Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, Number 2, 1982

H I S T O R I C A L OlUxvRTER

All sorts and conditions of men

UTAH HISTORICAL QUARTERLY (ISSN 0042-143X)

EDITORIAL STAFF MELVIN T. SMITH, Editor

J. LAYTON, Managing Editor B. MURPHY, Associate Editor

STANFORD MIRIAM

ADVISORY BOARD OF EDITORS MRS. INEZ S. COOPER, Cedar City, 1984 S. GEORGE ELLSWORTH, Logan, 1984 PETER

L. Goss, Salt Lake City, 1982

GLEN M. LEONARD, Farmington, 1982 LAMAR PETERSEN,

Salt Lake City, 1983

RICHARD W. SADLER, Ogden, 1982 HAROLD SCHINDLER, Salt GENE

Lake City, 1984 A. SESSIONS, Bountiful, 1983

Utah Historical Quarterly was established in 1928 to publish articles, documents, and reviews contributing to knowledge of Iftah's history. The Quarterly is published by the Utah State Historical Society, 300 Rio Grande, Salt Lake City, Utah 84101. Phone (801) 533-6024 for membership and publications information.

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.

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. The Society assumes no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by contributors.

The Quarterly is indexed in Book Review Index to Social Science Periodicals, America: History and Life, Combined Retrospective Index to the Book Reviews in Scholarly Journals, 1886-1974, and Abstracts of Popular Culture.

Second class postage is paid at Salt Lake City, Utah.

^PT'^^^'II ^UF HISTORICAL

QUARTERLY

Contents SPRING

1 9 8 2 / V O L U M E 50 / N U M B E R 2

PRELUDE TO DISPOSSESSION: THE FUR TRADE'S SIGNIFICANCE FOR THE NORTHERN UTES AND SOUTHERN PAIUTES

ALLEY, JR.

104

II

124

B. MURPHY

139

BICYCLE RACING AND THE SALT PALACE: TWO LETTERS edited by OLIVE W. BURT

160

RED LIGHTS IN ZION: SALT LAKE CITY'S STOCKADE, 1908-11 . . . .

MCCORMICK

168

DAVIS BITTON

182

JOHN

R.

BRIGHAM BICKNELL YOUNG, MUSICAL CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST KENNETH L. WOMEN IN THE UTAH WORK FORCE FROM STATEHOOD TO WORLD WAR II

MIRIAM

JOHN

ZION'S ROWDIES: GROWING UP ON THE MORMON FRONTIER BOOK REVIEWS

S.

CANNON

196

T H E C O V E R Few photographs capture the diversity of Utah society as tellingly as this scene at Washington and Twenty-fifth Street, Ogden, ca. 1895. Joe Hall, left, was a former pony express rider. Herman Kuchler, right, was a watchmaker, sheepman, and chemist. The young boy, the anxious-looking woman, and the two Indians are unidentified.

USHS collections, courtesy of Weber County Library.

© Copyright 1982 Utah State Historical Society

A U S T I N E. F I F E and ALTA F I F E .

Saints of Sage and Folklore among the

Saddle: Mormons

T H O M A S E . C H E N E Y , ed. Mormon

from the Rocky Mountains: A Compilation of Mormon L E S T E R A. H U B B A R D .

Songs from

Ballads

Songs

Folksong

and

Utah

T H O M A S E. C H E N E Y , A U S T I N E. F I F E , a n d J U A N I T A B R O O K S , eds.

Lore of Faith and Folly

T O M CARTER

196

MARIANNE FRASER

201

C L Y D E A. M I L N E R I I

202

MELVIN T. SMITH

203

Books reviewed BARBARA A L L E N a n d W I L L I A M L Y N W O O D

M O N T E L L . From Memory to History: Using Oral Sources in Local Historical

Research

ROBERT L. B E E . Crosscurrents along the Colorado: The Impact of Government Policy on the Quechan

Indians

P H I L I P L. FRADKIN.

No More: River

The

A

River

Colorado

and the West

X

'...

In this issue Historians tend to "concentrate on the happy few who leave records, give speeches, write books, make fortunes, hold offices, win or lose battles and thrones," according to Arthur M . Schlesinger, Jr. Yet, he asserts, historians, especially in the latter half of the twentieth century, have become aware, almost painfully so at times, of the distorted view of the past this skewed history provides. The old history was easier to write and probably more comfortable for its readers. More recent historical writing often probes previously ignored sources, unearthing data that challenge cherished assumptions or require the reader to observe the social order from a different perspective.

For example, the slow piecing together of Native American history in recent years has destroyed a number of stereotypes and preconceptions and presented nonIndians with uncomfortable thoughts. T h e beginning of the dispossession of Indian lands in Utah, as described in the first article, reveals a distinctly American tragedy in the making.

Subsequent articles that examine the overlooked accomplishments of half of humanity (women), the unsavory alliance of purveyors of vice with those sworn to uphold the law, and the eternally vexing problem of raising children to responsible adulthood also stir some psychic discomfort.

Tucked among these difficult looks at the past are two pieces that introduce a lighter motif; the story of a first-class musician and scion of a prominent Utah family and a remembrance of the heady 1890s when bicycling was the rage and there were schools like the one above on First South in Salt Lake City.

Disparate as they may appear, the trapper and the Indian, the singer and the working woman, the bicycle racer and the prostitute, the juvenile delinquent and his anguished elders represent all sorts and conditions of mankind, and that, finally, is what history is all about.

Prelude to Dispossession: The Fur Trade's Significance for the Northern Utes and Southern Paiutes

BY J O H N R. A L L E Y ^ J R .

B. SAGE mentioned a native people who had come increasingly to the American public's attention during the previous two decades: W R I T I N G IN THE 1840S, R U F U S

The Taos Utahs are a brave and warlike people, located upon the del Norte a short distance to the northwest of Taos. These subsist principally by hunting, but raise large numbers of horses. . . . The Lake Utahs occupy the territory lying south of the Snakes, and upon the waters of the Colorado of the west, and south of the Great Salt Lake.

These Indians are less warlike in their nature, and more friendly in their disposition, than the Taos Utahs. The persons and property of whites, visiting them, for trade or other purposes, are seldom molested; and all having dealings with them, so far as my information extends, unite to give ihem a good character. . . . The Diggers, or rather a small portion of them, are a division of the Utah nation,, inhabiting a considerable extent of the barren country directly southwest of the Great Salt Lake. They are represented as the most deplorably situated, perhaps, of the whole family of man, in all that pertains to the means of subsistence and the ordinary comforts of life.

The people Sage described are known today as the Southern Utes, the Northern Utes, and the Southern Paiutes.1 When he wrote, the Southern Mr. Alley is a doctoral candidate in history at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Rufus B. Sage, Scenes in the Rocky Mountains . . . , in Rufus B. Sage: His Letters and Papers, 1836-1847, ed. LeRoy R. Hafen a n d Ann W. Hafen, 2 vols. (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H . Clark, 1956), 2 : 9 1 - 9 2 . As used in this paper Northern Utes refers to those bands who resided most of the time north and west of the Colorado River a n d generally within the present boundaries of U t a h . Notably, this includes the T u m p a n a w a c h and Uinta Ats bands. I t might also include the Yamparika band of Colorado, although the primary sources of the fur trade era do not mention them by name. T h e San Pitch and Pahvant bands in U t a h did not, as will be seen, play the same role as other Northern Utes. Southern Paiutes refers to members of t h a t tribe living north and west of the Colorado River, with the primary focus on those occupying the Virgin River and Sevier River drainage basins. Unless otherwise specified, references to Utes a n d Paiutes in this paper are to the above-named groups.

1

Opposite: / . K. Hillers, a member of the Powell expedition, look some of the first photographs of Utah Indians, including this Uinta Ute camp, ca. 1873.

Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology photograph, USHS collections.

••mm*> ' " * « " . ! . • •

'

\ . .« 5».

afis*.

::

??*£»&. >.'"

{jKjtjfc* -.>iV

. , . *

106

Utah Historical Quarterly

Utes had been trading with Euro-Americans for some one hundred and fifty years. But the Northern Utes' and Southern Paiutes' relationship with Euro-Americans developed at a slower pace: it did not significantly affect their lives until the early nineteenth century. The attitudes and situations of these two peoples, who at first accepted but then resisted Mormon settlement in Utah, emerge only through an understanding of the years during which their lives developed under the influence of expanding trade.

Sometime shortly before 1813 New Mexican traders established direct trade with the Northern or Utah Utes. This was followed in the 1820s by the equally important arrival of American fur trappers who spread across Ute and Paiute territory. As a result, the international position of these tribes changed dramatically. This trade established patterns of intercultural contact which laid the groundwork for the later dispossession of the Utes and Paiutes by white settlers and the United States government. Long before this process wras complete, the fur trade introduced new technology and new forms of social and economic organization that significantly changed the life-style of Utah Indians. Thus, although the fur trade in Utah built on earlier, culturally influential contacts with New Mexicans, it had effects similar to those long identified by historians in other parts of North America.2 The journal of the Dominguez-Escalante expedition of 1776 provides a glimpse of Northern Ute and Southern Paiute life at the end of the eighteenth century. It is clear from the descriptions therein that neither had yet been directly affected by the introduction of European culture. The most revolutionary Spanish introduction, the horse, had reached only those Utes who lived southeast of the Colorado River. Although Comanches to the north had horses, the journal does not mention horses or metal tools among either the Northern Utes or Southern Paiutes.

The Utes were concentrated at Utah Lake and farther south, having been pushed out of much of northeastern Utah, including the Uinta Basin and Strawberry Valley, by the Comanches.3 Many of the latter may have been Shoshones, whom the Spanish later called "Comanches 2 For a recent discussion of this process in relation to the central Rockies fur trade see David J. Wishart, The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807-1840: A Geographical Synthesis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), p . 2 1 4 - 1 5 .

3 I t should be pointed out t h a t on one occasion the padres seem to designate the Uinta Mountains as the boundary between Utes and Comanches, but later they clearly designate the U i n t a Valley as Comanche territory. Fray Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Fray Silvestre Velez de Escalante, The Dominguez-Escalante Journal, trans. Fray Angelico Chavez, ed. T e d J. Warner (Provo, U t . : Brigham Young University Press, 1976), p p . 40, 43, and 45.

Prelude to Dispossession

10'

Sozones," but it is also quite possible that all of the Comanches proper had not yet moved on to the plains from their original homes in Wyoming. Some Northern Utes, whom the padres called Lagunas or Timpanogotzis, were visiting Colorado Utes when the expedition arrived, so they were obviously aware of the flow of Spanish goods that had reached their cousins; but the Comanches appear to have cut them off from this northward flow. Those Southern Paiutes who lived north of the Colorado River had also heard of the Spanish, notably Fray Francisco Garces who had recently contacted Chemehuevi Paiutes on the lower river. The Paiutes who met the explorers demonstrated greater involvement in a trade network than the Utes. The journal mentions Paiute trade with Hopis, Havasupais, Mojaves, and Apaches.

In most regards the Utes and Paiutes lived similar lives in 1776.

Their housing, clothing, and hunting-gathering subsistence patterns were basically the same although the Utes relied on fish from their lake and occasionally hunted bison while some of the Paiutes practiced horticulture. The Utes lived in more concentrated villages on Utah Lake and showed signs of more defined political leadership. This was probably due to the dependable food supply the lake provided and to Comanche pressure, since these social characteristics were not evident among the Bearded Utes farther south. Although the padres recognized the Utes and Paiutes as different nations, the only other distinctions they mentioned were slight linguistic variations and greater Southern Paiute timidity.

After 1776 the Southern Paiutes disappear from the record until the arrival of trappers in the 1820s. During this fifty-year interval only a few documents mention the Northern Utes, but these sources make it clear that their life-style had begun to change. By 1805 the "Yutas Timpanoges" were resisting their Comanche or Shoshone nemesis more successfully and apparently obtaining horses in the bargain. In that year Manuel Mestas journeyed to Utah Lake and recovered horses and mules the Comanches had stolen from New Mexicans and then lost in a war with the Northern Utes.

By 1813 the initial tentative contacts of Dominguez and Escalante and Mestas were transformed into direct trade with the Utes. According to reports in that year, a company of traders led by Mauricio Arze and Lagos Garcia visited the Timpanogos Utes, the Sanpuchi or San Pitch Utes, and the Bearded (probably Pahvant) Utes. The Spanish traded horses for slaves and pelts. The trade was still not completely

108

Utah Historical Quarterly

secure, since the Utes threatened to destroy the traders on several occasions, but a link had been created that only awaited the arrival of more extensive markets to turn the Northern Utes into a major trading nation.

This would not happen until the fur traders began to compete with the New Mexicans because, as David Weber has pointed out, "Aside from being illegal, the Spanish trade with Utes . .. was a small-scale, individual, and rather shabby affair."4 In 1822 the Southern Utes indicated to Thomas James their desire to increase the trade: Y o u are Americans, we are told . . . W e want your trade. Come to our country with your goods. Come a n d trade with the Utahs. W e h a v e horses, mules, and sheep, m o r e than we want. W e heard that you w a n t e d beaver skins. . . . Come over a m o n g us a n d you shall have as m a n y beaver skins as you want. . . . These Spaniards . . . wont even give us two loads of powder and lead for a beaver skin, a n d for a good reason. They have not as .much as they w a n t themselves.

American fur traders responded. Within twro years they had moved north from ^New Mexico through the lands of the Southern Utes and into the Utah homelands of the Northern Utes. Of the several parties that entered Utah in 1824, none was more important than that led by Etienne Provost. After Shoshones under Bad Gocha killed eight of Provost's men on the Jordan River, Provost turned to nearby Utes for protection as well as trade. When Peter Skene Ogden met him the next spring in Weber Canyon, Provost was accompanied by a band of twenty Utes, three of whom wore Spanish crosses. He apparently obtained many of his furs that year from the Utes.5 Ogden, of the Hudson's Bay Company, was part of the northern frontier of the fur trade which also approached Ute lands in the mid1820s. However, the British left the Ute country to their American competitors who had recently come west across South Pass. Americans may have encountered Utes in this area as early as 1812 when a returning party of Astorians mentioned the "Black Arms, about 3,000 strong . . .

4 Joseph J. Hill, "Spanish and Mexican Exploration Northwest from New Mexico into the Great Basin," Utah Historical Quarterly 3 (1930): 16-19; David J. Weber, The Taos Trappers: The Fur Trade in the Far Southwest, 1540-1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), p. 27.

5 Thomas James, Three Years among the Indians and Mexicans, ed. Milo Milton Quaife (New York: The Citadel Press, 1966), pp. 160—61. For Provost and other Taos trapping parties of 1824-25 see Weber, Taos Trappers, pp. 71-78; "The Diary of William H. Ashley, March 25-June 27, 1825," in Dale Morgan, ed., The West of William H. Ashley, 1822-1838 (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1964), pp. 113-17; and Peter Skene Ogden, Peter Skene Ogden's Snake Country Journals, 1824-25 and 1825-26, ed. E. E. Rich (London: Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1950).

Prelude to Dispossession

109

whose territories extend to the neighbourhood of the spainards." Probably Utes, these "Black Arms" were at war with the Arapahoes and in possession of "the best beaver country on this side the mountains."6 By 1825 Americans in the employ of William H. Ashley were moving south to test this conclusion which their fellow citizens moving north from New Mexico had already confirmed.

The records Ashley and his men kept from 1825 to 1827 provide the first substantial post-1776 description of the Northern Utes. In May 1825 Ashley himself met a band of Utes near the junction of the White and Green rivers. They met him "with great familiarity and Ease of manner" and showed signs of having prospered since 1776. The Utes, who would later be renowned among the trappers for their quality animal skins, "were clothed in mountain sheep skin & Buffalloe robes superior to any band of Indians in my knowledg west of Council Bluffs." They not only had "a great number of good horses" but also had enough English fusils to arm half their number. Since the only source of English guns was to the north and since there is no evidence of Ute trade with the Hudson's Bay Company, these guns were probably acquired from Shoshones. Ashley's account provides other evidence that the Utes were doing better in their relations with the Shoshones although the two tribes remained at war. The Shoshones' territory still extended down the Green River as far as Brown's Hole, but the Utes controlled the Uinta Basin, and some of them lived north of Utah Valley on the Weber River near present Wanship. Provost, accompanying Ashley's party, went even farther down the Weber to trade with another Ute encampment.7 The following year Jedediah S. Smith opened trade with Utes at Utah Lake. Despite greater mobility, the largest concentration of Utes still lived near the lake much of the year and depended on it for their principal food supply of fish. Smith, however, found most of them up nearby Spanish Fork Canyon gathering service berries. He confirmed a number of Ashley's comments: the Utes had many horses, were clothed in well-cared-for mountain sheep and antelope skins and buffalo robes, and had even more guns than the Shoshones. He disagreed with Ashley about the source of the latter, concluding that they came from Spanish New Mexico rather than the English; but given the general spread of firearms in North America, Ashley's conclusion seems more reasonable.

6 Robert Stuart, The Discovery of the Oregon Trail: Robert Stuart's Narratives, ed.

Philip A., Rollins (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1935), p. 86.

7 "Diary of Ashley," pp. 113-17.

110

Utah Historical Quarterly

Smith was greatly impressed by the character of the Utes, describing them in terms most of the trappers who followed him would repeat: I found these Indians more honest than any I had ever been with in the country. They appear to have verry little disposition to steal and ask for nothing unless it may be a little meat. . . . T h e Uta's are cleanly quiet and active and make a nearer approach to civilized life than any Indians I have seen in the Interior.

Anxious to encourage their friendship, Smith "concluded a treaty with these Indians by which the americans are allowed to hunt & trap in and pass through their country unmolested." Before moving on he purchased three horses at an unspecified high price and gave the Utes a "handsome present" of "1 Tin Kettle, 3 yards Red Strouding, 4 Razors, 2 durk knives, 50 balls 1 lb Powder, 3 looking Glasses, 2 dozen Rings, 1 dozen combs 4 hawk Bills, 2 stretching needles, 2 doz. awls, Buttons 1 large green handle knife."8 Most important for the future of Ute trade, Smith invited them to meet him at the rendezvous the following year to conclude a treaty with the Shoshones that would make the country safer for Indians and whites alike. The Utes agreed and thus were present to earn the trappers' "great applause for their bravery" in a battle with the Blackfeet.

They also concluded the treaty with the Shoshones, sending repercussions as far as Mexico City where the Mexican secretary of state protested to the American minister in 1828 that at four days' journey beyond the lake of Timpanagos, there is a fort situated in another lake, with a hundred men under the command of a general of the United States of North America . . . that the said general caused a peace to be made between the barbarous nations of the Yutas Timpanagos and the Comanches Sozones, and made presents of guns, balls, knives, &c, to both nations;. . . that the Yuta Timpanago Indian, called Quimanuapa, was appointed general by the North Americans, and that he states the Americans will have returned to the fort by the month of December.

Quimanuapa, one of the few Northern Utes mentioned by name during the trapping era, was apparently the "principal Chief" whom Smith had met the year before. The trappers called him Conmarrowap when in 1834 he reappeared in their journals. Ironically, his reappearance coincided with a renewed outbreak of war between the Shoshones and Utes. This war did not last long, for both Utes and Shoshones were at ?

Jedediah S. Smith, The Southwest Expedition of Jedediah S. Smith: His Personal Account of the Journey to California, 1826-1827, ed. George R. Brooks (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1977), pp. 41-43, 208.

Above: Young Uinta Ute woman on a horse with heavily beaded martingale and crupper. Right: Uinta Utes making a calculation. Note powder horn on man at left. Both pictures are Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology photographs by J. K. Hillers, USHS collections.

J •r4'-L

112

Utah Historical Quarterly

the rendezvous the following summer.9 In later years the two tribes still demonstrated a cautious attitude toward each other but remained generally at peace.

The 1827 rendezvous was a turning point for the Northern Utes.

They had not only mitigated the Shoshone threat, which had long restricted them, but they had also opened up trade with Americans on their northern frontier through the reciprocal arrangement of annual visits to the rendezvous coupled with trapper excursions into their country. This trade complemented and expanded that with the American trappers and New Mexican traders who continued to visit the Utes from a base in Taos and Santa Fe. The friendship of the Utes was probably even more important to the Americans. The late 1820s and early 1830s were the heyday of Rocky Mountain trapping. During those years Taos became an increasingly important competitor with the rendezvous for mountain man business. Hundreds of trappers moved back and forth between the two, trapping for furs and trading with Indians. It was therefore necessary to maintain the trust and cooperation of the Northern and Southern Utes who occupied the land the whites had to cross.

Kit Carson's travels in 1833 and 1834 provide a good example of this movement. In the fall of 1833 he joined a trapping party that followed the Spanish Trail north to the Uinta Valley. On the Uinta River (the trappers included the present Duchesne below its junction with the Uinta under this name) they found another party under one of the Robidoux brothers trapping and trading with the Utes. The combined parties went into winter camp at the mouth of the Uinta River near a Ute village. During the winter Carson and one of the Utes pursued a California Indian who had stolen some horses from his employer, Robidoux. The pursuit covered some one hundred miles before the horses were recovered. The following spring Carson joined Jim Bridger and Thomas Fitzpatrick in northwestern Colorado, accompanying them to the summer rendezvous on Green River.10

9 Daniel T. Potts, letter, July 8, 1827, Philadelphia Gazette, October 19, 1827, in Charles L C a m p , " T h e D . T . P. Letters," Essays for Henry R. Wagner (San Francisco: T h e Grabhorn Press, 1947), p p . 1 8 - 1 9 ; House Doc. 351 (Ser. 3 3 2 ) , 25th Cong., 2d sess., p p . 2 2 8 - 3 0 , quoted in Dale Morgan, Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1953), p . 229; W. A. Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, ed. Paul Phillips (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1940), pp. 266, 2 7 5 - 7 8 ; William Marshall Anderson, The Rocky Mountain Journals of William Marshall Anderson, ed. Dale Morgan and Eleanor Towles Harris (San M a r i n o : T h e Huntington Library, 1967), p p . 1 6 0 - 6 3 , 168-69. T h e editors of Anderson have included a short biography of Conmarrowap on pages 2 9 0 - 9 1 .

30 " T h e K i t Carson Memoirs, 1809-1856," in Harvey Lewis Carter, ed., 'Dear Old Kit': The Historical Christopher Carson ( N o r m a n : University of Oklahoma Press, 1968), p p . 5 8 - 6 1 .

Prelude to Dispossession

113

The fur trade began a long decline in the late 1830s as both the supply of and demand for furs diminished. Stationary trading posts appeared during this time as traders turned more and more to the alternative of buffalo robes while trying to stabilize trade for other animal skins.

The beaver trade remained extensive, though, and some posts, such as those built by Antoine Robidoux in the Ute country, still concentrated on these smaller animals. Although Robidoux's primary business was with independent trappers, the Ute trade was an important supplement.

At his post on the Uinta River near present Whiterocks the Utes provided "horses, with beaver, otter, deer, sheep, and elk skins in barter for ammunition, fire-arms, knives, tobacco, beads, awls, &c." In 1844 the Southern Utes went to war with New Mexico after an attack on one of their camps. They attacked Robidoux's Fort Uncompahgre and killed all the Mexican employees. Although they did not kill American citizens and did send word to the Uinta fort that Robidoux and his peltry were safe, this long-time Ute trader decided to abandon the post and retire from the trade, possibly because he felt that his practice of supplying guns to the Utes would ultimately involve him in the war.11 Other posts such as Fort Hall, Fort Davy Crockett in Brown's Hole, Bent's Fort, and the Platte River posts also traded with the Utes, occasionally dispatching traders to the Ute camps in northern Utah. The companies established different trading rates for Indians and trappers, resulting in a higher percentage profit from the former. As the Ute trader Richens Wootton said, "Trading with the Indians had its attractions, the chief of which was of course, the very handsome profits which we made out of the business." At the Uinta fort one of the Utes' excellently finished and large sheep and deer skins could be purchased for the equivalent of eight or ten charges of ammunition or two or three awls and then resold in New Mexico for one or two dollars. Wootton noted that even if the Utes "knew nothing about money," they could drive a hard bargain when it came to barter. Once an agreed value was set, though, one or two thousand dollars' worth of trade could be conducted in half a day. Although the Utes were considered keen traders, they were also known as honest collectors of "considerable fur" and thus profitable trading partners. 12 " S a g e , Scenes in the Rocky Mountains, p. 9 7 ; J a n e t Lecompte, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn: The Upper Arkansas, 1832-1856 ( N o r m a n : University of O k l a h o m a Press, 1978), p p . 1 3 7 - 3 8 ; Weber, Taos Trappers, p p . 2 1 3 - 1 7 . " O s b o r n e Russell, Journal of a Trapper, ed. Aubrey L. Haines (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1955), p p . 1 2 0 - 2 2 ; Howard Louis Conard, "Uncle Dick" Wootton: The Pioneer

114

Utah Historical Quarterly

Besides the men who actively sought out Ute trade, all trappers regularly carried such things as knives, tobacco, awls, vermillion, blankets, and beads when traveling through Ute lands. If Utes who had furs were then found, trade would occur. In addition, it was usually necessary to engage in formal gift exchange as a sign of friendship. Associated with this practice are the frequent trapper allusions to Ute demands for tribute. Having opened their territory to outsiders, the Utes commonly insisted that the intruders pay for the privilege. After the "tribute" or "presents" were provided the Utes would formally grant rights to travel and trap in their territory. Although considered honest, hospitable, and friendly, the Utes could be forthright and candid in their demands if the trappers were not willing to share food and other items while in Ute country. Such incidents occasionally led those who did not fully understand to accuse the Utes of begging. Taken as a whole, though, the trapper accounts make it clear that the Ute practice was consistent, and the whites had little excuse for ignoring a well-established tradition.13 The only reported battles between trappers and Utes involved trapper unwillingness to pay tribute. In 1839 traders from Bent's Fort in Colorado traveled to the Uinta River in an effort to compete with Robidoux for the Ute trade. The Utes informed them that "on no account could they enter the Eutaw country without paying tribute in some form."

The traders refused, and some fighting occurred before the outnumbered Whites decided to leave the area. In the fall of 1842 a more serious battle was reportedly fought near the Great Salt Lake after a band of trappers refused to pay tribute.14 Northern Utes were most commonly met by trappers at Utah Lake which was considered their "headquarters," on the Sevier River, near Brown's Hole, and on the Uinta River, particularly near the junction of it and the White with the Green River. They were also seen occasionally in Shoshone territory along the Bear and upper Green rivers.

Frontiersman of the Rocky Mountain Region (Chicago: W. E. Dibble, 1890), p p . 101, 1 1 0 - 1 1 ; Sage, Scenes in the Rocky Mountains, p p . 9 7 - 9 8 ; William T . Hamilton, My Sixty Years on the Plains Trapping, Trading, and Indian Fighting, ed. E. T. Sieber (New York: Forest and Stream Publishing, 1905), pp. 9 7 - 9 8 . " C h a r l e s L. Camp, ed., George C. Yount and His Chronicles of the West (Denver: Old West Publishing, 1966)i, p p . 70, 8 6 ; John Charles Fremont, Report of the Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D . C : Gales and Seaton, 1845), p . 272. These are two examples among many. " T h o m a s J. Farnham, Travels in the Great Western Prairies, Early Western Travels, 1748-1846, ed. Reuben Gold Thwaites, vol. 28 (Cleveland: Arthur H . Clark, 1906), p p . 1 6 6 70, describes the 1839 incident while the conclusions stated here are based on Lecompte, Pueblo, Hardscrabble, Greenhorn, p. 162. For the 1842 incident see Hamilton, Sixty Years on the Plains, p p . 104-14.

Prelude to Dispossession

115

They became particularly noted for their fine horse herds. One trapper called them "by far, the most expert horsemen in the mountains." The horses provided a link between the Spanish Trail traders from whom the Utes frequently purchased or stole them and the trappers who then bought them from the Utes. Whites also frequently remarked on how well-armed the Utes were. By the late 1830s a diarist could typically note that "These Indians are the best marksmen in the mountains and are armed with good rifles" as well as the earlier fusils.10 Between the mid-1820s and mid-1840s the Utes developed an important and mutually respectful relationship with the fur hunters of the Rocky Mountain West. News of the favorable reception the Utes had given the trappers had spread back east as early as 1826, the year the Missouri Advocate and St. Louis Enquirer announced that The Indians, west of the mountains are remarkably well disposed toward the citizens of the U n i t e d States; the E u t a w s a n d Flat-heads are particularly so, and express a great wish that the Americans should visit them frequently. 1 6

When the trappers included respect with their trade goods, the Utes welcomed them into their territory without realizing that once the Anglos came they would never leave.

It is easy to overlook the importance of the fur trade to the Utes.

The central Rockies fur trade was different from that in much of the rest of North America, particularly with regard to the organization and makeup of the labor force. White trappers did the trapping in the Rockies and then traded their catch at rendezvous. In other parts of the continent the basic work was done by unsupervised Indians who traded their pelts at posts. However, the assumption cannot be made that Rocky Mountain fur men were solely trappers. Trade with Indians continued to be an important, if supplementary, source of pelts. Over the years its contribution became more and more important as whites abandoned a depressed industry. Moreover, it was not a fur trade alone. Isolated, annually supplied trappers often depended on the Indians for many items that could not wait for the next rendezvous. Horses and food, among other things, were often supplied by Indians. The Utes, like all

13 Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, p. 312; Hamilton, Sixty Years on the Plains, pp.

97-98, 117; "The E. Willard Smith Journal, 1839-1840," in LeRoy R. Hafen and Ann W. Hafen, eds., To the Rockies and Oregon, 1839-1842 (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1955), p. 180.

10 Missouri Advocate and St. Louis Enquirer, March 11, 1826, quoted in Morgan, Ashley, p. 141,

116

Utah Historical Quarterly

the Rockies tribes, were eventually connected to the European market system that followed the trappers.

Although portions, and only portions, of their territory were outside the prime trapping areas, the Utes were in a crucial geographic position between Taos to the south and the Snake country to the north, between Santa Fe to the east and California to the west. The north-south trade route connected Taos-based trappers with the rendezvous while the eastwest Spanish Trail linked the northern Mexico provinces of California and New Mexico.

The Spanish Trail's importance to the Northern Utes was a direct continuation of the few pre-1820s contacts they had made with New Mexican traders. Such traders continued to visit the Northern Utes during the trapping era.17 The 1830 opening of the Spanish Trail between Santa Fe and Los Angeles gave a new boost to this trade. Annual Mexican caravans loaded with woven goods moved over the trail to California where they exchanged their loads for horses and mules to drive back to New Mexico. Along the way they traded with Utes and, occasionally, American trappers. By the 1840s the Utes were meeting the returning caravans annually to trade and levy tribute. Even as early as 1834 W. A. Ferris noted that Conmarrowap had recently acquired ten of the finest horses the trappers had ever seen from the passing traders. Ferris claimed to know of many instances when Conmarrowap had taken such animals by force.18 Besides furs, the Utes traded Indian captives for these horses, demonstrating that they had gained considerable power over neighboring tribes such as the Southern Paiutes.

The man most closely associated with the Spanish Trail is the Ute leader Wakara. He first emerged to importance in 1840 when, in association with a band of trappers who had left the depressed fur trade for more lucrative pursuits, he raided the ranches of southern California and made off with hundreds of horses and mules. Many of the animals that survived the transit east were later traded to trappers in the mountains. Wakara and other Utes continued to join trappers in these raids throughout the 1840s, carrying on the practice into the 1850s after the American conquest of California ended trapper participation.19 17 For example, Weber mentions an 1827 party which included the same Pedro Leon who is well known in U t a h history for his 1851 conflict with Brigham Young over the Indian slave t r a d e ; see Taos Trappers, p. 162.

18 Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, p . 277.

19 LeRoy R. Hafen a n d Ann W. Hafen, Old Spanish Trail: Santa Fe to Los Angeles (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1954), p p . 236-57.

Prelude to Dispossession

117

Wakara and the Utes who followed him are representative of a portion of the Northern Utes who eventually made trading and raiding their primary means of support. During the 1840s Wakara's activities carried him over a great amount of territory, trading with New Mexicans and Americans alike. He was seen pursuing his business at places as widely separated as San Luis Obispo in California, southern Wyoming, the San Juan River, and the Sevier River. In 1843 when Theodore Talbot found him in the company of the American fur trader Louis Vasquez, he noted that "He owes his position to his great wealth. He is a good trader, trafficking with the Whites, and reselling goods to such of his nation as are less skillful in striking a bargain."20 Many Utes adopted to some degree the trading life-style of men like Wakara, which meant greater mobility, increased dependence on white goods and technology, and considerable adjustment in traditional subsistence patterns. While most of them still depended on the traditional activities of hunting, fishing, and gathering and still resided much of the year in the old villages like those on Utah Lake, they were no longer the same people who had visited with Dominguez and Escalante. There were other Utah Utes, however, who had shared very little in this transformation. Throughout the trapping era the San Pitch Utes, for example, reportedly led lives more consistent with the hunting and gathering, nonequestrian life-style of the Southern Paiutes. Although trappers occasionally met the San Pitch, there is no evidence that they played a role in the trade like that of other Utes.

The Utes always displayed forthright confidence in their meetings with Euro-Americans. This confidence must have reflected an awareness of the power that trade had brought to them. When George Brewerton met them in 1848 at the end of one era in their history and the beginning of another, they were at the pinnacle of their political strength. Brewerton noted that "The Eutaws are perhaps the most powerful and warlike tribe now remaining on this continent. They appear well provided with firearms, which they are said to use with the precision of veteran riflemen."21 Their location on the axis of the north-south and east-west trade routes heightened the Utes' power and importance while also providing them with that tool which best represents the advance of European culture,

20 Theodore Talbot, The Journals of Theodore Metropolitan Press, 1931), p. 42.

21 George D . Brewerton, Overland ivith Kit Coward-McCann, 1930), pp. 99-100.

Talbot,

ed. Charles H. Carey (Portland:

Carson,

ed. Stallo Vinton

(New Y o r k : '

118

Utah Historical Quarterly

the firearm. Ironically, a similar strategic location had an opposite effect on the Southern Paiutes during these same years.

The Southern Paiutes' experience during this time can be more easily summarized. They did not acquire horses or firearms in the early years when the Northern Utes were obtaining them. Their isolation in southwestern Utah made these items less accessible, and the Paiutes were not at first under the same pressure that the Northern Ues were encountering from the mounted Shoshones. They probably saw little need for the animals or the guns. By the time they were under such pressure and therefore had such a need, they were cut off by their primary enemies, the Utes. The Utes had learned that New Mexicans would exchange horses for Indian slaves, so they began to take captives from neighboring tribes such as the Paiutes. It is difficult to say how extensive this traffic in Southern Paiute slaves was before 1830, though it is clear that the southwestern slave traffic in general was very extensive. After the YountWolfskill party of trappers opened the Spanish Trail in 1830, capture of Paiute slaves became regular and persistent. The trail ran directly through the heart of Southern Paiute territory, allowing New Mexican slave traders direct access to potential victims.22 Thus threatened, the Southern Paiutes were a harassed people leading disrupted lives when they first met Anglo-Americans.

Fur trappers only rarely visited Southern Paiute territory. With the possible exception of Thomas Smith they did not consider this region where the borders of Utah, Nevada, and Arizona now meet good beaver country. In 1828 Smith during a few weeks reportedly "secured enough skins to make a cargo" from the valleys of the Virgin River basin, but he was the exception.23 Most trappers lumped the area in with the bulk of the Great Basin which was known as the "land of starvation." Nevertheless, the Americans, while adding little to Paiute culture, left a definite legacy with these people.

Jedediah Smith was the first American trapper to meet the Paiutes, passing through their lands twice, in 1826 and 1827. Moving south in 1826, Smith and his party began encountering shy "Pa utch" and "Sampach" on the Sevier River. He drew little distinction between the two groups, but he did note that their appearance "strongly contrasted" with the Utes. Farther south the Paiutes tended to avoid him, but when 22 For discussions of the slave trade see. Hafen a n d Hafen, Old Spanish Trail, a n d Carling Malouf a n d A. Arline Malouf, " T h e Effects of Spanish Slavery on the Indians of the Intermountain West," Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 1 (1945) : 3 7 8 - 8 1 .

23 Camp, Yount's Chronicles, p . 235.

Prelude to Dispossession

119

they approached him near the Santa Clara River, they brought a rabbit "as a token of friendship" and an "ear of corn as an emblem of peace."

In return for some small presents, they supplied the hungry trappers with corn and pumpkins. Smith's men were pleased but surprised to find these crops in what they considered an inhospitable region. Here, at the junction of the Santa Clara and Virgin rivers and at the mouth of the

Southern Paiute children working on fur pelts, early 1870s. Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology photograph by J. K. Hillers, USHS collections.

120

Utah Historical Quarterly

Muddy River, the Paiutes grew corn, pumpkins, squash, and gourds.

They had dammed the Santa Clara and were irrigating their fields through a tree trunk. While the whites needed to replenish their food supply, the Indians were interested in acquiring pieces of iron that could be used for knives and arrow points. The Paiutes also wore deer, antelope, and mountain sheep skins, and a few of them had beaver moccasins; but the lack of beaver in the area hindered potential trade. 21 When Smith reached the Santa Clara the following year the situation had changed: "Not an Indian was to be seen, neither was there any appearance of their having been there in the course of the summer their little lodges had burned down." Wherever he went in their country, the Paiutes avoided him. Clearly something or someone had changed their attitude. When Smith reached the Mojave villages, the Mojaves informed him that, as he had suspected and had seen various signs of, another party of whites had recently visited the area. James O. Pattie has left a confused account of this party of Taos trappers. They had traveled up the Colorado in late 1826, had fought with the Mojaves, and had then had two battles with the Paiutes, on the Colorado and later on a tributary, probably the Paria River.25 By 1827 the Paiutes had a totally different image of the trappers than the one the friendly Smith had left.

In the spring of that year still another party of American trappers met "Pie-Utaws" on the Sevier and Fremont rivers. For three nights the Indians harassed the trappers, stealing two horses and wounding four others with arrows. When they later made another attempt on the animals, the whites attacked, but the Indians escaped across the river. The trappers then returned north. Jedediah Smith had remained fairly objective in his descriptions of the Indians residing in central and southern Utah, but Daniel Potts of this 1827 party introduced an image of them that remained firmly entrenched in the minds of the trappers. Referring to the Sevier, Potts wrote: This river is inhabited by a numerous tribe of miserable Indians. T h e i r clothing consists of a breechcloth of goat or deer skin, 'and a robe of rabbit skins, cut in strips, sewed together after the m a n n e r of rag carpets, with the bark of milk weed twisted into twine for the chain. These wretched creatures go out barefoot in the coldest days of winter. T h e i r diet consists

34

Smith, Southwest Expedition, pp. 49-63.

Maurice S. Sullivan, ed., The Travels of Jedediah Smith (Santa Ana: Fine Arts Press, 1934), pp. 28-29; James Ohio Pattie, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie of Kentucky, ed. Timothy Flint (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1930), pp. 132-38.

25

Prelude to Dispossession

121

of roots, grass seeds, and grass, so you may judge they are not gross in their habit. T h e y call themselves Pie-Utaws, and I suppose are derived from the same stock. 20

This description, while containing some information on actual cultural traits, is in large part a variation on the Digger image trappers applied to nonequestrian hunters and gatherers throughout the West. Although applied to many tribes, one of the most consistent usages of this ethnocentric terminology was in reference to Southern Paiutes and neighboring bands of Utes such as the San Pitch and Pahvant.

George Yount, who met the Paiutes in 1830, recorded one of the most offensive examples of this kind of characterization: These people are an anomaly—apparently the lowest species of humanity, approaching the monky—Nothing but their upright form entitles them to the n a m e of m a n . . . T h e i r food consists of occasionally a Rabbit, with roots and mice, grasshoppers & insects, such as flies, spiders & worms of every kind—Where nuts exist, they gather them for food—They also luxuriate a n d grow fat when they find a p a t c h of Clover—On many kinds of grass they feed like cattle—They are covered with vermine and whenever they take these from their heads or persons they appropriate them for food—Hence in point of economy they are truly remarkable—These are the lowest grade of species of the Digger Indians, which are found spread over all the eastern & middle portions of California—Probably there is not in all the world a race of h u m a n beings more low and degraded than the Diggers. 27

Yount, at least, could justify his remarks on the basis of first-hand observation. However, although few Americans had actually met them, such descriptions of the Southern Paiutes and San Pitch Utes appear in numerous accounts. The image performed an ideological role far beyond factual observation.

Personal observation also does not adequately explain the extreme value judgments in Yount's remarks. Their accuracy need not be accepted simply because he was there. More careful modern investigations lead to the conclusion that the Southern Paiutes lived quite well within the limits of a varied environment. They developed carefully balanced patterns of exploiting the available resources. As one ethnologist put it, "These . . . patterns show the Southern Paiute Indians not as pawns of a harsh environment, but rather as culturally adapted peoples capable 28 Potts, letter, July 8, 1827, pp. 18-19. These "Pie-Utaws" may have been Pahvant or Koosharem Utes, bands closely related to the Paiutes. If so, they, like the San Pitch Utes, were included in the Digger characterization of the Paiutes.

27 Camp, Yount's Chronicles, p. 89.

122

Utah Historical Quarterly

of exploiting a variety of conditions in numerous ways." The image of the Paiutes corresponded with the attitude trappers had toward Paiute territory. Yount felt that a "half starved, nakid" Paiute "well corresponded with the region where he dwelt." Warren Ferris mentioned "the barrenness of their country, and scarcity of game."28 Paiute territory contained alpine forests as well as arid deserts, but it produced little fur, so it is not surprising that the fur hunters considered it barren. The Paiutes also gave little to the trade, and the trappers' attitude toward Indian tribes was always based on whether a particular tribe contributed to or hindered the business.

The image of Diggers fit nicely into the Anglo-American ideology of savagism. Indians as savages acted as symbols of all that progress left behind. Whites felt that Indians had ultimately to pass away or be destroyed in order to prove the worth of civilizing ideals. In their minds the savage Indian stood in direct opposition to the civilized American. Despite the romance that has surrounded and obscured the actuality of their lives, trapper values were not far from those of most Americans of their time.

Even when referring to more respected Indians like the Utes, trappers made it clear that they considered Indians inferior to themselves and other men whom they considered civilized.29 They used Paiutes and other "Diggers" to confirm American ideas of the Indians' basic nature, a nature that at its heart had to be miserable, impoverished, and degraded to justify the ethnocentrism of the savagism/civilization dichotomy. The danger in these negative images was that they provided justification for overlooking the Paiutes' stake in their world.

Trapper images of the Northern Utes and the Southern Paiutes present a great contrast. In one sense this contrast is valid: it is clear that the two peoples, who appear to have led quite similar lives as late as the last quarter of the eighteenth century, had moved in different directions in the first half of the nineteenth century. The Utes had increasingly moved away from a traditional life-style toward one involving more wide-ranging hunting, trading, and raiding. The Southern Paiutes' traditional life-style had also changed as a result of outside pres28 Catherine S. Fowler, "Environmental Setting and Natural Resources," in Robert C. Euler, Southern Paiute Ethnohistory, University of U t a h Anthropological Papers no. 78 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1966), p . 14; C a m p , Yount's Chronicles, p . 8 8 ; Ferris, Life in the Rocky Mountains, p . 269, referred specifically to San Pitch Utes.

29 See Roy Harvey Pearce, The Savages of America: A Study of the Indian and the Idea of Civilization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1953), especially pp. 7 3 - 7 5 , 154, 168, 223, 232; William H . Goetzmann, " T h e M o u n t a i n M a n as Jacksonian M a n , " American Quarterly 15 (1963) : 4 0 2 - 1 5 ; and Wishart, The Fur Trade, pp. 205-7. For example, see C o n a r d , "Uncle Dick" Wootten,pp.

118-19.

Prelude to Dispossession

123

sure, but for them the change had been in the direction of disintegration of cultural stability as others violently invaded their lands and enslaved their people. Yet, both tribes had a similar reaction when Mormon settlers arrived in the late 1840s. Both seemed to welcome or at least accept settlement and the opportunity for increased trade, but they probably had different reasons for doing so.

The Utes had no reason to fear such an intrusion. They had gained wealth and power through their contact with outsiders. There were some obvious negative results of the fur traders' invasion. Intensive trapping and hunting undoubtedly had reduced game. Buffalo, for example, no longer ranged onto Northern Ute lands. But damage to the local ecosystem would not become a serious problem until alternative forms of economic support were no longer available. Although it did not take the Utes long to recognize the danger of permanent white settlement, at first it must have seemed a source of more stable trade, especially since the initial settlement lay between Shoshone and Ute lands. The Southern Paiutes actually asked the Mormons to settle in their area, with good reason.30 The settlers offered a buffer for the Southern Paiutes, a barrier to their many enemies. Moreover, they offered access to the technology and knowledge neighbors had so long used to the Paiutes' disadvantage.

Thus, the trappers and traders of the early nineteenth century prepared the way for later dispossession of the Utes and Paiutes. These harbingers of more permanent change had helped alter the lives of the Utes. Through their participation in the trade the Utes had augmented their stature among the varied populations of the Intermountain West.

Their cooperation had become, if not necessary, at least very important to the fur trade's success. But while increasing their short-term power, trade had connected the Utes to the forces of Euro-American expansion that would eventually end their sway in the Utah region. The Paiutes, on the other hand, while struggling to survive their contact with the Spanish Trail trade, had received little besides hostility from fur trappers. The importance of the Paiute-trapper encounter, then, was not due to its role in the fur trade, which was negligible, but derived rather from the fact that trappers helped open the region to later whites who accepted and reinforced the Digger image and, like their predecessors, allowed themselves maximum leeway in their treatment of the Paiutes.

30 J o h n Brown, Autobiography of Pioneer John Brown, 1820-1896 (Salt Lake City: J o h n Z. Brown, 1941), p. 110; John D. Lee to editor, Deseret News, September 4, 1852.

.11 martin, ti k, forOoofha, Mbfk the wait for i>HjnntipUon. oo kai been mad* in army Kiac UM past •t wtasea an befog horn, » • <***> Dr. 1. P. Mclennan, r* '•• u , «fo nr mad* a* food a to many mairelau.* o-.i::s .. :...• iyr i last (ore* month*, nil! t* j " ;;•, r*!i returned workoa UM toberioth. All who *fat u - ' - . : streak ii ebont two should do so huraediateiy. Hi* 'i'iei nrdta* creek. Th* 32i South Main street, beUrt« li.ird, t on th* other aide, site the St James Hot*!. CoritiiU- <;»'» ounces. In sinking:, <•» — - ••• ability ot water •n• a t >»riig» E J « H « M S .

On and after Saturday, Ma/ SEM, t - " • " » * »,•>! Sj>r

« p. m. i upon application by

GRAND CONCERT

Lake Park Resort

4, 5 am! furnished n. illS. i Jon* ftacs. |

i IrraM fcrlt Th* lett lsnctUi arrested at ate rwt- ] AJ well a* th* moat effectifv method ot diapelllna* Headache*, Colds and Fivers, Fwrera, or ""_"•"» J"«« "•» I Paulas' iteajtopatr Mnrahats SSSSoi thTVltem, to by taking a law d *™0<*' » » 0 , L j h # j dwaVofih*pleaiaataaUfoniJa Huwd fronted. Tn* flrat wife ad the anfortunata at abe Mateo • write oidtaf. Bothwonaao a* Holding, whotoaotb*r-in-i*w of Mr. lira brerat nothcr' ' " th* offers, nite* State* what* th*

who" *«*fn'» w*od allay o p p w * tfce

Ittaf Baft Result To the taste, more aeeeptante to the stomach, and more truly banendal Inttaaction, the famous Calif California tlouid fruit remedy. the famous

CNDKB THJB DOtXCTIOM OT

others. Try It. Sample t tars* bottle* for ml* by A. & Smith Tat WssriWi. I L

tasnouti brand to 1

AFTERNOON AND EVENING,

1

Young A Leigh, Boise a t ; . Maoo, by I. u:i.

--ihahaT BJerlns * MeLeugtatou, fort Benton. Mont. i. f. Jen net ta.

L. W. Walker. Halley. Little Morn.

Race No. 8-Purse | « a Bunnlng, lit -mile dash: all ages.

Third D a T - T b u r s d a y , Sept. nth.

Rase No. 7-Purse MOO. Trotting; 338 class.

- B. C. Holly, Pueblo, Cot. eh. s. Woodnut.

W. R. Baker, Helena, Moot. b. g. Baiah. & B. Larabree, Dear Lodge, Hoot, b. m. isle.

T. Carmlebael, BeUeroe, b. g. William M. T. Carmlebael, Beuerue, bk. g. Black Bart Base No. 8-Purse $300. Running, *A-mlfe dash; all ages.

Bace No. »-- Purse KO. Trotting and Paring; %M dees.

John McKay, Sacramento, eb.g. Wells Fargo. n Isss»Moof*bouee, Butte CWy. Mont.br. g.

VeflerVa'. Butt* City, Mont, ch m Fers.

J. C. Demon, Helena, or.«. Happy Jack. j . K. « t l i « p V i a r t j a k * , ^ « v g . Blaseiraod.

T. MoCojr, 8altLaae.br. g. Trarla (pacer).

I o t u i k D a y - r r s d a y . aapi. totk.

Baee Na 10-Puree *D0a Trottlagand Pacing: IreeCoralL _ • B. C BaOi. Pueblo, OoL, eh. a. Woodnot D. k K S e r ^ D e n w ; . V * BUTyBJaaear.) a Barnoa. Baft Lake.b- a j J t a m T e t E " " B. Barnes. Salt Lake.bJi.TDon Aigusf pseer).

W. a i W D o n d . Virginia atyrMontana, 6. m.CarrU9slleai>db.s.porcest*r.

Bass No. 11- Purse **m Hall-mile dash: an

Mr, B. B, Young and Mme. Mazzucato Young, "KSte^SSZ

for She Ua •okooofrol o

Assisted b| MISS MtEOtMH. Soprano, of Ogden,

Tha BaptM Mlstloa aebnoi will bffte >'

•nWiy afternoon. Mr. fourth year September 8. Terms, f t 00 h MM aw three win*.' hlnher department, and 92.SU for prfanar; flntntniatdowr MrKny MjJM S. BIUKLBY, Pri;rciW uu>»: fashion in o>-.

MIMHM FAKNSWO examination. Ball >r's Knamei Beady Mbud r t u t Ii Mmw.lH»i; J i ot 91000, and was | gwanlneone Intbemarkat Twentj Thomas aud W. F.

^"""lltsr**^

of tb* at** at

ATIMEU, gSJ^?,^ KB,

Miss B

"W

Brigham Bicknell Young, courtesy of author, and a concert from the Salt Lake Tribune, August 31,1886.

advertisement

Brigham Bicknell Young, Musical Christian Scientist

BY K E N N E T H L. CANNON II

U t a h Mormon family, attained great renown as a singer, music teacher, and one of the

O R I G H A M B I C K N E L L Y O U N G , A MEMBER OF A P R O M I N E N T

Mr. Cannon is a recent graduate of Brigham Young University in both history (M.A.) and law.

Brigham Bicknell Young

125

leading authorities and teachers of Christian Science. Many of the details of his life are missing from the historical record, but what is there reveals a talented and fascinating man. 1 The fifth son and eleventh child of Joseph Young and Jane Adeline Bicknell, Brigham Bicknell Young was born in April 1856 in Salt Lake City. His father was a brother of Brigham Young and an important leader in his own right. Joseph Young had joined the Mormon church shortly after its organization, participated in Zion's Camp, and witnessed the Haun's Mill Massacre in Missouri. In February 1835 he was called

by Joseph Smith to be the first president of the Seventies; he later served as a member of the Council of Fifty.2 Brigham Bicknell's older brothers Seymour B. Young and LeGrand Young both played important roles in Utah history. Seymour, one of the first professionally trained physicians in Utah, was his uncle Brigham's doctor for a number of years, and he operated an early mental asylum in Salt Lake City. Called to the First Council of Seventy in 1882 to replace his father who had recently died, Seymour, like his father, eventually served as senior president of that body.3 LeGrand achieved prominence as a lawyer and judge in early Utah and as a legal advocate for the Mormon church.4 It came as no surprise that young "Brigy" (as Brigham Bicknell was called by his family) took an early interest in music. According to one account, his father, Joseph, had been "known far and wide for his sweet singing of Wesleyan hymns."5 Another story relates that Joseph was "passionately fond of music."0 Most of Brigham Bicknell's sisters were 1 The only thing written on Bicknell Young in Mormon works is a biographical sketch on him by Leonard J. Arrington in "Centrifugal Tendencies in Mormon History," in T r u m a n G. Madsen, Charles D. Tate, Jr., eds., To the Glory of God: Mormon Essays on Great Issues (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1972), pp. 173-74.

2 Frank Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah (Salt Lake City: U t a h Pioneers Book Publishing Co., 1913), p. 1271; Levi Edgar Young, "Joseph Young," Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine 5 (July 1 9 1 4 ) : 1 0 5 - 7 ; "President Jbseph Young," Contributor 2 (September 1 8 8 1 ) : 3 5 3 ; D . Michael Quinn, " T h e Council of Fifty and Its Members, 1 8 4 4 1945," Brigham Young University Studies 20 (1980) : 197; B. H . Roberts, ed., History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2d ed. rev., 7 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1970), 3 : 183-86.

3 Andrew Jenson, L.D.S. Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History Co., 1901-36), 1:200-202; Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, p .

1271; Blanche F. Rose, "Early U t a h Medical Practice," Utah Historical Quarterly 10 (1942) : 2 2 - 2 5 ; Lester E. Bush, Jr., "Brigham Young in Life and D e a t h : A Medical Overview," Journal of Mormon History 5 (1978) : 9 0 - 1 0 3 . Seymour Young received his medical training at the University Medical College of New York.

4 Esshom, Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, p. 1270; History of the Bench and Bar of Utah (Salt Lake City: Interstate Press Association, 1913), p. 220. LeGrand Young received his law degree, from the University of Michigan in 1874.

5 "President Joseph Young," p. 356. Young had been a Methodist preacher before his conversion to Mormonism.

"Young, "Joseph Young," p. 105.

126

Utah Historical Quarterly

also very interested in music and worked to develop their talents. Young Brigy received lessons from George Careless, a musician and important teacher in early Utah who had been trained at the Royal College of Music in London. Young also studied piano under Orson Pratt, Jr., and received instruction from David O. Calder, another well-known music teacher. Young pursued other cultural interests as well, joining with young Mormons in the Wasatch Literary Association.7 By the late 1870s Brigham Bicknell had exhausted all channels of musical education in Salt Lake City. He had appeared in local productions, and most patrons of music in Salt Lake held high hopes for him.

His name began to appear as "B. Bicknell Young" in printed matter, and he apparently preferred to be called "Bicknell" by this time, undoubtedly to distinguish himself from his famous uncle and cousin. Like his brothers, Bicknell decided to leave Utah for educational training not available locally. In late April 1879 the local Philharmonic Society gave a benefit concert for Bicknell to aid the young singer financially.

On May 13, 1879, he set out for London in hopes of obtaining the finest musical instruction available, armed with letters from David O. Calder and others and with promises of financial support from his brothers.3 Young had not been in London long before he was granted admission to the National Training School of Music which was under the patronage of the Duke of Edinburgh. The principal professor of singing at the school was impressed by Bicknell's fine baritone voice and expressed optimism for his future musical career. Young was admitted as a paying student the first year, but during the second and subsequent years he won competitive scholarships. The National Training School closed in 1882, at which time Young entered the Royal College of Music whose patron was the Prince of Wales (later Edward V I I ) . Among Bicknell's teachers at the Royal College was Sir Arthur Sullivan of Gilbert and Sullivan fame.9

7 Edward W. Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: Star Printing Co., 1886), pp. 7 8 2 - 8 3 ; "Echoes of Music in Salt Lake City," Salt Lake Tribune, J a n u a r y 6, 1895; Ronald W. Walker, "Growing u p in Early U t a h : T h e Wasatch Literary Association, 1874-1878," Sunstone 6 (November/December 1981) :47, 50. O t h e r members of this early club were Heber J. Grant, Heber M. Wells, a n d Orson F. Whitney. Young had a falling out with the association a n d was censured by the group.

8 Joseph Young, Journal, M a y 13, 1879, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City; Salt Lake Herald, J u n e 19, 1 8 8 3 ; Seymour B. Young, Journal, October 10, 1880, U t a h State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City; Salt Lake Tribune, April 27, 1879.

9 Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, pp. 7 8 2 - 8 3 ; Christian Science Monitor, March 7, 1938; Hilgard B. Young to Leonard J. Arrington, July 26, 1967, photocopy in possession of the

Brigham Bicknell Young

127

Eliza Mazzucato Young, a talented musician and teacher, composed an opera.

Photograph courtesy of author.

While at the National Training School, Bicknell met an Italian woman who taught at the school. When that school closed Eliza Mazzucato accepted a position at the Royal College of Music. Young was impressed with this talented and cultured woman whose grandfather was an Italian count and whose father was a celebrated teacher of music at the Milan Conservatory where many notable nineteenth-century musicians received their training. After completing his training at the Royal College, Bicknell Young married Eliza Mazzucato, who was ten years his senior.10 Young then took an appointment as professor of music at the Watford School of Music in London and began appearing regularly in concerts and operas. He performed before the Prince of Wales several times and also at concerts held in the Crystal Palace.11 The London correspondent of the New York Musical Critic and Trade Review wrote in July 1883: . . . we are bound to speak of Mr. Bicknell Young, an American baritone, who, almost unknown at the beginning of the season, is now ranked writer; Salt Lake Herald, February 1, 1885; Arrington, "Centrifugal Tendencies in Mormon History," pp. 173-74.

10 Tullidge, History of Salt Lake City, pp. 782-83.

11 Ibid.

128

Utah Historical Quarterly . . . among the few singers that find themselves at h o m e in b o t h oratorios and dramatic singing. T h e powerful tone of his voice a n d its large compass qualify h i m for t h e interpretation of the sacred music of H a n d e l , Bach, and Mendelssohn, while the exquisite art and the consummate skill, by means of which he can control his vocal organ and m a k e it subservient to any nuance suggested by the nicest delicacy of feeling, render the young baritone the pet singer of all amateurs of Schumann's Gounod's a n d Schubert's lieder. W e are informed that, when the season is over, M r . Y o u n g intends to accept an engagement in Italy for the Italian o p e r a ; if he does it, heâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;in a true American spiritâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;shall have gone through the most difficult trials t h a t an artist can be p u t to, in less than two years. 12

However, Bicknell Young never went to Italy. He remained in England for two more years and then moved to Salt Lake City to open a music school.

Salt Lake music aficionados were delighted to have their favorite son return with his talented wife. They had seen and heard Young only once during the previous six years when he had returned for his father's death and funeral in 1881.13 A reception feting the couple in February 1885 was attended by most of the important patrons of music in Salt Lake City. The Youngs opened their school shortly thereafter. In June 1885 they held their first concert at the Salt Lake Theatre. Most of their students performed, but the highlight of the evening was the singing of B. B. Young (as the Salt Lake papers called him), accompanied by his wife on the piano. The newspapers raved about the concert the next day, ndting that expectations had been high and all had been fulfilled.14 The Salt Lake Tribune reported of Bicknell Young's part in the program: T h e house was awed to silence by his masterly rendition of this glorious piece of vocalization. His rich, resonant rounded notes came forth with a purity and sweetness a n d cadence that always bespeaks at once the greatness of the artist. H e sings with such a total lack of mannerism a n d with such a fervor a n d energy, t h a t one sees at a glance that his object is not so m u c h to attract t h e attention to the complete mastery h e has m a d e of his art, b u t rather to appeal to the loftier passions and c h a r m the soul with his melody. 1 3

The Youngs remained in Salt Lake City for much of the next two years and continued to hold classes, concerts, and sacred concerts, all of which received very good reviews locally. Patrons of music agreed that 12

As quoted in the Salt Lake Herald, July 27, 1883.

"Seymour B. Young, Journal, July 17, 1881, Utah State Historical Society Library.

"Salt Lake Herald, June 23, 1885, Salt Lake Tribune, June 23, 1885. w Salt Lake Tribune, June 23, 1885.

Brigham Bicknell Young

129

both Youngs brought unusual style and grace to Salt Lake City." Despite such adulation, Bicknell apparently felt that his professional career was hampered in Salt Lake, and in April 1886 he traveled to New York to perform. The American Art Journal reported: M r . B. B. Young, whose splendid baritone astonished and delighted us upon his return from London a year or more ago, is in town. Mr. Young, with his talented wife, took up their residence in Salt Lake City, where they have been exceedingly successful in establishing a school of singing. M r .

Young is making a brief visit to the east, and is greatly sought after in social circles. H e sang at a musical a few evenings since, and the power and brilliance of his voice apeared to be even greater than when last heard, and his fire and passion won the enthusiastic admiration of all who had the pleasure of listening to him, and the conclusion was quickly arrived at that such an acquisition to our list of artists should not be allowed to spend his energies in the far west. 17

The final words of the reviewer proved to be prophetic. Young spent much of 1886 in New York and sang at many concerts there. His performance brought excellent reviews from the American Art Journal which the Salt Lake Herald enthusiastically copied into its own columns.18 Although Bicknell returned to Salt Lake City in March 1887 with a "number of new operas" he anticipated producing in the city, he and his wife were to remain in Utah for only a few more months.19 They undoubtedly felt that greater opportunities existed further east. They may also have felt religiously and culturally isolated in Salt Lake. The Salt Lake Herald expressed disappointment at the departure of the Youngs: ". . . Salt Lake people are determined that if they must lose Mr. Young and his wife, they will give them a testimonial that shall ever keep their old home green in their memory."20 Bicknell and Eliza Young spent the next two years in Omaha, Nebraska. During September 1888 they returned to Salt Lake City briefly to produce Mrs. Young's comic opera, Mr. Sampson of Omaha, which had had a successful run in Omaha. The opera was received warmly, and shortly afterward the New York Mirror devoted a half-page to it.21 18 Salt Lake Herald, June 23, 1885, October 18, 1885, October 25, 1885 October 27, 1885 December 1, 1885, December 29, 1885, January 26, 1886, February 16, 1886, September 26, 1886, September 11, 1887.

17 As quoted in the Salt Lake Herald, May 2, 1886.

18 Salt Lake Herald, May 2, 1886, December 25, 1886, February 6, 1887. While Bicknell was in New York he met his brother Seymour who was on the underground to avoid prosecution for polygamy and helped him. Seymour B. Young, Journal, November 22, 1886, LDS Archives.

19 Salt Lake Herald, March 13, 1887.

20 Salt Lake Herald, August 28, 1887.

21 Salt Lake Herald, September 13, 1888, and October 7, 1888.

130

Utah Historical Quarterly

Little is known about Bicknell Young's religious activity before he and his wife moved from Omaha to Chicago in 1890. Genealogical records reveal that he was baptized into the Mormon faith in 1867 at the age of eleven and that he received temple endowments six years later in the Endowment House.22 Presumably his early religious activity was that of a normal young Mormon. His father was an important leader in the LDS church, most of his siblings were active Mormons, and his teachers in Salt Lake were practicing Mormons. (His affiliation with the Wasatch Literary Association indicates much more about Bicknell's cultural interest than his religious interests.) Possibly, Bicknell first experienced a questioning of his faith when, far from family and home, he became deeply immersed in the culture of London. This view is reinforced by the fact that Joseph Young apparently worried about the spiritual welfare of his son while he was in London.23 Eliza Mazzucato was not of the Mormon faith, and perhaps Bicknell's relationship with her hastened his removal from the religion of his family. One of Bicknell's sons, Hilgard, has written that his father separated himself from the LDS church at a comparatively young age and was an agnostic until his conversion to Christian Science.24 Despite his apparent break with the religion of his youth, Bicknell returned to Salt Lake City with his new wife after completing his musical training in London. Young had maintained a close relationship with his family and perhaps wanted to be near them. Additionally, his mother, brothers, and sisters probably wanted to meet Eliza Mazzucato.

His brothers had given Bicknell financial support, and the debt he owed them might have provided further inducement to return to Salt Lake.2a While in Utah, Bicknell and his wife often dined at the home of Seymour Young (already a Mormon general authority) and attended the annual celebration of Brigham Young's birth with other family members.2'1 Shortly after arriving in Chicago in 1890, Bicknell Young became gravely ill. Doctors were unable to help him. Someone, probably Kitty Heywood Kimball, a fellow member of the Wasatch Literary Association and a new convert to Christian Science in Salt Lake City, referred Bicknell to a Christian Science practitioner in Chicago. Bicknell was miracu22 Family Group Records, Genealogical Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

23 Joseph Young, Journal, September 20, 1880.

24 Young to Arrington.

25 Seymour B. Young, Journal, October 10, 1880, U t a h State Historical Society Library.

"G Seymour B. Young, Journal, June 1, 1885, LDS Archives.

Brigham Bicknell Young

131

lously healed through the practitioner's efforts. As a result of this experience Bicknell and Eliza Young devoted themselves to the study of Christian Science. After a lengthy conversation with the foremost Christian Scientist in Chicago, Edward A. Kimball, both Youngs became members of the First Church of Christ, Scientist.27 After his conversion to Christian Science, Bicknell practiced his new religion with enthusiasm.

Because of his musical abilities, he was soon named the soloist of his new church congregation.28 Bicknell and Eliza Young continued their musical careers in Chicago. In 1895 they both held professional chairs at the Auditorium Conservatory there and toured the country giving concerts.29 A brochure dating from the late 1890s briefly discusses the educational backgrounds of the Youngs and calls Bicknell a "broad, scholarly musician." It describes a series of their recitals as "among the most artistic musical events in Chicago" and states that both Youngs were very successful as performers and as teachers of music.30 In January 1897 the Youngs reappeared in Salt Lake as performers.

The Salt Lake Herald lauded their concert: "Nothing more delightful in the concert line has ever been heard here than the charming recital they gave on Friday night, and we trust the time is not far distant when they will be able to favor us with their presence again." The reviewer went on to state, "Mr. Young's many friends will be pleased to learn that fortune is smiling on him nowadays, as he and his wife have good positions and are besides in active demand at many important musical affairs in Chicago."31 An interesting sidelight to Bicknell Young's conversion to Christian Science is that his mother and all his sisters converted to that religion in the 1890s. According to Seymour Young, they had all been introduced to Christian Science by a woman described as one of Mary Baker Eddy's 27 Bicknell Young, "Personal Recollections," in Edward A. Kimball, Lectures and Articles on Christian Science, 3d ed. (Chesterton, I n d . : E d n a Kimball Wait, 1921), p. 1 1 ; Walker, "Growing up in Early U t a h , " p. 5 0 ; Seymour B. Young, Journal, J u n e 21, 1896, L D S Archives.

As a Mormon, I find it of no little interest t h a t two of the most important and popular Christian Science leaders (asi Kimball 1 a n d Young became) should have had the surnames they did. There is no evidence that Edward A. Kimball was related in any way to the Mormon Kimball s, however, and Kitty Heywood Kimball was a Kimball by marriage only.

28 Who's Who in America, 1926 ed., s.v. "Young, Brigham Bicknell"; Christian Science Monitor, M a r c h 7, 1938.

29 "Echoes of Music in U t a h . " 30 A photocopy of the brochure, is in the Bicknell Young file at the archives of the Mother Church in Boston and is reproduced in Robert E. Merrill with Arthur Corey, Christian Science and Liberty: From Orthodoxy to Heresy in One Year (Los Angeles: DeVorss and Co., 1970), p. 64.

31 Salt Lake Herald, January 10, 1897.

132

Utah Historical Quarterly

"leading disciples."32 They might have been converted to Christian Science before Bicknell was healed, or his miraculous recovery may have deepened their interest and caused them to accept Christian Science.

After 1895 the only members of Joseph and Jane Bicknell Young's family who remained in the LDS church were Seymour and LeGrand. Such a mass conversion of a leading Mormon family to another religion is puzzling and possibly without precedent in Mormon history. The most curious conversion was that of Jane Adeline Bicknell Young, who was the first wife of a ranking LDS general authority for forty-seven years and the mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother of other general authorities. The attitude of Seymour Young's family is that she was an old woman dependent on her daughters when she became a Christian Scientist.33 Christian Science, an indigenous American religion, was founded

by Mary Baker Eddy in 1879. She defined it as "the law of God, the law of good, interpreting and demonstrating the divine Principle and rule of universal harmony."34 Sidney Ahlstrom classifies Christian Science as a "harmonial religion" displaying "those forms of piety and belief in which spiritual composure, physical health, and even economic well-being are understood to flow from a person's rapport with the cosmos."35 Christian Science is essentially nonmaterial in philosophy. To the Scientist, the material world is illusory. Disease, pain, death, and sin are all illusions; only the spiritual mind is real.36 Because disease and other physical mala-

32 Seymour B. Young Journal, June 21, 1896, LDS Archives. This is the only entry I have found in Seymour's journals in which he discusses the mass conversion of most of his siblings to Christian Science. H e wrote: " T h e r e has been for several years growing up in our midst a silly system of faith designated Christian Science introduced into U t a h by the right reverend Mrs. D . B. G. Eddie [sic] who claims that she has founded the only true system of religion and that it is a [unclear] of her own production which I am ready to admit for I am truly aware that God never h a d anything to do with it. Mrs. Kilt Haywood Kimball became one of her leading disciples and she also converted my mother and all my sisters & B. B. Young our youngest brother and T J Mcintosh [the husband of one of Bicknell's sisters]." For substantiation of the conversion of the sisters, mother, a n d Bicknell to Christian Science, see List of Members of the Mother Church, June 3, 1899 (Boston, 1899), pp. 10, 9 1 , 118, 160, and Lee Z. Johnson to author, November 29, 1979, in author's possession, Mr. Johnson is the Archivist of the Mother Church in Boston.

33 Interview with Hortense Young Hammond, 1980, original tape in the possession of the writer. The son of J a n e Bicknell Young w h o was a general authority was of course Seymour.

She h a d two grandsons who became important leadersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Levi Edgar Young, who was a member of the First Council of the Seventy, and Clifford Earl Young, who was one of the original assistants to the Q u o r u m of the Twelve. T h e late S. Dilworth Young was a great-grandson of Jane Bicknell Young.

31 As quoted in George Channing, "Christian Science," in Leo Rosten, ed., Religions in America, 10th ed. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), p. 63.

33 Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, p . 1019.

36 See, for example, Mary Baker Eddy, Unity of Good, 121st ed. (Boston: Allison V. Stewart, 1912).

Brigham Bicknell Young

133

dies are unreal and represent a lack of "rapport with the cosmos," practitioners of Christian Science attempt to heal those suffering from physical illness or pain by bringing them into harmony with the spiritual reality.

Scientists claim "that the healing which they are able to mediate results as a direct corollary of the fact of the nonmaterial nature of the universe."

Because healings testify to the correctness of this nonmaterial philosophy, many Christian Science periodicals include testimonials of healing. This no doubt acounts for some of the popular images of Christian Science.37 Personal healing often plays an important part in the conversion of new Christian Scientists as it did in the case of Bicknell and Eliza Young.

Bicknell (as he was always known in Christian Science, with no reference to the first name that associated him with another religion) and Eliza Young increasingly assumed greater responsibilities in their new religion after their conversion. In 1898 he was made first reader of the Second Church of Christ, Scientist, in Chicago, a position he held until 1901. He was then given a position on the committee on publication for Illinois. In 1901 he also attended the normal class of the board of education which qualified him as a teacher of Christian Science.35 Attendance in this class proved to be a turning point in Bicknell's career. Because of its importance in his life, a brief history of the class is in order.

Shortly after Mary Baker Eddy formally established her church in 1879 she received a state charter to establish the Massachusetts Metaphysical College. This school conferred degrees to graduates until 1889.

Classes continued after the closure of the college, but no degrees were conferred.39 In 1898 Eddy chose three of her best students to set up a board of education. The board started holding classes in 1899 with Edward A. Kimball as the teacher. The normal class, as it came to be called, was patterned after the Massachusetts Metaphysical College and degrees (CSBâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;bachelor of Christian Science) were once again conferred on graduates. The number of students in these classes has always been limited to a select few. Graduation from the normal class is the only way one may become an authorized teacher of Christian Science. Graduates are qualified to teach primary classes where Christian Scientists are taught

"' Charles S. Braden, Christian Science Today: Power, Policy, Practice (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1958), p . 6.

38 Christian Science Monitor, M a r c h 7, 1938. Eliza Mazzucato Young also graduated from the normal class sometime before 1909, but it is not clear t h a t she was in the same class as her husband (Christian Science Journal 26 [February 1909]:lxii).

39 Braden, Christian Science Today, p p . 44, 102; Robert Peel, Christian Science; Its Encounter with American Culture (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1958), p p . 105, 131.

134

Utah Historical Quarterly

healing methods and Christian Science philosophy.40 Bicknell Young and Edward Kimball had developed a close relationship in Chicago, and it is likely that this friendship helped Young gain admission to the class.

Once there, he obviously impressed his teacher and others, because in 1903 he was named a member of the board of lectureship, a calling that forced him to abandon his music career.41 The Christian Science Board of Lectureship consists of a small number of lecturers who promote Christian Science, reply to public condemnation, and " 'bear testimony to the facts pertaining to the life of the Pastor Emeritus,' Mary Baker Eddy."42 The lecturers travel constantly, speaking wherever necessary. Bicknell soon became one of the most soughtafter and popular lecturers, undoubtedly assisted by his powerful voice and assured stage presence. He completed the first world tour by a Christian Scientist lecturer,43 lecturing to nearly 8,000 people in the Royal Albert 40

For a discussion of the normal class, see Braden, Christian Science Today, pp. 103-13.

Christian Science Monitor, March 7, 1938; Norman Beasley, The Continuing Spirit (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1956), p. 388.

42 As quoted in Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 120.

43 Norman Beasley, The Cross and the Crown: The History of Christian Science (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1952), p. 391.

41

Bicknell Young with his wife, right, and an unidentified who may have been a secretary. Photograph courtesy of

woman author.

Brigham Bicknell Young

135

Hall in London on April 23, 1907, where, it was reported, "thousands were not able to enter the hall."44 A survey of the Christian Science Sentinel for 1908 reveals that Young gave at least 131 lectures in twentyseven states, Mexico, Canada, and Australia. The trip to Australia took several months and cut down on the number of lectures he was able to give that year.45 He served continuously on the board from 1903 to 1938 with the exception of 1917-20 when he served as first reader of the Mother Church in Boston (the world headquarters for Christian Science) and 1927-32 when he took a few years off for study and practice.413 According to a historian of Christian Science, Bicknell Young was second only to Edward Kimball in popularity as a teacher and lecturer.47 The Christian Science Sentinel often reported that Young's lectures were attended by three or four thousand people; the number that heard him speak during his nearly thirty years of lecturing and teaching must be staggering.48 Only five of his lectures were published, however, because of a reluctance by Christian Scientists to publish lectures. The surviving lectures reveal an articulate and literate man who deeply believed in the teachings of Mary Baker Eddy.49 When Edward A. Kimball died in 1909, Bicknell Young was chosen to replace him as a teacher of the normal class for 1910. The highest teaching assignment in Christian Science and therefore extremely prestigious,50 this position reflected Young's rising reputation and popularity among Christian Scientists, including Eddy who still was alive when Young taught the class.

Mrs. Eddy's death in December 1910 precipitated a potentially disastrous conflict. She had been the sole leader of the church and had established two autonomous boards that vied for control of the church after her death. In addition, some followers believed that the formal

44

Ibid., p. 377.

Christian Science Sentinel, passim through volumes 10 and 11. Beasley states in The Cross and the Crown that lecturers average about three lectures per week (p. 3 9 1 ) .

46 Christian Science Monitor, March 7, 1938; Beasley, The Continuing Spirit, p. 388.

47 Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 327.

48 See, for example, Christian Science Sentinel, February 29, 1908, April 25, 1908, June 13, 1908, July 25, 1908; Beasley, The Cross and the Crown, p. 377.

49 Bicknell Young, "Christian Science: Its Principle and M e t h o d " (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1 9 0 9 ) ; "Christian Science: T h e Power of Good over Evil," The Christian Science Journal 28 (July 1910) : 2 1 9 - 3 3 ; "Christian Science: T h e New Birth," Christian Science Journal 30 (May 1912) :61â&#x20AC;&#x201D;73; "Prophecy," Christian Science Journal 37 (June 1919) : 1 1 1 - 1 5 ; "Christian Science: T h e Science of Life," Christian Science Journal 40 (August 1922) : 175-81. T h e r e is a conscious effort to keep lectures a n d class instruction secret and to publish only a small number of the speeches and writings of Christian Science leaders.

50 Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 327; Beasley, The Continuing Spirit, p. 131n.

45

136

Utah Historical Quarterly

church was to be dissolved at her death because almost all policy and organizational changes had required her approval and because she had initially had qualms about establishing a formal church structure. Despite Bicknell's adherence to the group that eventually lost the fight for control of the church, he was elected first reader of the Mother Church in Boston in 1917. As such he was one of the general officers of the religion. Readers can serve a maximum of three years and Young remained first reader until 1920. The "Great Litigation" (as the dispute between the two opposing groups has come to be known because it was eventually resolved in the courts) came to a head during Young's three-year term.

That he was able to remain in the good graces of the group that came to control the religion attests to his popularity.'51 Young's ability to maintain his important position is even more surprising for another reason. The views of his mentor, Edward A. Kimball, became controversial after his death because he had advocated what one historian of Christian Science has called a rational approach to the religion.52 Kimball's views conflicted with an intuitional school of Christian Science thought centered in Boston that numbered among its adherents the controlling group and the board of directors. Greatly simplified, Kimball's views seem to have been that matter, while nonexistent, reflected spiritual ideas; it was the corresponding "lie" to the spiritual truth. Students of the intuitional school believed that there was no correspondence between nonexistent matter and spiritual truth. A bastardized distinction between the two views can be drawn by what some Christian Scientists have called the "perfect liver" analogy. Kimball would have believed that a material liver, while nonexistent, reflects a perfect, spiritual liver (though not an individual spiritual liver; rather an idea of a perfect liver), while intuitional Scientists would argue that there is no liver, spiritual or material. Both perceptions are nonmaterial, but Kimball's more easily accommodates things material. Bicknell Young, his most outstanding student and follower, adhered to Kimball's views.53 When Kimball died in 1909, he still enjoyed the official approval of Mary Baker Eddy in all his teaching. After she died in 1910, leaders 81 Braden, Christian Science Today, pp. 42, 6 1 - 9 5 , 3 0 9 ; Beasley, The Continuing Spirit, pp. 142-82. Braden treats the "Great Litigation" critically, Beasley apologetically.

52 Braden, Christian Science Today, pp. 318-22.

53 Braden discusses differences between "Kimballist" and "intuitional" thought in Christian Science Today, p p . 308â&#x20AC;&#x201D;35. Some discussion of Kimball's views on the subject are included in Arthur Corey, Christian Science Class Instruction, 3d ed. (Los Gatos, Calif.: Farallon Press, 1950), p p . 146-47. Corey was a student in Bicknell Young's 1937 normal class and the book is based in large p a r t on Young's class.

Brigham Bicknell Young

137

of the intuitional school began attacking some of Kimball's ideas (although it was not made explicit that they were the teachings of the popular Kimball). According to one observer, Young went even further than Kimball in his rational approach. Young taught that the material universe "is the spiritual creation dimly seen and incorrectly interpreted.""4 Intuitional Christian Scientists would, of course, never accept such a premise. The ideas of Kimball, and by implication those of Young, have been unofficially in disrepute for most of the time since 1910, and in the last four decades some who have advocated these ideas have been disciplined by their church.53 With this in mind, it is indeed surprising that Young was elected first reader of the Mother Church in 1917 and even more surprising that he was once again named teacher of the normal class in 1937. According to historian Charles Braden: Several members of the 1937 Normal Class report that there was quite a stir among them when, at the opening session, it was discovered that Young was to be the teacher. One of them told me that two men, seated directly in front of her, voiced great disapproval of the appointment of a teacher bearing the Kimball stigma, and even some horror that Kimball's daughter, Edna, wras present as a fellow-student. Others have confirmed this report, and they add that in the field generally there was an adverse reaction.

That Young felt the sensitive position he was in is reflected by a remark he purportedly made to the class: " 'You don't want to get your teacher into trouble, do you? Then don't pass notes around of what I have said.''

Braden suggests that Young was not disciplined because his popularity in the church was such that it would have created bad feelings among Christian Scientists.56 Perhaps his many years of service prompted church leaders to reward him by appointing him as the normal class teacher in 1.937 despite his views.

Young's personality may have enabled him to teach heterodox ideas inoffensively and without fear of church discipline. The scanty record of his life reveals a warm, amiable man. His service to his religion, his

54

Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 327.

Ibid., pp. 308-35. T w o of Young's students in the normal class, both of whom are no longer members of the formal Christian Science religion, Arthur Corey and Margaret Laird, have published books on the conflicts in Christian Science thought. Both have drawn heavily on the thought of Bicknell Young in defense of heterodox ideas. (Arthur Corey, Christian Science Class Instruction, and Margaret Laird, C.S.B., Christian. Science Re-explored: A Challenge to Original Thinking (Los Angeles: Margaret Laird Foundation, 1965).

50 Braden, Christian Science Today, p. 328.

53

138

Utah Historical Quarterly

popularity, and his contributions to the furtherance of Christian Science undoubtedly made officers of the religion reluctant to indicate disapproval. That Young's relationships with his family and friends in Utah remained excellent even after he became a leader in Christian Science supports a view of him as a personable man of considerable tact and diplomacy.

By the time of his death in 1938, Bicknell had gained the respect and admiration of thousands of students, listeners, and patients. He had moved a long way from his religious and geographical roots, but his talents had certainly not been wasted. This nephew of Brigham Young should rightfully take his place as an important product of Mormon and Utah culture.

•

.-••' .,

arc

iiiiiia! \.:

Women using early telephone equipment.

Photograph courtesy of Mountain Bell.

Women in the Utah Work Force from Statehood to World War II B Y MIRIAM B. M U R P H Y

O. HARRIS of the Utah Independent Telephone Company visited the Maxfield homestead in Big Cottonwood

I N THE EARLY 1 9 0 0 S CHARLES

Ms. M u r p h y is associate editor of Utah Historical Quarterly. This p a p e r was originally prepared for a lecture series funded in part by the U t a h Endowment for the Humanities.

140

Utah Historical Quarterly

Canyon. He asked two daughters of the house if they would be interested in working for the new venture. The girls' father was outraged: "No daughter of mine will ever be a telephone operator. Most of them are nothing but little hussies." As the chagrined Harris quickly explained to his host, such a notion was incorrect. The Independent was looking for "good girls." Lois and Josie Ellen Maxfield were surely that, and, more to the point, they were experienced workers eager to learn new skills.

Like so many young women of their time, they had labored not only at home but as poorly paid domestics in the homes of others. With their father's worst fears allayed, the two sisters—one just in her middle teens —went to work in Salt Lake City for the promising, but short-lived, competition to the Bell System.

Utah's capital was a growing, bustling city of about a hundred thousand in the first decade of the twentieth century. Probably many a parent shared R. D. Maxfield's anxiety about letting daughters, especially, work there. However sheltered their lives may have been, the two sisters soon became street wise. The U I T C offices were on State Street near the old police headquarters and no more than a silver dollar's throw from the heart of Salt Lake City's red light district. The young women saw policemen drag prostitutes by the hair of the head into the station for booking. They knew something of the patrons of Regent Street, too— pillars of the community, many of them. These men would telephone from one of the notorious hangouts to ask the young operators to call home for them: "Tell my wife I've been detained at the Alta Club."

Such experiences neither tempted the Maxfield girls nor made them cynical. Rather, they learned to cope in a complex, changing world where good and evil continually contend.

In 1909 the younger girl accepted a job offer from John E. Clark, manager of the Lyric Theatre, to work as a cashier. Clark cautioned twenty-year-old Josie Maxfield not to engage in any conversation with male patrons of the silent movie palace. She never doubted the wisdom of this warning. A year later, in pursuit of better wages and working conditions, she started to clerk at a dental and surgical supply house. After two years and the disappointment of seeing another, less experienced girl promoted ahead of her, she decided to move on.

About that time, the Independent folded, and both Lois and Josie Maxfield began new careers as saleswomen for the city's leading department stores. Employment there was not necessarily safer — one store owner had a reputation as a womanizer, and a buyer for another firm was deeply involved in a complex thievery plot. Despite these perils, the

Women in the Utah Work Force

141

two women succeeded at their new line of work and rose in the retailing hierarchy. They married in 1919, and having no children continued their careers. Fortunately for their many relatives, the two women and their husbands remained employed steadily throughout the depression years.

They continued busily at work in their own restaurant-resort enterprise as World War II ushered in a period of prosperity and different opportunities for working women.1 There is something very typical about the experiences of the Maxfield sisters and something less typical as well. These young women went to work originally out of necessity. Their parents were not wealthy, nor even middle class, and children from such families were expected to shoulder some of the economic burden. Not until 1919 was compulsory school attendance through high school in effect in Utah. 2 Working children were hardly exceptional. Compiled employment statistics through at least the 1930 census include persons ten years of age and older.3 Paid housework brought the girls their first pay. That seems typical of the times. Domestic help was the most frequently advertised need in the female help wanted columns of the newspapers. But when other, more lucrative opportunities came along, the Maxfield sisters and their peers were quick to seize the bright ring of bigger paychecks and better hours and working conditions. The positions they filled were typical â&#x20AC;&#x201D; telephone operator, clerk, saleswoman, and occasionally department head or assistant buyer. Only their eventual leap into the employer class near the beginning of World War II was atypical.

1 Interview with Lois Maxfield Recore and Josie Ellen Maxfield Reenders, May 10, 1979, Salt Lake City. : T h e offices of the U I T C were at 115 South State Street, and the old police station was around the corner at 120 East First South. Regent Street runs intermittently north-south between Main and State streets; the particular block referred to as a red-light district was betweeen First and Second souths. T h e old Lyric Theatre at 321 South M a i n was a silent movie house at the time Josie Maxfield worked there. T h e restaurant-resort business was the original Maxfield Lodge in Big Cottonwood Canyon east of Salt Lake City.

2 John Clifton Moffitt, A Century of Service, 1860-1960: A History of the Utah Education Association (Salt Lake City: U t a h Education Association, 1960), p p . 4 6 4 - 6 5 . T o cope with the need for more personnel, since funds were insufficient to support the extended compulsory education law, local school boards hired teachers at lower salary levels, to which the U E A , not surprisingly, objected.

3 I n 1910 there were 90 females and 1,040 males between ages ten a n d thirteen employed in U t a h , mostly in agriculture, although 24 girls a n d 19 boys are listed as servants. By 1930 ' employment in this age group had dropped sharply to 281 males and only 24 femalesi. See' U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States . . .

1910. Vol. 4, Population 1910: Occupation Statistics (Washington, D . C . : Government Printing Office, 1914), p . 7 3 ; U.S., D e p a r t m e n t of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fifteenth Census of the United States: 1930; Occupation Statistics, Utah (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1931), p. 13. T h e 1940 census lists employed persons over age fourteen, an indication of declining child employment,

142

Utah Historical Quarterly

They encountered, or at least were made very aware of, sexual harassment on the job. That, too, was a fairly common experience, one of the hazards of employment for women.

Their paychecks helped to support ailing parents and relatives laid off work during the depression. Other women in Utah were also breadwinners. Coming from a large family, the sisters were unusual in having no children themselves. That would undoubtedly have changed their employment pattern as it did for most women of that time.

It is a temptation for researchers in Utah history to look for the unique, the unusual, indeed, for the "peculiar." One can resist that temptation in studying working women. Utahns generally fit into the statistical pattern for working women in the United States and varied only slightly from the norm, as did the Intermountain region, to the extent that the area was less heavily industrialized than other sections of the country and therefore provided fewer job opportunities.4 There is a popular song â&#x20AC;&#x201D; written in 1909 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; titled "Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl." 5 Heaven certainly seems to have favored the Maxfield sisters during their working years. But other forces also attempted to protect working women or advance their cause. During the 1895 constitutional convention in Salt Lake City several rather fascinating events occurred. To begin with, on March 12 the question arose of who would win the coveted position of convention clerk. Miss B. T. MacMasters and Miss Henrietta Clark were among the women nominated along with several men. George M. Cannon, who was to prove the champion spokesman for women at this all-male convention, came out strongly for MacMasters: " . . . She is perfectly capable of doing the work required, a n d . . . we will by this means give representation to the fair sex." Forwarding the skills of Clark was delegate David Evans who, with truth but no gentlemanly class, said: "She is thoroughly competent, I understand, and that will recognize the sex, as she is willing to work cheap.

She is an honest lady devoted to her work and does not seem to be very much devoted to the gentlemen around her." The backhanded compli4 Another regional variation in 1910 was the higher proportion of employed females in the professions and in domestic and personal service in the Mountain Division! (Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada) than in any other geographic region. See Thirteenth Census . . . Occupational Statistics, p. 51.

Nationally in 1910 23.4 percent of the females age ten and older were employed; the figure for Utah was 14.4 percent. (In Utah's two largest cities, however, female employment was appreciably higher: 17.7 percent in Ogden and 19.7 percent in Salt Lake City.) Males were also underemployed in Utah, 76.9 percent as opposed to 81.3 percent nationally.

6 The song was "a satire on the sentimental ballads of the 1890s, introduced by Marie Dressier in the Broadway production Tillie's Nightmare." The lyrics were by Edgar Smith and the music by A. Baldwin Sloan. The song was revived in musicals in 1926 and 1944. See David Owen, American Popular Songs from the Revolutionary War to the Present (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 139,

Women in the Utah Work Force

143

.. mm*' ' Henrietta Clark, left, and B. T. MacMasters, the all-male Utah Constitutional Convention

right, were hired as clerks of in 1895. USHS collections.

much devoted to the gentlemen around her." The backhanded compliments notwithstanding, according to the Deseret News, MacMasters and Clark won the day and were "employed after a . . . rather unparliamentary set-to lasting fully an hour." The two women were exuberant about their employment as convention clerks and saw it as a "good omen."0 Two delegates, George B. Squires and Samuel R. Thurman, contested for the title of "uncompromising champion of the fair sex," with Squires claiming to be "in favor of woman having whatever she wants in this world."7 Despite the good Squires's claim, however, to George M. Cannon goes the credit for espousing several revolutionary ideas.8 On March 15, 1895, he introduced to the convention a proposition that would prohibit any organization from discriminating against a person on the basis of sex in "acquiring knowledge of any trade or profession" or in limiting the number of persons of each sex that could be employed in a given field. What a blow that might have been to some unions and professional organizations had it been approved.9 6 Official Report of the Proceedings and Debates of the Convention . . . 1895 . . . to Adopt a Constitution for the State of Utah, 2 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1898), 1 : 1 2 0 - 2 5 ; Deseret News, March 13, 1895. MacMasters told the News that she intended to remember "the names of all the delegates who voted against her employment in order . . . to show her lady friends at the first election of equal suffrage in the Territory, t h a t the m e n who did so—if candidates— should not receive their votes. 'And,' with manifest assurance she concluded, 'I'll see that they d o n ' t get them> either,' " 7 Deseret News, M a r c h 14, 1895.

8 A son of Angus M . and Sarah Mousely Cannon, George M. Cannon was reportedly the first white boy b o r n at St. George. H e graduated from the University of Deseret ( U t a h ) in 1881 and shortly thereafter was elected Salt Lake County recorder. H e organized his own real estate company a n d also served as cashier of the Salt Lake Security & Trust Co. A Republican, Cannon was elected to t h e first state senate a n d was n a m e d senate president. See Press Club of Salt Lake, Men of Affairs in the State of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1914), p . 168.

• Official Report of the,,.

Convention . . . 1895, 1:164.

144

Utah Historical Quarterly

The defeat of this measure did not stop Cannon from introducing another, more controversial concept â&#x20AC;&#x201D; equal pay for equal work. In a most eloquent, but nonetheless futile, plea, he proclaimed: There has been in almost all ages a discrimination on account of sex, not because of the difference in work, not of the . . . amount performed, but simply because of sex. There are instances in this Territory where parties at the present time contract for certain kinds of work. I would instance the case of of tailors . . . where there has been a discrimination on account of the sexes that were employed. The articles made are sold to the public without a difference in price. The work is performed just the same by the lady tailors as by the men. . . . There has been, too . . . a difference in the amount paid to those who were engaged as typesetters . . . and this provision is intended to prevent anything of this kind.10

Needless to say, Cannon's fellow delegates did not concur. One claimed the measure would interfere with the rights of citizens to make contracts, another that it brought women down to the level of men, a third that it was an impossible task, wages being subject to supply and demand.

Women did achieve some gains in the new state constitution, however. Chiefly, they regained the right to vote that had been taken away from them in 1887 by the Edmunds-Tucker Act. And subsequent sessions of the state legislature also dealt with the problems of working women. Frequently, the legislation enacted in the early twentieth century limited the scope of female employment and often lumped adult women and children under a certain age together, as if they had similar needs.

For example, women, along with children under the age of fourteen, were prohibited by the constitution from working in underground mines.

Other statutes and local ordinances enacted in the period between statehood and World War I forbade the employment of women in saloons at any time or their hire as musicians in dance halls, public gardens, railroad cars, steamboats, and other such spots. Nor were women to be hired as dancers except for legitimate theatre performances. Women under twenty-one could not work where alcoholic beverages were made or dispensed, and girls under sixteen were forbidden to sell newspapers or other merchandise on the streets or in public places. Finally, employment agencies were warned not to send females to find work at any place of bad repute.11

io Ibid., 2:1169-70.

See, for example, George L. Nye, comp., Revised Ordinances of Salt Lake City, Utah . 1903 (Salt Lake City, 1903), sec. 323; P. J. Daly, comp., Revised Ordinances of Salt Lake ity, Utah , , , 1913 (Salt Lake City, 1913), sees. 4243, 4244, 1339-6, 1339-8, 1339-9, 722, City 11

Women in the Utah Work Force

145

Of greater potential consequence to women, other state laws of that time provided for uniform compensation for female and male public schoolteachers, limited the hours women could work on a daily and weekly basis, established minimum wages for female employees, and instructed businessmen employing women as clerks to provide chairs or other seats for them.12 But, as Elise Boulding has pointed out, "A description of the life of women in any society today, from tribal to industrial, based exclusively on a reading of law codes, would be most misleading."13 Certainly one would be misled by the 1896 law providing equal pay for female and male public schoolteachers. The Utah Education Association has detailed the failure of local school boards to comply.

An examination of school reports indicates that for many years men were paid more than were women for the same kind of work and with the same training. In 1907, the average salary for men in Millard County was 85 percent more than that of lady teachers. The average salary of men in Box Elder County in 1909-10 was more than 40 percent above that of lady teachers. The range of difference was even larger in the high schools than in the elementary.14

One result of these rather shocking disparities was high teacher turnover. As the UEA was to ask: Why should a woman prepare herself to teach at a salary of $60 to $85 a month for ten months when a short course at a business college would give her access to jobs paying from $75 to $125 a month the year around, including a two-week paid vacation. Despite continuing efforts by the UEA to boost teacher salaries, little was accomplished. During the 1930-31 school year the average male high school teacher received a salary more than 50 percent higher than the average woman teacher in an elementary school. The following

32 See Moffitt, A Century of Service, p. 4 5 5 ; James T. H a m m o n d and Grant H. Smith, comps., The Compiled Laws of the State of Utah, 1907 (Salt Lake City, 1908), Title 66, chap.

9, sec. 1853 and Title 43, chap. 3, isec. 1339; Allen T. Sanford a n d Richard B. T h u r m a n , comps., The Compiled Laws of the State of Utah, 1917 (Salt Lake City, 1919), Title 58, chap. 4, sees.

3671, 3673, 3677; The Utah Code Annotated, 1943 (Salt Lake City, 1943), Title 49, chap. 4, sees. 3, 5, 8.

Minimum wages for women in the 1917 compilation were 75 cents a day for minors under age eighteen, 90 cents a day for adult apprentices (with apprenticeships not to> exceed one y e a r ) , and $1.25 a day for experienced adults. I n 1933 the Industrial Commission wais empowered to determine if women's a n d minors' wages were adequate to secure " a proper living" (see 1943 reference above). In the 1917 compilation legal hours for women workers were nine per day or fifty-four per week with exceptions made if life or property were in danger. In the Utah Code Annotated, 1943 legal hours were eight per day or forty-eight per week with domestic service and packing a n d canning industries excepted.

13 Elise Boulding, The Underside of History: A View of Women through Time (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1976), p . 220.

14 Moffitt, A Century of Service, p . 455.

146

Utah Historical Quarterly

year salaries for both women and men were reduced and teaching loads increased because of the depression.15 Besides their generally lower pay, women teachers were saddled with another handicap that cut short their careers and effectively kept them from working toward higher-paying supervisory positions. Most school districts fired women teachers who married. Some women deeply resented this, and some women kept their marriage a secret as long as they could in order to continue working.16 Comprehensive data on working women are found in census reports for the years 1900 to 1940. The statistics reveal what kinds of jobs women had and where, as well as age, marital status, and race or national origin.

Charts also compare the number of women and men employed in the same occupation. Several generalizations may be made from this data.

First, women have been employed nationally in almost every occupation defined by the census. However, too much should not be made of this, for in the main most women have worked at jobs where they predominated and men were in the minority; and, likewise, men have predominated in jobs where women were in the minority. In the 1900 census, for example, one can find 14 women miners (presumably not underground miners) in Utah but 6,629 men and in nursing 14 men but 452 women. Although such anomalies teach us the dangers of stereotyping the sexes, they are of little consequence satistically. Nevertheless, as one analyst in the 1920s put it, "It is by no means certain that women have as yet filled the place they will ultimately occupy in the industrial world."17 Second, in some job classifications women and men continued to be employed in fairly large â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but not necessarily equal â&#x20AC;&#x201D; numbers. Teaching was one such occupation. In 1900 there were 1,040 female teachers and 648 male teachers in Utah. By 1930 their numbers had increased to 3,649 females and 1,556 males. The job of waitress or waiter was another that consistently attracted both women and men.18 is ibid., pp. 462, 470-71.

16 Helen P. Sheffield, Kaysville, questionnaire, 1979, and interview with Aurelia Bennion Cahoon, May 16, 1979, Salt Lake City. Some fifty women who worked in Utah during the period under consideration responded to a two-page questionnaire on the conditions of their employment. These questionnaires are in the author's possession. Women who requested anonymity will be cited by their initials and city of residence. " Joseph A. Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, 1870 to 1920: A Study of the Trend of Recent Changes in the Numbers, Occupational Distribution, and Family Relationship of Women Reported in the Census as Following a Gainful Occupation (1929; reprint ed., Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1978), p. 32, see also pp. 46-47; U.S., Census Office, Twelfth Census of the United States . . . 1900. Vol. 2, Population, Part 2 (Washington, D . C : Census Office, 1902), table 93, i s Twelfth Census . , . Population, Part 2, table 93; Fifteenth Census . , , Occupation StatisticSi UtahA table 4A

Women in the Utah Work Force

147

Third, some employment categories in which one sex was well established in 1900 became overwhelmingly dominated by the opposite sex.

For instance, at the turn of the century in Utah 40 percent of the stenographers were men. By 1930 men could claim less than 9 percent of such positions. Less dramatic perhaps, in the professional field women accounted for 11 percent of Utah's physicians and surgeons in 1900 and only 3 percent in 1930.19 Fourth, new job opportunities created dramatic shifts in employment patterns for women. On the national level the 1920 census recorded very large net losses against the 1910 figures in such occupational classifications as servants (-20.5 percent), dressmaker (-47.3 percent), home laundress, milliner, and boarding and lodging house keeper, among others.

Showing large net increases in 1920 over 1910 were clerk, other than in a store ( + 288.3 percent), college professor or president ( + 240.6 percent), semiskilled manufacturing operative ( + 33.4 percent), stenographer, bookkeeper, saleswoman, and teacher, among others, A similar shift may be seen in Utah employment figures. For example, the job category of female servant suffered a net loss of 31.4 percent during the decade from 1910 to 1920, while female stenographers and typists increased by 106 percent in the same period.20 Expounding on these changes for the Bureau of the Census, Joseph A. Hill suggested that T h e inducements m a y be better pay in m a n y cases, regular and shorter hours, more congenial companionship, a n d pleasanter surroundings, also probably a better social standing, since the occupation of domestic servant a n d t h a t of laundress or washerwoman, in particular, are very commonly looked upon as being menial pursuits. 2 1

Additionally, there was a lessening demand for some jobs: More women were buying ready-made clothing instead of employing a dressmaker and using the services of a steam laundry rather than a washerwoman. The small boarding houses of the turn of the century were also disappearing from the urban scene.

For many women the changes visible in the twenties seemed to usher in a new era. "A greater proportion of women were receiving

"Ibid, 20 Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, p. 33; Thirteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics table 7; U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census of the United States. State Compendium: Utah (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1924), table 25, 21 Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, p. 35.

148

Utah Historical Quarterly

Ph.D.s at American universities at that time than at any time since."2 Commenting on these phenomena, Elise Boulding noted: It is no wonder that young women born after 1940 cannot easily imagine how promising the world looked to women beginning their careers in the twenties. The women of the twenties were world shapers. The women of the forties, while they entered the labor force in large numbers as war workers, were already beginning the psychological retreat into the home so graphically described by Betty Friedan. 23

Fifth, a higher percentage of women were employed in urban than in rural areas. Looking at Ogden as a case in point, in 1910 17.7 percent of the women of that city who were over age ten were employed. In the state as a whole the percentage was 14.4 percent. This nationwide trend continued. In 1940, among females fourteen years of age or older in Utah, more than one in five living in urban areas was employed. In rural nonfarm areas of the state the number dropped to one in eight, and for rural farm areas to one in ten.24 Sixth, race and national origin were significant factors in defining female employment. In Salt Lake City in 1930 more than one-third of the black women over age ten were employed. For native-born whites the figure was slightly less than one-fourth, and for foreign-born whites about one-fifth. For other races the figure dropped to about one-seventh of the females over ten years of age.25 The relatively low economic status of blacks, both nationally and in Utah, would seem to account for the higher percentage of employed black women. Quite simply, black women experienced a greater need to find work, and find it they did, although usually at the lower end of the pay scale.26 22 Boulding, The Underside of History, p . 753.

23 Ibid., p . 755. T h e large increase in women as college professors noted earlier was one kind of breakthrough for women in the first decades of the twentieth century. R a l p h V. Chamberlain, The University of Utah: A History of Its First Hundred Years, 1850 to 1950 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1960), appendix P, lists teaching staff during 1850-1915. Over ninety women are listed. Of these, only sixteen began their employment prior to 1900. Outstanding among her peers was M a u d M a y Babcock (for whom the Babcock Theatre at the university is n a m e d ) who rose from instructor to professor of speech and physical education during 1892-1938 and eventually served as chairman of the D e p a r t m e n t of Speech. She originated one of the first university theatres in the United States. See p p . 175-77. Although more women were teaching at the college level, the stereotype of the male professor persisted. On. p . 339 the author lists the "new m e n " who signed teaching contracts for the university's 1915-16 school year following an academic crisis that h a d decimated the faculty. Almost 20 percent of the "new m e n " were women!

24 Thirteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics, p p . 256, 138; U.S., Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Population, Second Series: Characteristics of the Population, Utah (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1941), table 16.

25 Fifteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics, Utah, table 6.

26 Fully 90 percent of employed black women in U t a h in 1930 worked in domestic and personal service occupations, primarily as servants.

Women in the Utah Work Force

149

In the case of some foreign-born white women, entirely different factors operated to preclude their employment. Economic necessity notwithstanding, cultural values effectively kept most first-generation Greek, Serbian, and Italian women from entering the job market. A few eastern and southern European women worked unobtrusively in stores operated by their husbands or other male relatives or ran small boarding houses that catered to newly arrived immigrants (usually relatives or others from their old-country villages). Jobs that took women away from home or out from under the eye df a male relative were considered improper.

So strong was the proscription that even a poor widowed Greek woman would have been unlikely to seek employment but rather would rely on support from the extended family or the godfathers of her children.27 Seventh, age and marital status affected employment among women.

The census data for 1930, if laid out in graph form, would show a significant peak for the ages of 18 through 24. Almost half of the women in that age group in Salt Lake City were employed. From age 25 on the percentages decline fairly steadily. Going down the scale one finds one in five women between the ages of 50 and 54 employed. And with no Social Security to look to, one in ten women between 65 and 69 was working in Salt Lake City in 1930. As for marital status, nationally in 1920 one married woman out of eleven was employed. Or, another way of looking at that statistic is to note that two out of nine employed women were married. Utah did not lag too far behind with 17.5 percent of the female work force married in 1920.28 Although the census data provide a large body of information on working women, they tell nothing of the conditions of employment such as wages and hours, not to mention those more subtle but very significant evaluations of the employer or boss.

Some of the problems faced by women teachers have already been discussed. Office workers in Utah had no association to champion their cause, but women who worked as secretaries, stenographers, typists, and bookkeepers have expressed opinions â&#x20AC;&#x201D; some positive, some negative â&#x20AC;&#x201D; about their experiences. Taken as a whole, their employment seems to have been ordinary enough and fits into the national picture.

27 Interviews with Helen Z. Papanikolas and Philip F. Notarianni, May 1979, Salt Lake City. One Greek woman drove supplies to a sheep camp where her husband worked, and an Italian woman drove the school bus to Notre Dame School; but these were unusual activities for southern and eastern European women and may not, in fact, have been "gainful employment" as defined by the census., 28 Fifteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics, Utah, table 8; Hill, Women in Gainful OccupationSj, p. 75; Fourteenth Census . . . State Compendium: Utah, table 26.

Many women worked long and hard with few breaks and minimal pay. Above: American Linen Laundry workers. Merle Hughes Dowdle photograph, courtesy of G. Lynn Dial. Right: Fruit packers at Hurricane, Utah, ca. 1935.

Below: Tailoring department of Utah Woolen Mills, 1940s.

All photographs in USHS collections.

Women usually found better hours, pay, and working conditions in offices. Above: Employees of the Richfield Bank. Left: Nurses Gertrude Tobiason, Amber Olsen, Rose Rory, and Virginia Daily specialized in maternity cases.

Below: Young women took courses such as shorthand in 1903 at the Inter-Mountain Business College, later the Smithsonian College, to improve their employment opportunities. At center, Professor James A. Smith, founder.

All photographs in USHS collections.

152

Utah Historical Quarterly

In her excellent study of the American working woman, Barbara Wertheimer wrote that white-collar positions were, for a time, anyway, almost the exclusive prerogative of young, single, native-born white women. This was the case in Utah in 1910 when native-born white women, in proportion to their numbers in the population, were five times more likely to find employment in office positions than the foreign-born and almost six times more likely than black women. Only three black women had office jobs in Utah in 1910, and it seems highly probable that these were with black organizations.29 According to Wertheimer: T h e appeal of office work was real: it was cleaner and less strenuous t h a n factory work, a n d socially m u c h m o r e acceptable. Workers were paid a weekly salary rather t h a n hourly wages, a n d work tended to b e regular, layoffs less frequent. Most i m p o r t a n t for young women of that time, it m e a n t working for m e n o n a n individual basis, which provided a t least the possibility of finding a husband.

T h a t was the credit side of the ledger. O n the debit side were the the long hours, the often low salaries, the need to dress well (an a d d e d cost), a n d working conditions t h a t r a n g e d from poorly lit desks to rooms filled, with cigar smoke from t h e m e n w h o shared office space with the women. T h e n there were the advances of m e n who felt the young women were fair game and would not d a r e to protest. 3 0

Utah women office workers generally found conditions similar to Wertheimer's description. These stenographers, bookkeepers, and typists usually received much of their training in high school, taking such courses as shorthand, accounting, and typing. A few attended business college.

Once on the job they found it fairly enjoyable, and often they were thankful just to have a paycheck of any kind during the depression.31 As one secretary who worked in the 1930s expressed it: W e were grateful to have these jobs. W e never thought of taking breaks or needing them. I don't recall any of the girls complaining a b o u t t h e a m o u n t of work given t h e m a n d w e did work hard. W e didn't k n o w a b o u t discrimination or breaks then. W e didn't know or never considered the possibility of advancing to jobs the m e n held. Of course, the two jobs I held were exceptionally good for this area. Some girls were clerking at $30.00 a m o n t h so I can't speak for them. 3 2 29 Barbara Mayer Wertheimer, We Were There: The Story of Working Women in America (New York: Pantheon Books, 1977), p. 233; Thirteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics, table 7. Two of the three black women were clerks (not in a store), and one was a stenographer or typist. There were a few black businesses that may have employed these women.

3° Wertheimer, We Were There, pp. 234-35.

S1 General statements made about Utah office workers are based on compilations from the questionnaires mentioned in n. 16. Only specific statements will be individually identified.

32 K,W., Provo, questionnaire.

Women in the Utah Work Force

153

The hours worked were generally longer than today — forty-eight in many instances, although some women claim to have worked longer — with time on the job beginning to approach the standard forty-hour work week later in the period under consideration. Their starting wages in the mid-1930s ranged anywhere from 22.5 cents an hour for a secretary at a mill in Logan — with part of that amount in credit at the company store — to about $60 a month. Some women changed jobs when they could to improve their income. (Starting salaries seem to have been higher in the 1920s before the depression, with one woman reporting an $85 monthly stipend in 1924.) Most office workers received a paid vacation after a year's employment, but they enjoyed few other fringe benefits common today such as health and life insurance, retirement programs, or sick and overtime pay. Perhaps for these young women, most of them single, retirement funds and hospital insurance seemed unrelated to their needs, for many of them left their jobs upon marriage or with the birth of their first child. Some who wanted to continue working after marriage were not allowed to do so. One worker who married was jolted to hear upon returning from her honeymoon that "We don't have married women working for us." 33 Another office worker was required to give up her job as a WPA stenographer following her marriage in 1937 "so that an unmarried girl could take over."34 T h e office supervisor was most often, but not always, a man. And that leads into the debit side of office employment. Although a majority of those interviewed found their work experiences pleasant enough, about one-fifth did not. Here are a few of their complaints: •The pressure . . . was terrible — no time even to go to the rest room. Boss .also expected personal attention. Wanted to hire me an apartment and be my "friend."

Conditions improved at this woman's next job, but she objected to "the dirty stories told by the salesmen to each other" in her hearing. 35 A secretary-typist for two Salt Lake City firms reported excessive overtime on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays without extra pay. She also resented having a meter attached to her typewriter to keep track of the number of strokes typed. Each typist had to hand in a daily meter reading.*36 53

Gwen W. Jensen, Salt Lake City, questionnaire.

Maurine B, Campbell, Delta, questionnaire.

35 Gwen Jensen questionnaire, 36 L. S. W,, Salt Lake City, questionnaire.

34

154

Utah Historical Quarterly

One head bookkeeper found herself in a dilemma. She felt a responsibility to complete the tasks she was hired to do, but that was not easy given an unfortunate precedent.

When I refused to sit on the assistant manager's lap or kiss him as the former bookkeeper had done, he harassed me and made life miserable at work, so after I got die books all balanced, and had given him adequate notice, I quit my job. 37

A stenographer in northern Utah disliked having to cover for the infidelities of my boss. Having to take part in his petty vendettas. I sometimes left my initials off of his letters, I left with a great sense of relief when I got married. Later he offered me double my pay to work part time. I couldn't do it.38

The physical environment was fairly pleasant for office workers, although some women complained about smoking in enclosed spaces, cramped work areas, and excessive heat or cold depending on the season.

As one woman described it, she "worked in [a] small cubicle next to the V.P.'s office â&#x20AC;&#x201D; no windows â&#x20AC;&#x201D; [and it] became very stuffy at times especially] when cigar-smoking men waited for their app[ointmen]ts." 39 Canning or food processing was one of the new industries that beckoned many women workers during the early twentieth century. This was arduous labor in many instances, and as Barbara Wertheimer has suggested, Because the industry was seasonal, manufacturers were able to get exemptions from hours limitations for their workers. From die start, women made up over half the work force in canning. . . . Farmers' wives and daughters, sometimes whole families were employed. Some manufacturers preferred to hire newly arrived immigrant women. As one owner told an investigator, "They are the best workers I have; they keep at it just like horses."40

Most women cannery workers were between the ages of sixteen and twenty. Blanche Jensen remembers working for three summers at the Del Monte plant in Spanish Fork during the late 1920s. She was sixteen years old when she began. Supervised by a "stern" matron, the women and girls "sat on benches beside a moving belt and took out leaves, damaged peas, or anything not suitable for canning...." The women had to remain alert and work quickly for hours at a time with rest breaks only 37

V, H., Logan, questionnaire.

Z, W, T., Logan^ questionnaire, 39 K. W. questionnaire, 40 Wertheimer, We Were There, p. 217.

38

Women in the Utah Work Force

155

"if the pea load slacked up." The length cf lunch and dinner breaks was also determined by the volume of peas to be processed. Depending upon the harvest and the weather, the hours might vary from five one day to ten or twelve the next. The starting wage was 15 cents an hour with seasoned workers making 17.5 cents an hour or about $6 or $7 a week.

By 1940, Mrs. Jensen said, one woman worker reported earning 35 cents an hour â&#x20AC;&#x201D; more than her farm-worker husband who made only $1.50 a day. The women were required to wear "heavy blue, cotton dresses with matching caps The uniforms were supplied by the company and a small fee was taken out of each check for the rental of the uniform which was handed back to the company at the termination of work."

String beans followed peas in the canning season. At this task the women worked regular hours from 8 A.M. to 5 P.M. with an hour for lunch. They snipped off the ends of the beans, cut them in even lengths, and placed them in boxes. A supervisor inspected each box and punched the worker's tally card. The pay was about 7.5 cents a box, with two boxes per hour being produced by most of the women. "We grumbled about the job but wouldn't think of quitting," Mrs. Jensen said. The plant had "a waiting list of people who wanted work."41 At the Morgan canning factory in northern Utah women also canned peas and beans for wages ranging from 12 cents an hour to 22 cents for floor ladies. Shifts lasting up to nineteen hours during peak times were reported. When some of the women became dissatisfied with the pay and threatened to strike, the plant management vowed to bring in Mexican workers if the women left their jobs.42 Women worked in other kinds of factories, too. A Grantsville woman was employed at a nearby plant where she filled, by machine, cans and bags with salt and then pasted on labels or sewed up sacks that weighed as much as twenty-five pounds. The wages at this factory were 30 cents an hour in 1927 and 40 cents an hour by the early 1940s. The workers had few benefits until later when the plant was unionized and better working conditions and higher pay were achieved. Like so many women, this factory worker was grateful to have a paycheck during the depression, for her family depended upon her support. She rode a bus to and from work. As a sidelight on those grim depression days, she remembers being paid in cash during the time the banks were closed. "Payday could be any one of 5 days so we wouldn't be held up on the way home "43 41

Blanche J. Jensen, Spanish Fork, questionnaire.

Ruth Gregory West, " 'Those Good Peas': The Morgan Canning Company in Smithfield, Utah," Utah Historical Quarterly 36 (1968):176, 43 Ellen B, England, Grantsville, questionnaire.

42

156

Utah Historical Quarterly

A Salt Lake City factory worker was employed throughout the 1930s as a stacker and packer for wages beginning at 25 cents an hour and eventually climbing to $20 a week. As she described the duties, "The stacker picked cookies off warm pans and placed them in a trough for the packer to p u t . . . in cartons, boxes or caddies." She worked in a large area at a table staffed by sixteen young women. Two conveyors brought the cookies down from the ovens to be stacked and packed. Full boxes were conveyed to the scales for weighing. According to this informant, "the boss screamed and swore at the girls" and often called them back early from their lunch hour. The employees struck for better working conditions in 1937. Although conditions did improve somewhat, the strikers lost and the plant was not unionized.44 These factory workers certainly toiled long and hard for their meagre but much-needed wages. Whether some of them "worked like horses," as suggested earlier, is conjectural. However, for Salt Lake City the 1930 census does show that a foreign-born white woman (but not necessarily a newly arrived immigrant) was almost twice as likely to be found working in various manufacturing and mechanical pursuits as a native-born white woman. Black women, on the other hand, were very unlikely to find such employment, at least in 1930.45 Like their sisters in the East, some women factory workers in Utah struck or threatened to strike, and in these efforts they, too, were unsuccessful at significantly improving employment conditions or gaining union recognition. In fact, during the 1930s Utah women were much more successful at helping their husbands, sons, and brothers achieve union status than in achieving it for their own sex. One remembers, for example, Helen Papanikolas's description of the fearless Milka Dragos and other immigrant women in Carbon County during the 1933 coal miners' strike that led to recognition of the United Mine Workers of America.40 If strikers have their folk heroines in women like Milka Dragos and Mother Jones, so, too, do nurses. During the Civil War the tireless Mother Bickerdyke worked at emergency hospitals on the front lines, recruited volunteers, and raised money. When asked by a doctor on whose "authority she presumed to act in his hospital," she supposedly replied, "On the authority of Lord God Almighty; have you anything that outranks 44

A. M . , Salt Lake City, questionnaire.

Fifteenth Census . . . Occupation Statistics, Utah, table 11. Only 8.3 percent of employed native-born white women in, Salt Lake City worked in manufacturing or mechanical pursuits, whereas 15.4 percent of the foreign-born women workers were so employed.

46 Helen Z. Papanikolas, "Unionism^ Communism, a n d t h e Great Depression: T h e Carbon County Coal Strike of 1933," Utah Historical Quarterly, 41 (1973) : 2 8 4 - 8 5 , 45

Women in the Utah Work Force

157

that?" 47 More recently, in central Utah, Marva Christensen Hanchett became a heroine of sorts.

Born in the little town of Annabella in Sevier County in 1908, Marva was fascinated by medicine at an early age. In 1927, soon after her eighteenth birthday, she entered the Salt Lake General Hospital School of Nursing.

T h e first six months of the nurses training consisted of a full day of classes and demonstrations with long study assignments to be done at night. T h e nurses who successfully completed this period of schooling were given their caps and, besides continuing the classes and study, were assigned to work an eight-hour shift on one of the wards. 4 8

At that time and on into the early 1930s the old Salt Lake County General Hospital had so heavy a patient load that beds were sometimes set up in halls. "Nurses worked six and a half days a week, took regular classes, and studied in their off hours." After three years of this grueling schedule, Marva graduated and returned to Sevier County as the area's only available registered nurse. With no real hospital to work in, she and the local doctors delivered babies and performed surgery in patients' homes. "Many times she was paid with a bucket of honey or a loaf of bread instead of money. Sometimes she received no pay." After her marriage in 1933 Mrs. Hanchett's career took a new turn as she set up Sevier County's first regular public health program, and later she became nursing supervisor for the new Sevier Valley Hospital in Richfield.

Few nurses have been responsible for so large a geographic area â&#x20AC;&#x201D; almost one-fifth of the state â&#x20AC;&#x201D; as was Mrs. Hanchett. 49 Nursing was another occupation that experienced a dramatic change in the decade between 1910 and 1920. The earlier census showed 225 trained nurses in Utah and 643 midwives and untrained nurses. By 1920 the number of trained nurses had jumped 241.7 percent while the number of untrained nurses (midwives are not mentioned in this census breakdown) showed a slight loss.50 Before the turn of the century few nurses had formal training, and working conditions, including wages and hours, were poor. Standards were gradually imposed^ and nursing became a true profession. In 1917

47

Wertheimer, We Were There, pp. 135-36.

Patricia H. Sorenson, "The Nurse: Marva Christensen Hanchett of Sevier County," Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (1977): 166.

49 Ibid., pp. 168-71, 50 Thirteenth Census . . , Occupation Statistics, table 7; Fourteenth Census . . . State Compendium: Utah, table 25.

48

158

Utah Historical Quarterly

a registration law was enacted, and three years later graduating nurses were required to pass a qualifying examination. The first nursing schools in Utah were operated by hospitals, a situation that may have affected the professional status of nurses. As one educator has pointed out, in hospital nursing schools "the doctor became the teacher and supervisor of the nurse, a role which tended to keep the nurse in a subservient position." Not until World War II did nursing programs begin to move from hospitals to universities, with the University of Utah offering the state's first baccalaureate nursing program in 1942. Undoubtedly, universitybased education has enhanced the professional status of nurses.51 To cover in some detail several occupations typically associated with women has, in a sense, reinforced a stereotype of the working woman as either a teacher or a nurse, a secretary or a saleslady. And, indeed, these occupations have been important to women and important to society as well. Nevertheless, it is necessary to shatter the stereotype. A look at St. George in 1900 will do that.

A town of about seventeen hundred in the first years of the twentieth century, St. George offered women a variety of occupations. In addition to jobs as dressmaker and servant, teacher and saleslady, women were employed or self-employed as farmer, gardener, printing compositor, merchant, telegraph operator, postal clerk, photographer, and physician —• unexpected diversity for a small rural town in the West. Obviously, the variety of jobs in a city such as Salt Lake or Ogden would be too great to list conveniently. So, St. George can make the point for all of Utah. 52 In summary, then, what can be said about Utah working women?

During the forty-five-year span from statehood to World War II women filled a wide variety of jobs. Many of their occupations were of signal importance to education, health care, manufacturing, communications, retailing, business — the lifeblood of most communities, in fact. Despite unfavorable working conditions in some occupations, the percentage of women employed in Utah increased steadily over the years from 11.2 percent in 1900 to 17.5 percent by 1940. Working out of economic necessity as well as for personal fulfillment, women were harassed or handi-

51 Sandra Hawkes Noall, "A History of Nursing Education in Utah" (Ed.D. diss., University of Utah, 1969), pp. v-vi, 28.

52 Twelfth Census of Population, 1900, Utah, manuscript, National Archives, Washington, D.C, microfilm at Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. See St. George, Washington County. Many of these women were heads of household with several dependents. All are identified by name, marital status, age, and place of birth.

159

Women in the Utah Work Force

The war years created many nontraditional job opportunities for women such as making parachutes at a factory in Manti, Utah, during World War II. At left, Delia Cox Whitlock of Richfield.

USHS collections.

capped in some instances because of their sex. Nevertheless, they remained dedicated and persistent. As social and economic conditions changed they abandoned old occupations and took up new ones. Their horizons changed constantly. Young and old, single and married, black, white, and foreign-born, Utah women went off to work as did their sisters in other parts of the country. Yet, they remained essentially invisible in history. In 1929 Joseph Hill noted: Whatever opinions may be held as to the proper sphere of woman, the fact is that, to a considerable extent, women's place is no longer in the home. In addition to her social contributions to the preservation and welfare of mankind, the contributions of her sex to economic production in its commercial aspects are of such substantial proportions that not only is it impossible to ignore them as a factor in industrial progress, but they are worthy of serious study as an important element in this progress.53

Fifty years later such studies are beginning to be made. The invisible woman is becoming fleshed out, her contributions recognized, her significance to all aspects of human society acknowledged.

53

Hill, Women in Gainful Occupations, p. xv.

Lone cyclist on the banked track at the old Salt Palace.

USHS collections.

Bicycle Racing and the Salt Palace: Two Letters EDITED BY OLIVE W . B U R T

I HE ORIGINAL SALT PALACE, AT Ninth South between State and Main streets, was completed in 1898. It had taken three years and sixty thousand dollars to bring to reality this glittering architectural dream.

Cloyd F. Woolley, a Denver advertising executive, died in 1956.

Nine years earlier he had written the following two letters to me, his sister, reminiscing about the early days of Utah bicycle racing and the construction of the Salt Palace.

Mrs. Burt, a Fellow of the U t a h State Historical Society, submitted this article shortly before her death in September 1981. It is published through the kind permission of her son, Robin Burt.

Bicycle Racing

^02

I n 1893, when Cloyd was three years old, the family moved to Ann Arbor where our father attended the University of Michigan. Upon his graduation in 1897, the family returned to Salt Lake City and rented a small house at 767 South State Street, a little over a block from the Salt Palace site.

Cloyd spent a great deal of time at the track which was located in the northwest corner of the park. H e did odd jobs and ran errands for the racers, and during the events he sold "volley vons," a deep-fried dough covered with powdered sugar, that were popular among the spectators.

T h e nation was in the midst of a bicycle craze that reached its peak in 1896. 1 Although the rage lasted less t h a n five years its effect on the country was profound, and it had a lasting influence on my brother, as can be seen from the following letters.

Obvious spelling errors have been corrected and extraneous personal material has been deleted from the text.

July 4 Dear Sis, Florence2 tells me you are writing a story in which the old Salt Palace plays a part. Laugh, if you will, but deep inside of me there is a lingering conviction that the Salt Palace was mine. Built expressly for me. It always seemed that way.

And for a long time I have wanted to tell someone about it. You are the victim.

Of course Mr. Shefski3 — the old sports writer — has from time to time appeared in print with inferences that he was the moving spirit behind the venture.

This could be true. But, as a kid of 8 or thereabouts, watching the thing being built, I did not even know that Mr. Shefski existed — at least not in the same firmament as my Salt Palace.

I don't suppose my memories will be of any use to you. I am doing this for my own fun anyway. Rather, it's a kind of compulsion.

We were living then in the little house just above 8th South on State Street.

767, I believe the address was There came a 4th of July — or maybe it was the 24th — when the whole neighborhood was excited about a bicycle race at Calder's Park, later called Wandamere.4 The track at Galder's was just a dirt, or clay, track. Perfectly circular, as I recall. It was a quarter-mile track. Therefore the curvature was not great. It did not need to be "banked" steeply. The slope, possibly 15 degrees:, was uniform all the way around. No great speed was possible on such a track. The great excitement arose from the fact that John Lawson, "The Terrible Swede" was going to race. He was said to be the 1

69-73.

2

See Fred C Kelly, "The Great Bicycle Craze," American Heritage 8 (December 1956) :

Florence Tarbet of Logan, Cloyd F. Woolley's wife.

Frank E. Shefski.

4 The park was located between Thirteenth and Fourteenth South, Fifth and Seventh East.

3

162

Utah Historical

Quarterly

champion bicycle rider of Sweden and probably the fastest man in the world.

We later learned that his brother Ivor was much faster — and even the youngest brother, Gus, could beat him hands down. But John was the first to come to our notice. He won the race at Calder's Park — and the whole town promptly went bicycle racing mad. A n d our neighborhood naturally registered the most violent fever of all because, wonder of wonders, the great m a n lived right there in the 3rd ward. H e had just recently come from Sweden and was staying with a Swedish (or Scandinavian) family on the north side of 8th South between State and 2nd East — just around the corner from our place. Funny I can't recall their name. It was a frame house. We used to deliver milk there. Later, when we had the store, they always traded with us — and always paid their bills, which is sufficient entitlement to immortality in my opinion. . . . Why can't I recall their name? Everyone else along the block I can recite. Rasmussens, Binglys, Burkes, Surteses, Morks, Weilers — no, I can't remember who lived on the corner of Second East. That little low adobe place, with Tommy Curtis' home just north of it.5 No matter.

T h e next thing I remember was John Lawson giving exhibitions in Ward Meeting Houses. I believe he gave these exhibitions in many Wards — but that is just an impression. I do know I saw him as part of a program in the 3rd Ward Meeting House. Maybe you saw him too. In case you did not, here's what he did. H e rode a bicycle on a roller platform. Same principle as a tread mill. He could sprint furiously in one place. Big dials, attached to the rollers, registered his speed for all to see. His! attempt, as I recall, was to register a speed of a mile a minute and I believe he accomplished this (according to the dial) but would not swear to it. In any event, these exhibitions quite naturally fed the bicycle racing fever. Looking back, I can now realize that it was a truly remarkable promotion. Consider. Only two towns in the United States, I believe, ever became dyed-in-the-wool bicycle racing towns. One was Salt Lake and the other was Newark, New Jersey. T h e six-day bicycle races in Madison Square Garden came much later. 6 And they were promoted and managed by an ex-Salt Lake bike sprinter — one of the 5 or 6 of the fastest — Johnny Chapman. I think he came from Australia along with Al Goulet (a very fast m a n ) and big, lanky Vaughn. Many's the quarter he gave me for running errands.

A lot of property below 9th South and on both sides of State Street belonged to the Heath 7 brothers. They lived over on West Temple, I believe.

I knew the kids of both families and have been in both homes but do not recall the exact location. West Temple or 1st West, somewhere below 9th South. For years the Heaths had run the ice-skating rink. This was about midway between 9th and 10th South . . . on the East side of State. Baby creek where we used [to] swim or, rather splash', was the north boundary of the rink. We used to sneak in. There were guards to prevent this but they were hardly an obstacle.

5

The Curtis home was 764 South Second East.

T h e Madison Square Garden six-day bicycle races actually started in 1891.

7 Frederick H e a t h lived at 626 South West Temple. O t h e r Heaths lived at 135, 149, 151 and 153 West Sixth South.

6

Bicycle Racing

163

The Heaths owned also die ground where the Salt Palace was built. I remember when they put up the high board fence all around. Then the Palace began going up — a very rough board structure — siding full of knots and cracks. O n these they nailed slabs of salt. It was supposed to be beautiful. Then, one day, I noticed another structure. This, I knew at once was the new bicycle track everyone had been talking about. The skeleton of struts and beams was then about completed.

They were beginning to lay the track itself. I went over and peered thru the open spaces. One of the Heaths and John Lawson were inside the track. Lawson was pointing out how some part of the structure should be built. I saw him around there often thereafter and got the lasting impression that he was the guiding genius. Later I got a job carrying water for the workmen and heard their chatter. This was to be the fastest track in the world — modeled after the best tracks in Europe on which John Lawson had raced. That is what they said.

T h e people and the newspapers always referred to this as a "saucer" track.

Actually, of course, it was shaped like a platter in-so-far as it was longer one way than the other. It was an eighth [of a] mile track. O n the narrower ends the curvature was great and the track slanted steeply — probably 45 degrees. Lots of the kids could not ride fast enough to stick on the steep curves. T h e longer sides were flatter — not more, I'd say, then 15 or 20 degrees. One of the flatter parts was called the home stretch. T h e other, the back stretch. Ordinary sprint or straight distance races always started and ended on the home stretch. A big black line across the track marked the starting point which was also the finish.

T h e track itself was built of boards about an inch thick and maybe three inches wide. These were laid on their edges. This made the track about three inches

The grounds of the old Salt Palace were beautifully landscaped.

USHS collections.

/)

(

/

164

Utah Historical

Quarterly

thick and, for some reason which always seemed to be more or less occult, this thickness was supposed to make the track "faster." About a foot and a half or two feet up from the bottom of the track a broad black line was painted all the way around the track. Below this line the boards were narrower than the boards above the line. T h e "why" of this I tried in vain to find out. Everyone said, again, that the narrower boards made that portion of the track "faster." This portion of the track was called the "pole." T h e boards were of hard wood.

None-the-less whenever a rider fell he picked up a lot of splinters. It was a hazardous business. Quite a few were killed. Where the two flatter parts of the track merged into the steeper ends was an especially dangerous portion. Riders developed great skill in manipulating their bikes while traveling at high speed.

Hardy Downing, 8 for example, could make the rear wheel of his bike flip up the track a good foot or more to keep another rider from coming around him.

H e was by no means in the; class of several others as far as speed was concerned.

But he was so expert in tricks of the kind I have mentioned that the fastest riders like Ivor Lawson, Al Goulet and others used to "team" with him. His job was to get just behind his team-mate and keep dangerous rivals from passing. Lots of good clean fun. His nick-name was "Heady Hardy" and it was well earned.

Not often winning a race himself he yet made big winnings because the faster men he teamed with split the purse with him.

They had a great variety of races. In the most ordinary race they all lined up together at the starting line. A trainer held them erect on their bikes. At the sound of the starting gun the trainer shoved. The race might be for a quarter mile, half mile — any distance up to 50 miles. Some men who were good at short races were not so good at longer ones. I do not recall ever seeing John Lawson beat in a 50 mile race — or in an unlimited pursuit race. T h e unlimited pursuit was always, I believe, between just two men. One started on the home stretch and the other on the back stretch. T h e one who could finally catch and pass the other was [the] winner. Then they had what they called an "Australian Pursuit" race. In this, riders were placed to start every 10 or 15 yards around the track.

Any man who got passed by another had to drop out. Finally, of course, there would be only two left — and then only one.

There was another thing about this racing that none of the riders could ever explain to my complete understanding. This was in the so-called French style match race. In the ordinary sprint race each rider started out and rode his race to get ahead of the others — oh, perhaps not to lead all the way, of course.

Just as in a foot race, the successful runner "rates" himself according to his ability.

Same with horses. Never-the-less, as a rule, it is considered quite a point to be ahead, provided the contestant is not over-extending himeslf. But in the French style race every effort was made to get behind the other fellow so that he could not watch you carefully and know when you were going to sprint. T h e whole 8 Hardy K. Downing traveled on the world bicycle racing circuit, visiting Europe and Australia; however, much of his riding was done at the Salt Palace track. H e held the world's mile tandem record with Vic Benson for several years. H e later became a boxing promoter and sports writer in Salt Lake. See Men of Affairs in the State of Utah (Salt Lake City: Press Club of Salt Lake, 1914), p. 324.

Bicycle

Racing

165

idea was to take the other man completely by surprise with a sudden, unexpected burst of speed. This kind of race was run always just between two men — a match race. I have seen the two jockey for the hind position, riding so slow they would wobble and almost fall off the track. Then, suddenly, one; would shoot ahead, the other tearing after him. It was in this kind of race that Frank Kreamer beat Ivor Lawson — something that most Salt Lake, fans thought about as possible as water running uphill. Frank Kreamer was the great sprint star from the Newark, N. J., track. All thru the east they billed him as World's Champion. This we in Salt Lake considered a base usurpation. Didn't everyone know that Ivor Lawson was Champion of the World? But Frank Kreamer came there and beat him. It was just likq the sun falling out of the sky. What I started to say that I could never get thru my head was why it paid to get behind the other guy.

Gosh, if you're ahead, you're ahead. The other fellow has just got that much more distance to go. But no, the smartest heads in the game preferred to French style — and they always jockeyed to get behind. . . .

July 14 Dear Sis, You know, you half convince me that my memories of the Salt Palace may be of use to* you. But the fact is, of course, I am only looking for an excuse to go o n . . . .

There is another kind of bicycle racing that I must tell you about. It was called "Pace Following." The general idea is that if another man runs or rides in front of you and you can follow him closely enough, you can make better time than if you had to break the wind for yourself. T h a t is, always provided that he is a fast time-maker. Well, motorcycles could certainly go faster than bike riders.

This, recall, was the very earliest days of motorcycles. T h e first of this implement we saw was a "tandem" motorcycle. Two men rode it. T h e front man had only to steer. T h e rear man did all the operating of gadgets that speeded up or slowed down. So we had "motor-paced" races. The rear man on the tandem motorcycle wore an over-sized jacket, well padded out, in order to break more wind. Now, of course, one essential was that the "pace follower" should ride as close as possible to the "pace-maker" in order to take greatest advantage of the wind-breaking. T o accomplish this closest possible following, two important mechanical contrivances came into being. First, in order that the foot-pedaling rider behind the motorcycle should not rub his front wheel against the motorcycle's rear wheel and so engender a nasty "spill," there was a free-turning roller, held by a bracket, just behind the rear tire of the motorcycle — clear of the rear tire by less than one inch. T h e "follower" — foot-pedaling his bike — rode with his front wheel in constant (as possible) contact with this roller. Second, to throw the "pacefollower" as far forward as possible — and thus shield him from wind to the greatest possible degree, a special kind of bike was used. T h e front "forks" of an ordinary bike are curved forward, as you know. In "pace-following" bikes the front forks were straight. Again, the front wheel of the "pace-following" bike was made considerably less in diameter than the rear wheel. By these two contrivances,

166

Utah Historical

Quarterly

the foot-pedaling bicycle rider was able to follow his "pace-maker" so closely that it was nothing to see the "pace-follower" rest his head against the back of the "pace-maker." But consider, if you will, for a moment, the hazards of this operation. T h e man on the foot-pedaled bike seems to be sucked along at amazing speed — as indeed he is -— but he is riding basically blind. This took a special kind of nerve. Hardy Downing, as I recall, was acclaimed the best at this. Usually, they had only one rider on the track in such a test. H e rode against time — to see how much faster he could make a mile or a quarter mile or ten miles under these conditions. Occasionally, however, they would put two men in a race of this sort.

T h e motorcycle tandems would "pace" them until a certain distance from the end of the race. Maybe one " l a p " from the end — maybe two — but at the specified time the "pace-follower" must leave his protected position behind the "pace-maker" and go out on his own, to the finish line. You see the variety of fare they served?

Well, Hardy Downing — in addition to his riding as "team-mate," of which I have told you — was supposed to be the best of the. "pace-followers." I think he held a number of records against time — and in competition he was terrific.

Only one rider arose to challenge him in this specialty. And this rider, strangely enough, was the only neighborhood boy who ever made the grade into the big time circles. H e lived eater-cornered across the street from us when we had the store on Seventh South and State. His name was Harvey Wilcox. . . .

T h e fact is, if I am not mistaken, that the Salt Palace itself was several years in building. What does several mean? I had a discussion with D a d once about this and he maintained that 3 or more constituted several. I have come to adopt his view and I use the word in that sense. At any rate, I recall that they put u p the shell of the building and partially coated it with salt slabs — and then, for a season or two or three, the completion of the palace itself was, so to speak tabled. 9 Meanwhile, for income, the bicycle track was built and races were held and money flowed in. I do know that races were in full swing and crowds lining u p to pay admissions while the Palace, itself, was an empty hulk inside. Even, the rear part of the structure was not yet covered with salt slabs.

I remember seeing vistors (maybe tourists of the day) getting permission to look inside the "Palace" and, peeking around them, all I could see was an unfinished inner structure. Very crude. Very bare. But the "Salt Palace" as a resort — as a going proposition—was already and for a long time (as it seemed to me) in full swing.. . .

I think the track was finished first. The "Palace," itself, then stood as an empty hulk for some time. Meantime, behind the "Palace" — that is, south of the palace — they had a "Mid-way," as they called it. This was purely and simply an imported carnival. "Bosco" the snake-eater. "Coco," the Wild Girl.

"Major" Tom T h u m b , the midget. " T h e Wild M a n from Borneo" — with pictures of where he was captured. ( H e was really a very nice little guy who always gave a nickel extra.) But the feature, of course, was " T h e Streets of Cairo."

• T h e Salt Palace was formally opened by Governor Wells on August 21, 1899. I t was destroyed by fire on August 29, 1910.

Bicycle

Racing

167

For this promotion, greasy-faced men, fierce and foreign-looking, paraded ins baggy pants with wind instruments, resembling clarinets, on which they blew in strident tones the "Hootchy-Kootchy." Anyone could infer — and did so infer — that if you followed these foreigners into the enclosure you would see sights heretofore denied to western eyes. Of course it was a bilk. Languid ladies, almost invariably obese, lolled about on cushions. There was a dance or two of the type that you can imagine but not get excited about. T h e funny thing was, I ran errands for these ladies. T o me, it was just like sawing a board. And yet, and yet — in some vague way I had a notion what it was all about.

They, also had, on the "Midway" the first motion pictures I ever saw. This was a separate building — "Shanty" — rather. T h e fight between Bob Fitzsimmons and Jim Corbett at Reno, Nevada. 10 T h e time the "Solar-Plexus" punch was born. Gee. I bet I saw that fight fifty or sixty times. Well, you could not see much. T h e films were so streaked with flittering that you thought you were in a rain-storm. T h e point is that with my "Volly-Von" tray — and, later, with my basket of "Peanuts, Chewing-gum and Candy," I was privileged to walk into any of these places. But that is not quite correct. For other boys, selling the same things, were not allowed. I guess it was because I wore glasses and looked like a bug and at the same time knew what everyone was thinking. They could see this on my mug and it amused them. M a y b e . . . .

10

The fight was held in Carson City, Nevada, in 1897.

Overview of the old Salt Palace track. USHS collections.

- •

. . .

"In the above may be seen two rows of 'Cribs' facing each other on a narrow alley â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a door and a window opening from a little room that will soon contain the women who are to be protected by the police/' wrote the Deseret News, September 23,1908, of the stockade.

Red Lights in Zion: Salt Lake City's Stockade, 1908-11

BY J O H N S. M C C O R M I C K

1 HE HISTORY OF PROSTITUTION IN THE United States is not a frivolous subject, though it is often treated that way, and in recent years a number of historians have given it the serious treatment it deserves. They have focused particularly on the midwestern and western United States, writing, for example, about prostitution in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Saint Louis, Kansas, Helena, Nevada's Comstock, San Diego, and San Francisco.1 Dr. McCormick is research manager for the U t a h State Historical Society library and the author of a history of Salt Lake City. ^ o h n C. Burnham, " T h e Social Evil O r d i n a n c e : A Social Experiment in Nineteenth Century St. Louis," Missouri Historical Society Bulletin 27 (April 1971) : 203â&#x20AC;&#x201D;17; Carol Leonard

Salt Lake City's Stockade

169

Thus far, historians have had little to say about prostitution in Utah.

Yet, the situation here was little different from the rest of the country.

In Salt Lake City, as in other cities in the United States, laws prohibiting prostitution were on the books. In general, local officials saw them as politically expedient concessions to middle-class morality. Prostitution, it was felt, could not be eliminated. It could only be controlled. The best way to do that was to confine it to particular parts of town, known as "red-light districts," where it could be watched and regulated. As Arthur Pratt, Salt Lake City police chief in 1895, said, I think the best plan is to put them [prostitutes] in one locality as much as possible and keep them under surveillance. The evil cannot be suppressed, but it must be restrained and kept under strict police control. It is a more difficult problem to handle when the women are scattered out than when they are kept together.2

Red-light districts existed in most late nineteenth-century American cities and towns. They varied from place to place, ranging from a discreet house or two in or near small towns to the block after bawdy block of New York City's "Tenderloin," Chicago's "Levee," Baltimore's "Block," San Francisco's "Barbary Coast," New Orleans's "Storyville," and San Diego's "Stingaree." In Salt Lake City a red-light district was well established near the central business district within a generation of settlement; and in the early twentieth century, Salt Lake, following the example of other cities, adopted a "compound," or "stockade," policy.

Under the direction of the mayor and city council, the interior of a block on the city's westside near the railroad tracks was walled off, "cribs" and "parlor houses" were built within the enclosure, and prostitutes and Isidor Wallimann, "Prostitution and Changing Morality in the Frontier Cattle Towns of Kansas," Kansas History 2 (Spring 1979):34-53; Elliott West, "Scarlet West: The Oldest Profession in the Trans-Mississippi West," Montana, the Magazine of Western History 31 (April 1981): 16-27; Paula Petrik, "Capitalists with Rooms: Prostitution in Helena, Montana, 18651900," Montana, the Magazine of Western History 31 (April 1981)1:28-41; Marion Goldman, "Sexual Commerce on the Comstock Lode," Nevada Historical Society Quarterly 21 (Summer 1978):98-129; Elizabeth C. MacPhail, "When the Red Lights Went Out in San Diego," lournal of San Diego History 20 (Spring 1974) : 1-28; Neil Larry Shumsky, "Vice Responds to Reform; San Francisco, 1910-1914," lournal of Urban History 7 (November 1980) : 31-47. Other valuable studies include David J. Pivar, "Cleansing the Nation: The War on Prostitution, 1917â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1921," Prologue 12 (Spring 1980):29-40; Pivar, Purity Crusade (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976) ; Mark Connelly, The Response to Prostitution in the Progressive Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980) ; Robert E. Riegel, "Changing American Attitudes Toward Prostitution, 1800-1920," lournal of the History of Ideas 29 (July-September 1968) :437-52; and John C Burnham, "The Progressive Era Revolution in American Attitudes Towards Sex," lournal of American History 59 (March 1973) : 885-908.

'Salt Lake Tribune, January 4, 1895, p. 8. For similar statements see the comment of Frank B. Stephens, a member of the Salt Lake Police and Fire Commission, in Salt Lake Tribune, February 8, 1896, p. 5; an editorial in Salt Lake Tribune, February 9, 1896; and a note in Truth 1 (September 6, 1902) :6.

170

Utah Historical Quarterly

Regent Street, looking north from 200 South, housed a red-light district that by the early 1900s was deemed too close to the business district. USHS collections.

were allowed to work essentially unhindered within the stockade and were arrested only when they plied their trade elsewhere. Though little known,3 the history of the stockade is not only fascinating in itself but is a rich source of information about the larger history of Salt Lake City and, in combination with other studies, contributes to the history of prostitution in the United States.

The origin of Salt Lake's first red-light district is unknown. It is not clear whether it evolved gradually or whether city officials at some point unofficially established it. What is clear is that by the early 1870s, what is now Regent Street in downtown Salt Lake was the center of a red-light district. Then, it was appropriately named Commercial Street.

3 Reuben J. Snow's master's thesis, " T h e American Party in U t a h : A Study of Political Struggles during the Early Years of Statehood" (University of U t a h , 1964), deals with the stockade at various points in its discussion of the American party. T h e r e is no other study concerned, except in passing, with the stockade nor with any other aspect of the history of prostitution in U t a h .

Salt Lake City's Stockade

171

In 1903 the Salt Lake Tribune referred to the area as a "resort of gamblers and fast women."4 According to the Deseret News, half a dozen years later, the occupants of Commercial Street were "the demi-monde, the male parasite, the dope fiend, the gambler, and the begger."5 John Held's description is one of the most interesting. A native of Salt Lake who became a nationally known illustrator in the 1920s, Held said his account came from considerable first-hand experience.

Within the street were saloons, cafes and parlor houses, with cribs that were rented nightly to the itinerate 'Ladies of the Calling.' Soliciting was taboo, so these ladies sat at the top of the stairs and called their invitation to 'come on up, kid.' The parlor houses allowed no such publicity. There was no outward display to gain entrants to a parlor house. One pushed an electric bell and was admitted by a uniformed maid or an attendant. The luxury of these houses always included a 'Professor' at the piano. There was none of the brashness of the mechanical piano; those were heard in the saloons and shooting galleries of the street. The names of two of the madams are engraved on my memory, just as they were cut on the copper plates that Dad had made for printing the ladies' personal cards. In Dad's engraving shop an order for cards from the madams was always welcome.

They demanded the finest and most expensive engraving, and the cards were of the finest stock, pure rag vellum One of the madams called herself Miss Ada Wilson. Hers was a lavish house on Commercial Street.

Another gave her name as Miss Helen Blazes. Her establishment catered to the big money, and in it only wine was served. In other houses, beer was the popular refreshment, at one dollar a bottle, served to the guests in small whiskey glasses.6

Of the several dozen buildings on Commercial Street that were once houses of prostitution, three remain standing at 165, 167, and 169 Regent Street. A restaurant occupies two of the buildings and an electrical supply company the third. Throughout the United States, leading citizens commonly owned land and buildings in red-light districts,7 and that was also the case in Salt Lake. In 1893, for example, Gustave S. Holmes constructed the buildings at 165 and 167 Regent Street. A wellknown businessman, he owned the fashionable Knutsford Hotel (which stood where the Centre Theatre is now located, on Third South and State streets), served as a director of the National Bank of the Republic,

* March 31, 1903, p. 11.

June 24, 1909, p. 2.

8 The Most of John Held, Jr. (Brattleboro, Vt.: Stephen Greene Press, 1972), pp. 99-100.

7 See, for example, Goldman, "Sexual Commerce on the Comstock Lode," pp. 106-8.

5

172

Utah Historical Quarterly

had extensive mining interests, and in 1909 was reportedly the fifth or sixth largest taxpayer in Salt Lake County.8 "Female boarders," a common euphemism for prostitutes, occupied the upper floors of each building. In 1909, according to the Deseret News, the prostitutes at 167 Regent Street were "French women."9 Legitimate businesses were located on the first floor of both buildings. A cigar factory, one of about a dozen in the city at the time, was originally in one building, and a printing establishment was in the other. The liquor business was always closely associated with prostitution, and in 1900 a saloon replaced the printers.10 The third building has a similar history. It was built in 1899 for Stephen Hays, a Salt Lake merchant, real estate speculator, and, like Holmes, a director of the National Bank of the Republic.11 A prominent Utah architect, Walter E. Ware, designed the building. Other buildings Ware designed in Salt Lake include the First Presbyterian Church, the First Church of Christ, Scientist, Saint Mark's Hospital, and the Westminster College gymnasium.12 For several years, Martin E. Mulvey, a member of the Salt Lake City Council from 1906 until 1912, operated a saloon on the first floor of the building.13 Upstairs was a parlor house, so named because prostitutes received their customers in a common parlor or sitting room. Though long vacant, its original design and layout remain unchanged in the 1980s: a large center room surrounded by 8-by10-foot rooms, or "cribs," just large enough for a bed, washstand, and one or two chairs.

As in other American cities at the time, an unofficial licensing system for prostitutes existed in Salt Lake. Typically in cities throughout the country, police periodically arrested prostitutes and escorted them to the police court where they routinely paid a fine for being an "inmate" or a "keeper" of a "disorderly house." In many places the money derived in this way became an important part of the city's revenue, so that, in 8 For biographical information on Holmes, see his obituary in the Deseret News, July 3, 1935, p . 3, a n d Sketches of the Inter-Mountain States (Salt Lake City: Salt Lake Tribune Publishing Co., 1909), p p . 226-27.

9 June 24, 1909, p. 22.

10 Insurance Maps, Salt Lake City, Utah (New York: Sanborn-Perris M a p Co., 1898), 2 : 1 0 3 ; Salt Lake City Directory, 1894-95 (Salt Lake City: R. L. Polk a n d Co., Publishers, 1 8 9 4 - 9 5 ) , p. 8 2 4 ; Salt Lake City Directory, 1898, pp. 844, 846, 893, 6 4 3 ; Salt Lake City Directory, 1899, p . 5 0 5 ; Salt Lake City Directory, 1900, pp. 440, 512; Salt Lake City Directory, 1901, p. 926.

11 For biographical information on Hays, see his obituary in the Deseret News, January 29, 1927, p. 1, section 2, and the Salt Lake Tribune, January 30, 1927, p. 22, section 3.

12 For information on Ware see the Architects File, Preservation Office, U t a h State Historical Society, Salt Lake City. â&#x201E;˘Salt Lake City Directory, 1900, p. 5 1 7 ; Salt Lake City Directory, 1901, p . 9 2 6 ; For biographical information on Mulvey, see his obituary in the Salt Lake Tribune, April 22, 1951.

Salt Lake City's Stockade

173

fact, the aim of antiprostitution ordinances and periodic arrests and fines was not so much to suppress prostitution as to produce revenue for the city. In Wichita, Kansas, for example, the city treasurer reported at the end of August 1873 that the city income from fining prostitutes was so large that general business taxes were unnecessary.14 The way the system operated in Salt Lake City varied from time to time. In 1886 police regularly arrested several dozen prostitutes, fined them a maximum of fifty dollars each, gave them physical examinations, and released them. Between arrests, according to the Salt Lake Herald, the women were "allowed to go along without fear of molestation, as long as they did not ply their trade so openly and brazenly as to offend the public eye."15 By 1908 a registration system existed. Police kept track of names and addresses of madams and their houses. The madams in turn gave up-to-date lists of their "girls" to police. Every month each woman was expected to pay a "fine" of ten dollars. The Deseret News examined the book in which the list of prostitutes was recorded and found that during the summer of 1908 an average of 148 women paid fines each month. The nearly $1,500 collected monthly went into the city's general fund.16 In the mid-1910s city policy was to license brothels as "rooming houses" and require prostitutes to work only in them.

Around the turn of the century various individuals and groups began to advocate that city officials end prostitution on Commercial Street and relocate the red-light district farther from the business area. In 1903 the Deseret News reported that "It is now proposed to purge Commercial Street and move it to a less public district where their presence will not be a constant blot, defacing the business center and forcing itself upon public attention." In the view of the News, "The project is commendable. . . . Whether it is practicable remains to be seen."17 In another story, the News quoted Nephi W. Clayton, a prominent businessman and Mormon church leader, as favoring the continuation of a restricted redlight district but relocating it on the far west side of the city.18 The Salt Lake Tribune, on the other hand, preferred to "open up a new street into the interior of some of the downtown blocks."19 The general feeling 14 Leonard and Wallimann, "Prostitution and Changing Morality in the Frontier Cattle Towns of Kansas," pp. 44â&#x20AC;&#x201D;45. " J u n e 2, 1886, p. 4.

16 Deseret News, September 23, 1908, p. 1.

17 April 3, 1903, p. 4.

18 Ibid., p. 1.

19 March 31, 1903, p. 11.

174

Utah Historical Quarterly

was that prostitution could not be entirely eliminated and to try to do so was wasted effort; but when located near the downtown area, a redlight district had a harmful effect on business. It offended and drove away potential customers and led to higher rents, since space for legitimate business was scarce. In addition, it was pointed out, prostitution had begun to spread beyond the bounds of Commercial Street. Several brothels were operating on Main Street itself, another was located on Brigham Street, and the notorious Helen Blazes was reported to have opened a parlor house near the corner of Seventh South and Main streets.

Formal involvement of Salt Lake City officials in the relocation of the city's red-light district came in 1907 when Police Chief Thomas D. Pitt recommended in his annual report that a change be made in the city's method of dealing with prostitution. In his view, the red-light district needed to be moved from Commercial Street to another location, and a "stockade" needed to be established. As Pitt saw it, This question [of prostitution] is certainly a question h a r d to dispose of, and, being a necessary evil, there is only one way in which it can be successfully handled, which is as follows: Let the city set aside a piece of ground of sufficient size to a c c o m m o d a t e several h u n d r e d of these prostitutes.

Enclose same carefully w i t h high fences; build cottages or houses to accomm o d a t e these inmates; charge them r e n t ; license them a n d place them u n d e r control of t h e Police D e p a r t m e n t as to their safety and confinement, and to the Board of H e a l t h as to their cleanliness and sanitary conditions. 2 0

Mayor John Bransford and the Salt Lake City Council accepted Pitt's recommendation and in the spring of 1908 began to plan the stockade.

A prominent businessman, deeply involved in real estate and mining activities, Bransford was a member of the American party, as were nine of the fifteen members of the council.21 This explicitly anti-Mormon political party was founded in 1904 and made up of people opposed to what they saw as the Mormon church's continued domination of political affairs in Utah. In many ways a reincarnation of the Liberal party, which existed in Utah from 1870 to 1893, it was never successful in the state as a whole; but it grew rapidly in Salt Lake City and between 1906 and 1912 dominated city government.22 However, the stockade policy was not merely a policy of the American party but received support from council members of all parties. The clearest indication of that came when 30

Message of the Mayor, with the Annual Report of the Officers of Salt Lake City, Utah, for the year 1907 (Salt Lake City, 1907), pp. 374-75.

21 For a short biography of Bransford, see Sketches of the Inter-Mountain States, p. 97. " The only study of the American party is Snow, "The American Party in Utah."

175

Salt Lake City's Stockade

John S. Bransford, American party mayor of Salt Lake City.

Councilman L. D. Martin was the architect for the stockade.

All USHS

collections.

Councilman Martin E. Mulvey helped plan the stockade.

Chief Pitt changed his mind and refused to help implement the stockade policy. Mayor Bransford fired him, and the city council supported the mayor by a vote of twelve to two.23 The city council made no public announcement of their intention to establish the stockade until December 1908 when it was nearly completed and about to open. Bransford then held a press conference and frankly explained his own attitude toward prostitution and outlined the way the stockade had come about. "With reference to the new district," he said, "the houses of which are in the process of construction, I wish to say that I am thoroughly in favor of it and that it was at my suggestion that the work was begun." Prostitution would always exist, Bransford asserted. It could not be eliminated but only minimized and controlled. The best way to do that was to establish an isolated area where it would operate under official sanction and supervision. Accordingly, he said, "I propose to take these women from the business section of the city and put them in a district which will be one of the best, if not the very best, regulated districts in the country."24 23 Salt Lake City, "Minutes of the Meeting of the City Council," December 7, 1908, p.

831; December 14, 1908, pp. 856-58. " Salt Lake Herald, December 8, 1908, p. 1.

176

Utah Historical Quarterly

"Mrs. Dora B. Topham. Under the name of Belle London, she is the queen of the Ogden underworld, and, in company with various respectable citizens of Salt Lake, who compose the Citizens' Investment Company, is owner of the West Side Stockade, and is active manager of that walled city of sin," wrote the Intermountain Republican, May 20,1909.

Having explained his approach to the problem of dealing with prostitution, Bransford went on to outline the stockade's history. In the spring of 1908, he said, he and Councilman Martin E. Mulvey, with the approval of the rest of the council, met with Mrs. Dora B. Topham. Perhaps Utah's most notorious madam, she was better known as "Belle London" and operated much of the business of prostitution on Ogden's "Electric Avenue."25 Bransford and Mulvey asked her to form a corporation, purchase land on Salt Lake's westside in the center of Block 64, Plat A, which was between 500 and 600 West and 100 and 200 South streets, and set up and operate a stockade. According to Bransford, "I told her that if she did as I wished, and followed out the directions, . . .

I would see to it that the women of the downtown district were removed to the new location."26 London agreed. Later she explained: I know, and you know, that prostitution has existed since the earliest ages, and if you are honest with yourselves, you will admit that it will continue to exist, no matter what may be said or done from the pulpit or through the exertions of women's clubs. I believed that I could segregate the evil, that I could control it, and that I could decrease disease by an intelligent management, and while profiting financially myself, do some good. . . .27 25 Little biographical information is available on London. For some fragments see Lyle J. Barnes, "Ogden's Notorious 'Two-Bit Street,' 1870-1954" (Master's thesis, U t a h State University, 1969), p p . 19-20.

26 Salt Lake Herald, December 8, 1908, p. 1.

27 Salt Lake Tribune, September 28, 1911, p. 2.

Salt Lake City's Stockade

177

In the summer of 1908, Belle London formed the Citizen's Investment Company. During the next two months it purchased land in the interior of Block 64 and commissioned architect Lewis D. Martin, a member of the city council, to draw up plans for a stockade. In September 1908 construction of the stockade began. Work was completed three months later.

On the evening of December 18, ten days after Mayor Bransford's press conference, city police told all prostitutes on Commercial Street and nearby Victoria Alley that they had until 4:00 A.M. the next morning to vacate the area. According to Councilman Mulvey, The women of the town will not be told that they must reside within the shelter, but they will be given to understand that if they do not, things will be made unpleasant for them, while they will be given to understand that they will be allowed to live undisturbed within the stockade.28

In other words, the women had three choices: they could leave town, they could go to jail, or they could go to the stockade. Evidently, most of the women, perhaps one hundred in all, went to the stockade.

Salt Lake City newspapers, in particular the Deseret News and the Intermountain Republican, provided lengthy descriptions and photographs of the stockade. The 1911 Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps of Salt Lake City are also an important source of information. The stockade occupied the interior of the block and consisted of about one hundred small brick and frame dwellings called "cribs," built in rows, or on "line."

Hence, the phrase, "Going down the line." Belle London rented these cribs to prostitutes for from one to four dollars a day. Each crib was about ten feet square, with a door and a window in the front. Soliciting was usually carried on from the windows. According to the Deseret News, "At the windows, only two feet above the sidewalk, sits the painted denizen of the underworld calling to the passers between puffs on her cigaret."29 A curtain or wooden partition divided the inside of the crib. In the front half were a chair or two and a combination bureau and washstand. In the rear half was a white enameled iron bed. Also in the stockade were half a dozen larger buildings known as "parlor houses." A "landlady" operated each parlor house, renting it from Belle London for $175 a month. The half a dozen or so women in each house split their earnings with their landlady. A large structure at the end of one

Salt Lake Herald, December 10, 1908, p. 12.

May 18, 1909, p. 1.

178

Utah Historical Quarterly

row of cribs served as a storehouse for beer and liquor, always an important part of the stockade operation. A brick wall partially enclosed the compound. Outside of the stockade, on First South, Belle London built a two-story brick building as her office and residence. Its architect was Councilman Martin. There were three entrances to the stockade, one on Second South and two on First South, with a guard at each one.

Their job was to keep children out of the block and to warn stockade occupants of the periodic police raids that were conducted largely as a matter of form. To give warning, an elaborate alarm system was installed.

The effectiveness of the system, and the extent of cooperation between police and prostitutes, is shown by the fact that in March 1910, 453 warrants were issued for the arrest of women in the stockade. Not one Was served. The reason, the police officers in charge explained, was that each night when they went to the stockade to serve the warrants, they found it dark and deserted.30 Why was the stockade located at that particular place on the westside? No one wanted to be near it, Mayor Bransford explained, but it had to be somewhere. Those in charge of the project looked for an area wherÂŁ it would have as little negative effect as possible. According to Councilman Mulvey: The location of the new district is the best which could possibly have been secured. There are railroad tracks on two sides of the district, and when the Western Pacific tracks are completed, the tracks will surround the district on three sides. The block is the dividing line between two school districts, and no children will be compelled to pass the place on their way to and from school. From the outside, nothing can be seen of the movements within, and the offensive sights which have greeted passers-by in the neighborhood of Commercial Street will be absent.31

There was a second reason why city officials chose this location for the stockade, Mulvey said: "We found that most of the better class of residents were leaving the area anyway, because of the influx of Italians and Greeks who live in that neighborhood."32 The particular conclusion Salt Lake City officials drew was that the "foreign element" had so destroyed the area that establishing prostitution there would not harm it any further and could even be rationalized as catering to the "immoral foreigners."

30

Salt Lake Times, July 23, 1910, p. 1.

Salt Lake Herald, December 18, 1908, p. 2. *2 Ibid. sl

Salt Lake City's Stockade

179

"Here is shown a row of nearly completed 'Cribs' â&#x20AC;&#x201D; built upon the site where were until recently the homes of honorable citizens. Now all that remains of these homes are the piles of debris, as may be seen in the foreground," the DeseretNews 1908 caption read.

Mayor Bransford and Councilman Mulvey failed to mention one other fact that played a role in the selection of the site of the stockade: Bransford owned property across the street. On it he built a large twostory building. Its upper floors served as a rooming house for prostitutes, while the ground floor housed a variety of small Greek businesses, including, originally, a saloon, a barbershop, and a coffeehouse.33 The stockade operated for nearly three years. During that time reaction to it was mixed. On December 13, 1908, a few days before it opened, a group of fifty westside residents submitted a petition to the Salt Lake City Council endorsing the stockade policy. It would keep prostitution from spreading, they said, would not interfere with business nor "contaminate" residents of the area, and it would "add to the safety and respectability of that portion of the City known as W. Second South.'"

33 21

Salt Lake City Directory, 1911, pp. 108, 153, 774, 987.

Salt Lake Herald, December 13, 1908, p. 7.

180

Utah Historical Quarterly

At the same time, other residents formed a West Side Citizens League, submitted petitions to the city council, and held mass meetings at which they protested the establishment of the stockade on the westside and demanded the prosecution of those responsible.35 The league remained in existence for the life of the stockade. Of Salt Lake's five daily newspapers, the Salt Lake Tribune and the Salt Lake Telegram supported the stockade, while tilie Deseret News, the Salt Lake Herald, and the Intermountain Republican opposed it. In December 1908 and again in May 1910, the Deseret News ran a series of sensational articles purporting to expose conditions in the stockade. Mayor Bransford and a majority of the city council continued to support the stockade; but Bransford's own American party, on the other hand, opposed it, as did both the Republican party and the Democratic party. Salt Lake City Police Chief Samuel Barlow supported the idea. Salt Lake County Sheriff John C. Sharpe did not and conducted raids, on dubious authority, on the stockade. Women in the stockade, including Belle London herself, were periodically arrested. Charges were usually dismissed, however, and only a handful of women were ever convicted. When convicted, they were usually given the choice of paying a fine, going to jail, or leaving town.

The Salt Lake Ministerial Association periodically spoke out against the stockade, on one occasion characterizing it as "a system of brutality, debauchery . . . that Rome never out did."30 Mormon church leaders, in contrast, made no public statements about it.

On September 28, 1911, Belle London made an unexpected announcement: "The stockade will be closed on Thursday and the same will not be opened again. So soon as I can arrange my business I shall advertize the property for sale."37 Reaction to the announcement was mixed. The Salt Lake Telegram published an editorial expressing regret at the stockade's closing. Prostitution was inevitable, the paper said; a "segregated district" was the best way to control it, and closing the stockade would make regulation more difficult.38 Police Chief Barlow agreed, saying that with the closing of the stockade, control of prostitution in Salt Lake would be "infinitely more difficult."39 The Deseret News and the Salt Lake Herald were skeptical that London really intended to close 33 See, for example, Salt Lake City, "Minutes of the Meeting of the City Council," June 21, 1909, p . 448.

38 Intermountain Republican, December 15, 1908, p. 7.

37 Salt Lake Tribune, September 28, 1911, p. 1.

38 September 29, 1911, p. 4.

39 Salt Lake Telegram, September 28, 1911, p. 10.

Salt Lake City's Stockade

181

the stockade permanently. As the Herald saw it, her intent was "merely to embarrass the good citizens of the community by turning a flood of scarlet women into the streets, thus creating a condition more horrible, if possible, than the stockade itself."40 That accomplished, the paper predicted, the stockade would soon reopen. The Deseret News agreed, pointing out that "This turning loose of 300 prostitutes in Salt Lake where they will infiltrate the business district, flaunt themselves on the streets, and offend the public morals," would occur during the weekend of the Mormon church's general conference when the city would be filled with out-of-town visitors.41 According to the Salt Lake Telegram, the decision to close the stockade was made at a meeting of Belle London, Mayor Bransford, and Councilman Mulvey. London denied that, saying that the decision had been entirely her own. She had reached it, she said, because "there is a strong public sentiment in favor of such a course."42 Bransford agreed, without being specific, that "opposition from various sources" led to the stockade's closing.43 The precise circumstances surrounding the closing of the stockade remain unclear. The important point, however, is that its demise brought no substantial changes. It did not mean the end of prostitution in Salt Lake City nor the end of segregated vice districts. Prostitution continued to exist, and everyone knew it; though, as before, the subject was excluded from polite conversation. According to newspaper reports, no more than a dozen women accepted the offer of the Women's League to "leave their lives of sin" and come to the Women's Rescue Station where jobs as maids and domestic servants would be found for them.

The rest of the former occupants of the stockade either returned to Commercial Street or remained near West Second South. Laws prohibiting prostitution remained on the books but were only selectively enforced. The continued goal of public officials was not the elimination of prostitution but its regulation by de facto licensing and attempted confinement to certain areas of the city. Commercial Street remained a redlight district until the late 1930s, and West Second South until the late 1970s. Prostitution continued to be an integral part of the life of Salt Lake City.

40

September 29, 1911, p. 1.

September 28, 1911, p. 1.

"Salt Lake Tribune, September 28, 1911, p. 1.

43 Ibid., p. 1.

41

1 ,

:."

a

">',"

v n » \ iLv? i -• v.

Youth standing in center of Main Street, ca. 1868, may have been one of the rowdy young men whose acts greatly concerned residents of the frontier city. Charles R. Savage photograph, USHS collections.

Zion's Rowdies: Growing up on the Mormon Frontier

BY DAVIS BITTON

B E N J A M I N FERRIS, SECRETARY OF STATE IN Utah Territory in 185253, was not favorably impressed with the Mormon children there. They were deplorably unhealthy, he said — "the combined result of the gross sensuality of the parents, and want of care toward their offspring."1 Nor was the problem purely physical; it was also behavioral. Nowhere outDr. Bitton is a professor of history at the University of Utah. A version of this paper was presented at the Childhood in American Life Conference, Indianapolis, Ind., April 1, 1978.

1 Benjamin Ferris, Utah and the Mormons . . . (New York, 1854), p. 47.

Zion's Rowdies

183

side of New York City's "Five Points," he continued, could "a more filthy, miserable, neglected-looking, and disorderly rabble of children be found than in the streets of Salt Lake City."2 Of course, the Mormons did not look on their own children with such a jaundiced eye. Sharing general nineteenth-century attitudes, the Mormons regarded childless marriages as a disappointment if not a curse.

Agricultural and domestic needs meant that children could be a distinct advantage in terms of labor. To this expected frame of reference the Mormons added religious teachings that for them enhanced the importance of children. They saw children in terms of eternal existence.

Families, if properly and authoritatively made up on earth, would continue in the postmortal existence, and those who came closest to the divine plan, approaching divinity themselves, would have numberless progeny.

God himself had created "worlds without number," and the process of creating worlds and peopling them was ongoing. Abraham had been promised that his own progeny would be as the sands of the seashore.

Faithful Mormons, using this same frame of reference, looked upon children not merely in the limited perspective of the present but as evidence of their own divine creativity that would continue on in eternity. It was a poor, pinch-backed man, said Heber C. Kimball, who would chain himself down to the law of monogamy. Similarly, it was a poor, pinchbacked man and a shriveled, selfish woman who would choose to have no children or few. Increase, expand, multiply â&#x20AC;&#x201D; these were the watchwords. One who was faithful over a small kingdom or family in this life was preparing himself to be faithful over worlds in the hereafter. In this scheme of things children were not only welcome, they were indispensable.3 In addition to their importance for eternal salvation, children were seen as playing an enormously important role in the advance of Mormonism on earth. Here the millennialism of the movement gave a heightened sense of the significance of the generation in which they lived. The children that Mormon adults saw coming into their homes in the 1830s, '40s, and '50s were to be a choice generation. Unlike their parents, the young would learn the true gospel of Mormonism from their mothers' knees.

Brigham Young was sharply aware of the influence of values inculcated in youth, and usually when he described this phenomenon â&#x20AC;&#x201D; "traditioning" as he sometimes called it â&#x20AC;&#x201D; he was referring to the negative side 2 s

ibid.

See Kimball Young, Isn't One Wife Enough? (New York: Holt, 1954), chap. 2.

184

Utah Historical Quarterly

of the experience. He and those to whom he addressed his words had grown up in families that had not known the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

As a result, they had imbibed false ideas about God and man, about what was proper and improper; even after their conversion to Mormonism, some of the old ideas still clung on.4 Fortunately, their children would grow up in a society where they would learn truths and true values from the first. Great things were naturally expected of such young people, those born into Latter-day Saint homes. They were described in a later hymn as the "hope of Israel, Zion's army, children of the promised day."

The Mormons did, in fact, produce children in quantity. Reliable statistics are not available for the twenty years of Mormonism's history prior to 1850 â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the tumultuous series of settlements and flights in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois â&#x20AC;&#x201D; but in the frontier environment of the Great Basin children were unusually numerous. Perhaps the rigors of the overland journey and the hardships of settlement brought death to the old and infirm. For whatever reason, the census of 1880 shows a population in which something like 44 percent was fourteen years of age or under, with another 10 percent in the upper teens. Utah had a youthful population. This contrasts not only with such frontier territories as Colorado and Idaho, where there were proportionately very few children, but also with the country as a whole. The state in 1880 that seemed fairly close to Utah in its fecundity and child population was Iowa.5 As is always the case with human populations of any size, more males are born than females. In Utah this proved true, although by the age of fifteen females were dominant numerically. The fairly equal distribution of the sexes after the years of highest infant mortality and the large number of children may simply reflect that Utah was further into its settlement cycle in 1880, having been settled for more than thirty years.

In any case, children were numerous. If one walked down Salt Lake City's Main Street during a busy shopping day at church conference time, almost every other person passed would be fourteen or under. At least that would be the case if the shopping crowd represented the overall population. And there would be many tots; close to 18 percent of the population was four years old or less.

4 These ideas are stated and restated in the sermons printed in the Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 1 8 5 4 - 8 6 ) .

5 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Tenth Census of the United States . . . 1880 (Washington, D . C , 1880), vol. 1, Population. Cf.: "Of the population of U t a h one quarter are u n d e r eight years old, one-third under eleven, and one-half under seventeen. U t a h has more children under five years old, in proportion to its population, than any other division of the country. . . ," in Biennial Report of the Territorial Superintendent of District Schools for the Years Ending June 30,1882-1883 (n.p., 1884), p. 73.

Zion's Rowdies

185

But if the quantity of children was impressive, what about their quality? Were they physically strong and, consistent with their parents' hopes, were they a noble generation, intellectually and morally superior?

One way of getting at this question is through the eyes of travelers in Mormon country. Early in the Utah period J. W. Gunnison noted that Mormon youth "seem to care but little for the details of doctrine." The younger generation, he said, were not a "holy generation" but were "the most lawless and profane" he had ever observed.6 Agreeing with this negative evaluation was Jules Remy, who said the Mormon children were "far from being models of candor and innocence." He admitted that they were "handsome, well-made, and robust" but nevertheless saw them as "godless, licentious, and immodest."7 Physically, one gathers, they could be admired, but their behavior was deplorable. The fault, of course, was polygamy, which revealed to children the "mysteries of the harem." At least that was the standard explanation.

Other critics, while agreeing that Mormon children were guilty of outrageous behavior, were not willing to concede that they were physically robust. Benjamin Ferris, cited earlier, was only one of those who insisted that there were deplorable physical consequences to polygamy. Writing soon after the census of 1850 had seemed to provide evidence of a death rate in Utah of 21 per 1,000, with over a third of these among children under the age of five, ex-Mormon John Hyde proclaimed "a fearful mortality among the Mormon children." Like Ferris, Hyde added a condemnation of juvenile misbehavior among Mormon boys: Cheating the confiding, is called smart trading; mischievous cruelty, evidences of spirit; pompous bravado, manly talk; reckless riding, fearless courage; and if they out-talk their father, outwit their companions, whip their school-teacher or out-curse a Gentile, they are thought to be promising greatness, and are praised accordingly. Every visitor of Salt Lake will recognize the portrait, for every visitor proclaims them to be the most whiskyloving, tobacco-chewing, saucy and precocious children he ever saw.8

In short, the Mormon children were held up as Exhibit No. 1, their physical debility and moral depravity proving polygamy to be a vicious system.

* J. W. Gunnison, The Mormons, or Latter-day Saints in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake (Philadelphia, 1852), pp. 159-60.

7 Jules Remy and Julius Brenchley, A Journey to Great Salt Lake City (London, 1861), pp. 150, 174-75.

8 John Hyde, Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (New York, 1857), p . 77.

186

Utah Historical Quarterly

The travelers were not uniformly critical. Elizabeth Wood Kane noticed several beautiful family relationships as she traveled with the party of Brigham Young on a tour to southern Utah. She saw playfulness among some of these children; others, especially the girls, helped prepare arid serve meals to the visiting party; and the children were noticeably numerous in attendance at church.9 Perhaps Mrs. Kane was slanting her perceptions, but as a mother of two young boys she may have been more ready to recognize attractive traits in children who befriended her sons.

William Chandless, another visitor who enjoyed teasing and playing with Mormon children, wrote, Probably no people [speaking collectively] set a higher value upon their children than M o r m o n s d o ; and . . . upon boys particularly: not certainly w i m o u t a sort of Spartan feeling that their sons belong to their country a n d faith, to co-operate in the building u p of the church and Kingdom. 1 0

Chandless rejected claims that Mormon children were ill-behaved as "so much sheer nonsense."

Sir Richard Burton, whose City of the Saints appeared in 1861, did not challenge the assertion that Mormon children may have experienced a high mortality rate, but he did not think that polygamy was the explanation. As for the charge that Mormon children were a "filthy, miserable, and disorderly rabble," his experience did not provide confirmation: "I was surprised by their numbers, cleanliness, and health, their hardihood and general good looks." Burton responded directly to John Hyde's caricaturization of Mormon children, chalking it up to "the glance of the anti-Mormon eye pure and simple."11 Mormon children were being used as weapons in an ideological war. Objectivity was hard to come by.

Mortality figures present many problems. It has been estimated that throughout the United States unreported deaths approximated 15 percent of the total. Moreover, what is the basis of comparison? In 1880, according to census figures, one of every ten Utah babies (10.2 percent) died before reaching the first birthday. The figure for the United States as a whole was 11.1 percent, for Sweden 13 percent, for England 15 percent, and for Italy 22 percent. In the absence of detailed analysis that differentiates monogamous Mormons, polygamous Mormons, and non-Mor9 Elizabeth Wood Kane, Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession . . . , ed. Everett L. Cooley (Salt Lake City: Tanner Trust Fund, University of Utah Library, 1974), pp. 26, 43.

19 William Chandless, A Visit to Salt Lake . . . (London, 1857), p. 192.

"Richard F. Burton, The City of the Saints . . ., ed. Fawn M. Brodie (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963), pp. 472-543.

Zion's Rowdies

187

mons, it would be unwise to put much weight on these figures, but they at least suggest that sweeping condemnation of the Mormons based on the sickness of their children was premature and ideologically motivated.

But what about the other charge, that Mormon children were disorderly and ill-mannered? This kind of question, on the face of it, cannot be answered in simple terms, and it does not lend itself to quantification. What is clear, however, is that Mormons themselves, full of hope for the rising generation, were more than a little distressed at much juvenile behavior. As early as 1849 Bishop John Murdock remarked, "I was never in a community in my life where there was so much disagreement in the famelys [sic] as I witness here. The children from a very small size are learning bad habits such as cursing, swearing, taking the name of God in vain."12 In 1851 Bishop Edward Hunter remarked on the prevalence of "unruly youngsters." It is the duty of ward teachers, he said, "to make special enquiry of parents in regard to the conduct of their children." Several others seconded his observations about "the lax state of moral and religious [standards?] existing among the youths of the church."13 In 1854 at a meeting of the bishops in Salt Lake City the question was raised, "Should we ordain young men and boys who are wild, etc.?" (This referred to priesthood ordination which even before the reorganization of the 1870s was received by some Mormon boys.) After some discussion the answer given was that the young hellions should be ordained in hope that "the ordination may make them the best of men."14 In 1859 there were several incidents of street brawling.15 In 1861, speaking at a meeting of the city's bishops, Brigham Young favored the construction of recreation halls to attract youth "who would otherwise meet in small groups, and indulge in low, grovelling rowdyism."16 In 1868 the custodian of the tabernacle complained of "indecent words being written on the wall and the backs of seats being very much cut up." 17 In 1870 Martin Lenzi saw a group of teenagers tearing up foot bridges and ripping mail boxes from the fronts of houses and throwing

12 Presiding Bishop Minutes, November 18, 1849, Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

13 Ibid., July 13, 1851.

14 Ibid., January 3 1 , 1854.

15 Juanita Brooks, ed., On the Mormon Frontier: The Diary of Hosea Stout, 1844-1861 (Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press; U t a h State Historical Society, 1964).

18 Presiding Bishop Minutes, February 14, 1861.

17 Ibid., May 14, 1868.

188

Utah Historical Quarterly

them over the fence into the yards. He shouted to them, and they ran off.

"He says they live in the lower wards of the city," the Deseret News reported.18 The local establishment failed to see any joke in willful destruction of property. About the same time, Thomas Jones said that while people were at church on Sundays "mischievous boys" would break windows and damage property.19 "We have a large juvenile population," wrote the Deseret News that same year as it called for some kind of public recreation grounds.20 The community lamplighter complained that boys were throwing rocks and breaking the lamps. "It's first rate to see boys full of fun and frolic," said the News, "but it's quite another affair to see them wickedly mischievous."21 In 1873, again, the local press deplored "the writings of the most disgusting and obscene words and sentences on the walls of public buildings and other places."22 In the same breath, now that the subject of youthful misbehavior had been brought up, the newspaper added: "Many of the boys have also been in the habit lately of slinging pebbles through the windows of school houses and other buildings. This is not legitimate fun, but wanton mischief."23 That same year a Salt Lake City resident complained of boys who visited his stables at night, frightened his mules, and otherwise disturbed "him and his neighbors by hallooing and romping about the streets till a late hour in the night."24 The response of the press, again, was a reprimand: boys should behave and parents should be responsible for their children. Included in the news item was this interesting statement: "The hoodlum element in that part of the city ought to be checked."25 Also in 1873 a visitor from England noted that "he never was in a place in his life where there appeared to be so many people hanging around the streets, doing nothing. . . ."26 The observation may have been accurate; it was a depression year, and jobs may have been scarce. But from the moralistic vantage point that was no excuse. In the good old days everyone worked, and even during a depression there should be plenty to do.

1S

Deseret Deseret 20 Deseret 21 Deseret 22 Deseret 23 Ibid.

24 Deseret 25 Ibid.

26 Deseret 19

News News News News News

Weekly, Weekly, Weekly, Weekly, Weekly,

M a r c h 2, 1870.

M a r c h 9, 1870.

M a r c h 16, 1870.

December 7, 1870.

April 2, 1873.

Neivs Weekly, August 6, 1873.

News Weekly, September 17, 1873.

Zion's Rowdies

189

Some vandalism resulted from the prevalence of knives â&#x20AC;&#x201D; jackknives, bowie knives, etc. â&#x20AC;&#x201D; among the boys. In 1873 the News noted: T h e other day we stated that a little spell of sunshine brought out the "bummers' brigade" in force. This delectable body has its sub-divisions, one of w r hich is the "whittlers' squad." T h e members of this department appear to have a large development of w h a t phrenologists call the b u m p of destructiveness. T h e y are not contented with the old Yankee custom of assisting a free flow of thought by whittling a piece of stick, but they employ their jack knives in other ways. For instance t h a t street lamp post, at t h e bummers' headquarters, Exchange Buildings corner, is all but cut in two by their operations, and some of the posts which sustain the awning there have shared a similar fate.

N o w those fellows should consider that those posts are useful, and that in that particular they are m u c h ahead of those who whittle them. W h e n they go to whittling, let t h e m operate on that which is useless, which, however, would involve the question as to whether they could possibly find anything of less utility than themselves, which would bring in a second idea, as to whether they might not just as well commence whittling on each other. 27

In a later article the "bummers' squad" was further described as including the "squirters' squad," a group who squirted tobacco juice on goods put out for sale.28 Lovely young people, these.

Despite such adverse reports, not all of the young people of Utah were juvenile delinquents. Some of the "misbehavior" complained of was more annoyance and noise than actual serious threat. Thus, the sleighriding down the hill. Some old people were quite upset at the rapid speed of those coming down the hill, especially after dark when they could not be seen. They were concerned not so much for their own safety as for that of the children. One boy was killed when a wagon ran over him in this way. Another incident was described: A day or two ago a boy came down a hill and a cow crossed the track just as he was coming down. H e r e a collision was imminent. T h e boy could not stop, nor h a d he a chance to steer around, consequently h e went straight ahead. As good luck would have it, he shot right through between the legs of the cow, without collision and unhurt. Scared cow! Lucky boy! 2 9

In 1874 "a number of boys" were arrested. They had broken down fences, lifted gates from hinges, and written "various obscene and profane sentences" around the premises. They escaped with a reprimand from 27

Deseret News Weekly, December 10, 1873.

Deseret News Weekly, December 17, 1873.

29 Deseret News Weekly, January 14, 1874.

28

190

Utah Historical Quarterly

the police.30 A little later, a group went "howling and hooting" along South Temple Street lifting gates. The News, ever the guardian of public morality, opined, "A dose of coarse salt sent with sufficient propelling force against their posterior region would be as good as they deserve."31 On February 11, 1874, parents received another appeal: Parents, why do you allow your children to be o u t so m u c h at night after dark? T h e y there and then learn many things which they would not at home, a n d which are nothing to meir benefit. W h e n boys a n d girls are verging on m a n h o o d a n d womanhood, and scarcely understand their new feelings, some of them are apt to be headstrong and wilful, a n d will not be controlled nor advised by their parents or other elder friends. But the younger children should have a little healthy parental restraint thrown a r o u n d them, particularly as regards this out-at-night business. Y o u n g boys and young girls, who ought to be at h o m e and in bed, are strolling around at night in each other's company, and there is smoking by the boys and in all probability language indulged in that would not be permitted at home, a n d should not be heard anywhere. Just look after tiiese little ones, and have self-interest enough not to forget the proverb about "as the twig is bent," etc. 3 2

Without multiplying examples further, it can be observed that there are different possible approaches to this general question of rowdiness among Mormon children and teenagers. First, theoretically the phenomenon could be studied quantitatively. What were the kinds of misbehavior? How did it fluctuate from year to year and from season to season?

But there are not yet reliable studies of crime on the Mormon frontier, much less of an ill-defined activity like rowdyism. Since the evidence presented here is far less reliable than the usual crime statistics, any quantitative information could be used for comparative purposes only with the greatest caution.33 In the meantime, a second approach is to recognize that awareness of juvenile misbehavior was in part a function of the anti-Mormon crusade. Like other advocates of reform, the anti-Mormons were not in their minds making up evidence, but there is no doubt of their predisposition, of their determination to paint a negative picture. They saw what they were prepared to see.34 It is a case study of selective perception and of 30

Deseret News Weekly, February 4, 1874.

Ibid.

32 Deseret News Weekly, February 11, 1874. This is typical of many such statements.

33 As a study of crime a model is David J. Bodenhamer, "Law and Disorder on the Early Frontier: Marion County, Indiana, 1823-1850," Western Historical Quarterly 10 (July 1979) : 323-36.

34 On the larger stage a similar example of slanted perception is studied in Richard L. Rapson, Britons View America: Travel Commentary, 1860-1935 (Seattle, 1971), pp. 93-105.

31

Zion's Rowdies

191

caricature. The extent to which some degree of distortion occurred depends, of course, on the objective criterion against which the descriptions are measured, and, as already noted, such a criterion is lacking.

While recognizing some truth in the second approach, it is a halftruth at best. Whenever people are in a conflict there is likely to be both a negative outside image and a positive self-image. The surprising discovery of the present analysis is that the negative descriptions of Mormon children by outsiders had its counterpart in negative descriptions from the inside. Not that the two sets of observations were seen through the same lens. Critics found confirmation of the deplorable consequences of a despised local system. The Mormons might have answered that the practical demands of frontier living simply made it impossible to give adequate care and attention to their children, that it took time in a newly settled area for the institutions to become established and behavioral patterns regularized and that the Mormon young people were certainly no worse than those in other parts of the West. But among themselves the Mormons experienced a disconfirmation of their extravagant hopes. The children of the promised day were all too often behaving like ordinary nuisance-loving children and at times like thugs and ruffians.

If the Mormon perception of rowdyism assumes more importance than the passing criticism of travelers from the outside it is because the Mormons tried to do something about it. However much one disliked the Mormons of the past century, it is generally conceded that they were people who did things. Their theology was not simply a pie-in-the-sky affair; it required specific actions on earth, and these, or at least many of them, were organized by the church. Missionary proselyting, gathering immigrants, collecting tithes and offerings, laying out settlements, organizing the economy â&#x20AC;&#x201D; such activities were organizational responses to various kinds of challenges. True to character, the Mormons in territorial Utah, once they had clearly defined a problem, proceeded to come up with organizational responses. These responses, along with general frontier conditions and the set of community expectations already described, marked the parameters of what it meant to grow up on the Mormon frontier during the last three decades of the century.

Now, to focus the camera on 1874 when George Q. Cannon, editor of the Juvenile Instructor, made a significant statement of what the problems had been â&#x20AC;&#x201D; looking back, he noted: There are towns where the young men were indifferent about meetings or schools. They preferred to go riding, fishing, hunting or playing on Sunday

192

Utah Historical Quarterly to going to meeting. Faithful men and women were grieved in thinking of the future of these boys and young men. Did they leave Babylon and gather to Zion to raise their boys in this fashion—to see them grow up ignorant of the gospel, careless respecting its requirements, with no regard for God, or even for their parents, rude in speech and manners? I n coming here they hoped to be able to rear their children better than they could elsewhere. T h e y hoped their boys and girls would have more of the faith a n d of the power a n d of the gifts of God than they had. But alas! they saw them growing u p wild, uncouth, and ignorant, fonder of play and rioting t h a n of prayer and meetings. 3 5

Cannon clearly defined the contrast between the optimistic hopes and the behavior noticed above. But something happened to change the picture. Sunday Schools had been organized; young people, especially boys and young men, had made an about-face, becoming interested in religion and centering their "hearts' affections" upon the church. "Violence and rowdyism have been checked," he continued. "The reading of books has taken the place of the playing of cards. Amusements of a rational and innocent character have been adopted in the stead of drinking and carousing." If Cannon overstated the degree of change, there is still no mistaking his general sense of encouragement. The Sunday School was new; those Who lived in communities without this program — and where rowdyism presumably continued unabated — were encouraged to take steps to get things going in the right direction.

This decade also saw the emergence of other programs. Along with the Sunday School teenagers were offered the Young Women's or the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations, and children twelve and under could attend the Primary Association.36 Letters and speeches of contemporaries make it clear that each of these organizational developments was responding to the same perception: the young people were going to the dogs; they were growing up without testimonies or convictions of the truth of Mormonism; they were not living constructive, purposeful lives but were wasting their substance in riotous living.

"Young ladies, we are glad you are organized," said Eliza R. Snow at Ephraim, Utah, in 1875. "Come to meeting, learn the laws of life and salvation, never sacrifice the Spirit of God to marry a Gentile. Those young men who are hanging around the saloons, in Salt Lake City and 35

Juvenile Instructor 9 (1874) : 234.

Among the histories of the church auxiliary programs are the following: Jubilee History of Latter-day Sunday Schools, 1849-1899 (Salt Lake City, 1900) ; Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (Salt Lake City, 1911) ; Leon M. Strong, "A History of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association, 1877-1938" (M.S. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1939).

36

Zion's Rowdies

19*

elsewhere, defile their bodies with whiskey, tobacco and foul language; they are no more fit to be husbands and fathers than the heathen, and many girls are just the same."37 Of course, these saloon-frequenting young people included more than a few Mormons. The important thing in 1875, however, was the response to the problem â&#x20AC;&#x201D; organization: "Young ladies, we are glad you are organized."

What did the Mormons attempt to teach their children in the schools and in these organizations intended as responses to the problem of a disorderly younger generation? What, in other words, were the ideals the parents of the Mormon Israel sought to encourage?

1. Religious training was of the highest importance. As George Q. Cannon said in 1881, it was "of the first importance, more important than anything else; more important even than teaching them to read and write."38 Of course, sometimes the religious teaching would not "take," but Apostle Joseph F. Smith had some common-sense advice: "Teach your children so that they may grow up knowing what 'Mormonism' is, and then if they do not like it, let them take what they can find. Let us, at least, discharge our duty to them by teaching them what it is.""

2. Strong among the qualities that children were expected to develop was obedience. They should obey their parents and show respect for the standards of the church and community. Obey, obey, obey â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the word was heard over and over again. It was qualified, however, by the advice to parents that they should not use the rod when kindly words could accomplish the purpose.40 3. Mormon children were to learn to work. A practical fact of life for most people, it nevertheless was stressed in the sermons and manuals.

Parents, said Apostle Erastus Snow, should "begin the work of education with their offspring, and teach them to bear their own burdens at the earliest practicable day, and let them begin to learn and receive this practical education. . . . Let no mother, in her misplaced sympathy and love, and her anxiety to serve her offspring, wear herself needlessly out in waiting upon them when they are able to wait upon themselves."41 37

Woman's Exponent 4 (August 15 1875) :42.

Journal of Discourses, 22:287.

39 Ibid., 14:287.

40 "Bring up your children in the love and fear of the L o r d ; study their dispositions and their temperaments, and deal with them accordingly, never allowing yourself to correct them in the heat of passion; teach them to love you rather than to fear you, a n d let it be your constant care that the children that God has so kindly given you are taught in their early youth the importance of the oracles of God, and the beauty of the principles of our holy religion, that when they grow to the years of m a n a n d womanhood they may always cherish a tender regard for them and never forsake the truth." Ibid., 19:221.

43 Ibid., 17:365.

38

194

Utah Historical Quarterly

4. Cultivation was advocated as a goal of education, although it was not always defined with precision. Somehow the younger generation was to become accustomed to the finer things, learning how to discuss ideas and becoming socially adept. "Every boy should be trained in such a manner as to fit him to move in the first circles of society," said George Q. Cannon in 1881, adding, "We should not be content to make our children like ourselves; that because we have lived in a certain way that they may do so also."42 5. Although parents shared the responsibility to raise their children in the proper manner, mothers had the primary responsibility. "Mothers will let their children go to the Devil in their childhood," said Brigham Young, "and when they are old enough to come under the immediate guidance of their fathers, to be sent out to preach the Gospel in the world, or to learn some kind of mechanism, they are as uncontrollable as the winds that now revel in the mountains."43 It is of interest to notice how this compares with the larger American society. According to Robert Sunley's study, "Early Nineteenth-century American Literature on Child Rearing," the literature on the subject before 1860 stressed the importance of the mother, recommended freedom of movement rather than restrictive swaddling, insisted upon neatness and orderliness, and warned against sexual practices. All of this could be found in the Mormon prescriptive literature as well, combined, of course, with the specific slant provided by the Mormon religion.44 The new organizations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Sunday School, Primary Association, and Mutual Improvement Associations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; did not suddenly introduce a Garden of Eden into the valleys of the Rockies. For one thing, attendance at these organizations, whether from lack of interest or involvement in work or fatigue, was less than 50 percent.45 For another, the quality of the programs varied widely as did the abilities of the teachers whose services were donated. Even when the children attended and when the programs themselves were of high quality, there was the problem of follow-through. Without reinforcement at home teenage toughs would remain incorrigible. On one occasion Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., said: 42

Ibid., 2 2 : 2 8 2 - 8 3 .

Ibid., 1:68. " R o b e r t Sunley, "Early Nineteenth-century American Literature on Child Rearing," in Margaret M e a d a n d M . Wolfenstein, eds., Childhood in Contemporary Culture (Chicago, 1955), p p . 150-67. O n e theme emphasized in New England but largely rejected or ignored by the Mormons was the depravity of man.

43 See Susan Staker O m a n a n d Carol Cornwall Madsen, Sisters and Little Saints: One Hundred Years of Primary (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1979).

43

Zion's Rowdies

195

I go again to the Sabbath school, a n d on one occasion I said to the presiding officer: " W h o are those little boys on those back benches?" "Why," he said to m e in a whisper, "those are our hoodlums. We work with them as best we can. You see that brother is a mild tempered m a n . H e sits right there by those little fellows trying to keep them in order; and we use every effort and all the persuasion that we are capable of to get them to observe order, but I tell you, Brother Young, with all they get from here, their parents are indifferent as to what their children do. Parents neglect their children and they run hither and thither all the week long a n d when they come into the Sabbath school it is almost useless to try to keep them quiet and orderly for the little fellows have been neglected and disorderly the whole week." 4 6

Young went on to comment that there was "neglect in this department throughout the length and breadth of the land."

Mormon children were American children with a difference. The criticism of Mormon young people may be seen as a variation of the criticism of American young people by European travelers who thought they saw the baleful consequences of democracy.47 The community's own recognition of antisocial behavior â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the idleness and disrespect and wanton destruction of property â&#x20AC;&#x201D; must have had its parallel in other communities across the country.48 The difference for the Mormons was their tendency to see youthful behavior against a backdrop of millennial hopes. The efforts to organize programs as one means, along with improved schools, of combating juvenile misbehavior was not unique to the Latter-day Saints. Indeed, much of whatever improvement took place may have occurred naturally as Utah society matured. But one can discern in the programs that sprang into existence on the Mormon frontier a strong element of religious awareness along with conventional instruction in manners and morals. As the programs continued to expand and mature, taking Mormon children at a tender age and shepherding them through the early teens, the life of young Mormons was more fully programmed than that of most young Americans. In that sense, much of what remains true of Mormon group character even today was taking shape.

46

Conference Reports, October 1898 [Salt Lake City, 1898], p. 49.

Rapson, Britons View America, pp. 93-105.

48 Some illuminating examples are found in Joseph F. Kett, Rites of Passage: Adolescence in America, 1790 to the Present (New York: Basic Books, 1977). For a larger perspective, see John R. Gillis, Youth and History: Tradition and Change in European Age Relations, 1770Present (New York: Academic Press, 1974).

47

Book Reviews

'' ; ' / ' - > ; ' V ; L ' ' - •:L:'•:' • •'. 1

LL::;-L::LLLVLL:.LLL:L;LL;;LLL-

•:•

• • • • , - ; •

/

:

.

•

•

•

.

.

-

•

'

.

•

'

.

.

-

;

•

•

• • "

; ' ; - ' .

;

' • • ' : • ' • : : . : " :

;

^LS^^L. ^^vL;LL.^L; ; SW5:i;iL • • • - , : > ^

r

,

;

- , , . ^ . ; ^ , . V , . . ^ ,

•.•;'":.",,:T''..:

- : . ' '".'.':•

:

.'V,.'

.,;•..

•• .'•'•'.'•-'L L L L Lv • SL;K'LLL':L':: • LL'L'L : LLLLLS'•:'AMm'm'.

" • '••'.

L L ; A L L •'•••• :• L.• ':..::'.;'•:.'•.'.. L : : : ; • • • ;• ', • / " L ; • / • S ' - . ' •

'•;:;;LLLL":L:L':!L{1-;''"LL-L;;L

;;•:

::;L M LL" \ '"':lp"y::::.... ,

Saints of Sage and Saddle: Folklore among the Mormons. By AUSTIN E. F I F E and ALTA F I F E . (1956; reprint ed., Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1980.

Xxviii + 267 pp. Paper, $20.00.)

Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains: A Compilation of Mormon Folksong.

Edited by T H O M A S E. C H E N E Y . (1968; reprint ed., Salt Lake City: University of U t a h Press, 1981. Xvii + 221 pp. Paper, $15.00.)

Ballads and Songs from Utah. By LESTER A. HUBBARD. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1961 [rebound 1978]. Xxi + 475 pp. Paper, $25.00.)

Lore of Faith and Folly. Edited by T H O M A S E. C H E N E Y , AUSTIN E. F I F E , and JUANITA BROOKS. (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971 [second printing 1974]. Ix + 2 7 4 pp. Cloth, $20.00.)

Writing in this journal several years ago, the well-known Utah folklorist William Wilson recounted the long and distinguished history of his discipline in our state. Recognizing that few western states can claim such an early professional interest in the folk traditions of their people, Wilson noted that three of the most significant publications in the field to date were Hector Lee's The Three Nephites (1949), Austin and Alta Fife's Saints of Sage and Saddle (1956), and Thomas Cheney's Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains (1968). At the time he wras writing all three were out of print, their inaccessibility detracting from the continuing impact of their scholarly contributions.

During the last two years, the University of Utah Press has reissued the Fife (new preface) and Cheney volumes, thus coming the full distance in making the efforts of these pioneering Utah folklorists once more available to scholars and the general public alike. (Lee's Nephites was reissued by Arno Press in

1976.) Coupled with the press's support for Lore of Faith and Folly (1971, second printing 1974), a collection of folklore articles gathered together under the auspices of the Folklore Society of Utah, and their 1978 rebinding of Lester Hubbard's long out-of-stock Ballads and Songs from Utah (1961), the reappearance of these two major titles confirms their commitment to the study and publication of Utah and western folklore. This support should be acknowledged and congratulated for these four books represent the real flowering of Utah's first generation of professional folklorists. The recent arrival of Cheney's Mormon Songs provides an opportunity to look back on them and see wrhat they do and don't do and, ultimately, to judge their usefulness for today's reader and researcher.

It seems appropriate to deal with this group of books collectively, for they are drawn naturally together by born time and disposition. T h e work presented here was largely accomplished before

Book Reviews and Notices 1970 and, not surprisingly, reflects the general state of folkloristic scholarship at the time. Like their colleagues in other parts of the country, these folklorists viewed their subject matter—the items of folk performance—in historical terms. Folklore was history, first of all, because it was associated with the faceto-face, agrarian pioneer society tiiat had been displaced by the impersonal mass culture of the present century.

Folklore for them quite literally meant "old stuff." It should be noted that these books are filled with folklore texts specifically pertaining to the nineteenthcentury Mormon experience in Utah.

Old stuff, however, could be more than quaint and humorous; it could, witii the proper care and attention, be put to good use in helping modern scholars learn more about what the people themselves thought about the times in which they were living. Folklore was history, in the end, because it could be gathered and analyzed', like any historical data, for meaning. Here, encapsulated in narratives considered important and powerful enough to be told and retold through several generations, were the values and beliefs of the average men and women of the Utah past.

If Utah had a distinctive regional personality, these folklorists rightly sensed that much of it rested in legends of Nephite visitations, stories about polygamy raids, humorous tales of immigrant malapropisms, and militant, antigovernment songs. In an effort to preserve this intriguing, oral side of history, they entered the field with notebooks, disc recording machines, and, later, tape recorders. In some instances they talked to the pioneers themselves.

In 1951 Lester Hubbard recorded a moving rendition of "The Handcart Song" from ninety-six-year-old Margaret Boyle, a Scottish convert to the LDS church who remembered dancing for Brigham Young as a child in Salt Lake City. More often they discovered that

197 the dramatic events of Mormon history lived on in the traditional narratives and songs of second- and third-generation Utahns. These children of pioneers and their children, too, continued to tell the stories they had heard as youngsters, often prefacing their renditions with "Here's an experience that Mother had," or "Here's one that old Bert Wallen told me, there's no use doubting his word," and "This actually happened to Dad." T h e question here is not whether such stories are indeed true, for it hardly matters. They are important because they are believed to be true, and thus become the vehicles—the myths if you will—around which culture is maintained and perpetuated. The role folk belief played in forming a distinctive Mormon identity is graphically depicted in the Fifes' classic folklore study, Saints of Sage and Saddle.

There had been earlier studies of Mormon folklore, but Saints of Sage and Saddle constituted the first comprehensive, scholarly treatment of the subject.

At a time when such regionally oriented folklore publications were usually unreflective collections of annotated texts, the Fifes astutely organized their field data into an analytical scheme that operated on two distinct levels. First, the texts from each folklore genre—legends, tales, songs, and so forth—were integrated into a flowing historical narrative tiiat not only made for fine reading but also allowed the material to be grouped around particular historical topics. On the surface the book serves as a chronologically structured folk history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with folk history taken here to mean a history reconstructed totally from oral tradition and told from the actual participants' points of view. T h e book includes chapters on the usual people and events of Mormon history—Joseph Smith, the trek west, Brigham Young, the colonization of Utah, and the Three Nephites. Present

198 also are sections devoted to such newly recognized types of M o r m o n material as missionary folklore, conversion testimonies, a n d spirit stories. By arranging their texts diachronically, the Fifes were able to weave a thread; of theoretical continuity into their study that transcends simple chronology. Their intention at the outset, as stated in the original preface, was "to seek out and describe t h a t which has been the most typical a n d tenacious among the Morm o n folk." By utilizing a dynamic model stressing historical movement they were able, by way of contrast, to> indeed expose those elements of the culture t h a t remained the same. Constants often become more obvious when highlighted against a backdrop of change. Saints of Sage and Saddle is held together, then, at a level deeper t h a n time by a recurring thematic structure. This theme revolves around, to use the authors' words, "the principle of divine intervention in the affairs of m a n . " T h u s , the book becomes m o r e t h a n a folk commentary on historical events; it stands asi a sacred, providential history of M o r m o n d o m . I n compiling the record of God's direct involvement in the lives of these Saints, the Fifes have created a latter-day sequel to Cotton M a t h e r ' s Magnolia Christi Americana, the providential history of the Puritans written in 1702.

T h e followers of Joseph Smith, m u c h like their Puritan ancestors, saw themselves as the chosen people of God. Theirs was a divine mission to restore the gospel of Christ to earth and in this task they were aided by the direct actions of God. Supernatural providence permeates m u c h of nineteenth-century M o r m o n folklore. Nearly any event or h a p p e n i n g could be interpreted as a sign of God's favor (or, in the case of the unfaithful, disfavor). T h e financial reverses experienced by the Smith family in N e w York were seen as evidence that God was driving them westward for a rendezvous with destiny (p. 21) ; the

Utah Historical Quarterly Golden Plates wrere translated with divine guidance (p. 38) ; at Carthage, a mysterious light appeared to prevent the defiling of the fallen prophet's body (p.

58) ; the Mississippi froze over to allow the Saints to escape from Nauvoo (p.

61) ; in U t a h , the grasshopper invasion was thwarted by the miraculous arrival of the seagulls (p. 75) ; a new missionary in Germany suddenly heard himself preaching a sermon in fluent G e r m a n (p. 133) ; a family on its way to St. George was saved from I n d i a n attack by a mysterious voice (p. 149), a man's future plural wives were revealed to him in a peepstone (p. 167), and so forth; the list becomes endless. These are not the naive mutterings of superstitious folk but, rather, the faithful pronouncements of a chosen people. Such tales, told as true, serve as a charter for the culture, providing it at once with a sense of purpose a n d legitimacy. Saints of Sage and Saddle is a powerful bookâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a book that has, unfortunately, never received the recognition it deserves. (Do historians, I wonder, read folklore books?)

Contemporary folklorists might find fault in a lack of comparative motif analysis, for clearly many of the narratives enjoy wide currency throughout the world.

Yet, such concerns are negligible in comparison to the achievements of the work, for here is a remarkable study which should be considered essential reading for all students of M o r m o n culture.

Austin and Alta Fife were the real movers of early U t a h folkloristics a n d their influence, discerned today in many practitioners in the field, is particularly evident in T h o m a s Cheney's work on M o r m o n folksong. T h e Fifes spent a great deal of time recording M o r m o n folksongs and include m a n y examples in Saints. I n a chapter devoted to song, they state that "So a b u n d a n t are the songs t h a t the M o r m o n folk have composed a n d sung that, were every other document destroyed, it would still be

Book Reviews and Notices possible, from their folksongs alone, to reconstruct in some detail their story. . . ." Cheney took the Fifes at their word and in Mormon Songs from the Rocky Mountains, he attempts just thatâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a reconstruction of Mormon history in folksong. He draws from his own fieldwork as well as the collections of others (most notably the Fifes). After a short and rather unsatisfactory essay on the meaning of Mormon folksong, Cheney arranges the songs in chapters devoted to Mormon history ("Mormon Battalion Song," "The Iron Horse"), locale ("Once I Lived in Cottonwood," "St. George and the Drag-on"), customs and teachings ("None Can Preach the Gospel Like the Mormons Do," "Oh Touch Not That Wine C u p " ) , and satire and sin ("Brigham Brigham Young," "Mountain Meadows Massacre"). In all, there are 100 annotated texts, many of which have music, and ample headnotes setting the historical scene for each song. There are some fine songs here, and even if you Cannot sing along, they still make for easy and captivating reading. My own favorite is L. M. Hilton's "The Story of Mormonism."

We've heard fantastic tales for years About the Mormon nation.

And Utah's wonderland of birth And courage in creation.

There does not seem to be on earth A subject more entrancing, Than Mormonism and the Saints And how they are advancing. . . .

We used to hear they all had horns And barbs their tails were ended, That each man had a score of wives To keep his trousers mended.

These minor points I'll now pass by We'll take them u p in order, And get the general run of facts That now are in disorder.

Like me man in Hilton's song, Cheney has taken the w'orld of Mormon) folksong and put it in "order." Here in a single

199 volume, neatly arranged into chronological sequence, are most of the important songs of the pioneer generation.

Useful as a consolidating effort, this nevertheless is not the penetrating study it might have been, given a greater attempt at analysis. Still, the material is enjoyable, and there is plenty here for the average consumer. Folklorists and historians will value the work as an indispensable reference in the further study of the nineteenth-century Utah experience. As a handbook of Mormon folksong, Cheney's book makes a nice companion volume to the larger, more inclusive study compiled by Lester Hubbard of the University of Utah.

Hubbard became interested in Utah folklore during the 1940s when Hector Lee was teaching in the English Department at the University of Utah. His initial enthusiasm was undoubtedly triggered by the fact that his mother, Sally Hubbard of Willard, was an excellent singer of early Utah folksongs. Mrs. Hubbard contributed 134 songs to the collection that eventually became the Ballads and Songs from Utah. From nearly 1,000 items, Hubbard chose 250 examples for his book. Unlike Cheney, who concentrated only on Mormon material, Hubbard covered the full range of Utah singing, from old English ballads to sentimental, minstrel numbers.

The emphasis, however, especially in the short introductory essay, is on the Mormon songs and (again) their historical context. Feeling (like the others) that these songs could "supplement our knowledge of Utah and her people during the second half of the nineteenth century," Hubbard saw Mormon folksongs' growing out of the long years of conflict with the United States government. In fact, he deems them "militant songs" expressing feelings of intense loyalty and "Mormonness." Hubbard acknowledged the ephemeral nature of Mormon balladry; these songs, he wrote, "became less popular when the conflicts

200

Utah Historical Quarterly

were over and the forces which inspired them became less vital." (It is interesting to wonder if Hubbard's thesis— that specifically Mormon symbols surface during periods of conflict—applies to other genres of folklife performance.

For instance, do we see such Mormon icons as the beehive, square, compass, and all-seeingi eye only on the gravestones of the 1855-65 and 1880-90 militant periods?)

Hubbard's Ballads and Songs presents a good, across-the-board representation of the types of songs popular in nineteenlth-century Utah. In addition to die LDS material, there are sections devoted to Child ballads (traceable to medieval England), songs of love and courtship, children's songs, and songs of the West.

More than the other authors, Hubbard pays attention to the context in which the songs were performed, briefly mentioning song occasions during pioneer times. James Jepson, a freighter who gave Hubbard 100 songs, sang to pass the time while hauling produce for the church in southern Utah and northern Arizona. Elizabeth Jenson sang as a child while tending the community herd. Miles Wakefield mentioned that the songs were primarily for entertainment and remembered singing contests held by the sheep-shearing crews. Sally Hubbard sang primarily around the home but recalled that there were certain rules to be followed when performing: "When we rode home on horseback from dances . . . we sometimes sang about Brigham Young and polygamy, the Mountain Meadows Massacre and other things which, of course, we didn't sing in public." Hubbard's book, with its emphasis on song texts, functions well in its capacity as Utah's "official" folksong reference collection.

ety naturally brought together many different approaches to the subject.

There were professionals and amateurs, analysts and antiquarians, scholars and enthusiasts—and all were invited to participate equally. When, during the late 1960s, the society decided to publish a volume on Utah folklore, it was done with the purpose of representing "the whole membership of the society." As such, the book is uneven and lacks some of the prerequisites of good folklore scholarship (i.e., the rigorous collecting and verbatim reporting of texts). Still, in accurately reflecting the varied interests of the society, Lore of Faith and Folly remains an informative as well as entertaining book.

Part I of »the book, representing—I assume—'the amateur wing of the group, is devoted to "folk narratives, local history, reminiscences, and oral history."

Here we have, on the whole, local writers retelling particularly interesting tales from their own part of the state. Andrew Karl Larson spins several fine yarns, including a trickster tale about "Ithamar Sprague and His Big Shoes"; Juanita Brooks's "Our Annual Visitors" recalls early days in Bunkerville, Nevada; and the novelist Frank C. Robertson brings together a number of tales about coyotes in "The Gray Ghost of the Desert." Of particular interest here is Helen Papanikolas's "Greek Folklore of Carbon County," the only non-Mormonrelated piece in the book. Unlike the other writers, who feel compelled to disguise the talk of the folk in an often self-conscious and ornate literary style, Mrs. Papanikolas sticks close to her original sources; in giving us perhaps the most satisfying essay in the book, she tells us much about immigrant life in Mormon Utah.

Quite a different animal is Lore of Faith and Folly, a series of essays contributed by members of the Folklore Society of Utah. Organized in 1958 to promote the study of folklore, the soci-

'Part II contains analytical essays by many of Utah's most distinguished folklorists and historians. William Mulder contributes a fascinating analysis of an autograph album kept by a Dane in

201

Book Reviews and Notices prison for conscience' sake; Olive Burt continues h e r work with m u r d e r ballads in "Ditties of D e a t h in Deseret"; a n d Wayland H a n d discusses traditional remedies in " T h e C o m m o n Cold in U t a h Folk Medicine." T w o essays on local heroes—Porter Rockwell a n d Sam Brann a n — a r e especially thoughtful historical exercises. Gustive O . Larson expertly exploits oral tradition in creating an image of " O l d Port," t h e long-haired, whiskey drinking, avenging angel of the Lord. O n e early governor of U t a h accused Rockwell of murder, to which the old scout replied: "Well Governor, you know d a m n well I never killed anybody that didn't deserve it." W e all, however, deserve to read these stories, a n d while we're doing i t we'll get a rare glimpse at t h e often untold side of history.

H e r e then a r e four folklore books— the best of the early studies of folklore in U t a h . T h e y will do different things for different people: for historians they will

From

Memory

to History:

Using

provide a soft, h u m a n touch to the often cold facts of t h e past; for the general reading public they will serve u p a generous helping of enjoyable reading; a n d to a new generation of folklorists they can tell where we have been a n d where we should be going in our research. W e don't do folklore like this anymore. Studying t h e past has become unfashionable, a n d we a r e more interested i n the context of folklore t h a n in the texts. W e a r e studying M o r m o n folklore in new ways a n d with new theories, b u t this should not lead us to discredit the work that has come before.

I n fact, t h e work of these pioneers—the Lester H u b b a r d s , the Austin and Alta Fifes, the T o m Cheneys, the Helen Papanikolases—allows us to move forward into t h e present upon a firmly established scholarly base.

Oral Sources

TOM

CARTER

Utah State Historical

Society

in Local

Historical

Research.

By

BARBARA A L L E N a n d W I L L I A M L Y N W O O D M O N T E L L . (Nashville: American Asso-

ciation for State a n d Local History, 1981. Xii + 1 7 2 p p . $12.50.)

O r a l histories;—the vivid, personal documentation of times past—have gained in popularity during recent years. M a n y local historians a n d a growing number of academicians view oral accounts as not only valid b u t also essential to a complete historical record. This is the perspective of Allen a n d Montell, the authors of From Memory to History.

T h e i r book has two primary purposes: first t o describe various acquisition methods for oral materials a n d second to illustrate techniques of oral d a t a evaluation a n d interpretation. T h e i r intended audience is described as all researchers— be they university historians or local nonspecialists—who are interested in reconstructing oral histories. Perhaps this is the reason the book is written at a verygeneral level. T h e beginning researcher will find this book a useful library addi-

tion. F o r the experienced historian, however, m u c h of the material m a y prove too basic to be of practical use.

T h e content flows logically from background information on t h e current status of historical research to t h e actual preparation of t h e manuscript. T h e reader will also find information o n t h e characteristics of orally communicated history, potential oral topics, hidden truths in oral histories, a n d types of validity tests.

T h e novice researcher will encounter useful information in almost every section. T h e "almost" qualifier refers to t h e chapter o n validity testing.

Although t h e section o n external validity tests is well done, the discussion on internal tests is less than adequate.

Even though the authors sufficiently list the types of internal tests, they d o n o t explain w h a t to do if the tests reveal

202 discrepant data. The transition from test application to the actual decision about data appropriateness may be easy for the experienced researcher, but a neophyte will need more guidance than the text provides.

Oral history examples abound in this chapter. This technique can be helpful; it can also be distracting when taken to the extreme. The extreme occurs here.

At times the reader becomes lost in the illustrations, rather than finding a brief, explicit example of the authors' point.

This problem also occurs in die chapters entitled "Submerged Forms of Historical Trutiis" and "Identifying and Using Orally Communicated History."

Utah Historical Quarterly With the exception of the authors' overuse of illustrations and the weak internal validity section, the book generally accomplishes its major purposes. It is a practical guide for beginners and fills a basic need in oral history work.

Oral histories offer a fleeting, highly personalized view of past events. The importance of oral histories is best summarized by an African proverb quoted in the book, "When an old person dies, a library burns to the ground." This manual is an effective attempt to decrease some of that loss.

MARIANNE FRASER

University of Arizona

Crosscurrents along the Colorado: The Impact of Government Policy on the Quechan Indians. By ROBERT L. BEE. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1981. Xx + 184 pp. Cloth, $18.50; paper, $7.50.)

Robert L. Bee's study of the Quechan (or Yuma) Indians focuses most closely on the ninety years of this small tribe's history from 1884 to 1974. The first date marks the establishment of the Quechans' reservation on the west side of the Colorado River, in the state of California but near Yuma, Arizona. The latter date indicates Bee's last visit among the Quechans and so establishes an artificial terminus for his research. The book has a clear set of themes. Bee is primarily concerned with the establishment of "internal colonialism" by the federal government and the corresponding lack of planning for long-term economic development. He also examines the disunifying effect of factions among the Quechans as well as the national government's failure to encourage internal, community-centered leadership.

All of these themes (colonialism, economic development, factions, and tribal leadership) are important aspects of nineteenth- and twentietii-century American Indian history. Because of the narrow focus of Bee's study, it would be

unfair to expect definitive statements on these broad issues. Nonetheless, the author could have avoided some unfortunate misstatements. For example, on p. 14 Bee announces that "For the first half of the nineteenth century, the United States government regarded native American Indian tribes as 'foreign' nations. . . . " Bee has ignored Chief Justice John Marshall's monumental ruling in 1831 that Indian tribes were "domestic dependent nations"â&#x20AC;&#x201D;a phrase which seems to indicate a form of colonialism in regard to Indians. Bee also shows great confusion over the full role of Christian denominations during President Grant's Peace Policy (p. 17), and he fails to separate Social Security and the Works Progress Administration as two different pieces of legislation under the New Deal (p. 101).

Such errors over government principles and policies seem to disappear when the book reaches the period 1961-74, the time of Bee's field work among the Quechans. His best chapter covers these years and allows him to end his book

203

Book Reviews and Notices on a cautious but positive note in regard to community development. His conclusion lends support to William T. Hagan's belief {Western Historical Quarterly 12 [January 1981]: 5-16) that tribalism has been rejuvenated since the early 1960s, in part because of the greatly increased level of federal funding that has supported health care, low-income housing, business enterprises, and job training.

General readers and historians should react to Bee's book on two levels. As a ninety-year history of the Quechans, it contains numerous accounts of incidents and individuals that underscore the modern plight of many Indian groups. On another level, however, the analysis of tiiese ninety years can be questioned. Here, all readers will return to Bee's four themes. The author consistently laments the government's failure to create effective, long-term economic

development and to nurture internally viable native leadership. At the same time, Bee recognizes that "internal colonialism" and Quechan faction prevent what he laments. More can be made of this quandary. For example, it appears that the nation as a whole, not just Indian tribes in particular, have experienced the federal government's failure to establish effective, long-term economic planning. Similarly, questions about viable leadership are familiar on the national as well as tribal level. Indeed, the issues of economic development and appropriate leadership have complex social and cultural implications beyond the impact of any government policy. It is these implications that deserve closer attention, both in Bee's book and in any reader's reaction to his book.

CLYDE A. MILNER II

Utah State

University

A River No More: The Colorado River and the West. By PHILIP L. FRADKIN. (1967; reprint, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981. Xvii + 360 pp. $15.95.)

Philip Fradkin claims water is the key to the West, that Colorado River water is controlled by the "Iron Triangle" of Water Users, the Bureau of Reclamation, and the United States Congress, and tiiat its waters are not wisely used.

This is a book of politics. Western states water politics. Conservation, environmentalist, and energy development politics. To take us through these mazes of water politics the author tours the river's larger tributaries' headwaters, drainages, dams, and diversions. His is an interesting and a disturbing account.

In fact, it is almost a Jeremiad.

Fradkin reviews both the geography and the history of the Colorado River, its tributaries, and basin with care and detail, continually reminding readers that desert rivers ought to be rivers and their streams and tributaries allowed to do what rivers and streams are supposed

to do, whatever that is. So by his definition, Fradkin concludes correctly that the Colorado is "A River No More."

Its tributaries are dammed and diverted, its pure beginning waters have become saline and brackish. The river irrigates, generates power, recreation, and speculation. Its habitat and native flora are changed. It is no longer the river nature made. Today it is manmade, and men make ditches. Even the Grand Canyon is now only the "ultimate ditch."

It is easy to see Fradkin's biases. No doubt many of his readers would feel better if it were as easy to dismiss the basic issues he raises and reviews so critically in his book. Three stand out: One, are there not definite limitations on the West's waters and their capacities for uses? The author says yes, citing the disappearance of the ancientsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;Hohokam and Anaszaiâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;as examples. He sees

204 the drought of 1976-77 as a precursor of disaster for our own water policies.

T w o , is the use m a d e of most of western water really a wise oneâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to produce red m e a t ? T h e West's vast lands support only limited numbers of livestock when compared to national totals.

T h e marginal summer ranges, h e argues, must be shored up with irrigated meadows and hay fields to carry livestock a n d cows especially through t h e winter months. Additionally, t h e cloven sheep a n d cow hooves shred the fragile soil cover which leads to more erosion which fills reservoirs with silt which leads t o the construction of m o r e reservoirs needed to deliver 'the quality and quantities of water promised under western states compacts a n d international treaties.

A n d finally, where is energy developm e n t in the Colorado River Basin leading? Competition with livestock and farming interests? Reaching for water outside of the Colorado River system to the Columbia River or Canadian rivers draining into t h e Arctic Ocean?

Fradkin argues that the problems of western waiter a r e a product of its very finite limits. But m o r e directly they are the product of the politics of the western cowboy mentality, historically led by W a y n e Aspinall of Colorado, Carl Hayden and the Udalls of Arizona, Moss of U t a h , Stewart of Nevada, and others w h o knew w h a t their constituents wanted a n d maneuvered successfully in Congress and even with t h e State Departm e n t to obtain better rights to the water.

Utah Historical Quarterly But the claims are already greater than the quantity of water available.

T o date much of the water promised I n d i a n tribes still has not yet been allocated a n d delivered. Already the evaporation losses from reservoirs in this arid land amount to more t h a n two million acre-feet a year, which is nearly a million acre-feet more than Mexico's annual share. These problems Fradkin discusses in detail.

W h a t he does not evaluate adequately, for this reviewer, are t h e peoples' political prerogatives to choose, to dream, to hope, to expect, and to achieve new horizons a n d new frontiers. F o r all the "unnaturalness" of Hoover D a m or the All American Canal, or the surface wells in Salt River Valley, modern Americans have lived well and prospered there for several generations. W h o really knows what the limits of the region are? And w h o should decide, if not its people and their politicians?

T h e dilemma Fradkin describes is profound. For him a "river" is t h a t necessary place to which people retreat to renew their mental, emotional, physical, and political health. Most of us recognize that need.

A River No More is not an easy book to dismiss. Its validity rests o n the author's asking the right questions. I t is the answers we will continue to argue about.

MELVIN T.

Utah State Historical

SMITH

Society

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS, Smithfield, 1985

President M R S . ELIZABETH MONTAGUE, Salt Lake City, 1983 Vice-president MELVIN T. SMITH, Salt Lake City Secretary THOMAS G. ALEXANDER, Provo, 1983 J. ELDON DORM AN, Price, 1985 M R S . ELIZABETH GRIFFITH, Ogden, 1985

WAYNE K. HINTON, Cedar City, 1985 THERON L U K E , Provo, 1983

DAVID S. MONSON, Lieutenant Governor/

Secretary of State, Ex officio WILLIAM D. OWENS, Salt Lake City, 1983 M R S . HELEN Z. PAPANIKOLAS, Salt Lake City, 1985 ANAND A. YANG, Salt Lake City, 1985

ADMINISTRATION MELVIN T. SMITH, Director

STANFORD J. LAYTON, Managing Editor JAY M. HAYMOND, Librarian DAVID B. MADSEN, State Archaeologist

A. KENT POWELL, Historic Preservation Research WILSON G. MARTIN, Historic Preservation Development JOHN M. BOURNE, Museum Services

The Utah State Historical Society was organized in 1897 by public-spirited Utahns to collect, preserve, and publish Utah and related history. Today, under state sponsorship, the Society fulfills its obligations by publishing the Utah Historical Quarterly and other historical materials; collecting historic Utah artifacts; locating, documenting, and preserving historic and prehistoric buildings and sites; and maintaining a specialized research library. Donations and gifts to the Society's programs, museum, or its library are encouraged, for only through such means can it live up to its responsibility of preserving the record of Utah's past,

MEMBERSHIP Membership in the Utah State Historical SocietyJs open to all individuals and institutions interested in Utah history.

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

Annual dues are: individual, $ 10.00; institutions, $ 15.00 ; student and senior citizen (age sixty-five or over), $7.50; contributing, $15.00; sustaining, $25.00; patron, $50.00; life member, $150.00. Your interest and support are most welcome.