbaugh's classic, Cities in the Wilderness. But whereas Bridenbaugh was content to study only five major seventeenth-century towns, Larsen includes in his work the twenty-four towns scattered from Houston to Los Angeles
which reported populations of 8,000 or more in the 1880 census. T h e census not only defined the cities to be studied but was the major source of data, particularly the massive Report of the Social Statistics of Cities, compiled by George Waring, Jr., a n d printed as p a r t of the Tenth Census of the United States, 1880 in vols. 18 and 19 (Washington, D . C , 1886). This major work is supplemented with materials from the manuscript census, .local and regional histories, and monographs on specialized topics such
420 as u r b a n transportation. Larsen apparently visited archives from only a few of the towns studied, relying almost entirely on printed sources. T h e author approached his task with two major questions in mind. T o w h a t extent did the condition of these cities in 1880 confirm or deny Frederick Jackson T u r n e r ' s proposal that "to the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics"? In w h a t measure did these towns evidence the stereotypical image of western towns as aggregations of saloons, bawdy houses, and gun-toting marshals? Western towns, he concludes, wrere for the most part, dull and derivative. Without heed to local circumstances or native precedent, Anglo-Americans marched into the wilderness and built cities that were as m u c h as possible replicas of those they had left in the East. T h e r e is little evidence of innovation or reform-mindedness in the u r b a n m o n u m e n t s built by western pioneers. Symbolic of the lot were identical grids printed by the Illinois Central Railroad for communities along its route, containing a blank for the n a m e of whatever future towns might spring u p . Moreover, western u r b a n environments suffered at least as m u c h as eastern towns from extravagent promotional schemes and unmitigated acquisitiveness on the part of their citizens, as illustrated in the colorful career of William Gilpin w h o touted at various times the matchless future glories of u r b a n centers he styled "Centropolis" (Kansas C i t y ) , "Cosmopolis" (Denver) and " L i n n City" ( P o r t l a n d ) . Not only did these towns fail to demonstrate qualities Larsen feels the T u r n e r i a n frontiersman would have effected in his built environment, they were devoid of all the more colorful accoutrements of the pulp book West. Policemen wore blue worsted and brass buttons, not Stetsons and Levis. T h e y were more likely to carry nightsticks and handcuffs than Colt revolvers. Western towns were dull replicas of eastern towns and hence
Utah Historical
Quarterly
depressingly like one another. The Urban West at the End of the Frontier raises two interesting questions. O t h e r things being equal, is it better in studies of this n a t u r e to say m u c h about little or little about m u c h ? Larsen has opted for the latter and ultimately offers an overview too superficial to satisfy this reader. Those interested in the history of Salt Lake City, for example, will find little not already available to t h e m in printed form. All too often passages of the text end u p being listings of how this or t h a t of the twenty-four towns fared in its sanitation program or electrification project. T h e fifteen tables provide information permitting ready comparison with other towns in the study on such important indices of u r b a n development as child mortality rates, occupational structure, or proportion of foreignborn. T h e text does not, however, d r a w this d a t a into a conceptual framework that greatly advances our understanding of the western town. Perhaps a more detailed study of fewer towns would have revealed differences in the various towns' responses to environmental and historical circumstances t h a t simply are not visible in d a t a of the level Professor Larsen has used. T h e second question is raised by the firmness with which the a u t h o r concludes on the evidence presented that " T h e T u r n e r thesis did not work in the city." Can we expect t h a t those social d a t a that emerge in the census report could answer definitively such broad cultural and even social-psychological questions as how independent were westerners as a people? O r how innovative were they in their responses to conditions of life on the frontier? Centering, as he has done, on the T u r n e r thesis, Larsen owes the reader an explicit statement of w h a t he understands the T u r n e r thesis to imply for western u r b a n dwellers. W h a t would he have expected these cities to be like had the T u r n e r thesis "worked" in the city? Clearly, these were a provincial people. Like
421
Book Reviews and Notices provincial people everywhere they no doubt were rendered profoundly ambivalent by their wish to be independent of the values of the East but their inability to claim success in their undertakings except as measured in terms imposed by the mother society. This very ambivalence, as J o h n Clive and Bernard Bailyn pointed out in a stimulating essay on America and Scotland as eighteenth-century provincial societies {William and Mary Quarterly, 1954),
can lead to extraordinary creative endeavor. But to w h a t extent can such creativity, whether stemming from provincial ambivalence or other aspects of frontier life, be discerned in transit systems, town plans, or m a i n street architecture? Professor Larsen's evidence, it would seem to this author, is too limited in n a t u r e a n d scope to lead us with confidence to the conclusions h e has drawn. D E A N L.
University
of
MAY
Utah
Beckoning the Bold: Story of tlie Dawning of Idaho. By R A F E G I B B S . (MOSCOW: T h e University Press of I d a h o , 1976. Viii 4- 267 p p . Paper, $6.95.) Idaho's Gold Road. By H . L E I G H G I T T I N S . Moscow: T h e University Press of I d a h o , 1976. 165 p p . Paper, $8.95.) I d a h o has lagged behind other states in establishing a university press.—perhaps to its credit, considering the financial pitfalls. N o w it has ventured forth with a fledgling organization and a few books, including the tvvo reviewed here, that vary widely in quality of printing a n d design. Beckoning the Bold, in stand a r d paperback format, was printed in easy-to-read boldface type by a Portland commercial firm. I n addition to two separate photo sections that complement the text, the book is also illustrated by a vibrant pen-and-ink sketch at the beginning of each chapter. Idaho's Gold Road, in contrast, was printed by the University of I d a h o Duplicating Services in smaller type and double columns that occasionally end in horrendous widows and imbalanced white space. T h e photo illustrations are poorer in quality, and the pen-and-ink sketches lack the charm and draftsmanship of Alfred D u n n ' s superior work. T h e two books also vary in quality of content. Beckoning the Bold is a popular history of early I d a h o by an accomplished writer w h o tells a fast-moving a n d entertaining story. D r a w n largely from standard secondary works such as Beal's and Wells's History of Idaho, the narrative begins with Lewis and Clark, moves through all the colorful epochs of
the nineteenth-century I d a h o frontier, and closes with a few comments on Idaho's relationship to modern America. Serious students will look in vain for analysis and synthesis, but casual readers — a n d scholars, too, for t h a t m a t t e r — will find the book rich in color and h u m a n interest. I t is an excellent companion piece to Ross Peterson's Idaho: A Bicentennial History, and it should be recommended reading for young and old who w a n t a lively story that does not stray too far from the facts. Idaho's Gold Road is an example of both the promise and the problems of local history. T h e author, a native I d a h o cattleman a n d schoolteacher as well as history buff, is an enthusiastic chronicler of men and events along the m a i n artery of commerce between U t a h and M o n tana—essentially Interstate 15 today, although it began as a toll road in the 1860s. Primarily a regional history with a focus on one of the road's chief promoters, Henry Orville Harkness, the book has chapters on cattle, commerce, irrigation, social life, floods, crime, a n d other subjects. Some of these peripheral chapters are relevant and helpful; others are distracting digressions. T h e book should have been extensively copy edited, ft will be of interest to history buffs in eastern I d a h o , but outsiders
422
Utah Historical Quarterly
may not grasp the significance of such revelations as: "Would you believe it? T h e first annual Bannock County Fair was actually held in M c C a m m o n in 1912" (p. 135). Factual errors and analytical flaws also m a r the work. It is not helpful, for example, to dismiss the O n e i d a County seat fight with a shrug of the shoulders ("Politics are funny") or to perpetuate Hollywood myths ("Saloons were cer-
tainly much more popular than churches in frontier days." p. 125). Even more serious is the author's tendency to invent narrative, to p u t words in the mouths of his heroes, to "explain" their thinking (see chapter nine for numerous examples). T h e result may be a more dramatic story, but it is not good history.
Jews on the Frontier. By I. HAROLD S H A R F M A N . (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1977. X x + 337 p p . $10.95.)
believe he is researching Jews of the entire American West. Yet, his study reaches only to Texas with but brief notice given to the forty-niners. Part of the reason is that Sharfman started early, with the first settlers in the United States and so deals with the 1600s and 1700s. Still, with the 1800s a n d the gold rush to California, many Jews settled in the West, and Sharfman again stops short of his promise. Nevertheless, this volume is a useful one, for it contains biographies of many Jews whose lives would not otherwise be recorded, even as footnotes to history.
Rabbi Sharfman's thesis that the American frontier submerged different immigrant backgrounds, including that of Jews, is a valid one, but he promises in his foreword more t h a n he delivers in his text. T r u e , many of Jewish background discarded their religious customs, married out of their religion, and were buried in city cemeteries. In this context Rabbi Sharfman has done a good historical investigation. H e has ferreted out those Jews w h o are not recognized as such by their contemporaries a n d / o r historians. But the author has gone too far in the opposite directionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;making it sound as if Jews were the primary American frontiersmen when that was obviously not the case. And the retention of Jewish practices is given only passing mention. By the title and numerous references in the text, the author would have us
RONALD H.
University
Main
Street:
America.
Tfie
Face
LIMBAUGH
of the Pacific
of
By CAROLE R I F K I N D .
Urban (New
York: H a r p e r & Row, 1977. Xiii + 267 pp. $20.00.) A minor irony of America's urbanization during the last fifty years is that M a i n Street, which Sinclair Lewis depicted so derisively in fiction as the zenith of narrow-minded boorishness, has become the focus for an exercise in
423
Book Reviews and Notices nostalgie de jamais vu. M a i n Street, once the domain of the the American "boob," has now become " t h e historical root of u r b a n America." Regardless of whether it is satirized or mythicized. M a i n Street was the main street of Hogeland, M o n t a n a ; Somerset, Pennsylvania; a n d Salt Lake City. With the current growth of suburban areas into w h a t was once farmland, one can appreciate Gertrude Stein's description of Oakland, California a s : "there's no there there." O n e aspect of Salt Lake City that elicited favorable comments from visitors was the broad, well-paved, a n d wellflushed streets, which even the most stubborn anti-Mormons attributed to the foresight of Brigham Young. T h e street conditions elsewhere in the country during t h e nineteenth century are aptly exemplified by a sign that "residents of Santa Ana, California, posted . . . a t the corner of Fourth a n d M a i n : ' T h e street is not passable, n o r is it jackassable. All who must travel it must t u r n out a n d gravel it.' " Big Falling Snow: A Tewa-Hopi Indian's Life and Times and the History and Traditions of His People. By ALBERT
YAVA.
Edited
by
HAROLD
COURLANDER. ( N e w York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978. X i v + 178 p p . $10.00.) Albert Yava's life spans the period of white intrusion into traditional Hopi and T e w a ways a n d t h e adjustment to the conflict between old a n d new. H e was educated both in government schools and in the Hopi kiva ceremonies, and h e provides a unique view of the H o p i - T e w a culture. Although he is within t h e culture, he "steps back" to look objectively a t it. Unlike D o n Talayesva's book, Sun Chief, these recollections are n o t a personality study. Yava looks at Hopis a n d Tewas collectively to give a chronicle of their history and the traditions embedded within it.
The
Golden
Seventies.
Dream:
Suburbia
By S T E P H E N
in the
BIRMINGHAM.
(New York: H a r p e r & R o w , 1978. V i i i 4 - 2 1 3 p p . $10.00.) Billed as a "chatty, anecdotal . . . natural history of suburbia today," this book contains chapters on the suburbs of several major cities, including Salt Lake City. If the facts a b o u t other cities a r e as garbled as those about Salt Lake, this book is teeming with inaccuracies. T h e enlightened person will be interested to read that Brigham Young's statue is located in T e m p l e Square, t h a t "South Fifth Street West is five blocks west of State Street," a n d that all. nineteen-yearold males are required to go on proselytizing missions for t h e L D S church. Birmingham also finds it h a r d to understand w h y t h e shores of t h e Great Salt Lake have n o t been converted to miles of suburbs. T h e book shows a desire to deride rather than analyze t h e phenomenon of suburbia.
The
Western
War.
Territories
in the
E d i t e d by L E R O Y H .
Civil
FISCHER.
( M a n h a t t a n , K a n . : J o u r n a l of the West, Inc., 1977. 120 p p . $6.00.) A thoroughly documented, scholarly account of t h e Civil W a r period in twelve western territories. E a c h chapter deals with a territory or pair of territories a n d its political a n d economic status, its participation in the w a r effort, and its general milieu during that period.
Mexican
Americans
in a Dallas
By S H I R L E Y A C H O R .
(Tucson:
Barrio. Uni-
versity of Arizona Press, 1978. Xii 4 202 p p . Cloth, $12.50; paper, $6.95.) This cultural, sociological study of a Dallas Mexican-American neighborhood provides a contrasting viewpoint to earlier studies of Mexican Americans in rural areas a n d agrarian villages.
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Utah Historical
Giving Birth to Thunder, Sleeping with His Daughter: Coyote Builds North America.
By BARRY H O L S T U N L O P E Z .
(Kansas City, K a n . : Sheed Andrews and McMeel, I n c . , 1977. X x + 186 pp. $8.95.) Barry Holstun Lopez h a s collected a n u m b e r of stories on Coyote, the "herotrickster" figure of various North American I n d i a n tribes, a m o n g them the Shoshone, Southern U t e , a n d Navajo. Western readers, expecting some neat moral tagged on t h e end, as in Aesop's Fables, often have difficulty with such I n d i a n narratives. Others, with cultural evolutionary tendencies, find that they "bear the same relationship to good E u ropean fairy tales as the invertebrates d o to the vertebrate kingdom in the animal world." Those w h o pick u p this work with such attitudes a n d expectations will— like the wandering anthropologist in one Coyote story—find themselves left with nothing but a pile of Coyote droppings.
In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80. By ROBERT G. A T H E A R N . (Lawrence: T h e Regents Press of Kansas, 1978. Xii + 338 p p . $14.00.) Robert G. Athearn tells the story of the Black migration from areas of t h e South to Kansas a n d other midwestem and western states soon after Reconstruction. Working almost entirely from primary sources—letters of some Black migrants, government investigative reports, a n d Black newspapers—he describes a n d explains the "Exoduster" movement a n d sets it in perspective as a phenomenon in frontier history. T h e book begins with details of the
Quarterly
Blacks on the move. Athearn then fills in the background of w h y they were moving; relates h o w other people— Black a n d white, northern a n d southern —felt about t h e movement; examines political considerations; a n d , finally, evaluates the episode a n d provides an explanation as to why it failed. Adaptive Use: Development Economics, Process and Profiles. By M E L V I N A. G A M S O N , et al. (Washington, D . C :
U r b a n L a n d Institute, 1978. X + 246 pp. $26.00.) T h e book presents a n instructive overview of the concept a n d process of a d a p tive use in renovating older buildings for profitable current use while preserving their historical value. T h e first p a r t includes detailed suggestions for the process of initiating, planning, a n d implementing adaptive reuse projects. T h e second part is a series of case histories including a report on Trolley Square in Salt Lake City, as well as fourteen other case histories from across t h e United States. T h e third section catalogs short profiles of other projects, classified by the original use of the building. The City of tfie Angels and the City of the Saints; or, A Trip to Los Angeles and San Bernardino in 1856. By E D WARD
O.
C.
O R D . Edited
by
NEAL
H A R L O W . (San M a r i n o , Calif.: T h e H u n t i n g t o n Library, 1978. X x + 56 pp. $7.50.) This account of O r d ' s journey to Los Angeles a n d San Bernardino on assignment for the U . S . Army is printed from a newly discovered manuscript. I t is supplemented with excerpts from O r d ' s personal diary a n d the official report O r d gave his superior officers.
In Memoriam David E. Miller, 1909-78 David E. Miller, Fellow of the Utah State Historical Society, professor emeritus of Utah and western history, teacher par excellence, a gracious human being with an unusual zest for life, died Monday, August 21, 1978, in Salt Lake City, following a brief illness, at age sixty-nine. Few Utahns have not been influenced by his grasp of U t a h and western history and his enthusiasm. He was a peoples' historian who talked with the folk, who traveled the pioneer trails, and who recorded the past with a disciplined accuracy in nearly a dozen books, in hundreds of professional articles and reviews, and in thousands of stimulating talks and lectures. Dr. Miller was also a historian's historian. His classrooms generated interest in history and produced scores of scholars who not only recall their experiences with Professor Miller as the foundation of their own professional competence in history but also remember the warmth of this genuine person. Dave Miller served as chairman of the History Department at the University of Utah, 1963-68; as director of the Western History Center, 1968-71; as president of the Utah Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters, 1966-67; as executive secretary for the Organization of American Historians, 1969-70; and as a member of numerous other history boards and councils. H e received the Award of Merit from the American Association for State and Local History for his book Hole-in-the-Rock in 1960, and was the recipient of the prestigious Outstanding Educator of America Award for 1975. During 1975-76 he directed seven teams of researchers in reexploring the route of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776. Dave Miller was one of those rare human beings whom it enriched one's life to know. His imprint on all of us is extensive and permanent. H e served on nearly every committee and advisory board of the Utah State Historical Society except the Board of State History itself. It seems ironical that the dean of U t a h history was passed by; however, that fact did not diminish his multitudinous contributions. Not only did he tell us of our heritage, but he has also left us a rich legacy of his own. MELVIN T.
Utah State Historical
SMITH
Society
In Memoriam T. Edgar Lyon, 1903-1978 T . Edgar Lyon, well known to a generation of students at the LDS Institute of Religion at the University of Utah, died on September 20, 1978, at age seventyfive. Born and reared in Salt Lake City, he accumulated a remarkable variety of experiences in a life spanning the first three-quarters of the twentieth century.
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Utah Historical
Quarterly
After teaching in the LDS seminary system and on the high school level in Idaho, he pursued graduate work at the University of Chicago in 1931-32â&#x20AC;&#x201D; studying with Edgar J. Goodspeed and William W. Sweetâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and earned a master of arts degree in Christian history. Having earlier served as a proselyting missionary in the Netherlands, he returned to that country as president of the LDS mission in 1933. In 1937 Ed began teaching at the LDS Institute of Religion which had been started just two years earlier on the Utah campus. Hundreds, even thousands, of students attended his classes on the New Testament, Christian church history, and Latter-day Saint history. Always full of enthusiasm, he had a sense of humor and a warmth that won him the affection of those he taught. Blessed with energy and an insatiable thirst for knowledge, Ed Lyon never vegetated. He exhibited great tenacity in pursuing a doctorate in history at the University of Utah, achieving this goal in 1962. T h e author of several courses of study, textbooks, and a series of scholarly articles, Ed became recognized as the leading expert on Mormon Nauvoo (Illinois) and in 1963 was appointed research historian of Nauvoo Restoration, Inc. H e was a past president of the Mormon History Association. His knowledge of historical details was unrivaled, his memory phenomenal. At the time of his death he was preparing a volume on the Mormon experiences in Nauvoo for the projected sixteen-volume sesquicentennial history of the Latterday Saints. In late 1974 I had the choice experience of interviewing Ed for the oral history program of the LDS church. In incredible detail he recalled his boyhood; his education, mission, and teaching experiences; his long tenure at the LDS Institute of Religion; and Nauvoo Restoration and his continued research in Mormon history. H e also spoke with pride and affection of his children. T w o years later, paying tribute to his wonderful wife and calling his students "the finest generation the church has ever produced," T. Edgar Lyon made a statement that aptly expressed his attitude: "I have never been bored in my life." DAVIS BITTON
University of Utah
S T A T E M E N T O F O W N E R S H I P , M A N A G E M E N T , AND CIRCULATION
T h e Utah Historical Quarterly is published quarterly by the U t a h State Historical Society, 307 West Second South, Salt Lake City, U t a h 84101. T h e editor is Melvin T. Smith and the managing editor is Stanford J. Layton with offices at the same address as the publisher. T h e magazine is owned by the U t a h State Historical Society, and no individual or company owns or holds any bonds, mortgages, or other securities of the Society or its magazine. T h e purposes, function, and nonprofit status of this organization and the exempt status for federal income tax purposes have not changed during the preceding twelve months. T h e following figures are the average number of copies of each issue during the preceding twelve m o n t h s : 3,321 copies printed; no paid circulation; 2,737 mail subscriptions; 2,737 total paid circulation; 150 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or other means; 2,887 total distribution; 434 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total 3,321. T h e following figures are the actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date 3,380 copies printed; no paid circulation; 2,598 mail subscriptions; 2,598 total paid circulation; 150 free distribution (including samples) by mail, carrier, or otlier means; 2,748 total distribution; 632 inventory for office use, leftover, unaccounted, spoiled after printing; total, 3,380.
INDEX Numbers in italics refer to illustrations. Abbott, Nettie M., grocer, 131 Abel, Elijah, Black Mormon priesthood holder, 45-46, 58 Agriculture, 335, 359, 361, 363, 401, 403, 406, 409, 410, 411; alfalfa seed research in, 3 9 7 - 4 1 4 ; and grasshopper invasions, 3 3 6 - 5 5 ; in Sanpete County during 1920s and 1930s, 3 5 6 - 6 8 ; and sericulture, 3 7 6 96; women in, 123 Alexander, Julia, hotel proprietor, 127 Alexander House, Salt Lake City hotel, 127 Alfalfa, research on, by J. W. Carlson, 3 9 7 414, 401, 403, 406, 409, 410, 411 Allen, Asaph, captain in Ninth Kansas Cavalry, 252-55 Allensworth, Allen, chaplain of Twenty-fourth Infantry, 291, 292 Allensworth, Eva ( d a u g h t e r ) , 291 Allensworth, Nellia ( d a u g h t e r ) , 291, 294 Allred, William Moore, and grasshoppers, 354 Alta, mining in, 141, 750 Alter, E. Irving (son), 38 Alter, Hattie McColly ( m o t h e r ) , 38 Alter, J. Cecil, 37; as editor, 39, 40, 4 3 - 4 4 ; and Historical Society, 4 1 ; vita of, 38, 4 4 ; as weatherman, 38, 4 4 ; as writer, 39, 42 Alter, John E. (father), 38 Alter, J. Winston (son), 38 Alter, Marvin S. (son), 38 Amott, Art, miner, 138 Amott, Leatha Millard, mine locator, 138 Anderson, James H., Salt Lake County commissioner, 156 Anderson, Peter, and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 403 Andrus, Milo, and grasshopper war, 350 Anthony, Susan B., woman suffrage leader, 112, 118-19, 392 Appleby, William L., LDS church official, 6 1 62 Arns, Carl H., lieutenant in National Guard, 275 Arrington, Leonard J., writings of, 49, 346, 357 Asper, Sadie, typographical union treasurer, 135 Auerbach, Herbert S., and Historical Society, 41, 42, 43 Augur, , captain, Twenty-fourth Infantry, 293 Avey, Olive H., principal, 123
B Bacon, James H., banker, 291 Bagley, Mary A., Christian Scientist, 126 Baker, Alpheus, murder of, 227 Baker, Newton O , secretary of war, 281 Ballantyne, H. B., infantryman, 299 Ballantyne, Richard, views of, on love and polygamy, 13 Ball, Emma, store manager, 131 Ball, James, attorney, 158 Bank of Moroni, depression closing of, 364 Barnes, , infantryman, 293
Barnes, Albert R., U t a h attorney general, 303-4 Barnes, Elvira S., physician, 124-25 Barney, Lewis, and grasshoppers, 345 Barnum, P. T., defense of Mormons by, 105 Barrett, Gwynn, and W. M. Gibson, 66, 69, 71, 75, 76 Barrett, , and silk industry, 388 Barrows, Nancy, Ogdenite, and silk industry, 379 Barton, Mrs S. A., Industrial Home matron, 130 Basset, Freeman, U N G captain, 275 Bates, Pheobe, 178 Batie, [Henry], Cpl. and Mrs., dancing school of, 295 Battle of Bear River, 253 Bedell, Edward M., Indian agent, 246 Beeson, Desdemona Stott, mining entrepreneur, 136, 140-47, 146, 149 Beeson, Joseph J., mining entrepreneur, 1 4 1 47, 143, 146, 149 Bennett, Isabella E., member of U t a h Silk Commission, 393 Bennion, Zina, college superintendent, 123 Benson, Ezra T . : and Indians, 2 4 1 ; and W. M. Gibson, 68, 76, 77 Benson, William S., Utah commander, 315, 316, 317 Berle, â&#x20AC;˘ , and equal rights, 164 Bernhisel, John M., LDS church agent in Washington, D . C , 228, 229, 230 Bertrand, Louis, French Mormon, and silk industry, 379, 384-85 Beus, Mariana Combe, Italian immigrant, and silk industry, 390 Bickel, Miss A., forewoman, 131 Bingham Prospect Mine, 142-43 Black Hawk War, 249, 251 Blacks: and LDS church priesthood, 4 5 - 6 4 ; at Fort Douglas, 282-301 Black, Solomon, infantryman, 288-89 Blake, James, army surgeon, 226 Blood, Henry H., Gov. and Mrs., 166 Bolto, Agnes, store manager, 131 Bonner, Nellie, hotel proprietor, 127 Bosone, Reva Beck, state representative, 161 Bowman, Amy, clerk, 132 Bowman, Dora, clerk, 132 Bowman, Elizabeth, clerk, 132 Bowman, Robert, store manager, 132 Bowring, Annie, bookkeeper, 132 Boyce, Violet, author, 211 Bradley, Mrs. L. I., soap manufacturer, 133 Brandley, Henry, cavalryman, 253 British War Relief Society, 165-66 Broad Ax (Salt Lake C i t y ) , Black newspaper, 286, 292, 298-99 Brodie, Fawn M., historian, 47 Brown, Delia M., cigarmaker, 134 Brunson, Isabell C., and sericulture in Millard County, 394-95 Buchanan, James, and U t a h Territory, 2 4 8 49, 252 Buchenel, M., Swiss educator, 153 Buck, Kate D., dentist, 124-25 Buck, N. M., dentist, 125 Buenos Aires Peace Conference, 152, 161-63
428 Buford, Eliza Elizabeth, wife of Parker, 290 Buford, Parker, infantryman, 289-90 Buhring, Mrs. M. E., store owner, 131 Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, 409 Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering, 409 Burgin, William, geologist, 145 Burrows, Mrs. N. G., importer, 133 Burtenshaw, Ray, agricultural extension agent. 413 Bush, Lester E., Jr., research of, 47-48 Butler, , naval lieutenant, 317 Butterworth, Mrs. A., grocer, 131
Cactus (St. George), and silk, 386 Caine, John T., Mormon lobbyist, 114 Caine, Margaret A., member of U t a h Silk Commission, 393, 394 Call, Anson, vice-president of Deseret Silk Association, 387 Camp Floyd, troops at, reassigned during Civil War, 252 Camp Lund, U N G field hospital, 272 Camp Stephen J. Little, U N G artillery station, 271 Cannon, Abraham H., and polygamy, 29, 30 Cannon, Frank J., and Blacks, 285-86, 288, 291 Cannon, George Q . : and polygamy, 28, 30; and silk industry, 379, 382; and W. M. Gibson, 77; and woman suffrage, 103, 110, 118 Cardiff Mine, Alta, 144, 146 Cardon, Paul, Italian immigrant, and silk industry, 379 Cardon, Susannah, Italian immigrant and silk industry, 379, 387 Carlson, Anna Lundstrom ( m o t h e r ) , 398 Carlson, Carl Hyrum (twin b r o t h e r ) , 398 Carlson, Ina Sorensen (wife), 399, 404, 4 0 7 8 Carlson, John August (father), 398 Carlson, John Wilford, 397 \ alfalfa seed research of, 3 9 7 - 4 1 4 ; childhood and education of, 398-99, 4 0 7 - 8 ; as superintendent of Uinta Basin experimental farm, 401-6 C a m , Daniel, and grasshopper war, 350 Carranza, Venustiano, Mexican general, later president, 264, 266, 279 Carter, Mary, corresponding secretary of Deseret Silk Association, 387 Cavin, May, hotel proprietor, 127 Cazier, Mary A., member of U t a h Silk Commission, 393 Chapman, Annie E., librarian, 125-26 Chase, Alice ( d a u g h t e r ) , 176-77, 179-83, 180 Chase, Clarissa ( d a u g h t e r ) , 174, 176 Chase, David M. (son), 174, 175-78, 180, 180, 181 Chase, Fanny Dean ( d a u g h t e r ) . See Mathews, Fanny Dean Chase Chase, Frank L. (son), 176, 177. 180, 181. 182
Utah Historical
Quarterly
Chase, George O ( h u s b a n d ) , 169-72, 174, 176-83, 180 Chase, Isaac (father-in-law), 169-70 Chase, John W. (Jack) (son), 177-79, 180, 181-83 Chase, Josephine (daughter)". See Wood, Josephine Chase Chase, Josephine Streeper, 7 6 7 ; and church and community affairs, 174, 176-78, 182â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 8 3 ; diary of, 168-69; home of, 170, 171; household duties of, 171, 173-74, 176-82; illness and death of, 175, 179-81, 183; marriage and family of, 170, 171-72, 17483, 176 n. 10, 180; and polygamy, 170, 172; and status of women, 178, 179 Chase, Kate M. ( d a u g h t e r ) , 172-73, 176-79, 180, 181-83 Chase, Mary Ella (Mina, Min) ( d a u g h t e r ) . 173, 176-79, 180, 181-83 Chase, Phoebe (mother-in-law), 169 Chase, Viola ( d a u g h t e r ) , 176-82, 180 Chivington, J. M., cavalry colonel, 257-58 Christensen, David H., and Utah silver, 307 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: General Authorities of, 24; and grasshopper war, 349-50, 3 5 1 - 5 2 ; and polygamy, 25, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 3 5 ; Relief Society of, and silk industry, 377, 378, 382-83, 386, 387, 390, 391, 392, 396; Sanpete County garden project of, 368 Civil War, communications in die West during, 252-53, 254 Clark, Nancy, death of, 176 Clark, Nancy A., and silk industry in Farmington, 388 Clawson, Claire L., corporate officer, 131 Clawson, Curtis Y., U N G officer, 275 Clawson, Rudger, marital status of, 17, 30 Clayton, William, and woman suffrage, 113 Cleophan, cultural group, 159 Cleveland, Grover, and statehood, 175 Climate, variations of, in Utah, 369-75, 371, 372, 373, 375 Cluff, William W., and W. M. Gibson, 63, 76, 78 Colfax, Schuyler, anti-Mormon campaign of, 103, 110 Colletti, Josephine, cigarmaker, 134 Collett, Mamie, mill worker, 134 Collett, Rachel, mill worker, 134 Commercial Street, Salt Lake City, gambling on, 291-92 Connor, Patrick E d w a r d : and California Volunteers, 252, 2 5 3 ; and mining, 139 Conover, Peter W., militia captain, 230, 231 Cordon, Alfred, LDS bishop in Willard, 338 Corker, Elizabeth A., hotel proprietor, 128 Corker, Gertrude, 128 Corker, J. Fred, businessman, 128 Corker, Lucy, student, 128 Cornick, Betsie, farmer, 123 Corser, N. D., GAR leader, 268 Cowley, Matthias F., and polygamy, 3 0 - 3 1 , 32, 34 Craft House, 165 Credit Women's Association, 166 Crockett, Agnes, grocer, 131 Cullom, Shelby M., antipolygamy bill of, 111, 114-16
Index Curtiss, Emily C , college manager, 123 Custer, Lorenzo D., death of, in Indian fight. 230 Daman, Lulu, cigarmaker, 134 Daniels, James E., Provo mayor, 269 Darling, George, and grasshopper killing machine, 351 Davis, Pauline W., suffragist, 109-10 Day, Henry R., Indian subagent, 244-46 Daynes, , lucerne buyer, 177 Deakin, Ed, painting by, 384 De Long, Mrs. A. F., Christian Scientist, 126 Democratic party, Elise Musser's activities in. 152, 159-60, 161, 166 Denver, J. W., commissioner of Indian affairs, 245, 249 Dern, George, and Elise Musser, 159, 161, 166 Dern, Mrs. George, and Elise Muser, 159-60, 162 Deseret Agricultural and Manufacturing Society ( D A M S ) , reports of, on grasshoppers, 343, 344 Deseret News: and Blacks, 286, 292, 296, 2 9 7 - 9 8 : and grasshoppers, 337, 339, 342, 347, 351, 352; and silk industry, 379, 383, 385, 387, 392; and woman suffrage, 103, 110, 117 Deseret Silk Association, 376, 383, 387-91 Deseret Woolen Mills, 134 Dewson, Mary W. (Mollie), Democratic party worker, 159, 161 Diaz, Porfirio, Mexican president, 263 Dickenson, Anna, anti-Mormon lecture of, 103-4 Dickerson, James M., infantry sergeant, 294 Diehl, Christopher, librarian, 125 Dixon, Hepworth, comments of, on polygamy, 197 Domain, Louisa, cigarmaker, 134 Dorsey, George, son of Black cavalryman, 290 Dorsey, Viola Rucker, daughter of Black infantryman, 290 Doty, James Duane, and Indian treaty, 253 Dry Canyon, Tooele County, mining in, 138, 147-48, 148 Duchesne County Commercial Club, 400 Duchesne County Farm Bureau, 400 Dunford, Eliza Snow, corporate officer, 130 Dunyon, Ann, manager of Forest Farm cocoonery, 385 Dunyon, , and silk industry, 388 Dwyer, Robert J., Historical Society board member and editor, 43
Eakle, Emma, foster daughter of Josephine S. Chase, 178, 181, 183 Eaton, Ernest, and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 400 Economy: factors affecting, during 1920s and 1930s, 357-59, 3 6 0 ; role of home industry in, 377-78; of Sanpete County, 360-68 Edmunds Act, 17, 26 Edmunds-Tucker Act, 28, 119, 199 Elliott, Mrs. J. B., medium, 130
429 Emma Mine, Alta, 141, 143 Empire Steam Laundry, 128 Endowment House, 4, 19 Ephraim Enterprise, and local economy, 362 Ericsen, Mrs. E. E., state legislator, 161 Escalante expedition, accounts of, published, 42-43 Evans, Rosie, assistant college manager, 123
Farr, Lorin, report of, on militia action against Indians, 231 Ferguson, Ellen B., physician, 124 Ferry, W. Mont, Salt Lake City mayor, 268, 279 Field, Miss J., stenographer, 132 Fisher, Edith, farmer, 123 Fitch, Thomas, Nevada congresman, 116 Fitzgerald, Mrs. L., hotel proprietor, 127 Flanders, Gratia, teacher, 123 Fletcher, Maurine S., editor, 209-10 Flowers, James, Black infantryman and athlete, 295 Floyd, John B., secretary of war, 249 Ford, Joe, LDS home missionary, 179 Forest Farm, silk industry at, 379, 384-85 Forsgren, Elise T., and silk exhibit, 393 Fort Bridger, Wyoming, Indians at, 218, 253 Fort Crittenden, troops at, reassigned during Civil War, 252 Fort Douglas: Black soldiers at, 282, 2 8 2 - 8 3 , 287, 2 9 4 - 9 5 ; U N G troops at, 265, 267, 268, 279-80 Fort Duchesne: Black soldiers at, 2 8 3 ; experimental farm at, 400-406 Fort Halleck, Colorado, Indian activity near, 253, 257-59 Fort Huachuca, Arizona: Black soldiers at, 288, 294; U N G troops, at, 274 Fort Laramie, Wyoming, treaty council at, 243-45 Fox, Amelia, photographer, 124 Frees, M a r t b a J., railroad engineer, 130 Funston, Frederick, general, 264
Galloway, Andrew, and grasshoppers, 339 Gates, Susa Young, editor, 125 George Dunford Shoe Company, 130-31 German-American League, 166 Gibbs, Josiah F., writings of, 40 Gibson, Walter Murray, 65; reassessment of career of, 65-78 Gibson, William, of Vernal, 298 Gisborn, Mack, mining entrepreneur, 147-48 Glendinning, James, attitude of, toward Blacks, 291 Glenfield, , hay buyer, 177 Godbe, Annie Thompson, a n d woman suffrage, 107, 109 Godbe, Charlotte Cobb, 100; and woman suffrage, 107, 108-9, 116 Godbe, Mary Hampton, and woman suffrage, 107 Godbe, William S., Mormon reformer, 106-8 Godbeites, 106-7, 114 Goodrich, Mrs. M. V., electro-magnetic healer, 124
430
Utah Historical
Goodwin, C. C , editor, 291 Goodwin, Frank J., and Utah silver, 312 Gould, Helen, poem of, on silkworms, 381-82 Gowan, Jennette, store manager, 131 Grant, George D., militia officer, 224, 225, 230 Grant, Heber J., as polygamist, 31 Grasshoppers, invasions of, in U t a h , 336-55 Graves, Daniel, and silk industry census, 392 Gray, Fanny Stenhouse, teacher, 123 Great Depression, effects of, 356-59, 368 Greene, Jennie O., wife of J. Cecil Alter, 38 Groesbeck, Nicholas, divorce of, 11 Grosscup, Geneve E., forewoman, 131-32 Grover, H a n n a h , dubious marital arrangements of, 19 Grover, Thomas, as polygamist, 19 Gunnison Valley Bank, national bank holiday of, 364 Gunn, W. P., Black infantryman, 299
H Haalelea, Hawaiian chief, 75 Hall, Madame R., dressmaker, 133 Hamblin, Jacob, militia lieutenant, 232 Hammond, John Hayes, mining financier, 143 Hansen, Millie, laundress, 128 Hapgood, Norman, editor of Collier's, 309 Harding, Warren G., visit of, to Salt Lake City, 290 Harper's Weekly, portrayal of Mormon women by, 191-92, 195 Harris, Louise, and silk industry in Ogden, 390-91 Harris, Minnie V., state legislator, 161 Harrison, Benjamin, Mormons pardoned by, 28-29 35 Harrison, E. L. T., Godbeite, 106 Harrop, Annie, waitress, 129 Hayden, Charlotte E., principal, 123 Hayes, Rutherford B., visit of, to U t a h , 392 Head, Lafayette, Indian agent, 259, 260 Heninger, Taylor, described grasshoppers, 344 Henry, Lou, geologist, 150 Heywood, A. R., and Utah silver, 307 Hickok, Sarah A., grocer, 131 Higbee, Isaac, U t a h Valley settler, 222, 224 Higbee, John S., U t a h Valley settler, 221, 222 Hill, Caroline, grocer, 131 Hillam, Emily R., bookkeeper, 132 Hills, Ella, milliner and dressmaker, 133 Hoffman, William, army captain, 288 Hogle, James, mining investments of, 142-43 Holeman, , territorial district attorney. 245 Holeman, Joseph, Indian agent, 243-46, 250 Hollister, Mrs., and Woman's Christian Association, 115 Hooper, William H., and woman suffrage, 103, 112, 114, 116 Hoover, Herbert, mining activities of, 150 H o m e , Flora Bean, Historical Society secretary, 44 H o m e , Mary J., vice-president of Deseret Silk Association, 387 H o m e , Mrs. M. I., corporate officer, 131 Houghton, Mrs. E., restauranteur, 128 Hudson, Horace, Guardsman, 265
Quarterly
Huerta, Victoriano, Mexican general, 264 Hull, Cordell, secretary of state, 161, 163, 164 Humphrey, Ellen M., winner of silkworm prize, 394 H u n t Food Company, Ephraim cannery of, 361 Huntington, Dimick, Indian interpreter, 221, 244 Hurt, Garland, Indian agent, 246-47, 248, 250 Hyde, Emily Miranda, marriage of, 170 Hyde, Orson: and Blacks, 5 1 , 54, 59, 60; and polygamy, 18
Indians: campaigns against, during Civil War, 252-61 ; conflicts of, with white settlers, 220-21, 222-28, 2 3 0 - 3 2 ; cultural gap between, and whites, 233-34, 237, 241 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 42; federal superintendency of affairs of, 233, 236, 2 4 3 - 5 0 ; and land ownership, 219, 221, 222, 228-29, 233, 236 T 37, 2 6 0 6 1 ; Mormon theology concerning, 218, 237-40,242; relations of, with Mormons, 217-35, 2 3 6 - 5 0 : removal of, suggested, 228-30 International Typographical Union, Local 115, women and, 135 Italian-American League, 166 Ivie, John, description of grasshoppers by, 344 Ivins, Anthony W., Mormon leader in Mexico, 31, 155 Ivins, Stanley, and polygamy, 5, 8, 9
J Jackling, Daniel O , and Utah silver, 307, 312, 313-14 Jackson, Caroline, and silk industry in St. George, 386 Jackson, Thornton, Black infantryman, 290 Jacobs, Priscilla, and silk industry in Logan, 381 Jacobson, Mary, postmistress, 133 Jacques, John, Mormon elder, 104 James, Mrs. L. F., store manager, 131 Jenkins, John M., cavalry colonel, 279 Jennings, D. S., and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 401 Jennings, William: and grasshoppers, 3 4 1 ; as president of U t a h Silk Association, 391 Jensen, Minnie, plural wife of Lorenzo Snow, 31 Jenson, Andrew: as Historical Society president, 3 9 ; and W. M. Gibson, 67, 72, 78 John, David, and U t a h County silk industry, 395 Johns, D., stage line agent, 255-56 Johnson, A. T., and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 400 Johnson, J. E., and St. George silk industry, 386 Jones, J. G., stage line agent, 255-56 Jones, Rose, teacher, 258 Judson, Anna, apiarist, 123 Julian George Washington, Indiana congressman, 103 J u m p , Edward, and portrayal of Mormon women, 192
Index
431
Kane, Thomas, letter to, from B. Young, 232 Keith, David, governess of, 156 Kelsey, Eli B., Godbeite, 106 Kent, J. Ford, infantry colonel, 287, 293, 299 Kimball, Heber C.: and grasshoppers, 3 4 2 4 3 ; racial and ethnic ideas of, 5 1 , 219, 237 Kimball, Sarah M., and Cullom bill, 111 Kimball, William F., militia captain, 231 King, Wesley, judge advocate, 273 King, William H., U.S. senator, 166 Knight, Frances, principal, 123 Knowlton, Minerva Edmerica Richards, and grasshoppers, 337-38 Kon. Kapo, and W. M. Gibson, 72
Ladies' Literary Club, 125-26 Ladies Republican Club, sericulture class of, 394 Lamont, Daniel S., secretary of war, 285-86, 287 Lannan, P. G., racial attitudes of, 291 Larsen, Lena, mining ventures of, 147-49 Larsen, Otto, husband of Lena, 148 Lawrence, George, attorney, 148 Lawrence, Henry W., Godbeite, 106 LDS Business College, 132 Leavitt, Dudley, and Indians, 232 LeBaron, Benjamin, and grasshoppers, 338, 348 Legume Seed Research Laboratory, Logan, 409-10, 412 Lee, John D., and polygamy, 20-21 Lee, Miss E. R., attorney, 126 Lewis, Walker, Black Mormon priest, 46-47, 58, 61 Leyson, J. H., Co., and Utah silver, 308-9 Liberal party, 177, 178 Lightner, Mary Elizabeth Rollins, polygamist, 20 Lincoln, Abraham, and Indians, 252 Lindsay, Edith, actress, 124 Lindsay, Luella, actress, 124 Lindsay, Mary E., actress, 124 Lindsay, Mrs. B., store manager, 131 Lindsley, Thayer, Canadian entrepreneur, 145 Little Chief, Ute leader, 220, 221 Locke, Ella F., Salvation Army officer, 126 Lockwood, Belva, lawyer, 119-20 Long, John V., druggist, 125 Loose, C. E., and Utah silver, 315, 315 Loose, Fay, and Utah silver, 307 Loufbourow, G. F., judge, 27 Loving, Walter E., musician, 296 Lucas, Margaret, suffragist, 109 Lund, Anthon H., LDS leader, 30 Lund, Mrs. A. O , state legislator, 161 Lundberg, F. O., and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 400, 402, 403 Lyman, Amasa M., Godbeite, 106 Lyman, Francis M., and polygamy, 29, 30
M McAdoo, William G., and 1924 Democratic convention, 160, 162 McAllister, Dorotby, dairy farmer, 123 McBride, William, militia captain, 230, 231
McCann, Peter, army officer, 294 McCary, William, Black Mormon eccentric, 58-61 McCune, Elizabeth, and Utah silver, 307 McEwan, Isabella, employment agent, 131 McGee, Martha, laundress, 128 Mclntyre, Mrs. Thomas, store manager, 131 McLean, Eleanor J., dubious marital practices of, 17 McLean, Hector, husband of Eleanor, 17 MacMasters, Miss B. F., stenographer, 133 Maddison, Annie C , secretary, 132 Madero, Francisco I., Mexican president, 264 Manifesto of 1890, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 Manti Self-Help Cooperative, 367 Manning, Mrs. John, manufacturer, 133 M a n n , S. A., and woman suffrage, 112-13, 116 Mann, William A., brigadier general, 280, 281 Manti Messenger, 365, 366, 368 Manufacturing, women in, 133-34 Manypenny, , commissioner of Indian Affairs, 246-47 Mason, Thomas, shipyard foreman, 305 Mather, Georgia, dressmaker, 134 Mather, Helen, dressmaker, 134 Mathews, Fanny Dean Chase, daughter of Josephine S. Chase, 177, 179-82, 180 Mathews, Harry, deatii of, 179 Merckley, , and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 43 Merrill, Marriner W., polygamist, 31 Metcalf, Florence O , school matron, 130 Metcalf, Frank W., principal, 130 Mexico, relations of, with U.S., 262-81 Millennialism: and Mormon attitudes toward Blacks, 5 6 ; and polygamy, 8-12, 15, 16, 17 Miller, Rev. George A., and Utah silver, 312 Mining, women in, 136-50 Moffitt, Mrs. Spencer, Sanpete relief chairman, 367 Mono Mine, Dry Canyon, Tooele County, 147, 148 Moody, William H., secretary of the navy, 303 Morley, Isaac, San Pitch leader, 222 Mormons: attitudes of, toward Indians, 21719, 232-35, 2 3 6 - 4 3 ; funerary customs of, 365; and grasshopper problem, 346â&#x20AC;&#x201D;47, 3 5 1 - 5 3 ; and polygamy, 4 - 2 3 , 24-36, 1 0 2 4, 113-14, 116, 184-202, 184, 187, 188, 189, 191, 192, 194, 195, 196, 198, 199, 201 ; and woman suffrage, 110-20 Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 316-17 Mountain Echo Band, women in, 269 Mount, Mary Jane, and polygamy, 14 Mount Pleasant Commercial and Savings Bank, depression closing of, 364 Mount Pleasant Cooperative Farm, 367 Muerbrook Mine, Stockton, Tooele County, 147 Muller, William G., infantry officer, 286-87 Murray, George W., Twenty-fourth Infantry supporter, 287 Musser, A. M., secretary of U t a h Silk Association, 391 Musser, Bernard, son of Elise, 158, 165
432 Musser, Blanche, mother-in-law of Elise, 156, 158 Musser, Burton, husband of Elise, 156-58, 160 n 8 Musser, Elise Furer, 151, 157, 160, 162, 165 ; marriage and family of, 156-58, 166; and Mormonism, 154â&#x20AC;&#x201D;55; occupations of, 15256, 158-60, 165; peace conferences attended by, 162-64; political career of, 159-65, 160 n. 9; youth and education of, 153, 156-58 Musser, Joseph, and W. M. Gibson, 71 Musser, Joseph, brother of Burton. 158 Mutual Improvement Association of Hyrum, newspaper of, advocated plural marriage. 7
Naegle, George, and Elise Musser, 154-55 Nast, Thomas, and cartoons of Mormon women, 184, 186 National Defense Act, 280-81 National Woman Suffrage Association, 106, 118-20 Neighborhood House, 152, 158-60, 158 n. 5, 165-66 Nelson, A. O , and Utah silver, 307 Nelson, Lowry, sociologist, 363 New Grand Theatre, 296 Newman, Mrs. J. P., Woman's Christian Association organizer, 115 Newman, Rev J. P., antipolygamy activities of, 115 Ninth Cavalry, 283, 285, 295 North Sanpete Bank of Mount Pleasant, depression closing of, 364 Nowlin, Mrs. H. S., hotel proprietress, 127, 134 Nowlin, Maria, modiste, 134 Nowlin, May, dressmaker, 134 Noyce, Mary A., shoe factory worker, 134 Nunn, Alice, milliner, 133 Nye, Bill, humorist, described Mormon women, 193 Occidental Seed Company, 401 O'Dormell, Thomas W., state senator 400, 401, 402 Ogden Standard, 392 Old Bishop, Indian, murder of, 223, 227 Olsen, H a n n a h , cook, 129 Olson, H a n n a h , domestic, 129 Order of Women Legislators, 165 Osborne, Nellie, store manager, 131 Overland Stage Company, problems of with Indians, 252, 256-57 Owen, Erna Von R., campaign of, against Utah silver, 308-9, 310-11, 312, 313, 318
Pack, John, and grasshopper war, 350 Paddock, Mrs. A. G., author, 125 Palmer, William R., and Utah Historical Quarterly, 39, 40, 42 Pan American Club, 166 Pan American conference, 165 Park City, mining activities in, 136, 143
Utah Historical
Quarterly
Patsowett, executed for murder, 227 Pearl, Josie, mining entrepreneur, 150 Pearsall, C. R., and Utah silver, 308, 310 Pearson, Henry A., naval officer, 304 Pellet, Elizabeth, mining entrepreneur, 1 4 9 50 Penrose, Charles W.: and polygamy, 22, 30; and woman suffrage, 110 Peoples Conference in Favor of Peace, 163 n. 11 People's Mandate to End War Committee, 163-64, 166 People's party, 177, 178 Peppard Seed Company, 401 Perea, Beverly, Black infantry officer, 299 Pershing, John J., and Punitive Expedition in Mexico, 264 Peterson, Erastus, Uintah County agent 400, 401 Peterson, Mary, chambermaid, 129 Peterson, William, director of U t a h Experiment Station, 400, 401 Phelps, W. W., and redemption of Indians, 239 Philips, Albert F., Historical Society president, 39, 40 Pittman, D. W., and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 401 Plummer, E. H., general, 279 Polygamy: and divorce, 4 - 2 3 ; after the Manifesto, 24â&#x20AC;&#x201D;36; and portrayals of Mormon women, 184-202 Pope, Jane, grocer, 131 Pratt, Orson: and grasshoppers, 344; and polygamy, 7, 9, 115; and "redemption" of Indians, 239 Pratt, Parley P.: dubious marital practice of, 17; and Indian relations, 224; and racial attitudes, 50 Pratt, Romania B., physician, 124 Pyper, Alexander C., superintendent of Deseret Silk Association, 387 Pyper, George D., and Forest Farm cocoonery, 385 Quip, John, Uinta Basin farm worker, 402
Radmall, private, funeral of, 278 Randall, Mel, 181 Reinsmar, Nettie L., corporate officer, 131 Republican party platform of 1856, 25 Reynolds v. United States, 26 Rich, Mrs. Grover, Utah legislator, 161 Rich, Mary Ann, co-op manager, 131 Richards, Emily S. Tanner, suffragist, 110 Richards, Franklin D . : and polygamy, 30; and woman suffrage, 110 Richards, Franklin S., and woman suffrage, 110, 119-20 Richards, Jane S.: and silk industry, 390; and woman suffrage, 110 Richards, Miss J. E., and Utah silver, 312 Richards, Willard, and Indian relations, 218, 224 Rigdon, Sidney, dissident Mormon leader, 53-54 Riley, C. V., Missouri entomologist, 353
Index Roberts, Brigham H e n r y : as home missionary, 179-80; and polygamy, 26, 34, 198; and woman suffrage, 119-20 Roberts, K a t e L., art teacher, 123-24 Robinson, Delinda, and silk industry in Farmington, 388 Robinson, Mrs. Ray, hairdresser, 130 Rockwell, Orrin Porter, and Indians, 230 Rockwood, A. P., and grasshopper war, 349, 350 Rockwood, Charles, 182 Rodehaver, Mary E., grocer, 131 Rogers, Austin F., professor of mining engineering, 142 Rollins, C , 176-77 Rollins, Viola Chase. See Chase, Viola Roosevelt, Franklin D . : and Buenos Aires Peace Conference, 161, 162, 163; and Elise Musser, 159, 161, 165 Roosevelt State Bank, and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 401 Roosevelt, Theodore, 3 0 2 - 3 , 311 Roundy, Brooks, alfalfa seed research of, 4 1 2 13 Roundy, Juliette L., corporate officer, 131 Rucker, Alfred, Black infantryman, 290 Rufener, Frederick, step-fadier of Elise Musser, 153
Salt Lake Employment Office, 131, 131 Salt Lake Herald: and Black soldiers, 295; and U N G , 2 7 8 - 7 9 ; and woman suffrage, 116-17 Salt Lake Herald Republican, and Utah silver, 314 Salt Lake Tribune: and Black soldiers, 285, 286, 288, 291, 296, 297; and Utah silver, 309-10 Sanpete County, agriculture in, in 1920s and 1930s, 356-68 Sanpete Self Help Cooperative Saw Mill, 356, 367 Scandinavian League, 166 Schettler, Paul A., treasurer of Deseret Silk Association, 387, 389, 391 Schofield, J. M., general, 287 Schuler, Maria, hotel and restaurant proprietor, 129 Schulthess, Arnold, and Swiss immigrants, 154, 155 Schuldiess, Mrs. Arnold, 154 Scott, George M., and Blacks, 291 Scott, H u g h L., general, 264, 280 Scott, John, militia officer, 220 Seagull Monument, 337 Seeley, John, sheepman, 362 Shaffer, J. Wilson, territorial governor, and woman suffrage, 116 Shearman, William H., Godbeite, 106 Shephard, Dorothy, secretary of Elise Musser, 165 Shephard, Elizabeth Ann (Betty), marriage of, to Bernard Musser, 165 Shephard, Retta Pyper, 165 Shephard, Harry, 165 Shipp, Ellis R., physician, 124-25 Shipp, Maggie C., physician, 124 Shoshoni Indians, 219, 228, 231, 247, 253
433 Silk industry, 376-96 Sinclair, Marguerite L., Historical Society manager, 43, 44 Sisters of the Holy Cross, nurses and teachers, 126 Sixteenth Infantry, transfer of, from Fort Douglas, 284 Smedley, Alice Chase. See Chase, Alice Smith, Al, and 1924 Democratic National Convention, 160 Smith, Alice A., Salvation Army officer, 126 Smith, Alma L., and W. M. Gibson, 68, 76, 77 Smith, [Bathsheba], 181 Smith, F. A., U N G officer, 265 Smith, George A., 110; and divorce, 1 1 ; and grasshoppers, 348, 349; and Indians, 218, 239; and W. M. Gibson, 75 Smith, George Albert, as monogamist, 30 Smith, Hyrum Mack, as monogamist, 30 Smith, John Henry, 179; and polygamy, 31, 32 Smith, Joseph F . : and grasshoppers, 354; and polygamy, 28, 31, 32, 33-34, 197-98, 198; and silk industry, 3 8 3 ; and W. M. Gibson, 68, 76, 77, 78 Smith, Joseph, Jr., 378; and Blacks, 47, 4 8 ; successors of, 52â&#x20AC;&#x201D;53 Smith, Joseph, I I I , 53 Smith, William, L D S apostle, 51 Smith, William Reed, LDS leader, 181, 183 Smoot, Reed: and polygamy, 32, 3 3 ; and Utah silver, 306, 315 Snow, Eliza R.: and polygamy, 111, 192, 2 0 1 - 2 ; and silk industry, 378, 387, 388-89, 3 9 1 ; and W. M. Gibson, 7 8 ; and woman suffrage, 113 Snow, Lorenzo: and polygamy, 28, 3 1 ; and W. M. Gibson, 76, 78 Snow, William J., Historical Society president, 40, 4 1 , 42 Sorenson, Charles J., entomologist, 405 Soule, S. S., army officer, 256-57 Southport Mine, Stockton, Tooele County, 147 Sowiette, Ute leader, 228, 245 Spanish Fork, U t a h County, as silk production center, 386 Spencer, Josephine, autiior, 125 Sprague, J o h a n n a H., librarian, 126 Spry, Mary Alice, and battleship Utah christening, 303-6, 305 Spry, Mrs. William, 304, 306 Spry, William: and battleship Utah, 303, 305, 306, 307, 308, 313, 315, 316; and U N G , 268 Squires, John Fell, and grasshoppers, 338 Stansbury, Howard, and Indians, 224, 227 Stansfield, Louisa, druggist, 125 Stansfield, Miss M. L., stenographer, 133 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, suffragist, 118-19, 118 Stark, William C , U N G lieutenant, 275 Steen, Charles A., uranium magnate, 146 Steiner, Catharine, cheese dealer, 123 Stevens, Doris, and women's rights, 163, 163 n. 12 Stevens, Evan, directed Mormon Tabernacle Choir, 316 Stevenson, Rev. Robert, and Utah silver, 312
434 Stewart, John, and J. W. Carlson, 414 Stewart, Mary I., mining ventures of, 149 Stone, Lucy, suffragist, 108 Stott, George, brotber of Desdemona Beeson, 140-41 Strang, James J., claimed Mormon leadership, 53 Streeper, Matilda Wells (Millie), mother of Josephine S. Chase, 169, 178, 180, 182 Streeper, Wilkinson, father of Josephine S. Chase, 169, 180, 182 Stringham, George, polygamist, 18-19 Stringham, Polly Hendrickson, first wife of George, 18 Strong, Aaron, polygamist, 13 Strong, Bessie, second wife of Aaron, 13 Sutherland, George, U.S. senator, and Utah silver hearing, 313 Swain, John, and grasshopper killing methods, 347 Swan, James E., naval architect, 305 Sylvester, Mrs. E. E., typographical union secretary, 135
Taft, William Howard, and Utah silver controversy, 311 Tanner, Annie Clark: and polygamy, 14, 15; and silk industry, 390 Tanner, Myron, polygamist, 14 Tanner, William, Kansan, and grasshoppers, 351 Taylor, John, and silk industry, 391 Taylor, John W., and polygamy, 5, 31, 32, 34 Taylor, Julius F., editor of Black newspaper, 286, 291, 299 Taylor, Thomas W. ("Jerger O k o k u d e k " ) , Black infantryman, 289 Taylor, W W., editor and Black lodge member, 294 Teasdale, George, polygamist, 31 Teeter, J. E., mining entrepreneur, 149 T e n t h Cavalry, 266, 280, 283 Terikee, Shoshoni leader, death of, 228 Thatcher, Moses, and polygamy, 30 Thomas, A. R., U N G lieutenant, 265 Thomas, Elbert D., U.S. senator, 166 Thomas, Mrs. M. W., corporate officer, 131 Thompson, Charles B., Mormon schismatic leader, 60 Thorne, D. Wynne, director, U t a h Agricultural Extension Station, 412 T h r u m , Thomas G., and W. M. Gibson, 67, 74, 75 Thurber, A. K., LDS bishop in Spanish Fork, 386 Timmerman, F. A., U N G corporal, 271 Tingey, C. S., Utah secretary of state, 303-4 Tooele County, mining in, 149 Tout, Hazel (Hazel D a w n ) , and Utah silver. 315, 315-16, 317 Tracy, Mrs. M., dressmaker, 133 Train, George Francis, defense of Mormons by, 104-5, 113 Trans-Mississippi Exposition, Utah silk exhibit at, 394 Troy Laundry, 129 Tuckett, Lelia, secretary of Deseret Silk Association, 387
Utah Historical Quarterly Tullidge, Edward W., Godbeite, 106 Twenty-fifth Infantry, 283 Twenty-fourth Infantry, history of Douglas assignment of, 282-301
Fort
u Uinta Basin, experimental farm in, 400-406, 401 Uinta Basin Industrial Convention, 400 Uintah and Ouray Indian Agency, and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 400, 401, 404 Uintah Basin Alfalfa Seed Experimental Farm, 400-406 Uintah County Farm Bureau, 400 Uintah County Commercial Club, 400 Unitarian church, 166 U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, and Unita Basin experimental farm, 402 U.S.S. Utah, 311, 318; launching of, 3 0 3 6; silver service for, 302, 307-18, 316 Ursenbach, Octave, Swiss immigrant, and silk industry, 379; trip of, to Mexico 154â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 55 U t a h Agricultural Experiment Station, alfalfa seed research at Cache Valley farm of, 406, 409 U t a h Constitutional Convention, 1895, and woman suffrage, 119-20 U t a h Cracker Factory, 134 Utah Historical Quarterly, J. Cecil Alter's editorship of, 37-44 U t a h Legislative Assembly, and woman suffrage, 112,115, 116 Utah Magazine, and woman suffrage, 106 U t a h National Guard ( U N G ) , 262-63, 266, 270, 271, 272, 273, 275; camps of, at Nogales, Ariz., 2 7 0 - 7 4 ; departure of, for Mexican border, 2 6 7 - 6 8 ; evaluation of, 2 8 0 - 8 1 ; mobilization of, 262, 2 6 4 - 6 7 ; patrol and other duties of, 2 7 4 - 7 9 ; return of, to Utah, 2 7 9 - 8 0 ; support of, by local citizens, 268-70 U t a h Nurses Association, 166 U t a h Oil W7omen Employees, 166 U t a h Silk Association, 391-92 Utah Silk Commission, 393-95 Utah State Agricultural College, alfalfa seed research at, 409 U t a h State Farm Bureau Federation, and Uinta Basin experimental farm, 400 U t a h State Historical Society, publications of, 37-44 Utah State Legislature, women in, 160-61 U t a h Oil Refining Company, 158 U t a h Territorial Indian Agency, 233 U t a h Territorial Legislature: and Indians, 232; and woman suffrage, 110 U t a h Woman Suffrage Association, 119 Ute Indians: difficulties with, during Civil Wrar, 2 5 1 - 6 1 ; and Mormons, 218-33
Vanetten, E. W., interpreter, 244 Van Cott, Lucy, University of Utah dean, 140 Van Horn, Mrs. J. H., teacher, 123 Van Steward. Urban, Shoshoni chief killed by, 228 Varian, C. S., U.S. attorney, 27 Vernon, Mrs. Weston, Democrat, 162
Index
435
Villa, Francisco ( " P a n c h o " ) , guerilla activities of, 264, 276 Voss, Horace, member of Black lodge, 294
w Wackhams, Mrs. Albion V., and Utah silver, 312 Wagener, Margaret, brewery owner, 134 Wakeham, John A., and grasshoppers, 348 Walkara, 222, 227, 234, 245 Walker Brothers, department store, 132 Walker, Sharp, marriage of, 170 Walker War, 233 Wallace, W. B., U N G officer, 267, 268, 276 Watt, George, and silk industry, 385 Weather Bureau, Salt Lake City station of, 38 Weaverling, Jeanette (Nettie), dentist 12425 Webb, , U N G officer, 268 Wedgwood, Edgar A., U N G officer, 266-67 Wells, Daniel H . : as militia general, 224, 225, 226, 2 3 1 ; and polygamy, 19, 114, 200 Wells, Emmeline B.: as editor, 125; and sericulture, 3 9 3 ; and woman suffrage 108â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 9, 109 Wells, Kate, artist, 124, 124 Wells, Sumner, assistant secretary of state, 161 West, Caleb, territorial governor, and silk industry, 377, 392 Westover, H. B., mining supervisor, 147 Wheeler, Joseph E., and grasshoppers, 347 Whipple, Nelson W., and William McCary, 60 White, Margaret, success of, at sericulture, 386-87 White, Rosana M., real estate agent, 131 Whitely, , Indian agent, 259 Whitney, Orson, F., and woman suffrage, 119-20 Whittaker, Elizabeth, English immigrant, and silk industry, 379 Whittaker, Thomas, English immigrant, and silk industry, 379 Wight, Lyman, schismatic Mormon leader, 53 Wignall, Grace, and silk industry, 388 Willard Co-operative Sera-culture Society, bylaws of, 394 Willard, Lottie L., artist, 124, 124 Willcox, Hamilton, New York suffragist, 102, 116 Williams, Alexander, Utah Valley settler, 223 Williams, Emma A., real estate agent, 131 Williams, H u g h W., army officer, 253 Williams, Rosella, wife of Thomas Taylor. 289 Williams, Sarah, store manager, 131 Williams, W. G., U N G officer, 268, 274, 279 Wilson, James, secretary of agriculture, 303 Wilson, Woodrow, 156, 160; and relations with Mexico, 262, 264 Wimmer, , Kentuckian, ran Forest Farm cocoonery, 385 Winberg, A. W., blacksmith, and grasshopper killing machine, 350-51 Winder, John R., and polygamy, 30 Wolfe, James H., U N G enlisted man, 265 Woman's Christian Association, 115 Woman's Commision House, silk items sold at. 388
Woman's Exchange, restaurant, 128 Woman's Exponent, 108-9, 202, 383 387, 393 Woman's Lode Mining Claim, 139 Woman suffrage, 102, 105-6, 109, 112, 113, 117-20, 182 _ Women: in agriculture, 123; in domestic and personal service, 126â&#x20AC;&#x201D;30; in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits, 1 3 3 - 3 5 ; in professions, 123-26; in silk industry, 3 7 6 96; in trade and transportation, 130-33. See also Mining, Polygamy Women's Centennial Congress, 165-66 Women's Christian Temperance Union, 119 Women's Legislative Council, 165 Woodbury, Ann O , member of U t a h Silk Commission, 393 Woodbury, Ann Cannon, and Silk industry in southern Utah, 389-90 Woodhull, Victoria, suffragist, 120 Wood, Josephine Chase, 177, 180, 181 Woodmansee, Gladys, corporate officer, 131 Woodruff, Abraham Owen, polygamist, 3 1 , 32 Woodruff, Wilford, 239; and Blacks, 46, 6 1 , 292; and grasshopper war, 350; and polygamy, 6, 7, 9, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 34 World's Fair of 1892, U t a h silk exhibit at, 392-93 World War I, 262, 356 World War I I , 358 Wright, George, general, 252 Wyllie, Robert G., Hawaiian foreign minister, 74 Wynkoop, , army officer, 255, 2 5 6 57, 258 Yeadon, Esther, herbalist, 124, 124 Young, Augusta Adams Cobb, 107-8 Young. Brigham, 8, 111, 132, 137, 169, 19495, 236, 250; and Blacks, 47, 48, 49, 5 3 54, 57, 59, 6 2 ; and divorce and marriage, 5, 9, 10-12, 19-20, 186, 191, 192, 200; and grasshoppers, 351, 352; image of, on Utah silver, 302, 309, 312, 3 1 3 ; and Indians, 217, 218, 219, 221, 223, 224, 226, 229, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239, 2 4 0 45, 247, 248, 249; and silk industry, 376, 378, 379-80, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388; and woman suffrage, 113, 117; and W. M. Gibson, 70, 71, 72, 73, 77-78 Young, Brigham, Jr., polygamist, 31 Young, John R., and Hawaiian Mormons, 78 Young, Kimball, and polygamy, 5, 8, 14, 15, 20 Young, Lorenzo, 182 Young, Richard W., U N G officer, 279 Young, Seraph, first U t a h woman voter, 113 Young Mahonri, sculptor, 157 Young, Mrs. Wesley, 157 V'oung, Willard, and silk industry, 388 Y.W.C.A., 162, 165-66 Young, Zina D. H., 178, 182; and polygamy, 20, 20; and silk industry, 376-77, 383, 384, 387-88, 393 Zapata, Emiliano, Mexican rebel leader, 264 Z C M I , women employees of, 121, 132, 134
UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY D e p a r t m e n t of D e v e l o p m e n t S e r v i c e s D i v i s i o n of S t a t e H i s t o r y BOARD O F STATE
HISTORY
M I L T O N C. A B R A M S , Smithfield, 1981
President D E L L O G. D A Y T O N , O g d e n , 1979
Vice President M E L V I N T . S M I T H , Salt Lake City Secretary MRS.
E L I Z A B E T H G R I F F I T H , O g d e n , 1981
W A Y N E K . H I N T O N , C e d a r City, 1981 T H E R O N L U K E , Provo, 1979
DAVID S. M O N S O N , Secretary of State
Ex officio M R S . E L I Z A B E T H M O N T A G U E , Salt Lake City, 1979 MRS.
M A B E L J . O L I V E R , O r e m , 1980
M R S . H E L E N Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1981 H O W A R D G. P R I C E , J R . , Price, 1979
T E D J. W A R N E R , Provo, 1981
ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH,
Director
STANFORD J. L A Y T O N , Managing Editor JAY M . H A Y M O N D , Librarian DAVID B. M A D S E N , State Archaeologist
A. K E N T P O W E L L , Historic Preservation W I L S O N G. M A R T I N , Historic Preservation
Research Development
T h e U t a h State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited U t a h n s to collect, preserve, and publish U t a h and related history. Today, u n d e r state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly a n d other historical materials; locating, documenting, a n d preserving historic a n d prehistoric buildings a n d sites; a n d maintaining a specialized research library. Donations a n d gifts to the Society's programs or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live u p to its responsibility of preserving the record of U t a h ' 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 : Individual, $7.50; institution, $10.00; student, $5.00 (with teacher's statement) : contributing, $15.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; life member, $150.00. Your interest a n d support are most welcome.
