Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 50, Number 3, 1982

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HISTORICAL QUARTERLY

Contents SUMMER 1982/VOLUME 50 / NUMBER 3

IN THIS ISSUE

207

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE: THE RESIGNATION OF BISHOP PAUL JONES

JOHN

SILLITO 209

S. MCCORMICK

225

HORNETS IN T H E HIVE: SOCIALISTS IN EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY UTAH THE EMERGING SOCIAL WORKER AND T H E DISTRIBUTION OF THE CASTLE GATE RELIEF FUND . . .

R.

and TIMOTHY S. HEARN

JOHN

MICHAEL KATSANEVAS, JR.

241

LORETTA L. HEFNER

255

.

268

THE NATIONAL WOMEN'S RELIEF SOCIETY AND T H E U.S. SHEPPARD-TOWNER ACT

POLYGAMY AND T H E FRONTIER: MORMON WOMEN IN EARLY UTAH

.

.

LAWRENCE FOSTER

BOOK REVIEWS

290

BOOK NOTICES

299

THE COVER For the Thomas L. Smith, Paxman, Booth, and Grace families the pleasures of summer in 1896 included rusticating in Salt Creek Canyon between Nephi and Fountain Green.

USHS collections, courtesy of Roe Jean H, York.

© Copyright 1982 Utah State Historical Society

N E W E L L G. B R I N G H U R S T . Saints,

Slaves,

and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism

R O N A L D G. C O L E M A N

T H O M A S G. A L E X A N D E R , ed. The

People: and

Their

Mormon

Character

Traditions

J A M E S C. F O S T E R , ed.

Hundred

MARK MCKIERNAN

291

ALLAN K E N T POWELL

292

American

Labor in the Southwest: One

290

Years

The First .

.

.

Books reviewed HENRY WARNER BOWDEN.

American

Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict .

J E F F D E A N . Architectural

.

K A R L E. G I L M O N T

294

GARY B. P E T E R S O N

294

ERNEST H. LINFORD

296

Photography:

Techniques for Architects, Preservationists, Historians, Photographers, and Urban

Planners

M I C H A E L D . D E V I N E , et al.

Energy

from the West: A Technology Assessment of Western Energy Resource

Development

.

N O R M A N E. W R I G H T . Preserving

.

.

Your

American Heritage: A Guide to Family and Local History .

.

.

M. GUY BISHOP

297

In this issue Wars, social and political ferment, disasters, and experimental life-styles stir public and private emotions and create the issues and responses with which individuals, groups, and, at times, entire generations identify.

Utah Episcopalians did not seem to mind that their bishop, Paul Jones, was a Socialist and a pacifist; but when he remained — as a matter of conscience — consistent and vocal in his views after the U.S. entered World War I, reaction from his flock was swift and predictable. Jones's fellow Socialists, as described in the following article, added zest to the political scene and elected officials in communities as diverse as Salina, Elsinore, and Salt Lake City.

Other forms of social awareness and concern rose in the yeasty teens and twenties. A progressive workmen's compensation law and a generous public subscription aided families of miners killed at Castle Gate in 1924 (Greek burial procession shown above). A full-time social worker was hired to serve the needs of the widows and children, and that set a precedent. T h e welfare of women and children, especially during childbirth, became an issue for members of the LDS church's Relief Society. They lobbied for appropriate legislation, established a maternity hospital, and provided support services that reduced high infant and maternal death rates. Their program succeeded, but the financial underpinning was snatched away by reactionaries who labeled the women as neurotic and the federal funding as Bolshevik interference with the family.

These twentieth-century bubblings of the social stew seem tepid indeed compared to the controversy generated earlier by polygamy. Contributing to a growing body of work on the subject, the final article in this issue presents an insightful look at the effect of polygamy on Mormon women and suggests areas for further research that may make a comprehensive study of this alternative life-style possible.

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The Right Reverend Paul Jones, fourth Episcopal bishop of Utah, 1914-18, was forced to resign because of his pacifist views.

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A Question of Conscience: The Resignation of Bishop Paul Jones B Y J O H N R. S I L L I T O A N D T I M O T H Y S. H E A R N

against American participation in World War I," wrote historian Ralph Lord Roy.1 Numbered among that group was Paul Jones, Episcopal bishop of Utah, an active Socialist who believed the American people were being swept into the war on a wave of hysteria. Jones's pacifist sentiments and, in particular, his opposition to United States' participation in the war, ultimately cost him his ecclesiastical position. Moreover, Jones's resignation precipitated a major crisis within the Episcopal church, dividing both clergy and laity within the Diocese of Utah and throughout the nation.

Understanding this crisis and its resolution requires an examination of Paul Jones's early life, his succession to the episcopate, and the factors leading to his 1918 resignation as bishop of Utah.

Jones became bishop in 1914 after the accidental death of his friend and mentor, Franklin Spencer Spalding. For nearly a decade Spalding guided Episcopal affairs in Utah while at the same time actively participating in the movement for socialism developing in his church. In 1911 Spalding was one of the founders of the Church Socialist League and served as its first president. The league united Episcopal clergy and laity who were Socialists into an organization that called for the "collective ownership of all the means of production and distribution." Members dedicated themselves to a twofold goal of advancing socialism by "all just means" while promoting "a better understanding between church people who are not Socialists, and Socialists who are not church people."2 U N L Y A HANDFUL OF AMERICAN CHURCHMEN STOOD

Mr. Sillito is the archivist at Weber State College, Ogden, U t a h . Mr, Hearn is a student at Harvard Law School.

1 R a l p h L o r d Roy, Communism and the Churches (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960), p. 15. For informationi on the role of clergymen during World War I see Ray H . Abrams, Preachers Present Arms (Scottsdale, Penn.: Herald Press, 1969). Abrams identifies some seventy individuals, including Jones, who actively opposed the war. Nine different denominations were represented with a few coming from the Unitarians, Congregationalists, Universalists, Baptists, and Episcopalians. Of these clergymen, fifty-nine were occupying pulpits during the war. Approximately half were able to remain at their posts, the other half were forced or chose to resign.

2 The Social Preparation 1 (January 1913). For a decade this magazine was the official publication of the Church Socialist League.

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In his capacity as a missionary bishop, Spalding spent much of his time on speaking tours in the East, raising funds for the Episcopal church's work among the Mormons and recruiting clergymen to assist him in Utah. One of those answering this call was Paul Jones, who arrived in Logan in 1906, fresh from the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to work with students at the Utah State Agricultural College.

During the next eight years Jones clearly became a protege of Bishop Spalding and grew close to the senior cleric in his commitment to the Christian faith as well as in his belief in the relevance of socialism. In 1914, after Spalding's death and before his own consecration as bishop, Jones joined the Socialist party (a step Spalding had never taken) so there would be no misunderstanding concerning his political views. In a later account, Jones explained his motivation: I joined the Socialist p a r t y . . . not only as a matter of conviction, although the Socialist program a n d point of view seemed to represent the most honest effort in sight to apply Christian principles to the social order, but it was to some degree the casting of an anchor windward. I did not want, in the position of bishop, to get swung, as so many have been, into the easy acceptance of things as they are. 3

There is little in Paul Jones's early life to suggest that one day socialism would become his anchor. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 1881. His formative years were, in his own view, not characterized by any tendency toward radicalism: I . . . grew u p in association only with right-thinking people of the best type. Again my years at Yale did nothing to shake those sound conclusions which I had naturally accepted, for I recall that I had no hesitation in going in as a strike breaker in the anthracite strike of 1902. . . .

T h e natural right of the best people to have the best things, wealth as evidence of individual probity, punishment as the only proper treatment for crime, the foreigner to be kept in his place and to be treated kindly, b u t firmly, the army and navy as the loyal defenders of the nation, the worship of the church as the proper expression of all decent a n d respectable people •— all these conceptions were mine by ordinary training and association. 4

Jones identified three factors that ultimately altered these inbred concepts: first, a realization that the validity of the teachings of Jesus 3 Paul Jones, "What the War Did to My Mind," Christian Century, March 8, 1928, pp.

310-12. * Paul Jones, "The Philosophy of a Madman," Christian Century, September 13, 1923, pp.

1164-66. In the Yale student annual the year he graduated, Jones noted that his "highest ambition was to send a son to Yale."

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Placard in Ogden announced a pastoral visit of Jones's mentor and predecessor as bishop, Franklin S. Spalding, inset, a founder of the Church Socialist League.

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Christ "rested upon their essential truth rather than upon some outside or supernatural authority" and a conviction that these truths could be applied to the "ordinary relationships of life"; second, his experience in Logan which gave him the chance to "spread the understanding and practice of Christian principles among all the people of the community, Mormon and non-Mormon alike," instead of trying to build up only his own church; and, third, the "sound thinking and personality" of Bishop Spalding which convinced Jones that the principles taught by Jesus "not only could but should be applied to both industrial and international relationships."5 Jones's activities as a Socialist continued after he became bishop of Utah. He succeeded Spalding as president of the Church Socialist League and wrote and lectured in support of socialism. At the same time, he began to speak out against the war in Europe and the military preparedness movement sweeping the United States. At the Episcopal General ConIbid.

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vention in 1916 Jones participated in a forum on "Christianity and Force" and took a militant pacifist position that war was always a rejection of Christian principles. During this period, Jones joined the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a nondenominational religious organization whose antiwar views he believed most closely resembled his own.6 In general, Jones's pacifist sentiments were based on a desire for moral consistency in all aspects of life, not just in regard to war. In a pamphlet entitled The Christian Soldier, Jones attributed his stand not to traditional pacifism, which he regarded as too narrow and concerned with only one aspect of life, but rather to a "Christian attitude . . . concerned with the reclamation of the world from evil, and the development of perfection, tasks which in their very nature imply a continued struggle."7 Citing biblical sources in support of his views, Jones asserted that the "Christian Soldier" must attempt to "win to Christ those who are crucifying him afresh," not only by their attitudes toward war but also by their attitudes toward business, society, and the church itself. Moreover, Jones wrote, for the Christian "there is but one supreme loyalty and that is to Christ and His Gospel. Duties to country, to home, and to family must always give way to the larger loyalty which alone is capable of . . . giving them full significance."8 In another tract Jones outlined his concept of "Christian loyalty," which led him to oppose war as an inherently "un-Christian activity."

Instead of war, mankind should pursue a policy of "active, aggressive, militant goodwill founded on the example and teachings of Christ." The day will come, Jones proclaimed, when "Christian men and women will be brave enough to stand openly for the full truth, [and] the terrible anachronism of war between Christian nations will be done away with."9 Consistently, Jones argued that opposition to war from a Christian perspective is not a passive approach but an active one. He also insisted that Christians must be consistent in their commitment to the teachings of Christ regardless of the outcome: 6 John Howard Melish, Paul Jones, Minister of Reconciliation (New York: Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1942), p. 38. Jones's antiwar attitudes were strongly influenced by those of his wife, May, who was a pacifist and also a member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

7 Paul Jones, The Christian Soldier (np., n d . ) . Jones differed from Spalding in that he frequently used militaristic metaphors and symbols when expressing his antiwar views. Spalding was so adamant against using military symbolism that at one point he wrote a set of new lyrics to the standard Protestant hymn "Onward Christian Soldiers" which he retitled " O n w a r d Christian Workers."

8 Ibid. " P a u l Jones, Christian Loyalty (np., n d . ) . Copies of this pamphlet and The Christian Soldier are on file at the U t a h State Historical Society library, Salt Lake City.

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T o prosecute war means to kill men, bring sorrow upon women and children, and instill suspicion, fear and hatred into the hearts of the people on both sides. N o matter what principles may a p p e a r to be at stake, to deliberately engage in such a course of action . . . is repugnant to the whole spirit of the Gospel. 10

Jones's pacifist sentiments were well known to the residents of his own diocese. In November 1915 he preached at Saint Mark's Cathedral telling the congregation that the calls "for this or any other nation to resort to force to resist an invasion of rights" would ultimately lead to war, arid "plunge the world in an inferno of blood." The true safeguard for any nation, Jones believed, was "not to be found in the weapons of war, but in those eternal principles which make for righteousness and truth and brotherhood and peace."11 In March 1916 Jones published an article in the Utah Survey, a magazine sponsored by the Episcopal church in the state, in which he decried the "agitation for preparedness" that he saw as sweeping the governmental, business, educational, and religious sectors of American life. Jones argued that preparedness in itself would never prevent war and maintained that the breakdown of the military alliances that characterized prewar Europe was evidence of that fact. Moreover, he asserted, American involvement in the war would put an end to the Progressive movement because it would divert funds from needed domestic social projects and threaten both public morality and civil liberties.12 Thus, by 1917 Jones's support of socialism and his commitment to pacifist sentiments were well known both in Utah and on the national level as well. Within a few months, Jones's identification with and support for these views became so controversial that he was forced to resign his position as bishop of Utah.

The chain of events that precipitated this crisis began in March 1917. At that time, a rally labeled as a "patriotic demonstration" in support of possible American involvement in the European war was held in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, attracting some 10,000 people. Included in the assemblage were representatives of government, business, and education, as well as several local clergymen and LDS general authorities.

A resolution passed at the rally asserted that the United States had been pushed to the brink of war and that it was necessary for this counibid.

Deseret News, December 22, 1915. : Paul Jones, "Armed or Unarmed," Utah Survey 3 (March 1916)

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try to take action to "reassert its traditional principles" of freedom of commerce, respect for the sovereignty of all nations, and opposition to tyranny. The resolution, which was to be sent to Utah's congressional delegation for transmittal to President Woodrow Wrilson, called for the "loyalty, unity and solidarity" of all Americans "in support of whatever course becomes necessary to preserve our honor as a nation and to protect the lives of our fellow citizens at home or abroad, on land or sea."13 In response to the actions taken at this rally, a meeting was held the following evening at Unity Hall, headquarters of numerous radical arid labor organizations, to protest American involvement in the war.

Several Utah radicals spoke in opposition to Wilsonian policies toward the war. Paul Jones told these antiwar Utahns that the United States was being "swept on a war wave" and that the American people were "no longer using their heads" when it came to the question of involvement in the European conflict. In assessing the situation, Jones said: The speakers at the Tabernacle . . . put democracy, loyalty and truth in terms of guns, fighting and bloodshed, terms that this new world, if not the old, has grown beyond. No adequate reasons were presented by any of the representatives of state or federal government for entering the war.

There was nothing but an emotional appeal, and the people were carried off their feet. There was no appeal for democracy, or for suffering humanity in Europe.

I believe we should stand by the President, but we should not forsake the high ideals we have always had. The President is still in a position to keep us out of war. There is still time to appeal to him with sentiments other than those fostered by hot-headed pseudo-patriots of today.14

Reaction from the local Episcopal community to their bishop's views was swift in coming. Hugh A. McMillin, a vestryman at Saint Mark's, ridiculed the notion that an Episcopal bishop could truly be a Socialist and further stated that it should be thoroughly understood by the people of Salt Lake that Jones was speaking "as an individual and not in any way as a bishop of the church." Subsequently, the entire vestry of Saint Mark's issued a statement expressing their "keen regret" over Jones's utterances, because they believed many citizens might attribute his opinions to the church as a whole. The vestry urged Jones to make it clear that his opinions did not' reflect, by virtue of his official position, "the Episcopal church or. . . any member thereof."15 13

Deseret News, March 27, 1917.

Deseret News, March 28, 1917.

15 "Petition from the Council of Advice, Missionary District of U t a h , to House of Bishops, Chicago, October 17, 1917," Records of the House of Bishops, Record Group 9, Episcopal Church 14

A Question of Conscience

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Jones responded with a cordial, but nonetheless negative, answer.

He told the vestry that because his stand opposing American involvement in the war was based upon what he believed to be "the clear teachings of the scriptures," he did not feel it necessary to make the disclaimer requested.16 For a time the matter rested there, although other leaders in the Utah Episcopal community continued to seek, publicly and privately, to dissociate Bishop Jones's views from the church. Clearly these local critics were not as willing to tolerate Jones's pacifism at a time when American involvement in the war seemed imminent as they had when such action seemed remote or speculative.

As might be expected, Jones's attitudes were not altered, nor was his voice stilled, by the American declaration of war on the Central Powers a week later. During the next few months his opposition intensified, though it was less visible and created less public attention. Jones did alienate local Episcopal critics further, however, when he affiliated with the People's Council for Democracy and Justice, a national organization that campaigned "for a quick peace on liberal terms, civil liberties, and repeal of conscription."17 The People's Council was regarded by many as extremely radical, and possibly seditious, and Jones's affiliation further supported the impression of many local Episcopalians that their bishop was following a traitorous path.

By fall 1917 Jones's opposition to the war was again attracting public attention. In October he attended a conference in Los Angeles sponsored by an interdenominational peace group known as the Christian Pacifists.

His participation was relatively minor (he offered a prayer and made brief remarks), but because the meeting was broken up by the police he made headlines in Los Angeles and Salt Lake newspapers. The Salt Lake Tribune, for example, proclaimed in bold headlines, "Swarms of Police Chase Bishop Jones."18 This new publicity prompted the Utah Council of Advice, a body of local clergy and lay people appointed by the bishop to advise him on diocesean matters, to send a letter to Jones calling for his resignation due to the "loss of respect and confidence of loyal Americans not only Archives, Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest, Austin, Tex. Hereafter cited as Episcopal C h u r c h Archives.

18 Paul Jones to H . A. McMillin, March 30, 1917, Records of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah, Special Collections, Marriott Library, University of U t a h , Salt Lake City.

17 Charles DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. 104. See also, Salt Lake Tribune, July 3 1 , 1 9 1 7 .

18 Salt Lake Tribune, October 3, 4, 1917; Los Angeles Times, October 3, 4, 1917.

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within the church, but outside, without which no bishop can be acceptable or successful in the prosecution of his work."19 Jones's response came in the form of a questionnaire to the council seeking a more specific rendering of the charges against him. Piqued by the bishop's attitude, the Council of Advice, and the vestries of the two largest parishes in Utah, appealed directly to a special meeting of the House of Bishops then being held in Chicago for the removal of Bishop Jones. The groups stressed their belief that Jones's inability to support U.S. war policy had destroyed his credibility.

Since the day when the United States accepted the challenge of war from Germany, the Bishop of Utah has persistently maintained an attitude of hostility to the United States government.

On Sunday, April 29, 1917, while preaching in St Marks Cathedral . . . he asserted that the United States was preparing to send its young men forth for organized murder and butchery.

From that day to the present time, he has not ceased to proclaim, in public utterances and in private conversations, antiwar doctrines which are held by the people of this state to be inimical to the best interest of the nation in this present crisis.20

After several unsatisfactory attempts to deal with the controversy over Jones in committee, the House of Bishops decided (apparently at Jones's suggestion), that the Bishop of Utah should request a leave of absence while a special commission of three bishops investigated the situation. The commission met twice, first on November 7 and again on December 12. It reviewed the facts of the case, received information and depositions, and interviewed two members of the Council of Advice as well as Jones himself. Soon after the December meeting the special commission recommended that Jones submit his resignation to the House of Bishops.

Jones complied with this request in late December. In his letter of resignation, addressed to Presiding Bishop Daniel S. Tuttle, himself a former bishop of Utah, Jones noted that he had hoped "that there might be room in the Church for a difference of opinion on the Christianity of warfare and the ways of attaining peace," but he now realized this was not the case: The commission, speaking I take it, for the House of Bishops, maintains, first that war is not an unChristian thing and that no Bishop may 39 20

"Petition from the Council of Advice."

Ibid.

A Question of Conscience

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preach that this war is unChristian; and second that a Bishop should not express the opinion that peace can be secured otherwise than by the prosecution of the war when the government and the preponderance of the membership of the Church believe otherwise.

Those conclusions I cannot accept; for I believe that the methods of modern international war are quite incompatible with the Christian principles of reconciliation and brotherhood, and that it is the duty of a Bishop of the Church, from his study of the word of God, to express himself on questions of righteousness, no matter what opinion may stand in the way. 21

When the House of Bishops met in April it had difficulty in disposing of the case because of its inability to accept either the report of the special commission or Jones's letter of resignation which seemed to imply that the House of Bishops supported restrictions on the freedom of expression of its members. Finally, the House of Bishops accepted a simple, one-sentence letter of resignation from Jones because they believed he had lost his usefulness and effectiveness as bishop. At the same time, however, they asserted the right of "every member of this House to freedom of speech in political and social matters, subject to the laws of the land," thus making the issue Jones's ability to function as bishop and not his opposition to the war.22 Shortly thereafter, Frank Hale Touret, bishop of western Colorado, was named acting bishop of Utah, and the Church Board of Missions assigned Jones to a position as a missionary in Maine. At that time, Benjamin Brewster, former dean of Saint Mark's Cathedral and a colleague of Jones in the Church Socialist League, was bishop of that diocese. Thus, the brief and often controversial tenure of Paul Jones as bishop of Utah ended.

But several questions remain: What role did the secular and Episcopal press play in shaping public attention and sentiment against Jones?

Did Jones's critics in Utah oppose him only because of his objections to American involvement in World War I? Or, did other factors fuel the fire of anti-Jones sentiment, resulting in his removal from office.

During 1917 and 1918 Bishop Jones's activities and attitudes were frequently the subject of coverage in the Utah press and, ultimately, in national publications. Much of the reporting tended to be both emotional and inflammatory. In Utah, the Salt Lake Tribune was particularly

" P a u l Jones to Daniel S. Tuttle, December 20, 1917, Episcopal Church Archives.

22 Journal of the General Convention of the Episcopal Church. 1919 (New York, 1920). p. 497.

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guilty of this type of coverage. In reporting the incident in Los Angeles, for example, the Tribune accused Jones of offering a prayer "for a German peace" and stated that the bishop and other leaders of the Christian Pacifists were "consciously or unconsciously . . . instruments of sinister German propaganda." 23 Despite Jones's denial of these reports, which he labeled as completely inaccurate, they did severe damage to his credibility. This is particularly true in light of the intense anti-German and pro-American campaign then sweeping the country. These news accounts were picked up by other newspapers and fed the anti-Jones sentiment throughout the nation. Moreover, such accounts gave those members of the House of Bishops who disapproved of Jones even more justification in their own minds to seek an end to the public notoriety caused by the activities of their outspoken colleague.

The Episcopal press, sensitive to the delicate issue involved in infringing upon a bishop's freedom of conscience and expression, was not nearly as zealous in reporting the controversy surrounding Jones. Few of the major Episcopal publications agreed with Jones's attitudes on war, but most tended to be tolerant toward him. A moderate paper, the Witness, said it did not agree with much of Jones's views of the war but believed that his attitudes should receive a hearing. On the other hand, the Churchman, while praising Jones in many respects, questioned not only his loyalty but his right to dissent: "What strikes us in the attitude of Bishop Jones and some other pacifists is their audacity. Liberty of speech is not an absolute r i g h t . . . in this critical hour."24 Despite the critical accounts in the press, it is unlikely that the House of Bishops would have taken action against Jones had not the impetus for his removal come from within Utah. Although Jones's opposition to American involvement in the war was the primary offense motivating calls for his resignation, at least three other factors contributed to the rise of sentiment against him: the desire of some Utah Episcopalians for an older, more prominent bishop; a fear on the part of some that their relations with the Mormon majority of Utah would be seriously disrupted by Jones's outspoken opinions; and opposition on the part of some to Jones's Socialist allegiance.

Two close associates of Jones provide the most direct evidence that animosity toward him was based to some degree on considerations of ''Salt Lake Tribune, October 3, 1917.

-' "Bishop Jones' Reply," The Churchman,

116 (September 1917) : 423.

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social status. In a letter to William Lawrence, bishop of Massachusetts, Marguerite Schneider, a friend and occasional secretary for Bishop Jones, emphasized this view: I feel very sure that the whole thing arises from the personal prejudices of the laymen. In fact, even before Bishop Jones was consecrated, the feeling among the laymen was that they wanted some "big" Eastern m a n to be their bishop. I t was argued against Bishop Jones that he knew nothing, could not preach, had no experience a n d was unknown outside of U t a h . I feel that the prejudice which existed then has persisted up to the present time and that is now seeking open expression under the cover of a lack of patriotism on his part in the call for [his] resignation. 25

A similar letter was written to Arthur Selden Lloyd, president of the Board of Missions, by Francis B. Affleck, a pacifist, Socialist, and friend of Jones and his wife. Affleck offers additional evidence to support the assertion that some Utah communicants desired a more prestigious bishop.

Affleck charged that J. Walcott Thompson, junior warden at Saint Mark's and a member of the Council of Advice, repeatedly stated his belief that Jones was "a mere nobody" and that he felt the diocese needed a "bishop from the East with a big reputation." Affleck further asserted that from the day of Jones's election as bishop, a group within Utah had "been disloyal at heart, and often openly; they have slighted the Bishop and his wife socially — and have shown in every way that they did not intend to make them welcome among them."26 Naturally, some skepticism should be allowed in assessing the views of these individuals since both were close personal friends of the bishop.

There is other evidence, however, that suggests that opposition to Jones did have social connotations.

In the first place, the agitation against Jones came overwhelmingly from the two largest parishes in Utah: Saint Mark's with 385 communicants and Saint Paul's with 300 communicants. Both were located in Salt Lake City. All of the vestry resolutions against Jones sent to the House of Bishops originated with the vestries of these two congregations.

Moreover, of the six members of the Council of Advice, all but one attended one of these parishes, and indeed, one member of the council was dean of Saint Mark's. Furthermore, when Maxwell W. Rice, minister at All Soul's Church in Garfield, reported the results of a statewide survey he had taken to Presiding Bishop Tuttle, he noted: "except for the 25

Marguerite Schneider to William Lawrence, October 11, 1917, Episcopal Church Archives.

28 Francis B. Affleck to Arthur Selden Lloyd, October 11, 1917, ibid.

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two [Salt Lake City] parishes of St. Mark's and St. Paul's, the district is loyal to our Bishop though most of us are against him on this question of war."27 Thus, it appears that opposition to Jones was motivated, at least in part, by the desire of some members of the large and growing city congregations for a bishop who could fulfill a higher social function than that normally demanded of a missionary bishop.

In terms of the relationship between Utah Episcopalians and their Mormon neighbors, one commentator has suggested that the primary reason the House of Bishops accepted Jones's resignation was the threat his opinions posed to the Mormon people's "high respect for the Episcopal church and for its patriotic, as well as religious spirit."28 Although this is probably an overstatement, the records of the House of Bishops reflect concern, both within and without Utah, that the pacifist activities of Paul Jones brought shame and embarrassment. Such sentiments are certainly found in the report to the House of Bishops from the Council of Advice: T h e C h u r c h has become a n object of suspicion, and C h u r c h people throughout the state are covered with shame and confusion. T h e outlook for the future appears very dark . . . [and there is] increasing criticism of the C h u r c h at large, t h a t a n ecclesiastical organization, which would maintain in a position of power a m a n who uses the weight of his high office to disseminate unpatriotic and dangerous doctrines, itself shares the implication of disloyalty. 29

Despite these assertions, the attitude of the Mormon church, at least as seen in the editorial pages of the Deseret News, reflected a somewhat different view. On March 29, 1917, the paper editorialized: A disproportionate a m o u n t of importance seems to b e attached to the remarks of t h e gentleman of the cloth at a Socialist-Pacifist protest meeting the other night. At t h e outset w e can dismiss as wholly immaterial t h e fact the h e was a clergyman. Fie was speaking not as a clergyman b u t as a Socialist. 30

The Deseret News further commented that although it regarded the present crisis as one in which "there can be no neutrality," the question of the dissent of Bishop Jones was a matter "for the communicants of the church of which he is the head" to decide. Doubtless, the paper 27

Maxwell W. Rice to Daniel S. Tuttle, October 10, 1917, ibid.

Chauncey P. Overfield, "The Church and the Mormons," The Living Church, April 6, 1935, p. 420.

29 "Petition from the Council of Advice."

30 Deseret News, March 29, 1917, 28

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221

affirmed, they will take "whatever action is appropriate and the matter will be closed."31 On the other hand, Jones came under intensive criticism from the non-Mormon press in Utah. The views of the Salt Lake Tribune have already been outlined. Another non-Mormon paper, Goodwin's Weekly, held similarly critical views of Jones's activities. In its March 31, 1917, issue the paper noted: T h e patriotic demonstration at the Tabernacle . . . touched the verydepths of the souls of the thousands who participated. . . .

T h e n what happened? T h e very next night a sorry bunch of Socialists led by the Rt. Rev. Paul Jones (what a travesty of the illustrious name of Paul Jones of o l d ) , got together and pulled off a "one-horse" opposition of their own.

After the simple minded bishop undertook to cite the charter of George Washington in justification of their cowardly action, they adopted a resolution aimed to belittle and offset the ringing resolutions of the night before. . . .

It was a shameful affair from start to finish and disgrace to the city." 2

Thus, it is difficult to assess the source of the "shame and embarrassment" local Episcopalians felt over the actions of their bishop. The Council of Advice reported to the House of Bishops that Jones's activities had made the Episcopal church an "object of suspicion," but local press accounts, both Mormon and Gentile, criticized Jones while making it clear that he was acting for himself and not his church.

In addition, no criticism was leveled at Bishop Jones at the April 1917 sessions of LDS conference. It seems probable that if the actions of Paul Jones had turned the Mormon hierarchy against Utah Episcopalians they would have expressed such views at this conference, held the same time that President Wilson was asking Congress for a declaration of war.

31

Ibid.

'•'•- Goodwin's

Weekly, March 31, 1917.

Saint Mark's Cathedral, early 1930s.

Parishioners here and at Saint Paul's were the most vocal in their opposition to Bishop Jones. USHS collections.

222

Utah Historical Quarterly

Finally, there is the question of Jones's Socialist allegiance and its significance. Assessing the impact of this particular factor presents considerable difficulty. Undoubtedly, many Utah F^piscopalians must have shared the sentiments of one individual who characterized the "Socialist adventure of Bishop Spalding and Bishop Jones" as the "most lamentable episode" in Utah Episcopal history.33 Yet, surprisingly, there is little mention of Jones's socialism in the deliberations of the House of Bishops or those of the Utah Council of Advice. Thus, the view of one historian that Jones was "hounded from his diocese . . . for his socialism as much as for his pacifism" seems an oversimplification.31 The possibility that Jones was driven out of Utah because of his Socialist affiliation also seems less likely due to the fact that one member of the Council of Advice — the Rev. WTilliam F. Bulkley — was himself a Socialist who had been, in fact, the nominee of the Utah Socialist party for state treasurer in 1916. Little is known of Bulkley's Socialist commitment, and his particular attitudes at this time are unclear. It is possible, for example, that Bulkley was one of many American Socialists who broke with the party over American involvement in World W'ar I. Nevertheless, the fact that Bulkley served on the council makes it seem less likely that Jones was forced out by a reactionary cabal.

Of course, there can be no question but that Jones's Socialist views were a source of irritation to many and played a part in the creation of sentiment against him within Utah and throughout the nation. Certainly other antiwar Socialists were subjected to personal vilification and repression during those years. The difficulty lies in trying to separate criticism of socialism in general from opposition to the war effort in particular.

In the end, though all of these factors played a role, it was his opposition to the war that constituted the primary reason for Bishop Jones's loss of office at a time when pressure in America to enter the war reached unprecedented heights. Such sentiments were as much in evidence in Utah as elsewhere. Jones himself realized that his chance of surviving as bishop in such an atmosphere of intolerance was unlikely. Still, he refused to give the church an easy way out by resigning before they addressed his right to conscience and freedom of political expression. This issue was of far more importance to Jones than his own personal well-being or the retention of his office as bishop. At the same time, he realized that his 03

K e n n e t h S. Guthrie to Thomas Gailor, March 22, 1918, Episcopal C h u r c h Archives. " C h a r l e s Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (KnoxvilleUniversity of Tennessee Press, 1971), p. 43.

A Question of Conscience

223

critics were genuine in their own convictions. In his address to the district convocation in 1917 he said: T o try to harmonize these two points of view would probably be an impossible, or at any rate thankless, task. But the fact that sincere Christian people are represented on both sides, brings before us all the great necessity for tolerance in judgement, caution and consideration in expression and restraint in action. 3 5

Jones continued to work for the causes he believed in. During the 1920s he served as secretary of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and on the boards of numerous leftist organizations. He also continued to be an active member of the Socialist party, serving as a delegate to party conventions and as the nominee of the Socialist party of Ohio for governor in 1940. In 1929 Jones joined the faculty of Antioch College as a professor and chaplain, remaining in that position until his death in 1941.

The former bishop of Utah lived long enough to see many in his church, along with others throughout the religious establishment in America, regret the role they had played in the war effort of 1917-18.36 Such a view was expressed by the eminent American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: Every soldier, fighting for his country in simplicity of heart without asking m a n y questions, was superior to those of us who served no better purpose t h a n to increase, or perpetuate, the moral obfuscation of nations. . . . T h e time of m a n ' s ignorance God may wink at, b u t now he calls us to repent. I a m done with this business. 37

In 1929 the Episcopal church tacitly acknowledged its error of a decade before by appointing Paul Jones to serve for six months as acting bishop of southern Ohio. Although not a position of tremendous influence, the call represented a vindication for the Right Reverend Paul Jones and a confirmation of his belief that bishops of the Episcopal church have the right of political expression and freedom of conscience. ^Journal of the Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Convocation of the Protestant Episcopal Church of Utah, 1917, Episcopal Church Archives.

38 Clifton E. Olmstead, History of Religion in America (Englewood Cliffs, N . J . : PrenticeHall, 1960), p . 565. As Olmstead notes, "many Christian leaders [suffered] pangs of conscience for the part they played in World W a r I. Through the 1920s there was an increasing resolve on the part of large numbers of the clergy never again to bless another war. . . ." I n 1931 the World Tomorrow polled 19,000 Protestant ministers on their attitude toward war a n d learned t h a t 12,000 would disapprove of any future w a r and more than 10,000 would decline to take p a r t in a conflict. A second poll taken three years later reaffirmed this sentiment. T h e American religious community was divided on this question through the 1930s. T h e debate ended with Pearl Harbor, but response to American involvement in World W a r I I from the religious community was considerably less extreme and jingoistic t h a n had been the case in 1917-18.

27 Quoted in Abrams, Preachers Present Arms, p . 235.

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Hornets in the Hive: Socialists in Early Twentieth-Century Utah

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

in Utah today, and it is easy to assume that it always has been. Yet, in the early twentieth century, the Socialist Party of America was active throughout the state, attracted widespread support, and had considerable impact. Few people realize this, however, and historians have written little about it.1 This article proposes to sketch the scope of Socialist party activity in Utah in the first two decades of the twentieth century, look at the kinds of people who belonged to the party, and suggest areas for further research.

Throughout the nineteenth century Socialist groups in the United States were small and isolated and had little impact on American life.2 Around the turn of the century that began to change. In 1901 the Socialist Party of America was founded. During the next decade it enjoyed continuous growth. By 1912 it had a membership of 118,000 people, its presidential candidate, Eugene V. Debs, received nearly one million votes, 340 cities and towns throughout the country elected more than 1,200 Socialists to office, and 2 Socialists were serving in the U.S. Congress. At the same time, more than 300 Socialist papers were published throughout the country. One of them, the Appeal to Reason, published in Girard, Kansas, reached a circulation of 761,000 a week. Socialists SOCIALISM IS A FOUR-LETTER WORD

Dr. McCormick is research manager for the U t a h State Historical Society library.

T h e only published study is John R. Sillito, "Women and the Socialist Party in Utah, 1900-1920," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (1981) : 2 2 0 - 3 8 ; and there are scattered references in a few theses and dissertations.

2 For useful overviews of socialism in the U.S. in the nineteenth century, see Albert Fried, Socialism in America from the Shakers to the Third International (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1970), p p . 178-95, and Lillian Symes a n d Travers Clement, Rebel America: The Story of Social Revolt in the United States (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), pp. 3-209.

1

Opposite: The rally described in this handbill was held in Tooele ca. 1915.

J. Alex Bevan was elected to the Utah State Legislature from Tooele County in 1914 and 1916. Courtesy of Mrs. Cleone Hogevoll, daughter of Thomas De La Mare, a long-time Tooele Socialist who was related to the De I^a Mare sisters noted on the handbill.

226

Utah Historical Quarterly

found much support within the labor movement. They dominated several important unions, had considerable influence in others, and received the official endorsement of five state federations of labor. Socialists were also involved in most of the reform movements of the early twentieth century. The founders of the NAACP, for example, were mostly Socialists, and party members made up most of its leadership in its early years; the first articles on birth control to be widely circulated in the United States were published in a Socialist newspaper, the New York Call; and the Socialist party was an important force in the victory of women's suffrage in many states.3 The Socialist Party of America's growth in its first decade of existence filled many of its members with untroubled optimism. Convinced that the expansion would continue indefinitely, they looked forward to the emergence of the party as the dominant force in American politics.

After 1912, however, a leveling off occurred. The party ceased to expand and by 1922 had all but ceased to exist. The reason why this happened is a source of continuing scholarly debate and the basic question the historian of American socialism must address.4 A branch of the Socialist party was organized in Utah in 1901, and local groups began springing up within a few months. Ultimately, Socialist locals existed in twenty of Utah's twenty-nine counties. The counties not organized were rural, isolated, and thinly populated. The party was particularly successful in mining areas of the state. It was strongest between 1905 and 1912 and was in rapid decline after 1916.

In the fall of 1901 Socialists elected three people to office: Hans P. Hansen as justice of the peace in Elsinore; Henry East as marshal in Lehi; and Jonas Mattson as president of Salina's town board. In the next twenty-two years the party elected at least ninety-four more officials in nineteen locations throughout the state. The high point came in 1911 when it elected thirty-three people in ten communities, including entire :!

Much has been written about American socialism during its "Golden Age." The major works are David Shannon, The Socialist Party of America (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1 9 5 5 ) ; Howard Quint, The Forging of American Socialism (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1953) ; I r a Kipnis, The American Socialist Movement, 1897â&#x20AC;&#x201D;1913 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952) ; Daniel Bell, Marxian Socialism in the United States (Princeton, N . J . : Princeton University Press, 1967) ; James Weinstein, The Decline of American Socialism, 1912-1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967) ; and James R. Green, Grass Roots Socialism: Radical Movements in the Southwest, 1895-1943 (Baton R o u g e : Louisiana State University Press, 1979).

4 See, for example, John H. M. Laslett and Seymour Martin Lipset, Failure of a Dream?

Essays in the History of American Socialism (New York: Doubleday and Co., 1974), and David H . Leon, "Whatever Happened to an American Socialist Party? A Critical Survey of the Spectrum of Interpretations," American Quarterly 23 (1971) : 236-58.

Upper Mammoth, 1920. This Juab County mining town was one of several Utah communities that elected Socialist city administrations in 1911, a banner year for the party. USHS collections.

city administrations in Eureka, Mammoth, Murray, Stockton, and Joseph, the mayor and city treasurer in Cedar City, and city councilmen in Fillmore, Monroe, Bingham, and Salt Lake City.

Utah's Socialist party had considerable strength in the state's labor organizations and among its working class. Avowed Socialists were often elected to union offices; in 1906 union members in Salt Lake City and Ogden formed a Union Socialist Labor and Propaganda League to promote socialism and help elect Socialists to public office, and for several years both the Salt Lake Federation of Labor and the Utah State Federation of Labor officially endorsed the party. At its annual convention in September 1911, for example, the Utah State Federation of Labor, "with little opposition," adopted a resolution that read in part: Resolved, that we, the delegates in convention assembled do hereby endorse the said Socialist party as the party of the working class and be it further Resolved, that we call upon all members of organized labor in the state of Utah to study the principles and aims of Socialism and its representative party, to render aid to this political party which is, working for the better organization of labor and for an industrial democracy in which labor shall be supreme and be it further

228

Utah Historical Quarterly Resolved, that as a state organization, we aid in the p r o p a g a n d a of Socialism that we may hasten the day when the emancipation of the working class from the bonds of wage slavery shall be proclaimed in America and throughout the world. 5

While the labor movement in Utah in the early twentieth century supported the Socialist party, the party likewise supported the labor movement. In 1911, for example, it pledged aid to striking railroad workers, held a rally and parade through downtown Salt Lake City, and promised to expel members of the party who aided the railroad in any way; and in the fall of 1912 the party petitioned the Salt Lake City Commission to provide jobs for the unemployed, establish a free city employment bureau, and end the practice of using convicts as workers on city projects.

Utah's Socialist party was most visible during election campaigns when it sponsored regular speeches and rallies, distributed literature, took out advertisements in local newspapers, and otherwise engaged in conventional political activity. In 1902 Salt Lake City Socialists sponsored a "soap-box campaign" with local party members and national party speakers addressing crowds from a soap-box at the corner of Main Street and Second South in downtown Salt Lake every night for two weeks before election. During the campaign of 1904 Socialists in Nephi held a series of weekly rallies and published a regular "Socialist Column" in the Nephi newspaper. According to the paper's editor, "We had not thought that socialism was so interesting a theme or we would have catered somewhat to the public taste long 'ere this."6 During that same year, Socialists in Richfield held a series of what the newspaper described as "rousing rallies." At one of them, a California Socialist named Harry McKee, who made regular speaking tours of Utah, "presented the clearest and most logical exposition of socialist principles of any speaker that has ever visited the section." During the course of his remarks he argued that the common charge made against Socialists "that they were anarchists and that they believed in destroying the government was made by people who did not read or study the principles of socialism. He advised them to read more and talk less."7 The Socialist party functioned not only during elections, however, but carried on a range of activities throughout the year, many of them ' Deseret News, September 13, 1911. ' Nephi Record, August 17, 1904..

Deseret News, November 4, 1904.

Hornets in the Hive

229

designed to provide mutual support for party members. While the party sought to spread the gospel of socialism, it also tried to establish a network of associations and activities to sustain its members through isolation and hard times. Dozens of examples could be noted. As part of Duchesne County's Fourth of July celebration in 1915, for instance, the Socialist local there held a three-day encampment. An estimated 1,000 people attended. The three days were "devoted to outdoor exercises and a dozen socialist speakers made the beautiful valley resound with their eloquence."8 The next year, Duchesne Socialists made their county convention a three-day affair and scheduled a variety of activities. On Saturday evening "a very enjoyable dance was attended by a large number of people, but the dancing stopped promptly at midnight." All day Sunday convention delegates heard political speeches. Monday morning they named a county ticket and adopted a county platform. Monday afternoon a Dr. Herold "delivered a very interesting lecture on Character Analysis."

On Monday night "the dancing continued until the exhausted dancers cried 'enough.' Two orchestras relieved each other, and when both orchestras wrere 'played out,' the piano player was brought into service."6 What kind of people belonged to the Socialist party in Utah? What kind of people were attracted to a political party that viewed capitalism as inhuman and unjust and looked forward to a completely different kind of economic and social system? What kind of people, for example, wrote and subscribed to the Juab County Socialist Platform of 1908, which stated in part that "The present capitalistic system of government with its consequent evils of public competition and private monopolies is productive of practically all the poverty, suffering, and crime which makes our present society a reproach to our boasted civilization," and which went on to urge people to "vote against a social and economic system that gives wealth to a handful of parasites w:hile toiling millions must content themselves with a meager and uncertain subsistence."10 Debate among historians about the membership of the Socialist party throughout the United States during its golden age centers on these questions: Were Socialists "aliens," that is, were they either foreigners or dropouts from respectable society? And, what was the class composition of the party? Was it largely middle class, as, for example, David "Duchesne Record, July 20, 1915.

"Ibid., September 9, 1916. ""Eureka Reporter, September 18, 1908.

230

Utah Historical Quarterly

TTfoe Grists.

OFFICIAL ORGAN OF UTAH STATE OF LABOR.

FEDERATION

A S o c i a l i s t P a p e r for N o n - S o c i a l i s t s .

All t h e N e w s of t h e World of Labor.

L a r g e s t C i r c u l a t i o n of Any Weekly in Utah,

NC

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MOTTO: " T h e Workers Must Own the Machines."

Price One Dollar per Year.

THE CRISIS PUBLISHING CO., Ltd, Office; Western Newspaper Union Bldg..

241-245 South West Temple St. a L. POLK, P r o . »nd Treae.

T. F. SMnra. Vioe-Pre-H.

R . L . P O L K (®L C O .

Directory Publishers.

C i t y D i r e c t o r i e s , S t a t e G a z e t t e e r s , Blue B o o k s , N a t i o n a l T r a d e Directories. ' O F F I C E S AT •

SALT LAKE CITY. OGDEN. BOISE. COLORADO SPRINGS. PUEBLO. Joseph Gilbert edited newspaper advertised

T h e Crisis, a Utah in Polk's 1905 city

Socialist directory.

Shannon and Daniel Bell suggest, based on their examinations of the Socialist party's national leadership?11 Or has the middle-class presence in the party been exaggerated, as recent studies by Melvin Dubofsky, James Weinstein, John H. M. Laslett, and James R. Green suggest?12 To what extent were women active in the party? Were party members largely native born, or were they "old immigrants" from the British Isles 11

States.

Shannon, The Socialist

Party of America,

and Bell, Marxian

Socialism

in the

United

"Dubofsky, When Workers Organize (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1 9 6 8 ) ; Weinstein, The Decline of Socialism in America, 1912-1925; Laslett, Labor and the 'Left: A Study of Socialist and Radical Influences in the American Labor Movement, 1881-1924 (New York: Basic Books, 1970) ; a n d Green, " T h e 'Salesmen-Soldiers' of the Appeal A r m y : A Profile of Rank-and-File Socialist Agitators," in Bruce M. Stave, ed., Socialism and the Cities (Port Washington, N . Y . : Kennikat, 1975), p p . 13-40.

Hornets in the Hive

231

and northern and western Europe? Did the "new immigrants" who came to the United States in increasing numbers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries join the party? In general, historians have found questions like these difficult to answer; the generalizations they have made have been based on limited evidence, and there have been no studies of state or local membership.

In order to find out about the membership of the Socialist party in Utah, the names of every person who ran for office on the Socialist ticket anywhere in Utah between 1900 and 1923 or who was active in the party organization in any way were collected. In all, 1,423 such people were identified and biographical information gathered on as many of them as possible: sex, marital status, date and place of birth, date of immigration to the United States if foreign-born, religion, dates active in the party, date and place of election to public office, and occupation.

The main sources from which the data were drawn were the 1900 manuscript census, obituaries, and records of the Mormon church, including membership records, deceased member records, and family group sheets.

Miscellaneous sources supplemented these, including local and family histories, biographical encyclopedias, diaries, and oral interviews. It was not possible to get all the information wanted on every person, but at least some information on everybody was obtained.

Briefly, the results of the study were these: The Socialist party in Utah was not a product of foreign influences imported from abroad. It was not an extraneous movement that European immigrants brought to Utah that had no relevance to the Utah scene. It was not a party of people on the fringes of respectable society. Neither was it a party of dentists, as Lenin once derisively charged about the party in the United States. Rather, it appealed to a wide cross section of people and had a strong working-class base. Specifically, about 90 percent of the members were men. Ninety percent were married. Two-thirds were native-born, and 70 percent of them were born in Utah. Of the foreign-born, half were born in the British Isles and almost all of the rest in Scandinavia and western Europe. The overwhelming majority were not recent immigrants. Ninety percent had been in the United States more than ten years before they joined the party and over half more than twenty years.

In terms of occupation, 4 percent were professionals, 8 percent were white-collar workers, another 8 percent were proprietors, 40 percent were skilled manual workers, 20 percent were semi-skilled or unskilled workers, and 20 percent were farmers. One in eight worked in the mining industry.

232

Utah Historical Quarterly

What is perhaps most interesting is that over 40 percent of Utah's Socialists were Mormons. Many of their names give them away: Joseph Smith Jessop, Parley Pratt Washburn, WTilford Woodruff Freckleton.

More important, many were active and faithful members who held important positions on the ward and stake level. At one time, for example, the bishop of the Eureka Ward, his first counselor, and one of the ward clerks were all active Socialists.

The following table summarizes findings about the membership of the Socialist party in Utah.13 SEX

Male Female

PERCENTAGE

NUMBER

90.7 9.3

1,291 132

91.5 8.5

830 77

41.7 58.3

594 829

MARITAL S T A T U S

Married Single RELIGION

Mormon Non-Mormon PLACE OF B I R T H

Native-born Foreign-born

66.1

564

33.9

287

3.8 8.4 8.4 40.4 20.1

35 77 77 371 185

18.7

172

OCCUPATION

Professional White Collar Proprietary Skilled M a n u a l Semi or Unskilled Farmer

Brief biographical sketches of a dozen or so Utah Socialists add light and color to the statistical picture.

Andrew Mitchell was elected mayor of Eureka in 1907 and again in 1911. A non-Mormon, he was born in Scotland in 1859, came to Utah as a young man, worked briefly on the Salt Lake LDS Temple, and then settled in Eureka where he worked as a carpenter for various mining com-

The full unpublished study is in possession of the author and his associate, John R. Sillito.

Hornets in the Hive

233

panies until his death in 1915. Active in the local carpenters union, he served as its president for several years. Prior to his election as mayor in 1907 the Salt Lake Tribune described him as "an energetic Socialist, . . . and he stands high in the estimation of the working men of the camp."14 Other Socialists elected in Eureka in 1907 included Annabell Mooney, the town's first grade schoolteacher, who was a non-Mormon native of Kansas; C. C. Stillman, the town's Baptist minister; and a miner named Wilford Woodruff Freckleton. Halfway through his term on the city council, the Mormon church called Freckleton on a mission to England.

Upon his return two years later, he resumed his activity in the Socialist party and in 1917 was again elected to the city council on the Socialist ticket.

Frank Defa was born in Rome in 1880. He came to Utah in the 1890s and worked for the railroads as a machinist. When the federal government opened the Uintah Indian Reservation to white settlement in 1905, Defa moved to what in 1914 would become Duchesne County and opened a saloon in a tent. Eventually, he became a prominent rancher and businessman, owning a general store, a garage, a restaurant, a dance hall, and a theatre. Following the demise of the Socialist party after World War I, he became active in the Democratic party and in the 1930s served several terms in the state legislature.

Henry and Jacob Gease were active in the Socialist party in both Carbon and Utah counties. While living in Provo the brothers owned and operated a cigar factory. According to a guidebook to the city, their leading cigars were the "Henry VI," the "Best People," and the "Provo Girl" and were sold "in every first class establishment handling cigars and tobacco throughout the central and southern section of the state."

The Gease brothers themselves, the book noted, were "practical cigarmakers," "personally well-liked by everyone," and "numbered] among Provo's most progressive citizens."1'" Walter J. Lemon was a brakeman and conductor for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad. Active in the Brotherhood of Railway Trainmen, he also edited its journal for several years. In 1922 he emigrated to the Soviet Union with several thousand other Americans whom the Soviets had recruited to work on a project to rebuild and expand an old industrial complex in the Ural Mountains. The director of the " O c t o b e r 9, 1907.

15 William M. Wilson, Pictorial Provo, An Illustrated of Utah (Salt Lake City, 1907), n.p.

Industrial

Review of the Garden

City

234

Utah Historical Quarterly

project was William D. ("Big Bill") Haywood, a Salt Lake native who had helped found the militant Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1905 and who was one of the best-known radicals in the United States.

While in Russia, Lemon met and married Mrs. Ida Seldon, also a former resident of Salt Lake who had worked for several years as a seamstress.

Lemon died in Russia in 1925.

William Knerr was born in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, in 1877, the son of a Methodist minister. He studied briefly for the ministry but left school following his father's death and came west. He worked first in Colorado as a telegrapher for the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, then as a sheepherder in Wyoming, and in 1900 came to Salt Lake City. For twelve years he drove a laundry wagon and then in 1912 went to work in the city recorder's office. Active early in Utah's labor movement, he was an organizer for the American Federation of Labor and president of Utah's Federation of Labor for three years. He was named a member of the Utah State Industrial Commission in 1917 when it was organized and was its chairman from 1927 until his death in 1942. The commission's main function was to administer the state's Workman's Compensation Act. Knerr's wife, Laura Ann W7alker, was also an active Socialist. Born in Salt Lake City in 1887, she graduated from the LDS Business College in 1906 and went to work as a bookkeeper. At the time of her marriage in 1910, she was secretary of the Utah Socialist party.

Gottlieb Berger, whose family converted to the Mormon church in Switzerland and were among the early settlers of the Murray area of the Salt Lake Valley, was first elected to the Murray City Commission as a Socialist in 1911 and served continuously until 1932. During that time he was active in local Mormon church affairs, serving as president of the high priest's quorum and assistant Sunday School superintendent.

He made his living as railroad brakeman, a farmer, and a smelter worker.

Joseph Q. Dart on, Sr., was a prominent musician and an active Mormon. Born in Nephi in 1864, he was an accomplished violinist by age nine. When he was fourteen, however, he lost an arm in a railroad accident and turned to the coronet. During his career, he organized Darton's Silver Band of Provo, led the Nephi City Band and the Eureka City Band, and was associated with most of Utah's early "name" bands, including those of Anton Pederson, John Held, and Owen Sweeten.

Murray E. King edited the Intermountain Worker and ran for public office several times during his nearly four decades of involvement with the Socialist party. He was born in Fillmore, Utah, in 1876, came

Hornets in the Hive

235

Laura Ann Walker Knerr, left, civic and church worker, was Socialist party secretary and nominee for state treasurer. Frank Defa, right, Duchesne County rancher and businessman, served in the state legislature as a Democrat following the demise of the Socialist party after World War I.

to Salt Lake City in 1894, and was one of the pioneers of socialism in Utah. In 1909 the Salt Lake Tribune said that he had "a wide reputation as a writer and speaker on political and economic conditions."10 He described himself as a "constructive socialist," meaning that he believed that capitalism should be abolished, but through the ballot, not through force.17 After the Intermountain Worker ceased publication in 1916 he left Utah. During the next decade or so he worked and wrote for the left-wing Farmer-Labor party in North Dakota and Minnesota, was managing editor of the Socialist party's American Appeal, worked on the staff of another radical paper, the New Leader, and wrote extensively for both the Nation and the New Republic. His best-known book, however, written after he returned to Utah in the 1930s and published soon after his death in 1940, was The Last of the Bandit Riders, a biography Of Matt Warner, Utah outlaw and, later, a sheriff.

Ole Arilson was secretary of Mount Pleasant's Socialist party from 1901 until 1914 and was several times a candidate for office on the Socialist ticket. A non-Mormon in predominantly Mormon Sanpete County, he was born in Denmark in 1849, came to the United States in ]0 37

October 21, 1909.

Salt Lake Herald Republican, July 10, 1912.

236

Utah Historical Quarterly

Prominent Utah Socialists Henry W. Lawrence, left, and William Thurston Brown, right. USHS collections and the First Unitarian Church anniversary

book.

1862, and settled in Utah. He worked most of his life as an unskilled laborer and operated a small farm.

The two Utah Socialists about whom the most is known are Henry W. Lawrence and William Thurston Brown. Lawrence was a prominent Salt Lake City businessman and once-active Mormon. Born in Canada in 1835, he joined the Mormon church with his parents in the mid-1840s and came to Utah in 1852. In 1859 he and his brother-in-law, John L. Kimball, founded the firm of Kimball and Lawrence, which quickly became one of the leading mercantile establishments in Utah. The firm advertised in the 1879-80 Utah Directory and Gazetteer as a Wholesale and Retail Dealer in Staple and Fancy Groceries, Fine J a p a n and English Breakfast Teas, Heavy and Shelf H a r d w a r e , Paints, Oils, and Brushes, Crockery and Glassware, Wooden and Tinwares, Rope, F a r m i n g Implements, Miners' supplies, Howe's Platform and Counter Scales, and Sporting and Blasting Powder. 1 8

Following its establishment, Lawrence became involved in an increasing number of business enterprises, including mining. By the late nineteenth century he was a millionaire. In addition to his business activities, he was active in civic and Mormon church affairs. He served in the bishopric of the Eighth Ward in Salt Lake, was a member of the first board 15 H. L. A. Culmer, ed. and comp., Utah Directory and Gazetteer for 1879-80 v(Salt Lake City, 1880), p. 166.

Hornets in the Hive

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of directors of ZCMI, served as territorial marshal in the early 1860s, and was a member of the Salt Lake City Council from 1865 to 1869.

In 1869 Mormon authorities excommunicated him and other members of the dissident Godbeites. In 1870 he was a founder of the anti-Mormon Liberal party and in that year ran for mayor of Salt Lake on the Liberal ticket, receiving 302 votes. Daniel H. WTells, the candidate of the Mormon church's People's party, received 1,999. Lawrence remained an active Liberal and in 1892 was elected to the Utah Territorial Senate.

With the dissolution of the People's party in 1890 and the Liberal party three years later, national political parties emerged in Utah. Lawrence joined neither the Republican nor the Democratic party, however, but instead helped found Utah's Populist party. An agrarian-based leftist party in most areas of the United States, it found its greatest strength in Utah in urban areas. Organized in Salt Lake City in the fall of 1893, it concentrated on furthering the cause of organized labor and the unemployed. The party had only limited success in Utah, electing a mayor in Sandy and city councilmen in Ogden and Vernal. Lawrence ran on the Populist ticket for governor in 1895 and for Salt Lake mayor in 1897.19 With the demise of the Populist party in Utah and the rest of the United States in the late 1890s, Lawrence, like many former Populists, turned to socialism, and in 1901 he helped found Utah's Socialist party.

Several times a candidate for public office as a Socialist, his election to the Salt Lake City Commission in 1911 completed his evolution from political and religious orthodoxy to political radicalism.

William Thurston Brown served as minister of Salt Lake's Unitarian church during his three-year stay in Utah from 1907 until 1910. During that time he was one of the state's most articulate and widely read Socialists. Born in 1861, the son of a New York clergyman, he studied for the ministry at Yale University and was a Congregational minister, first in Connecticut and then in Rochester, New York, in the 1890s.

By the turn of the century he was a Unitarian, a Christian Socialist, a vigorous opponent of the Spanish-American War, and, with Bolton Hall and Ernest Howard Crosby (America's leading apostle of Tolstoyan nonresistance), an editor of The Social Gospel. In the early years of the twentieth century he was an organizer for the Socialist party and traveled throughout the country, as Paul Avrich notes, "denouncing the evils of 19 On the Populist party in Utah, see David B. Griffiths, "Far Western Populism: The Case of Utah, 1893-1900," Utah Historical Quarterly 37 (1969): 396-407, and Lauren H. Dimter, "Populism in Utah" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1964).

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capitalism and upholding the rights of labor, free speech, and free sex."20 A prolific writer, he contributed to a wide range of radical journals, from anarchist publications to Socialist ones, and wrote a dozen or more lengthy pamphlets, including How Capitalism Has Hypnotized Society and What Socialism Means as a Philosophy and as a Movement. While in Utah he directed much of his writing at churches in general and the Mormon church in particular for failing to confront social problems and work for economic justice.

In the fall of 1910 he helped organize the Modern School, a private elementary and secondary school based on the educational theories of a Spanish anarchist, Francisco Ferrer, whom the Spanish government had executed in 1909 after finding him guilty of fomenting a popular insurrection. During the next decade members of the Francisco Ferrer Association of the United States established Modern Schools throughout the country. The first one was in Philadelphia. The second was in Salt Lake City. In addition to Brown, its main organizers were Kate S. Hilliard and Virginia Snow Stephen. Hilliard was an early leader of the Socialist party in Ogden and editor of the "Socialist Column" that ran weekly in the Ogden Morning Examiner from 1905 until 1909. By the time of her involvement in the Modern School, however, she and a group of other Ogden Socialists had left the Socialist Party of America, charging that it had become too "reformist," and had joined the more radical Socialist Labor party of Daniel De Leon. Stephen was an art instructor at the University of Utah and daughter of Lorenzo Snow, fifth president of the Mormon church. "Do you believe there is justice for the poor working factory girl, or for the ill-paid person in other employment?" she wrote a friend. "If you knew and had seen right here in Salt Lake City what I have seen with my own eyes, you might change your view."21 Emma Goldman, America's best-known anarchist, called her "a very courageous and able woman,"22 and in 1914 she became involved in the struggle to save Joe Hill, a songwriter and organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World. After he was executed in 1916, the university fired her. She married another member of the IWWr and moved to California.2* Salt Lake's Modern School was not as long-lived as its founders had hoped, closing within a year after its establishment. William Thurston 20 The Modern School Movement: Anarchism and Education in the United States (Princeton, N . J . : Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 62.

21 Quoted in Gibbs M . Smith, Joe Hill (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Inc., 1969), p. 90.

22 " T h e Power of the Ideal," Mother Earth, May 1912.

23 On Hilliard and Stephen, see Sillito, "Women and the Socialist Party," p p . 231-37.

Hornets in the Hive

239

Brown, at least, remained undiscouraged. He left Salt Lake City in 1911 and in the next few years founded Modern Schools in Portland and. Los Angeles and tried to revive the one in Chicago. From 1916 until 1919 he was the director of the Modern School at Stelton, New Jersey. The most successful of the Modern Schools in the United States, it lasted until the 1950s. In the 1920s Brown moved to California and joined the Communist party. He spent the last years of his life teaching at a private boys' school in Menlo Park.

The history of the Socialist party in Utah is beginning to unfold, but there is much more to learn about the ideas and activities of individual Socialists; what motivated them to support the party and the degree to which their commitment was maintained in later years; the extent of the connection, if any, between the Mormon church's United Order and the Socialist party; the actions of Socialists in office. Recent studies of the party elsewhere in the United States in the early twentieth century, for example, have uncovered an ambivalence at the core of the movement. Socialists tended to be radicals in theory, but "gas and water" Socialists in practice. Once in office they tended to adopt a reformist orientation, seeking to win elections, stay in power, and work within the existing system.24 More needs to be known about internal divisions within the party. Factionalism was always a problem for the Socialist movement in the United States, but little is known about the situation in Utah, beyond a few incidents. We need to find out about governmental repression of the party in Utah. In some places and at some times, particularly during World War I, efforts of governmental bodies at all levels to suppress Socialists presented a serious problem to them. What happened in Utah is unclear, beyond the fact that in the summer of 1910 Salt Lake City police attempted to deny Socialists the right to speak on street corners and arrested several who did; and then, in 1913, the Salt Lake City Commission denied Socialists the right to hold rallies at Liberty Park, which led the IWW to launch one of their "free speech" campaigns in Salt Lake. Socialist party efforts to support the working class in their struggles and activities also need to be examined. Did the party have a consistent program of support? What did they do in specific instances?

How effective were they? Here it might be fruitful to look at areas of the state where the party met with initial success but then faded. It was 24 See, for example, Henry Bedford, Socialism and the Workers in Massachusetts, 18861912 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1 9 6 6 ) ; Stave, ed., Socialism and the Cities; and Garin Burbank, When Farmers Voted Red: The Gospel of Socialism in the Oklahoma Countryside, 1910-1924 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1976).

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active early in the coal fields of Carbon County, for example, and elected several people in 1904. After that, however, coal miners ceased to see the Socialist party as a vehicle for them, and the party faded away.

The ideology of the party is another area ripe for investigation. Recent studies of the Socialist Party of America suggest that its ideology was poorly developed at best. Debate centers around the question of whether that was a weakness or a strength and in what ways. The little known about Utah Socialists suggests that socialism here was more a mood than a theory, and an important part of that mood was anti-Mormonism.

Briefly, Socialists sometimes characterized the Mormon church as an authoritarian and reactionary institution that posed an obstacle to progress in general and to the advance of socialism in particular. There was also some attempt to develop a theory of the relationship between religious institutions and capitalism within which to fit the features and actions of the Mormon church. Finally, a great deal more needs to be known about the relationship between the Socialist party in Utah and the Mormon church, since in the early twentieth century the church was still the dominant force in the social, economic, and political affairs of the state, and church leaders were increasingly critical of radical politics and even union organization by workers.

The history of the Socialist party in Utah is an intriguing subject.

Further investigation into it promises to yield new insight into a number of aspects of Utah history. It also has wider implications. Americans today think radicalism strange, alien, and irrelevant. As Michael Harrington recently said, "Socialists in this country are dismissed as either totalitarians or as nuts, marginal people, or dilettantes."25 The attitude Harrington identifies is itself peculiar, since the United States is the only highly developed country in the world without a strong Socialist or Labor party. As Lloyd C. Gardner and William L. O'Neill point out, "What needs explaining is not why other countries at least pay lip service to socialism but why the United States does not."26 The early twentieth century â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the only period in American history when a mass movement for socialism existed and also the time when comparably developed countries, especially in Europe, acquired powerful Socialist movements â&#x20AC;&#x201D; is the place to look for answers. In the search, local studies will be important.

23

i n These Times, December 17-23, 1980, p. 2.

Looking Backward: A Reintroduction to American 1974), p. 274.

2a

History

(New York: McGraw-Hill,

Some of the children who lost their fathers in the Castle Gate explosion. Utah State Archives.

The Emerging Social Worker and the Distribution of the Castle Gate Relief Fund

BY MICHAEL KATSANEVAS, JR.

mine disasters. On May 1, 1900, an explosion at the Winter Quarters Mine in Scofield killed 200 men. Less than a quarter-century later, 171 men were killed when an explosion rocked the Number 2 Mine at Castle Gate on March 8, 1924.

In some ways, responses to the two tragedies were similar, but in other ways the assistance available to families of the dead miners differed significantly.

U T A H HAS BEEN THE SCENE OF TWO MAJOR

Mr. Katsanevas is a sales representative in Salt Lake City. His grandfather was one of the Castle Gate victims.

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At Scofield neither state nor federal law provided help for the stricken community. The Pleasant Valley Coal Company, heavily criticized for the unsafe condition of its mine, voluntarily paid burial expenses, cancelled debts at the company store, and gave each family of a dead miner $500. In addition, $216,289.81 in donations was raised throughout the United States for the relief of the dead miners' dependents.1 With little data available, it would be difficult to assess the effectiveness of these voluntary relief efforts.

By the time of the Castle Gate disaster state legislation provided a measure of relief through workmen's compensation when injury or death occurred on the job. A detailed analysis of this legislation is not possible here, although a brief summary will be useful in setting the scene.

As early as 1912 Democrats and progressive Republicans had urged passage of a workmen's compensation law. Many Utahns had come to believe that "the common law rule that virtually freed an employer from responsibility in industrial accidents should be overridden." The 1913 and 1915 legislatures "considered workmen's compensation, but in 1915 passed the hot issue to a commission charged with preparing recommendations for the next legislature." The election of Democrat Simon Bamberger as governor in 1916, combined with a Democrat-controlled legislature, led to enactment of a number of progressive programs, including workmen's compensation to be administered by a newly created Industrial Commission. Although thirty other states had workmen's compensation before Utah, the law passed by the 1917 legislature "was one of the most stringent in the nation."2 Significant for the victims of the Castle Gate disaster, the law, created a State Insurance Fund and provided the following death benefit to dependents: the p a y m e n t shall be 55 per cent of the average weekly wages, but not to exceed a m a x i m u m of $15.00 per week, and to continue for the remainder of the period between the date of death, and six years after the date of the injury, and not to a m o u n t to more than a m a x i m u m of $4,500, nor of less than a m i n i m u m of $2,000.

Another section of the act provided for "reasonable" funeral expenses up to $150. In 1919 the legislature increased the death benefit to 60 percent of the weekly wage, not to exceed $16.00 per week, nor $5,000 1 S e e A1Ian Kent Powell, "Tragedy at Scofield," Utah Historical Quarterly 41 (1973): i yyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;y l. r> . 3 J h ° m a s G - Alexander, "Political Patterns of Early Statehood, 1896-1919," Utah's History, ed. Richard D. Poll, et al. (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), pp. 421-23.

Castle Gate Relief Fund

243

Annie D. Palmer.

Deseret News, August 1, 1932.

total over six years.3 This, then, was the legal situation at the time of the Castle Gate disaster.

Two other equally important differences between the Scofield and Castle Gate relief efforts need to be discussed in greater detail because they represent a stage in the development of social welfare in Utah, a bridge between the voluntary aid offered at Scofield and the welfare establishment created by the federal government in response to the Great Depression. The first of these concerns the decision to disburse most of the Castle Gate Relief Fund contributions in monthly installments rather than lump sums. Second, a full-time welfare worker was hired to deal directly with the families of the dead miners. Her reports provide detailed information on the day-to-day problems of women and children struggling to adapt their lives to changed circumstances. Annie D. Palmer's background and training with the Red Cross gave her some useful skills, and she may be viewed as a transitional figure in the history of social service. It would take the crisis of the depression a few years beyond Castle Gate to spur the University of Utah to introduce professional courses for social workers and to establish the Graduate School of Social Work.4 3

State of Utah, Laws of the State of Utah . . . 1917 (Salt Lake City, 1917), pp. 332-33; State ofl Utah, Laws of the State of Utah . . . 1919 (Salt Lake City, 1919), pp. 163-64.

U i a i l , i-,UiVi Uj UlC U M t » f I ^ "•*"• . . . » « • « . . .

V / , I > i i . _ ™-« i »• rw-r I TT • _ "J . . _1 f t x - L .

A ~U„* r- 4 si iv * • >-, -f T f f. Z 7 < * ^ f 7-4 41 •« AY 0 A Ralph V. Chamberlin, The University of Utah: A History of Its First Hundred Years, 1850 to 1950 (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1960), pp. 431-32.

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With Castle Gate, as with any disaster, the human element looms largest; the tragedy remains forever etched in the memories of those who lived through it. Fifty-six years after his father's death in the mine, Theodore Sargent clearly remembered the day: I was looking out of my kitchen window when I heard a big explosion and saw a huge flame shoot out of the ground. A second later I heard another explosion, then another, and saw two big balls of dust come from the ground. It looked like it was happening where Dad was working! 5

It was 8:30 in the morning, Saturday, March 8, 1924. The Number 2 Mine of the Utah Fuel Company in Castle Gate, also known as the Willow Creek Mine, had exploded, killing 171 men. It would take a week for the disaster team to remove the last of the entombed miners.6 Meanwhile, as the Price newspaper wrote, "The real immediate need of help at Castle Gate was for workers to give aid in the commonplace household tasks which could not be properly handled by the distracted womenfolks of the stricken homes."7 Women from the nearby communities rushed to the scene to help the grieving widows and their families.

They heated milk for babies, cooked over open fires, and brought blankets to protect them from the early spring cold.8 Local churches, the Red Cross, the American Legion Auxiliary, and the Salvation Army were among the organizations tendering aid. Simply arranging funerals and burials became an awesome task.9 The magnitude of the tragedy overwhelmed the small town and strained its resources.

On March 11 Gov. Charles R. Mabey appointed a committee to survey the situation of the widows and orphans: Imer Pett, manager of Bingham Mines Company, chairman, and committee members F. E. Hansen and Darrell T. Lane from Salt Lake City and Mrs. C. H. Stevenson and Carl Marcusen from Price.10 The committee's classification of the miners' nationalities listed 72 Americans, 49 Greeks, 22 Italians, 8 Japanese, 7 English, 6 Austrians, 2 Scots, 2 Negroes, and 1 Belgian. Of these 171 men, 57 were single, 114 i n t e r v i e w with Theodore Sargent (Sargetakis), Salt Lake City, November 5, 1980.

For one woman's reminiscence of the tragedy, see Saline Hardee Fraser, " O n e Long Day T h a t Went on Forever," comp. Marianne Fraser, Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (1980) : 378-89.

'Sun, March 14, 1924.

8 Florence Reynolds, "Biography of Sarah Reynolds," Utah State Historical Society library, Salt Lake City.

9 Sun, March 14, 1924.

10 "Report of Committee on Preliminary Survey of Conditions of Dependency Resultant from Castle Gate Mine Disaster March 8, 1924," p. 7-8. This report and other cited reports, case histories, and correspondence are filed under Castle Gate Relief Fund, U t a h State Archives, Annex, Salt Lake City.

8

Castle Gate Relief Fund

245

married. They left 417 dependents, including 241 children and 25 expectant mothers. Boys of sixteen and older and girls of eighteen and over were excluded from the enumeration of dependents.11 The families of 143 men were left without income or assets. One family owned a small house; one widow worked as a schoolteacher. No information could be found about 26 of the men. Twenty-two of the men had private life insurance policies; eighteen of the policies ranged from $1,000 to $5,000, and the other four were for unknown amounts.

This meant that only 64 of the 417 dependents had some source of income.12 Dependents were presumed to be entitled to a maximum of $5,000, payable at $16.00 weekly, under Utah's workmen's compensation law.

Being self-insured, an option under the law, the Utah Fuel Company was required to pay all compensation claims.13 The company assured the committee that it proposed to give the provisions of the law the most liberal interpretation. It placed store credit at the disposal of the families, provided fares for relatives to come to Castle Gate, arranged for the transportation of bodies, assisted families in moving elsewhere, and made cash advances in many cases.14 The committee realized that the relief required by law provided only temporary aid and would be insufficient in most cases because of the gravity of the disaster. With so many men killed at once in so small a community, few friends or relatives could help each other. The families had experienced financial troubles before the explosion because the mines were not running at full capacity; miners had worked only two or three shifts a week, leaving many of them in debt.lu The committee recommended to the governor that an effort be made to raise a fund by public donations to add to the sum legally due the dependents. On March 20, Governor Mabey signed a proclamation appealing to the people of Utah and surrounding states to come to the aid of the distressed widows and children. He urged a public subscription of not less than $100,000. He appointed a citizens committee on ways and 11

Ibid., p. 7.

Ibid., p. 2.

13 Ibid.

"Ibid., p. 3. In addition to the $150 for burial expenses, Utah Fuel Company paid just under $5,000 to a majority of the claimants. See chart detailing payments made for fatalities in the Industrial Commission's report in State of Utah, Public Documents, 1923-24 (Salt Lake City, 1924), vol. 2.

15 "Report of Committee on Preliminary Survey," pp. 3, 4.

12

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Utah Historical Quarterly

means to raise the relief fund and authorized it to receive all contributions. He also named a committee to disburse the funds; it comprised three members of the Industrial Commission, a representative of Utah Fuel Comapny, a member of the Carbon County Commission, a representative of the Carbon County chapter of the American Red Cross, three representatives from the state at large, and, later, a social worker.16 The response in the state was immediate. In Weber County alone $9,558.62 was collected. Donations came from the press, luncheon clubs, Boy Scouts, the American Legion, fraternal and civic organizations, ministers, churches, women's organizations, shopmen, banks, merchants, doctors, business and professional men and women, city and county officials, the typographical union, and Standard-Examiner employees. Members of the LDS church made a house-to-house canvass of Ogden and Weber County.17 The campaign in Weber County was emulated throughout the state. In the mining communities of Park City, Bingham, and Price, miners, always close to the threat of violent death, contributed generously.

After the money ($132,445.13) had been collected and deposited in local banks, Governor Mabey appointed the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee to oversee disbursement of the money: Imer Pett; G. L. Becker; M. A. Keyser; Mrs. C. H. Stevenson, a Red Cross official in Carbon County; Ferdinand Erickson, attorney for Utah Fuel Company; William M. Knerr, Nephi L. Morris, and O. F. McShane of the Industrial Commission; and Eugene Satschi, chairman of the Carbon County Commission. The committee met on April 30, 1924, and elected Pett as chairman; Becker, vice-chairman; McShane, secretary; and Keyser, treasurer. Later, Knerr, Morris, and McShane resigned, and Governor Mabey appointed J. T. Hammond, Jay H. Johnson, and H. F. Decke to fill the vacancies.18 In June, Hammond was named secretary of the committee.

On June 6 the most important member of the committee â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Annie Palmer â&#x20AC;&#x201D; was hired at $150 per month plus expenses. It was her duty to investigate persons or families asking for relief fund money and to report to the committee.19 The huge task of how and to whom the money would be distributed began, with the responsibility falling mainly on Mrs. Palmer.

36

Ibid., p. 5 ; proclamation! dated March 20, 1924, in State Archives.

Ogden Standard-Examiner, April 27, 1924.

1S "Final Report of Castle Gate Relief F u n d Committee to Governor Henry H . Blood, 1935."

19 Committee to Palmer, J u n e 6, 1924. For additional information on Mrs. Palmer, see Salt Lake Tribune, July 31, 1932, and Deseret News, August 1, 1932.

17

Castle Gate Relief Fund

247

Red Cross workers at Castle Gate included, left to right, Mrs. Thomas Foutz, Mrs. C. H. Stevenson, Mrs. William Perry, Mrs. Barboni, Mrs. Carl Gunderson, Mrs. Joseph Hopkins, and J. W. Richardson, a national representative.

Utah State Archives.

Annie Palmer was born in Fairview, Sanpete County, in 1864. Educated at Brigham Young University and the Utah State Agricultural College, she had taught English at the former school. She entered social work in 1917 and served as executive secretary of the Red Cross, Utah County chapter, during the First World War. She received Red Cross training that enhanced her capabilities as a welfare worker.20 Married but childless, she was able to transcend the prejudice against working wives.

Mrs. Palmer's Red Cross background and that of Mrs. Stevenson, one of the committee members, may have affected the way the relief work was carried out, for in the early 1900s the Red Cross had begun responding to industrial disasters. A mine explosion at Cherry, Illinois, on November 13, 1909, in which 259 miners were killed, gave the organization its first experience in handling the relief effort for such a disaster.

20 During World War I the American Red Cross came to full maturity, providing massive assistance. Its personnel became skilled administrators. Following the war, new goals were set.

Community health projects and family welfare work were begun by some chapters, and on the national level the Red Cross "sponsored courses in social work in universities and colleges, and then helped to fill these classes by means of scholarships for public health nurses and social workers." See Charles Hurd, The Compact History of the American Red Cross (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1959), p. 181.

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As at Castle Gate, a large fund was established from contributions to aid the survivors, most of whom were of foreign origin. The disbursement of this fund closely resembles the approach used by Annie Palmer and the Castle Gate committee: Instead of h a n d i n g out proportionate capital sums of relief money, the R e d Cross p u t into operation its first deferred-pension plan, with monthly payments to widows a n d orphans. T h e sequel was reported as follows: " T h i s scheme worked out successfully, and because so many of the widows remarried after the m i n e was reoponed and new workers moved to Cherry, the monthly allotments of the remaining widows were later increased."

T h e test worked out so successfully, in fact, that it was the model for similar operations. . . . 21

After five months of investigation Mrs. Palmer revised the original statistics of the explosion. Of the 172 men killed, 59 were single, 110 married, and 3 were widowers; 106 widows lived in America and 4 overseas; 18 of the widows had no dependents, 45 had either 1 or 2, and 44 widows had more than 2, making a total of 258 dependent children.22 Before any relief could be allotted, families had to fill out application and questionnaire forms in triplicate, the original going to the secretary in Salt Lake City and copies to the treasurer and the subcommittee.23 Many of the immigrant families needed an interpreter to translate, write, and speak for them, and, some, for this reason, decided to return to former homes elsewhere in the United States or to their native countries.

Not all of the widows who applied for relief funds received them.

Mrs. Palmer divided the dependents into three classes. In Class 1 she placed the more helpless families for whose special benefit the relief fund was collected. Most of these had four or more minor children and no insurance or other income except that provided by workmen's compensation. Almost all of these women were also in poor health and unaccustomed to carrying the heavy responsibilities of a home alone. They found it difficult to adjust to their husbands' deaths but made attempts for the sake of their children. Mrs. Palmer believed that these families would need assistance for a long time, for perhaps fifteen years. She estimated that they would need as much as $500 a month.24 21

Ibid., pp. 135-36.

"Report on Dependents of Castle Gate Mine Disaster after Five Months' Welfare Work," November 8, 1924, p. 1. The 172 death total included a rescue worker who died from inhaling carbon monoxide.

23 Chart showing application for relief, prepared by the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee.

M "Report on Dependents," p. 1.

32

Castle Gate Relief Fund

249

In Class 2 were smaller families with healthier, more competent women heading them. For these Mrs. Palmer recommended a lump sum of $100.00 for each dependent, or an average of $277.17 per family.25 In Class 3 were families living in their native countries and widows without dependents or whose husbands had left them insurance. Unless their circumstances changed, Mrs. Palmer advised that they receive no relief money. On October 18 the committee voted to give no assistance from the fund to the eighteen widows who had no dependent children, lived overseas, had remarried, had insurance, or had transportation to their former homes.26 At first, nine families wanted to return to their homelands in Italy and Greece. Many had tickets and had made final arrangements,27 but because of misunderstandings or a change of heart, four of the families decided to stay. Some members of the committee were disappointed and annoyed that these families refused to accept the generous transportation arrangements after they had made application for a return to their homelands.28 Mrs. Palmer explained the situation to the committee: It appears that Mrs. Peazakis never intended to return to Greece.

Her idea was that the money would be given for transportation and that she could use it to invest in some business and remain in Helper.

Mrs. Dallas expected a thousand dollars and would go when she got ready.

Mrs. Tagliabue expected a large sum of money but used the excuse she was too ill to travel.

The Katsanevas family decided to stay because the oldest son soon would be of age to get drafted and if drafted when he returned to Greece, he would be unable to help anyone. His sister was soon to be married and if transported back, they would both be dissatisfied. Her relatives advised that the family remain in America.29

The women who did leave were full of joy and gratitude at being helped to return to their native countries.30 The two black families left Utah to return to relatives: the Willis family to Los Angeles and the Hendersons to Raton, New Mexico.31 Not all of the families were inter25

Ibid., p . 2.

Ibid., p p . 1,4.

2T "Sub-committee of Investigations, Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee," July 1, 1924.

28 Palmer to Committee, July 11, 1924.

29 Ibid.

30 Ibid.

31 Ibid.

26

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Utah Historical Quarterly

Widow and two of four children, Archie, Jr., nine, and Myrtle, twelve, of Archie Henderson, one of the black miners killed at Castle Gate.

Mrs. Henderson was expecting another child when her husband died.

Utah State Archives.

ested in going back home. Despina Sargetakis said that the opportunities for her children were not back on the small island of Crete but here in America.32 Many widows with children were eager to settle for a lump sum of several hundred dollars and forfeit claim to any further aid. A report on April 4, 1925, showed that a majority of the women preferred to receive a single payment for their share of the $132,445.13. They signed a petition asking the committee to meet and make immediate distribution of the relief fund.33 However, the committee decided to hold the fund in the interest of the children and pay it out monthly as long as the money lasted.

No set formula governed the distribution of the fund. A monthly allowance was given to each family depending on its size. But if the family had an emergency and money was neded, the committee approved of payment in most cases.34 Emergencies included medical and dental bills, burial expenses for the mother of the four Seeley children, and school 32

Sargetakis Family Report, September 1924.

"Petition Addressed to Honorable George Dern," April 4, 1925.

31 "Final Report of Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee," p. 2.

33

Castle Gate Relief Fund

251

clothes and books. In some instances special allowances were made, as in the case of Viola Rollins who sent a telegram to Gov. George Dern: D e a r Governor I a m eight years old have you any little girls did you have turkey for thanksgiving dinner we didn't m o m m a said we couldn't afford turkey because t h e castle gate relief fund committee wont let us have our money which was given us children w h o lost our papas in the disaster will you help us get it so we can have turkey for christmas please answer. 35

The governor replied that the committee would determine if the family's allowance could be increased.36 As the years passed, the Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee dropped from its rolls many dependents who no longer appeared to need help.

Many widows remarried, making them ineligible for further aid. However, before anyone was removed from the rolls the committee conducted a thorough investigation of the family.

The committee worked for twelve years until all of the fund was expended. During that time it spent only $12,445.13 for salaries and expenses.37 Mrs. Palmer drew a steady salary for a few years, then, as the demand for her services lightened, worked part-time.38 All members of the committee took their responsibilities seriously and felt a deep commitment to the welfare of the families even after the money had been completely disbursed. Especially involved with the dependents and giving freely of their time were the chairman, Imer Pett, until his death in March 1935; the secretary, J. T. Hammond; the treasurer, M. A. Keyser, who accounted to the committee without the loss of a single cent; and Mrs. C. H. Stevenson who made periodic visits to the families after Mrs. Palmer's death in 1932. During her eight years of service, Mrs. Palmer performed a monumental task as the social worker for the committee.39 Although some Castle Gate residents made accusations of fraud and embezzlement in the handling of the relief fund monies, those charges were never substantiated.40 What remains clear is that without the work of the committee and Mrs. Palmer in disbursing the relief fund, many families would have gone without adequate food and medical attention and many children without education.

35

Telegram in committee reports.

Dern to Rollins, December 13, 1926.

37 "Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee Report," September 15, 1927.

08 Report of Mrs. Palmer to the committee.

39 "Final Report of Castle Gate Relief Fund Committee."

40 Communication from Marianne Fraser, April 24, 1982, to editorial office, Utah State Historical Society.

36

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Utah Historical Quarterly

As Mrs. Palmer made her rounds of the Castle Gate families, the townspeople learned to identify her by her garb, for she invariably wore a black dress and a black hat and carried a black umbrella. Forewarned of her imminent arrival, they "could either prepare to welcome her or hide from her when they saw the black figure coming down the street."41 Although there is evidence that some families did not care for her, many of the women eagerly awaited Annie Palmer's visits to tell her their problems. Some immigrant women were especially grateful to her. She had to contend, however, with American women like Mrs. H , who "was busy ironing. . . . Woman inclined to be cross. . . . Said she considered the questionnaire all rot and did not expect to ever get anything from Fund. In her opinion the millionaires will use it."42 Annie Palmer's reports would be condemned by present-day social workers for their invasion of privacy, but her human feelings gave the committee an accurate basis on which to make decisions that would deeply affect the lives of widows and children. Whether a family's house was owned by them or by the coal company, whether a garden grew and chickens were kept, the condition of the children's clothing and teeth â&#x20AC;&#x201D; all this and more was recorded by Mrs. Palmer. She took the Ambrosia children shopping for underwear and duly noted the cost, $23.62. She traced a family's furniture that had been waylaid for two months. She found temporary household help for pregnant, sick, and emotionally ill women.

To mothers who remained "helpless and broken hearted" and were unable to look for work outside their homes, she suggested remarriage.

She wrote, perhaps with satisfaction, that Eirine Markakis had married again and that her husband's brother had given "a beautiful bedroom suite with pillows and silk coverlet and all for a wedding present."

Most widows immediately sought ways to help their children. Mary Katsanevas wanted a "big house from company, so she can take boarders."

Despina Sargetakis, from whose Castle Gate house her husband and three of his relatives left on March 8 to die in the mine, wanted "a little place where she can have chickens and where there is room for the children to play. . . . She could not get enough money ahead to get a coat for herself; she seems to put all of it on the children." Teresa Aquilla asked "that she be assisted to purchase a 'homestead' for [herself] and children."

41

ibid. â&#x20AC;˘ T r !" T h i s a n d f u b s e c i u e n t case histories cited are with the other Castle Gate Relief Fund papers in Utah State Archives,

Castle Gate Relief Fund

, .

'

.

:

,

â&#x20AC;˘

;

253

:

Castle Gate, Utah. The deaths of 171 miners strained the resources of this small mining community.

USHS collections.

By today's standards Mrs. Palmer acted unprofessionally on occasion. For instance, she several times suggested to one widow with many children and poor health that she join the Mormon church to receive aid from that source.43 When a woman whose son had been killed complained to Mr. Palmer that his wife had "hurt her feelings in the letter written about relief fund [further money denied]," Mrs. Palmer immediately wrote Mrs. A , "explaining no offence [sic] was intended, etc." But often her methods were indirect: Mrs. P. told Edith . . . who would carry back the word, that the family were all too lazy to clean u p their house, and if they were to expect any help from the Relief Fund, they would have to show better management.

Mrs. Palmer recorded the gossip she heard on each visit and often had to verify the truth if, as in the following report, the law was being broken: 43

Interview with John Sargetakis, 1980, whose father was killed in the explosion.

254

Utah Historical Quarterly A Mrs. Z told visitor [Mrs. Palmer] that Mrs. B made up an immense amount of wine in the fall, and that she carries on a big trade in "bootlegging." It was the opinion of Mrs. Z that the woman had cleared up at least a thousand dollars since the death of her husband.

The social worker's records do not show the outcome of the bootlegging investigation, but the malicious charge of Mr. H , who accused a widow of having enough money to buy a one-fourth interest in the Parisian Bakery, was proved false.

The gossip must have proved wearying, for in a letter to the committee, Mrs. Palmer wrote: Every woman in Castle Gate knows the business of every other woman.â&#x20AC;&#x201D; knows how much she received and what she said about it, an hour after my visit is made. Together they air their grievances and tell one another what they intend to say the next chance they get.

Throughout the volumes of case records, Annie Palmer's interest in the children remained paramount. When they appeared undernourished or their teeth needed attention or their tonsils looked inflamed, she made appointments with health care professionals, often taking the children herself and asking the doctors and dentists to be "lenient of charge."

She unsuccessfully attempted to persuade a thirteen-year-old girl to return to school and not marry. When town officials were inclined to believe a rapist's story of innocence, she campaigned for and saw to his conviction for molesting a Greek orphan. Whatever her shortcomings, she was certainly something more than an anonymous bureaucrat dispensing funds.

The relief measures undertaken at Castle Gate illustrate a response to disaster that was fairly effective at serving a large number of people in a small community. The approach was systematic and generally fair, helping most those who needed the most help. If Mrs. Palmer sometimes lacked the finesse or discretion of today's social worker, she nevertheless had an abundance of heart; and, after all, she was challenged to take some of the first tentative steps in a profession that would reach maturity during the great economic crisis that loomed just ahead.

The National Women's Relief Society and the U.S. Sheppard-Towner Act

BY L O R E T T A L. H E F N E R

Amy Brown Lyman, director of the Relief Society's Social Services Department. USHS collections.

1920s THE NATIONAL WOMEN'S Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints participated at the forefront of one of the country's most important pieces of social legislation. From 1921 to 1928 the Relief Society lobbied in state and federal chambers, allied itself with several noted American reformers, and became widely recognized as an important progressive leader in the cause of maternity and infant health care through its extensive efforts in support of the national Sheppard-Towner Act. D U R I N G THE

.Ms. Hefner is supervisor of the Record; Center, U t a h State Archives. T h e National Women's Relief Society, m e n t i o n e d i n the title, was the official name under which the organization was incorporated on October 10, 1892. I n 1945 the name was changed to the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

That bill, formally known as the Federal Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, was the first social reform measure to involve federal grants-inaid to states. The measure was a vital part in a series of ideas and actions dealing with the health and welfare of children. The movement, spanning two Roosevelt administrations, began with the White House Conference on Child Welfare Standards in 1909 and ended with the Social Security Act of 1935.

In addition to its importance for maternity and infant health care, the Sheppard-Towner Act was also seen as the first major political victory for women following the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. Indeed, the legislation, which was supported by ten million women, was introduced by Julia Lathrop, director of the Children's Bureau. Although some health care bills incorporating federal grants-in-aid to states had been introduced in Congress by 1919, and again in 1920, it was not until after the Nineteenth Amendment had passed that the bill sponsored by Democratic Sen. Morris Sheppard of Texas and Republican Rep. Horace Towner of Iowa succeeded in winning congressional approval. On November 23, 1921, it was signed into law by President Warren G. Harding. 1 The goal of the legislation was to establish cooperation between state and federal governments to improve maternity and infancy health care.

This was to be accomplished by creating health centers and prenatal clinics, by holding child health conferences, by giving examinations in schools to screen for medical and dental problems, and by distributing literature about a variety of subjects relating to mother-child care.

The Sheppard-Towner Act authorized an appropriation of over a million dollars a year, beginning in 1923 and ending in 1927. Each state adopting the act would receive $5,000 and an additional $5,000 if matching funds were provided. The remainder would be distributed according to population percentage and matching funds. The administration of the Maternity and Infancy Act was handled by the Division of Child Hygiene and Maternity Health within the U.S. Children's Bureau.

The Relief Society's initial involvement began during the summer of 1921. The women's organization had previously received permission from the First Presidency and the Presiding Bishopric to go ahead with their plans to build a maternity home in Salt Lake City to augment ex*J. Stanley Lemons, " T h e Sheppard-Towner Act: Progressive in 1920s," Journal of American History 55 ( 1 9 6 9 ) : 781. Unfortunately, no studies of the Sheppard-Towner Act in other states have been published to add a comparative dimension to the U t a h history.

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isting health care facilities. The confinement home (as the women called it) was to be financed with the interest accrued from the Relief Society's wheat fund. On July 28, 1921, as the General Board members were reviewing the project, Amy Brown Lyman, general secretary and director of the Social Services Department of the Relief Society, suggested "that a movement to establish a maternity home in Salt Lake City be considered as a movement in the interest of maternity and motherhood throughout the Church." She went on to suggest that other institutions be established on a smaller basis, that trained nurses work in these facilities, and that such a program be announced to the women of the church at the next General Relief Society Conference in October.2 This broadened proposal was discussed by the General Board and was unanimously approved. Even though the Sheppard-Towner Act was in the midst of a critical debate in Congress in which conservative groups suggested that it was part of a Communist Bolshevik plot to gain control over the children of the country, the Relief Society joined the nation's progressive leaders from the U.S. Children's Bureau, National Conference of Women, the Red Cross, and the National Conference of Social Workers to reduce what they believed to be the extraordinarily high infant and maternity morbidity and mortality rates in the United States.3 The revised program was submitted to and approved by both the First Presidency and the Presiding Bishopric. On the opening day of the organization's conference, General Relief Society President Clarissa S. Williams announced to the several hundred women attending the meetings that the Relief Society would embark upon a drive to improve the health of the church's women and children. After President Williams delivered her address, she asked for comments on the proposal from the attending representatives. The local leaders were enthusiastic about the Relief Society's plans and related many accounts of poverty and poor health conditions in the less populated areas of the western states.

2 Minutes of the General Board of the Relief Society, July 28, 1921, Archives Division, Historical! Department, Church of, Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City.

3 U.S. Congress, House, Public Protection of^ Maternity and Infancy, Hearings on H.R. 10925 before the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, 66th Cong., 3d sess. (December 20-29, 1920), pp. 6 - 7 ; " T h e Maternity Bill," Capitol Eye 1 (October 1921) : 4â&#x20AC;&#x201D;10; Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: Free Press, 1974), p. 185.

As historian Robert K. Murray points out, by 1920-21 the high water mark of the Red Scare was quickly receding; but many political groups continued to use the term Bolshevik throughout the 1920s to discredit anyone they disagreed with. Murray writes, "Bolshevism was translated not so much in terms of a specific political philosophy as in terms of the average citizen's own emotions, especially his pet hatreds and fears." See his Red Scare: A Study in National Hysteria (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955), p p . 166-67. For a thorough treatment of how the Red Scare was used against women's programs, see J. Stanley Lemons, The Woman Citizen ( U r b a n a : University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 209-27.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

During the next year many of the program's details were worked out.

The leaders of the Relief Society used their positions, their magazine, and a strong grassroots organization to educate their own members as well as the local priesthood and community members at large about the nature of the Sheppard-Towner work and what they hoped to accomplish through it. In letters sent out from the Presiding Bishopric and the General Relief Society Presidency, local leaders were instructed to "cooperate with state and federal officials in carrying out the provisions of the recently enacted maternity bill." Several months later at another conference, President Williams said: T h e Relief Society workers are beginning to prepare for a great movement such as we have never undertaken before. We hear lamentable conditions in outlying communities which are far removed from medical help, a n d we will be able to alleviate some of this suffering a n d distress. We are all agreed t h a t the life and health of a h u m a n being should be undertaken not only by the family and the state, b u t by the nation as well. 4

In 1923 the executive committee of the Relief Society, consisting of the president, her two counselors, and general secretary, began meeting with Dr. Theodore B. Beatty, state director of Public Health, May Muckley, state director of the Bureau of Child Hygiene and Public Nursing, and Hyrum Young Richards, director of the Maternity and Child Welfare Department. The Relief Society and the state officers cooperated very closely during the remainder of the Sheppard-Towner work.

The Relief Society executive committee encouraged the Utah State Health Department to work with the local Relief Society women in every city and town in the state. Beatty, Muckley, Richards, and their colleagues were given permission to send literature about the Sheppard-Towner work to stake and ward presidents and to call upon that leadership to direct and organize local clinics and classes and to improve health care delivery. In return, the Relief Society augmented its efforts by utilizing public health nurses, physicians, dieticians, and medical practitioners.

With the state's ability to pay competitive fees for medical personnel to attend conferences, teach classes, and conduct clinics to examine mothers and children, the Relief Society was more than willing to publicize the event as well as to make the local wardhouse or Relief Society hall available for local meetings. In the end, their mutual cooperation made it 4

Minutes of the General Board of the Relief Society, October 4, 1921.

National Women's Relief Society

259

possible for both groups to accomplish more than either one could have done alone.5 In 1923, at the first session of the Utah State Legislature to be held after the passage of the Federal Maternity and Infancy Act of 1921, the Relief Society lobbied for the adoption of the Sheppard-Towner Act so that the state would become eligible for federal grants. Amy Brown Lyman, who originally advocated the Relief Society's support of the Sheppard-Towner Act, was also a member of the House of Representatives and sponsored the measure. Her bill, HB 88, passed both House and Senate without a single dissenting vote. Shortly thereafter, the enacting legislation was also passed which allowed Utah the fullest amount possible of federal grants-in-aid to underwrite the work.6 Within eighteen months after the Sheppard-Towner work was proposed to the Relief Society General Board, nearly every ward and stake in the Intermountain West had participated to some degree in the cause.

The work involved the distribution of literature on proper prenatal care to expectant mothers; examinations by physicians and public health nurses of mothers, infants, and children; conferences to instruct women in nutrition, hygiene, medicine, and child care; examinations of infants and children for deformities, chronic health problems, and immunization, as well as dental examinations. For many who lived in rural areas and for those who did not have access to good professional health care in the larger towns and cities, these services provided the first opportunity for diagnosis and treatment of this kind.

Because it realized the wide variety of needs throughout Utah's twenty-nine counties and in the surrounding Intermountain states, the General Board decided to encourage local stake Relief Society leaders to design their own health care programs. This way, the program would be responsive to the needs of a particular area and could draw upon what 5 Evidence of the extensive cooperation can be found throughout the Minutes of the General Board of the Relief Society, September 27, 1922, November 8, 1922, January 3, 1923, April 4, 1923; the U t a h File, Sheppard-Towner Records, U.S. Children's Bureau, National Archives and Record Service, Washington, D . C ; of particular interest is the speech given by H y r u m Richards Young, "Cooperation of Lay Organizations in Maternity and Infancy Work," Proceedings of the Third Annual Conference of State Directors in Charge of the Local Administration of the Maternity and Infancy Act, Held in Washington, D.C, January 11-13, 1926, U.S. Children's Bureau Publication no. 157 (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1926), pp. 184-86.

6 U t a h State Legislature, House Bill No. 88, 1922, "An Act Accepting the Provisions of an Act of Congress Entitled 'An Act for the Promotion of Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, and Other Purposes,' Approved November 23, 1921, Designating the Bureau of Child Hygiene as the State Agency with Which the Federal Bureau Shall Cooperate," U t a h State Archives, Salt Lake City.

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Utah Historical Quarterly

governmental funds were coming to that community. The only guidelines established by the Relief Society General Board related to the use of various Relief Society funds, the building of maternity hospitals (which required the approval of the Presiding Bishopric), and the careful and thorough study of the needs of a local area before taking formal steps to acquire aid. Stake Relief Society presidents were asked to survey the health care facilities already in existence, to take note of the area's birthrate and socioeconomic background, and to let those two factors play an important part in formulating their proposal. Finally, the women were told that whatever course they pursued, they should work with only the most reputable doctors and should maintain the highest standards in facilities and equipment.7 The autonomy of local leaders proved to be a great benefit for the work. Shortly after the program was announced stake leaders began submitting plans to the General Board for review, and in time virtually every stake in the western United States was participating to some degree.

During the legislation's seven-year span local women enthusiastically devised, promoted, and mobilized health care delivery for thousands of women and children. The reporting years of 1925 through 1929 show that in Utah alone 52,925 infants and children were given examinations at some 2,203 health conferences; 133 health care centers were established; 274 dental health clinics were sponsored where 5,491 children were checked; and 3,766 women attended mothers' classes where they were instructed in prenatal health, nutrition, and child care. In addition, public health nurses visited 13,675 homes where women and children were given special medical attention. Over four thousand untrained volunteers â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the overwhelming number of which were Relief Society members â&#x20AC;&#x201D; assisted public health officials with physical examinations and made the local arrangements for conferences. Members of the health and medical profession delivered over nine hundred lectures throughout the state on maternity and child care, while a number of traveling exhibits were displayed in community centers to inform the general public of various related aspects of the Sheppard-Towner work.

Each year the State Health Department initiated a special program to combat particular health concerns. In 1926 the program focused on diphtheria immunization and the prevention of goiter. In 1927, 1928, and 1929, as part of the "May Day as Child Health Day Observance," ' M i n u t e s of the General Board of the Relief Society, April 5, 1924, September 24, 1924, October 2, 1924.

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examinations were given to preschool children. Also during those years intensive efforts were made to immunize children against smallpox.8 In 1923 the General Board, with the advice and counsel of the State Health Department and the Red Cross health nurses, suggested that each ward and stake make available to expectant mothers and attending physicians and nurses at least one of three maternity outfits: a maternity bundle, a loan chest, or a baby layette. The purpose was to provide sanitary articles for delivery to new mothers and babies in communities where such items were frequently unobtainable.

The maternity closets worked very well in Utah as they had elsewhere throughout the country. For little or no charge physicians, midwives, mothers, and newborns were provided with a convenient supply of necessary instruments, bandages, and clothing for the very critical time of delivery.9 In another aspect of the Sheppard-Towner work, seventeen different stakes established maternity health centers that ranged in sophistication from two available sanitary beds with the care and attention of nontrained volunteers to entirely furnished buildings equipped with outstanding delivery facilities and personnel. Stakes proposing such hospitals were Utah, Box Elder, Parowan, South Sevier, Kanab, Granite, Union, Blackfoot, Roosevelt, Franklin, Oneida, Blaine, Panguitch, Garfield, North Sevier, Deseret, Liberty, and Cottonwood.

The most successful and well known of the maternity homes existed in the Cottonwod Stake. In 1924 the stake Relief Society president, Amanda Bagley, asked the Presiding Bishopric for approval and financial support in purchasing an older home in south Salt Lake County for $6,000.

The women of Cottonwood Stake believed they could maintain the hospital themselves after the Presiding Bishopric acquired the building, remodeled it, and obtained the essential equipment and supplies. Within a week after the proposal was submitted, Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley sent an affirmative answer to President Bagley. By mid-October the hospital was ready to receive patients. The Relief Society Stake Presidency supervised the hospital with the advice of a board made up of local physicians, public health care officials, community business people, and church leaders. As for the services, a fee of $40.00 furnished a woman s The Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, U . S . Children's Bureau Publication no. 203 (Washington, D . C : Government Printing Office, 1929), p. 138. * "Recommendations of General Board Respecting Maternity and H e a l t h , " Relief Society Magazine 11 (January 1924) : 27-30.

Cottonwood Stake Maternity Hospital, established in October 1924, was part of the Relief Society effort to reduce infant and maternal mortality rates. From A Centenary of Relief Society, 1842-1942.

the use of the delivery room, articles from maternity bundles, layettes, three meals a day, and the professional care of a licensed nurse for a period of two weeks.10 Even though most of the other facilities were much smaller in size and did not grow into major medical complexes like the Cottonwood Maternity Hospital, the fact that some place was set aside for examinations, prenatal care, delivery, and confinement and that midwives and physicians had access to a clean, quiet environment with sterile equipment had a significant impact on the maternity and infancy mortality and morbidity rates.

After only two years of Sheppard-Towner work in Utah, the General Relief Society Executive Committee reported great success. President Clarissa S. Williams stated in the April 1925 General Relief Society Conference: c â&#x20AC;˘ Amanda N. Bagley, "Cottonwood Stake Maternity Hospital," address given at the Relief Society Conference, October 3, 1925, Relief Society Magazine 12 (November 1925)- 635-36Mary P. Lindsay, "History and Development of the Cottonwood Stake Relief Society Clinic " address given at Relief Society Conference, October 2, 1926, Relief Society Magazine 13 v(December 1926): 627-28.

The Cottonwood Maternity Hospital existed until 1963 when a new general hospital was built. This large medical complex is part of the Intermountain Health Care Corporation which was, divested from the LDS church in 1974.

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We are very m u c h pleased with the work which is being done in the Relief Society organizations throughout the Church i n the interest of maternity and child welfare. . . . We feel that in every stake of the Church there is a wide field for the opening up of just such a work as this, if our stake a n d ward presidents have their eyes open and are alert to the needs of the community.

T h e death rate among infants under one year has decreased very materially. Some statistics from the Presiding Bishop's Office show that during the year 1920 there were 776 deaths among children under one year, or 49 per 1,000', based on the birth r a t e ; in 1921, there were 902 deaths, or 53 per 1,000; in 1923 the death rate decreased to 619, or 39 per 1,000. We feel that some credit for the decrease in infant mortality is due to the efforts of the Relief Society women. W e want to say to* you, go on assisting in the work which will further decrease the death rate of children. Let us work for the mothers in order that the mothers may be healthy, in order that they may bear healthy offspring. 11

The Relief Society did continue assisting in the Sheppard-Towner program, and the conditions did continue to improve. By 1929, seven years after the work had begun, the general maternity mortality rate for Utah Was about 8 percent lower in 1928 (9.6 per one thousand) than in 1921 (10.4 per one thousand). The infant mortality rate was considerably lower in 1928 than in 1921 as the following table sfiows.

D E A T H S O F I N F A N T S UNDER O N E Y E A R O F A G E PER 1,000

LIVE BIRTHS IN U T A H

Percentage of Difference

1921

1928

State

73

59

-19

Urban

69

55

-20

Rural

75

61

-19

If the 1921 infant mortality rate had prevailed in 1928, 14 more infants would have died for every 1,000 born alive. Given the 1928 birthrate, this meant a total saving of 182 infant lives. If the maternal mortality rate had prevailed in 1928, there would have been 94 deaths from puerperal causes instead of 63.12 11 Clarissa S. Williams, address, no title, given at Relief Society Conference, April 3, 1925, Relief Society Magazine 12 (May 1925) : 312.

12 The Promotion of the Welfare and Hygiene of Maternity and Infancy, pp. 104, 112.

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The reduction in maternal and infant mortality rates made Utah one of the five lowest states in the nation for maternity- and infancy-related deaths. Indeed, the U.S. Children's Bureau published several reports stating that Utah had achieved the greatest reduction in the maternity death rate of any state in the union. In fact, Utah's successes attracted Grace Abbott, chief of the U.S. Children's Bureau; her sister, Edith Abbott, the famous social worker and educator; and their colleague Sophonisha Breckinridge. These noted reformers and social work leaders met with the Utah State Board of Health as well as with Amy Brown Lyman and several members of the Relief Society General Board to congratulate them on the efforts.13 In spite of the successes of Sheppard-Towner work in Utah and elsewhere, national "biennial squabbles over appropriations required that reform associations remain eternally vigilant."14 This required the continual support of all groups that originally worked for the measure, including the Relief Society. In 1926, when the U.S. Children's Bureau defended its request for more appropriations, the Relief Society began its campaign to raise the political consciousness of its members.

At the October 1926 General Relief Society Conference, two addresses were given that advocated extending the legislation and continuing the appropriations. Julia F. Lund, General Board member, defended the use of federal aid â&#x20AC;&#x201D; a major point of disagreement with opponents : W o m e n should stand squarely on this one great measure, that if there must be a cutting in the expenditures of public money a n d in the activities of the federal government, that the very last act which should be cut or abolished is that which has to do with the m o t h e r a n d child â&#x20AC;&#x201D; that the Sheppard-Towner Act should be the very last instead of the first to be repealed.

Amy Brown Lyman then cited her admiration for Grace Abbott and described the historical development of the U.S. Children's Bureau and the Sheppard-Towner Act. She further stated: Knowing, as Relief Society women know, the value of this work, it is to be earnestly hoped that every woman will use her influence to have the work continued. O u r state legislators should therefore be urged to pass the necessary legislation for the continuance of the work. . . , 15 "Grace Abbott to Amy Brown Lyman, September 4, 1926, Amy Brown Lyman Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

"Clarke A. Chambers, Seedtime of Reform: American Social Services and Social Action, 1918-1933 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), pp. 50-51.

15 Julia F. Lund, "Federal Aid," and Amy Brown Lyman, "The Federal Children's Bureau and the Sheppard-Towner Work," addresses given at Relief Society Conference, October 2, 1926 Relief Society Magazine 13 (December 1926) : 621-27. '

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Sen. William H. King, staunch foe of the Infancy and Maternity Act. USHS collections.

Three months later, Grace Abbott solicited the help of the Relief Society, in particular Amy Brown Lyman, in securing the extension of the Sheppard-Towner legislation. Abbott desperately needed help in dissuading the most vocal critic of the legislation and the agency â&#x20AC;&#x201D; Democrat William H. King. Utah's junior senator, King was completing his second term in a congressional career that would span twenty-four years.

He was an outspoken advocate of states' rights and the decentralization and limitation of the federal government.

In an attempt to change his mind, Lyman sent King telegrams, letters, reports on what the Relief Society and Utah had accomplished under the provisions of the act, and visited him personally, but to no avail.

On January 13, 1927, King delivered a decisive blow to the SheppardTowner Act. While supposedly discussing a foreign policy matter on the floor of the Senate, King turned his attention to the Maternity and Infancy Act and filibustered for several hours. He referred to the people supporting the measure as ". . . neurotic women, . . . social workers who obtained pathological satisfaction in interfering with the affairs of other people, . . . and Bolsheviks who did not care for the family and its perpetuity."

During the filibuster King made it clear that he did not intend to give up the floor until legislation was passed ending the Sheppard-Town-

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er Act. After several hours, Senator Sheppard, an original cosponsor of the bill, whispered to King that "an amendment to the pending bill had been prepared which would permit the passage of the bill with little further discussion."16 That night the amendment was summarily read, discussed, agreed to, and passed.

Because of the sudden pressure of King's filibuster, coupled with the mounting strength of the conservative lobbying caucuses of the American Medical Association, Women Patriots, and the Daughters of the American Revolution, as well as the immediate need for funds to cover operating expenses, Senator Sheppard and other proponents were forced to accept a compromise bill that would renew appropriations for two more years but automatically terminated the original legislation on June 30, 1929. Hoping that the next Congress would be more supportive of their efforts, proponents voted in favor of the compromise bill. These hopes proved to be fruitless. In 1928 a new bill that retained the original provisions and renewed appropriations was introduced in Congress. However, Senator King and the same conservative lobbyists who were so effective in 1927 were once again victorious. The Sheppard-Towner Act expired June 30, 1929.

Despite Congress's repeal of the Sheppard-Towner Act, forty-five states, including Utah, continued their own efforts in providing maternity and infancy health care programs until the federal government became involved once again in 1935. In Title V of the Social Security Act, "the Children's Bureau was authorized $5,820,000 for maternity and infancy protection, $3,870,000 for crippled children, and $24,750,000 for aid to dependent children."17 Thus, after a fifteen-year struggle for acceptance and legitimacy, the national reformers finally saw their hopes realized: needed health care during pregnancy and infancy became a permanent fixture in the social welfare apparatus. lfi Grace Abbott to Amy Brown Lyman, January 19, 1927, Amy Brown Lyman Collection; Congressional Record, 69th C o n g , 2d sess., 1572-86 (January 13, 1927). In. that same session of Congress King sponsored S.B, 5820 to repeal an act establishing the U.S. Children's Bureau. u u Th u e ? e ! i e f S o c i e t t > r t r i e d t o retaliate against King, who was up for reelection in 1928, for what he had done to the Sheppard-Towner Act the year before. Jeanette Hyde, Republican national committeewoman and member of the Relief Society General Board, was responsible for a portion of a one-page advertisement published November 2, 1928, in the Salt Lake Tribune i t stated in bold headlines, "Senator King's Record at Washington Is One of O P P O S I T I O N to U t a h s Welfare" and "King Against the Welfare of U t a h Mothers and Babies." However u° o ^ â&#x201E;˘ Society's dismay, King won the senatorial election handily over Ernest Bamberger VÂŁ 20,000 votes. See D a n E. Jones, " U t a h Politics, 1926-1932" (Ph.D. diss. University of U t a h , i y b 8 ) , p . 83.

This author has found nothing to suggest that the male hierarchy of the LDS church ever contacted K i n g about the Sheppard-Towner legislation.

17 Lemons, " T h e Sheppard-Towner Act," p . 786.

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Throughout the 1920s and long after the rescinding of the SheppardTowner legislation in 1929, the Relief Society maintained its involvement in maternity and infancy health care as well. In the 1920s it proved itself to be one of the most progressive social welfare organizations in the country. While leading the way in Sheppard-Towner work, the women's group also received its child adoption and placement license in 1922, was a vital force in creating the American Fork Training School for mentally retarded children, distributed milk to poor children in Salt Lake City, temporarily placed malnourished children in homes where they would be given better diets, and played an active role in resolving problems in Utah's juvenile courts.

Even after the demise of the Sheppard-Towner Act, the Relief Society made effective use of the Relief Society Magazine to provide its readers with a significant source of information and editorial direction that both supported and advocated persistent social welfare reform. The interest from the wheat fund was used by local units to finance various health programs until the early 1940s, and the numerous maternity hospitals continued to receive patients. Indeed, the Cottonwood Maternity Hospital continued under the direction of the Cottonwood Stake Relief Society until 1963.18 In this period, traditionally treated as a time devoid of activism, the Relief Society demonstrated its belief that even though the Ninetenth Amendment had passed, a great deal more needed to be done in behalf of women. As an organization it would support Carrie Chapman Catt, Jane Addams, Grace Abbott, and other reformers in working for protective legislation for women; but it did not choose to support Alice Paul's campaign for equal rights.

In addition to saving the lives of many mothers and infants and helping thousands more live free from disease and chronic health problems, the Relief Society's involvement in Sheppard-Towner work resulted in other dividends as well. With the publicity brought about by its great success in helping Utah reduce the infant mortality rate more than any other state in the union, and through the praise of Grace Abbott and other reformers lauding it as an important lay women's group, the Relief Society received national recognition for its social intelligence, extensive grassroots organization, and political effectiveness while firmly establishing itself as a primary force in child welfare reform.

18 Vera White Pohlman, "Annual R e p o r t â&#x20AC;&#x201D; 1 9 4 0 , " address given at the Relief Society Conference, April 2, 1941, Relief Society Magazine 28 (June 1941) : 429.

Jane Snyder Richards described life under polygamy. USHS collections.

Polygamy and the Frontier: Mormon Women in Early Utah

BY LAWRENCE FOSTER

I HE MORMON ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH POLYGAMY in Utah and adjacent areas in the Intermountain West during the last half of the nineteenth century constitutes the largest, best organized, and most controTechnofcT ^ ^

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versial effort to radically restructure marriage and family life in nineteenth-century America. While other alternatives to monogamy in this period, such as the systems of the celibate Shakers and the free-love Oneida Perfectionists, directly affected only a few thousand individuals at most, polygamy ultimately became the family ideal for more than one hundred thousand Latter-day Saints who placed their indelible cultural imprint on much of the American West. In setting up their Great Basin kingdom the Mormons skillfully and systematically sought to create an autonomous religious and cultural order based on American and biblical models. Polygamy became an integral part of that larger effort between 1852, when the Mormons in Utah first publicly announced that they were practicing it, and 1890, when, under intense federal pressure, they began to give up the practice.1 Few aspects of Mormon polygamy have been more controversial than its impact on women. During the nineteenth century hostile external observers attacked the practice as a "relic of barbarism," a system of institutionalized lust that degraded women, destroyed the unity of the family, and led inevitably to unhappiness, debaucheries, and excesses of all kinds. Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints were equally vigorous in defending their marital practices, arguing that plural marriage and the Old Testament patriarchal model on which it was based actually strengthened family and kinship ties, led to the rearing of righteous children in the best families, and allowed women greater freedom in choosing the men they really Wanted to marry. More recently, both Mormon and nonMormon scholars have attempted to treat polygamy with greater objectivity, to ÂŁhow how it functioned in pioneer Utah and what it meant to the people who participated in it. Through the use of demographic studies, literary analyses, oral histories, group biographies, and a variety of other methods, these writers have highlighted key questions raised by this extraordinary effort to introduce new forms of marriage and family relations in nineteenth-century America.2 1 For a treatment of the process by which the Mormon form of polygamy was conceived, introduced, and institutionalized, see Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: Three American Communal Experiments of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981).

Portions of that study have been used here by arrangement. A contrasting perspective on the theory and practice of polygamy, unfortunately based on limited primary research, is presented in Louis J. Kern, An Ordered Love: Sex Roles and Sexuality in Victorian Utopiasâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981).

2 Among the historically important treatments of Mormon polygamy by apostates, see John C Bennett, The History of the Saints (Boston, 1842) ; John Hyde, Jr., Mormonism: Its Leaders and Designs (New York, 1857) ; T. B. H. Stenhouse, The Rocky Mountain Saints (New York, 1873) ; Fanny Stenhouse, "Tell It All" (Hartford, C o n n , 1 8 7 4 ) ; and John D . Lee, Mormonism

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Based on current research and available manuscript materials, it is now possible to move beyond simple polemics and begin to understand the complex ways in which polygamy affected relationships between men and women in the Great Basin region. Although polygamy had been secretly taught and practiced by Mormons at least as early as 1841 in Nauvoo, Illinois,3 not until the difficult exodus to the relative isolation of the Intermountain West were the Latter-day Saints free to set up their unorthodox marriage system without constant external interference.

During the years between 1847, when the Mormons first arrived in Utah, and 1877, when Brigham Young died, polygamy became an integral part of Mormon life in the Great Basin region and profoundly influenced the experiences and activity of women there.

The problems and challenges of life under polygamy in Utah are described in numerous diaries, journals, letters, and other first-hand accounts by Mormon women.4 Perhaps the finest presentation of the range of women's experiences under polygamy is found in the reflections of Jane Snyder Richards, first wife of the Mormon apostle Franklin D. Richards and herself active in many capacities on behalf of her family and the women of Utah. In 1880 in an interview entitled "The Inner Facts of Social Life in Utah," Mrs. Richards spoke candidly about her experiences and feelings with the non-Mormon Mrs. Hubert Howe BanCroft who was helping her husband collect information for his monumental history of Utah. Although Mrs. Richards was far from a typical Mormon wife and mother, her interview and other writings sensitively portray many of the characteristic features of early polygamy as well as the complex adjustments necessary to make polygamy work, even in an Unveiled, ed. W. W. Bishop (Saint Louis, 1877). Semi-novelistic attacks on Mormon polygamy are surveyed m Leonard J. Arrington a n d J o n H a u p t , "Intolerable Zion: T h e Image of Mor£ £ ? " £ ? I £ _ N m e t e e 2 ™ Century American Literature," Western Humanities Review 22 ( 1 9 6 8 ) f* • , ° ™ n KTT'I8?8, P ° 1 y S a m y a r e Presented in Orson Pratt's periodical, The Seer (Liverpool, 1 8 5 3 - 5 4 ) ; Helen M a r Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage (Salt if %' t rV > , P e n o d l c a I Publications such as the Journal of Discourses the Deseret News, a n d the Wo man s Exponent. A bibliographic essay analyzing scholarly treatments of polyg(1977) • ^ 0 V l - 1 8 l t t ° n ' " M ° r m o n P o l y S a m y : A Review Article," Journal of Mormon History 4 3 Documentation of the Mormon efforts to set up polygamy prior to U t a h is provided in Foster Religion and Sexuality, p p . 1 2 3 - 8 0 ; Danel W. Bachman, "A Study of the Mormon Prae?o^?

T i t f " ^ o b u f ° ? S f D e a t h o f J ° s e P h S m i t h " ( M - A - the™> ^ r d u e University, Pol am Publisnin" Co 1914) ^ ^ 0rlgin °f M°rm0n yS y (Cincinnati: Standard su r . • *Jt comPr^emi\% rvey of the major collections of Mo r m o n manuscript writings is Uavis Bitton, Guide to Mormon Diaries and Autobiographies (Provo: Brigham Young University t-Tess 1977). Also see Stanley Snow Ivins's notebooks and transcripts, U t a h State Historical Society Library, Salt Lake City, a n d the Kimball Young Papers, Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif, and the Garrett Theological Seminary Library in Evanston 111

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unusually good relationship. Observing Mr. and Mrs. Richards together, Mrs. Bancroft wrote: He seems remarkably considerate and kind and speaks of her with gratitude and pride, and that he wanted her to enjoy this little visit to California for she has suffered so much affliction and so many hardships. . . . his attentions and kind consideration for her are very marked. She is certainly very devoted to him, and I am imagining this trip and the one they have just returned from in the East, as a sort of honey-moon in middle life.5

Before abstracting out some of the characteristic aspects of polygamy illustrated by the Richards case, a brief look at their relationship and experience is in order. Jane Snyder was born on January 31, 1823, in Pamelia, New York, one of the youngest of eleven children of a prosperous farmer and stock raiser. Her father had not belonged to any church before joining the Mormons, while her mother had been a devout Methodist. Jane showed her strength of will at age seventeen when, upon deciding to join the Mormon church in midwinter, she insisted on undergoing a proper baptism by immersion out-of-doors in a lake near her home in La Porte, Illinois.6 Franklin D. Richards was born in Richmond, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1821. The fourth of nine children, he grew up accustomed to hard manual labor on his father's farm, but in his spare time he loved to read and discuss issues of the day. At age ten Franklin left home and traveled about as an itinerant worker until he joined the Mormon church in 1838. He rose rapidly in the hierarchy as he demonstrated his remarkable organizational and proselytizing skills.

Jane Snyder and Franklin Richards met through their mutual involvement in the Mormon church. Robert Snyder, Jane's father, was one of Franklin's traveling missionary companions. When Franklin became seriously ill on one occasion, Jane nursed him back to health in the Snyder family home in La Porte. Thereafter, he became a frequent 5 Interview of Mrs. Hubert Howe Bancroft with Mrs. F. D. Richards, " T h e Inner Facts of Social Life in U t a h , " p. 11, Hubert Howe Bancroft Collection of Mormon Manuscripts, Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley. Unless otherwise indicated, most of the evidence about Jane and Franklin Richards comes from this source and from "Reminiscences of Mrs. Franklin D . Richards" and "Narrative of Franklin Dewey Richards," both manuscripts in the Bancroft Collection. See also Andrew Jenson, c o m p . Latter-day Saint Biographical Encyclopedia, 4 vols. (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson History C o , 1 9 0 1 - 3 6 ) , 2 : 1 1 5 - 2 1 ; D. Michael Quinn, "Organizational Development and Social Organization of the Mormon Hierarchy, 18321932: A Prosopographical Study" (M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1973), p. 2 7 1 ; and Connie D u n c a n Cannon, "Jane Snyder Richards: The Blue-White Diamond," in Vicky Burgess-Olson, e d . Sister Saints: Women in Early Utah (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1978), pp.

173-98.

8 Cannon, "Jane Synder Richards," pp. 175-77.

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visitor to La Porte, eventually marrying Jane in December 1842. Their first child was born in November 1843, and in the spring of the following year Franklin was called on a mission to England.

As an increasingly prominent member of the Mormon church, Franklin soon learned of the new belief in polygamous marriage as a necessity for the highest exaltation in the afterlife. About eight months after their marriage, when Jane was in the advanced stages of pregnancy, he approached her about the possibility of taking another wife. She was deeply hurt at this suggestion, and her opposition may have been largely responsible for his waiting nearly three years before finally taking the seventeen-year-old Elizabeth McFate as a plural wife in January 1846, eight days after he and Jane had been sealed together for "time and eternity" in the new temple.

Although Jane Richards had severe misgivings about polygamy, she found that she and Elizabeth could get on well together. Aware of the awkwardness of the situation, Elizabeth was deferential to Jane and tried to be especially kind and considerate. Jane lived in the lower half of the house, while Elizabeth was assigned to the upper story. They divided the labor between them. If Elizabeth did the cooking, for instance, Jane did the washing, and vice versa. To those who knew that the Mormons were practicing polygamy, Jane Richards spoke of Elizabeth as Mrs. Elizabeth Richards.

In May 1846 the Richardses reluctantly sold for a mere pittance the house that they had sacrificed to build. Along with the other Mormons who were fleeing the anti-Mormon mobs in Illinois, Jane and Elizabeth Richards began an incredibly difficult journey west. The two women had to take almost complete responsibility for the difficult move, since Mr. Richards was called away on another mission at the time of their departure from Illinois. During the trip west, Jane gave birth to a second child, who promptly died. She also lost her first daughter.

Elizabeth, whose health had never been robust, died of "consumption" en route. During the trip Jane Was so sick at times that, in her own words, "I only lived because I could not die." Seeing her pitiable state when the Mormons stopped for the winter in Nebraska, Brigham Young expressed special concern for her, saying that if he had known her situation, he would not have required her husband to go on a mission at that time.

Conditions improved somewhat after Jane's arrival in Salt Lake, but life was still exceptionally difficult for her. In 1849, after Franklin

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had been back only a short time, he was appointed one of Brigham Young's twelve apostles and shortly thereafter was called to undertake yet another mission to England. There he was playing an increasingly important role in originating and developing the remarkable Mormon emigration system. Before he left, he was married to Sarah Snyder, a sister of his wife Jane. Sarah had been deserted by her first husband while she was coming west, and she was having considerable difficulty managing alone with five small children. Also in 1849, Franklin took Charlotte Fox as a plural wife.

The succeeding fifteen years were marked by Franklin's repeated missionary and church appointments and by his resulting long absences from home. Following a highly successful term as president of the British Mission from 1850 to 1852, during which time 16,000 people joined the Mormon church, Franklin Richards returned home to the Great Basin, taking three additional wives, Susan S. Pierson in 1853, Laura A. Snyder in 1854, and Josephine de la Harpe in 1857. After Willard Richards died in 1854, Franklin was counseled by Brigham Youngâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;following the Mormon variant on the Mosaic practice of the levirateâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;to marry his uncle's widows. As a result, four more women, Nancy Longstroth, Mary Thompson, Susannah Bayliss, and Rodah H. Foss, were sealed to him

by Brigham Young in March 1857.7 Living conditions for the various wives differed greatly during the course of their marriages to Franklin Richards. The early years were the hardest. When Franklin was called to go to England in October 1849, for instance, Jane Richards was left temporarily in a one-room, floorless, and almost roofless house. As soon as possible, she and the other women who married Franklin took steps to improve their condition.

To a considerable extent they were on their own resources, at least until 1869 when Franklin finally came back permanently to live in the Great Basin region after the last of his four major missionary trips to England.

Jane Richards eventually established a house in Ogden, while the other wives lived in different cities in Utah. During this period Jane played an active role in the Relief Society, the women's organization in the church, as well as in national women's organizations, while Franklin '' I n levirate marriage as described in Deuteronomy 2 5 : 5 - 1 0 it was the duty of the brother of a man who died without leaving any male heir to take the dead man's wife as his own and sire children by her to perpetuate the dead brother's name and family line. In the Mormon system, as practiced in this instance, women who had been sealed to Willard Richards for "time and eternity" were remarried following his death "for time only" to Franklin D . Richards.

Children born to that union were considered to belong to the Willard Richards family in the afterlife, according to Mormon marital theory.

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served variously as judge, church historian, and president of the Council of the Twelve Apostles, one of the highest positions in the church.

Though his work still called him away from home much of the time, many of the greatest pressures from the early period were gone after he had finally completed his missionary activities abroad.

Underlying the entire interview between Mrs. Bancroft and Mrs. Richards was an awareness of the intense personal commitment and the difficult personal renunciations involved in the practice of polygamy, especially for women and, most especially, for the first wife. Romantic love was sharply undercut by the new arrangements. Jane Richards spoke of her initial "repugnance" when she first learned of polygamy in Illinois; how "crushed" she felt when her husband first approached her about the possibility of taking another wife; and of her unhappiness when he married three new wives in Utah after he had returned from an extended mission to England. Like many other Mormon women, Mrs. Richards was only able to accept polygamy because she convinced herself that it was essential to her salvation and to that of her husband.

She found that in practice polygamy "was not such a trial as she had feared" and that she and the other wives were able to cooperate effectively. On several occasions during the interview Mrs. Richards appeared to be trying to reassure herself that her hushand was motivated by a sense of religious duty and not by any lustful desires. Mrs. Bancroft concluded her record of the interview by Observing that on the whole it seemed to her that Mormon women considered polygamy . . . as a religious duty and schooled themselves to bear its discomforts as a sort of religious penance, and that it was a matter of pride to make everybody believe they lived happily and to persuade themselves and others that was not a trial; and that a long life of such discipline makes the trial lighter.8

Other diary and journal accounts, interviews with individuals who lived in polygamous families, and recent quantitative analyses show that religious commitment was, indeed, the primary reason that most Mormon womenâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and most men as wellâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;gave for entering into plural marriage. Only a sense of the cosmic importance of their endeavor was enough to convince thousands of individuals to accept or adopt practices radically at variance with all that they had ever been taught. As the 8

"Social Life in Utah," p. 18.

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Mormon mother Annie Clark Tanner, who grew up in a polygamous household and became a plural wife herself, declared: I am sure that women would never have accepted polygamy had it not been for their religion. No woman ever consented to its practice without great sacrifice on her part. There is something so sacred about the relationship of husband and wife that a third party in the family is sure to disturb the confidence and security that formerly existed.

T h e principle of Celestial Marriage was considered t h e capstone of the M o r m o n religion. Only by practicing it would t h e highest exaltation in the Celestial K i n g d o m of God be obtained. According to the founders of the M o r m o n Church, the great purpose of this life is to prepare for the Celestial K i n g d o m in the world to come. T h e tremendous sacrifices of the M o r m o n people can only be understood if one keeps in mind this basic otherworld philosophy. 9

Although polygamy was especially difficult for women, it also required significant renunciations from the men who took on the responsibility of marrying plural wives. Since polygamists such as Franklin Richards were typically of a higher religious and economic status than the average member, they were frequently called away from home on church business for extended periods of time so that they had relatively little opportunity to be with their families. Furthermore, even when such Mormon polygamists were at home, they faced complex problems of family management that made significant expression of romantic love difficult. Like other serious polygamists, Franklin Richards had to try to avoid favoritism toward his plural wives if he were to maintain family harmony; he had to try to make an equitable distribution of his time, money, and affections when he was not away on church business. Jane Richards remembered how even her husband's most sincere efforts to treat his wives equally led to frustration and heartache. 10 Even with the best of will, individuals who had been socialized into monogamous norms found the necessary transition to the new patterns of relationships in polygamy difficult.

Given the complexities of polygamy and the renunciations that it entailed, it is not surprising to find that plural marriage was far from 9 Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1969), pp. 116, 1. Also see Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, pp. 2 3 24; James E. Hulett, Jr., "The Sociological and Social Psychological Aspects of the Mormon Polygamous Family" (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1939); and Vicky Burgess-Olson, "Family Structure and Dynamics in Early Utah Mormon Families, 1847-1885" (Ph.D. diss.

Northwestern University, 1975), pp. 69-82.

10 "Social Life in Utah," p. 6.

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universally practiced in the Great Basin. Using a sample of more than 6,000 prominent Mormon families, Stanley Snow Ivins estimated that at most only 15 to 20 percent were polygamous. Using a subsample of 1,784 polygamous men, Ivins found that a large majority, 66.3 percent, married only the one extra wife considered necessary for the highest exaltation in the celestial kingdom. Another 21.2 percent married three wives, and 6.7 percent went so far as to take four wives. The remaining group of less than 6 percent married five or more women. The limited incidence of polygamy may also have been due in part to the limited number of available women. At no time during Utah territorial history did the total number of women outnumber the men. Finally, according to Ivins's figures, the rate at which new polygamous marriages were established was always in an overall decline after the early 1856-57 peak. Sporadic increases in the rate of entry into polygamous marriages occurred during times of internal or external crisis, when polygamy served as a rallying point through which Mormons could prove their loyalty to the church, but continued exhortation and group pressure appear to have been necessary to sustain the practice.11 Although plural marriage may well have been less than appealing to many men and women, such arrangements can be viewed in context as part of the necessary subordination of individual desires to long-term group goals that underlay Mormon success in the rapid settlement and development of the Intermountain Wrest. Sexual impulses were sublimated into the arduous group enterprise of settling Utah and building up a Zion in the wilderness. As the historian Leonard Arrington has observed—"Only a high degree of religious devotion and discipline, superb organization and planning, made survival possible" in early Utah.12 Mormon men, particularly the leading Mormon men who were most often polygamists, had to be willing to move flexibly on church assignments as the demands of the group required. By partially breaking down exclusive bonds between a husband and wife, and by undercutting direct emotional involvement in family affairs in favor of church business, polygM a k * r S o ™ l e L S ? ° . W , I v . i n S ' " N ° t e . S ° n M o r m o n Polygamy," Western Humanities Review 10 ( l y ^ b j : ^ 9 - 3 9 . Ivins s interpretation is elaborated and qualified in James E. Smith and Philip a T Y G S " 2 ^ „ f e ?i F e r t i l i t y i n Nineteenth-century America," Population Studies 30 (1970) : 465-80 United States census figures for Utah Territory prior to 1890 show an approximately equal balance between men a n d women, always with a slightly higher number of men.

Kin c • , 1 2 7 ^ n f n ^ i - / ^ r r i u g - 5 n ' GJfat Basin Sdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, y 1830-1900 a k m(Cambridge, Mass.: H a r v a r d University Press, 1958), p. 38. See also Dean g 7<u '» rT L ^ . . ?f Saints: T h e Mormon Town as a Setting for the Study of Cultural Change," Utah Historical Quarterly 45 (1977) : 75-9?

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amy may well have contributed significantly to the long-range demands of centralized planning and the rapid establishment of a new religious and communal order.

II Polygamy obviously required difficult renunciations and tended to undercut, though by no means to eliminate, emotional attachments based on romantic love. Yet polygamy also had certain positive features that gave it staying power. In a rather impressionistic survey of 110 plural marriages, the sociologist Kimball Young concluded that 53 percent were highly or reasonably successful, 25 percent were of moderate to doubtful success, and 23 percent were unsuccessful.13 Other evidence, which will be indicated below, also suggests positive features that could be present in polygamous marriages. What were some of the possible compensatory aspects of plural marriage for women, and how did they adapt to the demands of the new arrangements? How did polygamy in some instances encourage women to develop self-reliance and independence?

The status advantages of being a plural wife have seldom been seriously considered. Non-Mormon critics of polygamy have almost invariably assumed that since they would have felt degraded under plural marriage, plural wives must also have felt degraded. Plausible though this might seem, little internal Mormon evidence supports such a view.

Life certainly did hold special trials for plural wives, but at least until the 1880s, being a plural wife brought higher status through association with the most influential men and through a sense of serving as a religious and social model for others. First wives such as Jane Richards Who married under monogamous expectations often had considerable difficulty in adjusting, but many plural wives had other reactions. In some cases, first wives actively encouraged a reluctant husband to take a plural wife so that they could both reach the highest state of exaltation in the afterlife or for other more pragmatic economic or personal considerations. Viewed as an honorable and desirable practice, plural marriage could give women a sense of pride and significance within the Mormon community.14 The almost cosmic importance attached to home and family life was a major factor determining woman's status in the Great Basin " K i m b a l l Young, Isn't One Wife Enough? (New York: Henry Holt, 1954), pp. 5 6 - 5 7 .

14 Both Kimball Young and James E. Hulett, Jr., stress the extraordinary range of personal reactions possible to polygamy. For additional evidence, see Quinn, " T h e Mormon Hierarchy," p p . 177-245.

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region. Children were highly valued by Mormons. Like outside converts, children provided an essential work force to help in settling the new land and in building up an essentially agrarian economy in Utah. One polygamous wife emphasized the extreme importance that Mormons placed on childbearing and child rearing: O u r children are considered stars in a mother's crown, and the more there are, if righteous, the more glory they will add to her and their father's eternal kingdom, for their parents on earth, if they continue righteous, will eventually become as Gods to reign in glory. Nothing but this, and a desire to please our Father in heaven, could tempt the majority of M o r m o n m e n or women either, to take upon themselves the burdens and responsibilities of plural marriage. 1 5

In terms strikingly familiar to those used by their Victorian contemporaries, Mormons stressed the positive and vital social role that women could play in the family and, by extension, in the larger community, which in the Mormon case was generally coterminous with the family.

As one observer has noted, "Polygamy seemed to introduce no outstanding change in how Mormon women viewed themselves in their home role; the family was often treated in the same sentimental tones used by those who lauded the monogamous family."16 The Mormon emphasis on the mother-child relationship served compensatory emotional functions for women whose husbands were often absent. Jane Richards, like many other plural wives, indicated that her primary emotional involvement was with her children, rather than with her husband. Similarly, Mrs. S. A. Cooks, who became a Mormon despite her aversion to polygamy, described how Heber C. Kimball's first wife, Vilate, had advised an unhappy plural wife that "her comfort must be wholly in her children; that she must lay aside wholly all interest or thought in what her husband was doing while he was away from her" and simply be as "pleased to see him when he came in as she was pleased to see any friend." In short, the woman was advised to maintain an emotional distance from her husband in order to avoid psychic hurt.

13 Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, p. 53. Of course, children were stars in the crown of the monogamous mother as well. Although plural families of three or more wives appear to have had fewer children per wife than monogamous wives did on the average, the objective was not producing the largest number of children per wife but rather the largest total number of children m the families of the best men where, presumably, they would be reared under the most advantageous circumstances. See Ivins, "Notes on Mormon Polygamy," pp 236-37- Quinn "The Mormon Hierarchy," pp. 246-91; Burgess-Olson, "Early Utah Mormon Families,"' W pp. 100-104and Smith and Kunz, "Polygyny and Fertility," p. 471. ' ' ne 6 Toi r d for Zion : lft^9 r « ? £ w(M.A. ? f i e r ! idiesis, * 'V ^ i ^ oState ¥ -°r ' 9 n w a1974), TUniversity, 1852-1890" Utah p. 71.'

Ima

g e s of the Mormon Woman,

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Vilate Kimball, first wife of Heber C. Kimball.

USHS collections.

Mrs. Cooks concluded: "Mrs. Kimball interested herself very much in the welfare of other's wives and their children to see that there was plenty of homespun clothing etc. for all; and set a noble example to others situated as she was."17 The strong stress on ties of sisterhood between plural wives also served an important compensatory emotional function when the husband was absent. Informal female support networks and cooperation among women developed, especially during crisis periods such as those associated with Childbirth, economic hardship, and bereavement. Mormon "sisterwives," as they were sometimes called, often literally were blood sisters.

Of Vicky Burgess-Olson's sample, for instance, 31.2 percent of the plural marriages included at least one pair of sisters. Although such sororal polygamy was a departure from Old Testament standards and led to erroneous allegations that the Mormons practiced "incest," such arrangements made much practical sense. If two sisters were married to the same man, they could more easily adjust to each other in the marriage than total strangers could.18 17

Mrs. S. A. Cooks, "Theatrical and Social Affairs in Utah" (Salt Lake City, 1884), pp.

5-6, in Bancroft Collection.

1S Female support networks in nineteenth-century America are analyzed in Carroll Smith Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth

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^ The popular semi-novelistic American stereotype of the plural wife as living in a Mormon '%arem" had almost no basis in fact. Far from secluding women from the world, polygamy and the cohesive Mormon village community with which it was associated could lead some women to participate actively in the larger society. The non-Mormon historian Gail Casterline has noted: As in N e w England colonial families, the M o r m o n wife seemed to m o v e with relative ease and frequency between home, neighborhood, and c h u r c h ; the M o r m o n village plan of settlement allowed a variety of social contacts outside the immediate family. Wives were not cloistered or excluded from the larger society as in a harem, although husbands did seem to have a possessive attitude on the issue of their womenfolk associating with Gentiles. 1 9

Women's independence was stimulated in a variety of ways by the social conditions of frontier Utah and by the practice of polygamy.

With husbands frequently away on church missions, wives and their children tended to be thrown back on their own resources and on those of their immediate relatives and friends. Jane Richards said that her husband . . . was away so m u c h she learned to live comfortably without him, as she would tell him to tease h i m sometimes; a n d even now he is away two thirds of the time as she is the only wife in Ogden, so that she often forgets w h e n h e is home, a n d has even sat d o w n at meals forgetting to call him. She says she always feds very badly about it when it happens, b u t that he was more necessary to her in her early life.

Mrs. Bancroft added: "And yet she is a very devoted wife, and he is remarkably attentive to her. To see them together I would never imagine either had a thought but the other shared."20 Other accounts also stressed this same tendency of polygamy practice to encourage women's independence. After stating that "Plural marriage destroys the oneness of course" and that it "is a great trial of feelings," Mary Home noted that the practice got her away from being "so bound and so united to her husband that she could do nothing without him." She became "freer and can do herself individually things she in Societ ? 6 ^ ! l , ^ m e r i C i a ; ' SlrgnS: J°U-rnZl of Women y and Cultu™ 1 (Autumn 1975) • 1-29 W i J e f T F s S f i f c t h T ^ ^ p e T f t i V e " M a U r e e n ' U«enbach Beecher, "Skters Sister 2 ? m a e d J t £ / / Support Systems among Nineteenth Century Mormon Women," 1977 S E £ iS Conference on the History of Women, Saint Paul, Minn, October 22, 1977. Also see Burgess-Olson, "Early Utah Mormon Families," pp. 87-90. Ivins "Notes on -ZrinpSsySerJ: ^ ' " * * ° f * S 3 m p I e ° f J ' 6 4 2 ^ S i s t s , 10 jpercenlI'maSd o £ 39 Casterline^ "Images of the Mormon Woman," p. 71.

20 "Social Life in Utah," pp. 13-14.

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never could have attempted before; and work out her individual character as separate from her husband."21 Evidently in some cases women also were grateful for the possibility polygamy offered for freedom from male sexual demands; as Mary J. Tanner noted: "It is a physical blessing to weakly women."22 And the feisty Martha Hughes Cannon, who was the first woman state senator in the United States and the fourth wife of a polygamist, argued that a plural wife was in a better position than a single wife: "If her husband has four wives, she had three weeks of freedom every single month."23 While this might be the kind of "freedom" that some wives would wish to be freed from, it does suggest how polygamy and the exigencies of life in the Great Basin region could force women into new roles and break down certain sex stereotypes, at least temporarily. In the absence of their husbands, women and their children ran farms and businesses.

Some early census reports even went so far as to identify plural wives as "heads of households." Burgess-Olson's sample showed that in polygamous marriages, husbands and wives exercised approximately equal responsibilities in financial management, while in her monogomous sample, men held greater control. By the late nineteenth century a relatively large class of professional women, many of them plural wives, had developed in Utah. Women dominated the medical profession, for instance, and a sizeable number worked as teachers and writers.24 Brigham Young and other early church leaders recognized the necessity of making use of female talent in establishing and maintaining the group in the sometimes hostile environment of the Great Basin.

Mormon leaders encouraged education for women from the very early 21 Mrs. Joseph H o m e , "Migration and Settlement of the Latter Day Saints" (Salt Lake City, 1884), p p . 34-35, in Bancroft Collection. Mary Isabella H o m e was Relief Society president of the Salt Lake Stake and a prominent woman in her own right.

22 Letter of Mrs. Mary J. Tanner, Provo, U t a h , 1880, pp. 5 - 6 , in Bancroft Collection.

Casterline, "Images of the Mormon Woman," p . 103, discusses the argument of Mormon women that polygamy freed them from masculine demands a n d allowed for a healthy continence. It also m a d e possible continence during pregnancy and lactation, as recommended by nineteenth-century medical theory, and therefore was seen as making for healthier, better-spaced babies.

23 San Francisco Examiner, November 8, 1896, as quoted, in Charles A. Cannon, " T h e Awesome Power of Sex: T h e Polemical Campaign against M o r m o n Polygamy," Pacific Historical Review 43 ( 1 9 7 4 ) : 76n. For accounts of this remarkable woman, see Jean Bickmore White, "Dr. M a r t h a Hughes C a n n o n : Doctor, Wife, Legislator, Exile," in Burgess-Olson, e d . Sister Saints, pp. 383-97, and Barbara Hayward, "Teaching the Slavish Virtues: T h e Public Life of M a r t h a Hughes Cannon," Century 2: A Brigham Young University Student Journal 2 (1978) : 1-15.

24 Burgess-Olson, "Early U t a h Mormon Families," p. 135; Casterline, "Images of the Mormon Woman," p. 7 7 ; Keith Calvin Terry, " T h e Contribution of Medical Women during the First Fifty Years in U t a h " (M.A. thesis, Brigham Young University, 1 9 6 4 ) ; and Leonard J. Arrington, "Women as a Force in the History of U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly 38 (1970) : 3-6.

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settlement period, as indicated by the establishment of the University of Deseret as a coeducational institution in 1850. Women voted earlier in Utah than in any other state or territory in the United States, including Wyoming. And, somewhat ironically in view of the non-Mormon attacks on the degradation polygamy supposedly caused women, the efforts of Mormon women in the 1870s and 1880s to organize themselves to support plural marriage against external attacks served as a significant means of increasing their political awareness and involvement.25 One major forum for women's expression in the church was the Relief Society. Originally founded in 1842, the Relief Society was organized "under the priesthood after a pattern of the priesthood" to support a variety of activities, including the building of a temple, charitable work, and cultural betterment. During the troubled period that followed Joseph Smith's death, the Relief Society became largely inactive, but with the reestablishment of the society in the mid-1850s under the leadership of Eliza R. Snow, it went on to play an important role in Utah economic, social, and cultural life.26 Perhaps the most impressive achievement of the women of Utah in the late nineteenth century was the publication of the Woman's Exponent. Although it was not officially sponsored or financed by the church, this largely woman-managed, -supported, and -produced newspaper served as the major voice for Mormon women's concerns during its publication between 1872 and 1914. The Exponent was the second periodical expressly for women to appear in the trans-Mississippi West. A respectable and well-produced periodical by any standards, the Exponent spoke highly for the literacy and intelligence of its women contributors and designers.

The wide-ranging historical and literary concerns of this publication were by no means limited to sectarian matters.27 / i n T o ^ Q ^ J 1 1 1 M u I v a y D e r r > "Woman's Place in Brigham Young's World," BYU Studies 18 (1978) : 377-95, and Shauna Adix, "Education for Women: T h e U t a h Legacy," Boston University Journal of Education 159 (August 1977) : 3 8 - 4 9 . Although Wyoming in 1869 was the first territory to pass a bill granting woman suffrage, women in U t a h actually went to the polls in 1870 under a similar bill passed that year and cast their votes before women in Wyoming did. Articles on this topic include Thomas G. Alexander, "An Experiment in Progressive Legislation: T h e Granting of Woman Suffrage in U t a h in 1870," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 ( 1 9 7 0 ) : 2 0 - 3 0 ; Beverly Beeton, "Woman Suffrage in Territorial U t a h , " Utah Historical Quarterly 46 ( 1 9 7 8 ) : ' 100-120; and T. A. Larson, "Woman Suffrage in Western America," Utah Historical Quarterly 38 ( 1 9 7 0 ) : 7â&#x20AC;&#x201D;19. T h e campaign by M o r m o n women in support of polygamy is discussed in Casterline, "Images of the M o r m o n W o m a n , " pp. 94-100.

26 General Board of the Relief Society, History of the Relief Society, 1842-1966 (Salt Lake City: General Board of the Relief Society, 1966), p. 18. Also see Leonard J. Arrington, " T h e Economic Role of Pioneer Mormon Women," Western Humanities Review 9 (1955) : 145-64.

2T CaSterIine > ' " I m a S e s of the M o r m o n W o m a n , " p p . 8 3 - 9 4 ; Sherilyn Cox Bennion, " T h e Woman s Exponent: Forty-two Years of Speaking for Women," Utah Historical Quarterly 44

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As suggested by its masthead slogan: "The Rights of the Women of Zion, The Rights of the Women of All Nations," the Woman's Exponent provided an important forum for the discussion of many problems of "woman's sphere." Expressing an almost feminist awareness at times, the Exponent devoted much attention to the universally inequitable position of women in politics, education, and the professions. Even marriage was not put forward as an absolute imperative for women. In the Exponent's wide-ranging discussion of issues, only polygamy, then one of the key elements of Mormon self-definition as a group, failed to receive a critique. Overall, the Woman's Exponent portrayed Mormon women as individuals of character, intelligence, and high aspirations. It served an important identity-building function and helped to reinforce pride and unity among the women of the church.

As Casterline observed: The reinstitution of the ancient custom of polygamy may have in its own subtle ways served as a liberating force for women. This may have occurred by default, with restless or dissatisfied plural wives looking for places to direct their energies, or it may have occurred through the necessity of a wife's suporting her family. Some women may have welcomed polygamy as a great boon, as it decreased some of the demands and divided the duties of the wife role, allowing them more time to develop personal talents. By these quirks in its machinery, plural marriage did in some cases provide a working method for women to achieve independence from men.28

Ill Despite certain positive or at least mitigating features such as those mentioned above, polygamy was obviously a more demanding way to organize marriage than monogamy. Even under the best of circumstances, developing and sustaining an optimal relationship among husband, wives, and children in polygamous families was difficult. How did Mormon families deal with the inevitable tensions that arose in plural marriages? Although the studies of James E. Hulett, Jr., Kimball Young, and Vicky Burgess-Olson reveal great differences in the ways conflict situations were managed in both monogamous and polygamous families, the general rule was to try to deal with problems within the home as much as possible.29 As Jane Richards noted: "It is making confidants (1976) : 2 2 2 - 3 9 ; and Carol Cornwall Madsen, " 'Remember the Women of Zion': A Study of the Editorial Content of the Woman's Exponent, A Mormon Woman's J o u r n a l " (M.A. thesis, University of U t a h , 1977).

28 Casterline, "Images of the Mormon Woman," p p . 8 0 - 8 1 .

29 Hulett, " T h e M o r m o n Polygamous Family," p p . 3 0 8 - 4 0 3 ; Young, Isn't One Wife Enough?, p p . 191-225; and Burgess-Olson, "Early U t a h M o r m o n Families," pp. 117-19.

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of other women in their domestic disturbances that has brought about most of the trouble in polygamy, and the less people gossip, the better off they are."3" In the practice of polygamy, as in other aspects of social life in Utah, great stress was placed on unity and consensus, on the avoidance of public expressions of hostility. This emphasis may well help account for the impressive degree of external order and social harmony described by many of the more open-minded visitors to Utah in the nineteenth century.31 Even with good will and sincere effort, attempts to salvage a relationship could fail. In such cases the possibility of separation or divorce always remained. Jane Richards was quite frank in noting, for instance, that when her husband first talked with her in Illinois about the possibility of taking another wife, she told him that he should do what he felt he had to do and that "if she found they [she and the new wife] could not live without quarreling, she should leave him." This never became necessary for her, but she noted that others had taken such steps: "If a marriage is unhappy, the parties can go to any of the council and present their difficulties and are readily granted a divorce."32 How representative were Jane Richards's informal observations on nineteenth-century Mormon attitudes toward divorce? This topic has only recently begun to be investigated, but a few preliminary observations may be made. One initial point of reference is Utah territorial divorce policy. The Utah divorce law of February 4, 1852, was one of the most liberal in the country. For instance, a divorce could be granted not only to a person who "is a resident of the Territory" but also to a person who "wishes to become one." Presumably this proviso allowed the Mormon church flexibility in dealing rapidly with converts who had separated from an unbelieving spouse and who needed to be reintegrated as quickly as possible into the new Mormon society. In addition to the usual causes, a divorce could be granted to the plaintiff in cases in which the defendant was guilty of "absenting himself without reasonable cause for more than one year." If liberally applied, such a provision could be used to terminate unsatisfactory relationships in which missionaries were gone for extended periods of time. Finally, the territorial law contained an omnibus clause allowing divorce "when it shall be made to appear ao

"Reminiscences of Mrs. F. D. Richards," p. 47.

See especially J. W. Gunnison, The Mormons (Philadelphia, 1852), and Richard F Burton, City of the Saints (London, 1861). ' '' xucaiaro r .

2 "Social Life in Utah," p. 1, and "Reminiscences of Mrs. F. D. Richards," p. 55.

31

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to the satisfaction of the court, that the parties cannot live in peace and union together, and that their welfare requires a separation."3 The Utah divorce law cannot necessarily be assumed to represent Mormon church policy, since marriage and divorceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;particularly polygamous marriage and divorce, which were not directly recognized in territorial lawâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;were handled primarily through church courts and procedures. Instead, the primary function of the divorce law probably was to provide maximum flexibility for Mormons in handling their own unorthodox arrangements. What, then, was the Mormon church's policy on divorce? The official stand was a highly complex one. In theory, divorce was strongly discouraged. Marriage was viewed in the light of eternity as a vital part of life that brought out the finest aspects of human relationships. Brigham Young and other early leaders repeatedly inveighed against divorce, particularly when requested by the man.

Using rather salty language, Young could suggest, for example, that one man had made his bed and would have to lie in it. Declarations such as the following were typical: "It is not right for men to divorce their wives the way they do. I am determined that if men do not stop divorcing their wives, I will stop sealing."34 Yet, if men were discouraged from divorcing their wives, women were given remarkable freedom in seeking a divorce for themselves in unsatisfactory situations. Young himself once publicly offered to give a divorce to any of his wives who did not want to live with him any longer.

He could declare that "he liked a woman to live with her husband as long as she could bear with him and if her life became too burdensome then leave and get a divorce." In an important sermon in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on October 8, 1861, Brigham Young further developed the argument about when a women could leave a man lawfully. He said that if a woman became alienated in her feelings and affections from her husband, then it was his duty to give her a bill of divorce and set her free. Men must not have sexual relations with their wives when they were thus alienated. Children born of such alienated unions were properly seen as "bastards," not the product of a full marriage relationship.33 33

T h e law is printed in Acts, Resolutions and Memorials, Passed at the Several Annual Sessions of the Legislative Assembly of the Territory of Utah (Great Salt Lake City, 1855), p p .

162-64.

34 Brigham Young's statements appear in Historian's Office Journal, 1858-1859 Book, p . 11 (December 15, 1858), and p. 15 (December 17, 1858), Archives Division, Historical Department, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, hereafter referred to as L D S Archives. These statements were called, to my attention by D . Michael Quinn.

35 See Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool, 1 8 5 4 - 8 6 ) , 4 : 5 5 - 5 6 , and Brigham Young's Office Journal, 1858-1863, p. 300 (October 8, 1861), L D S Archives. T h e latter statement was

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This line of argument is strikingly similar to the 1842 argument put out in Illinois in The Peace Maker, the first defense of polygamy ever printed under Mormon auspices. According to that pamphlet, whose authorship and significance have been hotly debated, the only "biblical" (i.e., legitimate) grounds for divorce was the alienation of a wife's affections from her husband. If a man became dissatisfied with his wife he could not legitimately divorce her if she remained loyal to him, since that would be an irresponsible shirking of family duties. Instead, his option in such a case was to take additional wives, while maintaining the first and her children. This approach is essentially the same as early Utah practice. Women had the primary initiative in determining when to terminate a relationship, while the husband could not easily divorce his wife if she were opposed. No stigma was attached to the remarriage of a divorced woman; indeed, such remarriage was normally assumed.

Thus, in Utah, women could find through easy divorce and remarriage the opportunity for what amounted to a sort of de facto serial polygamy (though Mormon writings never spoke in such terms), while their husbands were allowed to take additional wives if they wished.36 The relationship of polygamy and divorce in early Utah may also be easier to understand as a result of the recent recovery of records of 1,645 divorces granted during the Brigham Young period (1847-77).

Although these records have not yet been thoroughly analyzed, the bulk of the cases appear to have involved plural marriages. Since the entire population of Utah numbered only 86,786 in 1870 (with a high percentage of the population consisting of unmarried children and youths), the divorce rate might appear rather high. Support for such a conclusion is also suggested by D. Michael Quinn's listing of Mormon church leaders and their wives between 1832 and 1932. A simple analysis of his data shows that the 72 church leaders who practiced plural marriage had a total of 391 wives, with 54 divorces, 26 separations, and 1 annulment. For perspective, one should note that at least some of these divorces were those of apparently nonconjugal wives whose marital ties were only symbolic. The extent to which the divorce situation in Utah and called to my attention by David J. Whittaker. A summary of Brigham Young's speech of October 8, 1861, is found in the entry for that date in James Beck's Notebook I, 1859-1865, L D S Archives.

T h e original speech, recorded stenographically by G. D. Watt, is in LDS Archives a n d has been reproduced in an unauthorized transcription in Dennis R. Short, For ~ty<Men Only: The Lord's Law of Obedience (Salt Lake City: Dennis R. Short, 1977), pp. 85-90.

For a discussion of the pamphlet, its argument, and its significance, see Lawrence Foster, "A Little-known Defense of Polygamy from the Mormon Press in 1842," Dialogue: A lournal of Mormon Thought 9 ( 1 9 7 4 ) : 21-34.

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surrounding areas of Mormon settlement differed from that of other frontier areas also needs to be investigated.37 To understand the significance of this data on divorce, it must be placed within the larger context of the development of plural marriage and other early Mormon social institutions. Plural marriage appears never to have become fully institutionalized during the relatively brief period when it was publicly practiced in Utah. Joseph Smith's revelatory mandate promulgating polygamy in 1843 had required that polygamy be introduced, but it did not specify exactly how it was to be practiced after it was introduced. Later Mormon leaders apparently also Claimed no special inspiration on exactly how the system was to be regulated, except to continue to insist, as Joseph Smith had, that all plural marriages must be sanctioned and sealed by the central church authorities.

The wide variation in polygamy practice has been noted by scholars. James E. Hulett, Jr., one of the earliest serious students of Mormon polygamy, observed that he had "expected to find a variety of behavior but not so great a variety." No fully standardized patterns of handling the needs of polygamous families for things such as shelter, food, clothing, and amusement appear to have developed, although there were tendencies toward such standardization. For example, plural wives sometimes lived together under one roof, sometimes had separate houses adjoining each other, and sometimes lived in entirely different locations.

Hulett argued that Mormon society of the period continued to remain basically monogamous in its norms and that "except for the broad outlines, the local culture provided no efficient and detailed techniques for control of the polygamous family; each family in a sense had to develop its own culture." Although Hulett's sample was primarily taken from the period of extreme stress in the late nineteenth century when polygamy was under heavy attack, scholars who have focused on the period when polygamy was more openly practiced have also found significant variation in the ways polygamous families wrere organized.38 37 T h e existence and whereabouts of the divorce records, which have now been microfilmed, are reported in Eugene E. Campbell and Bruce L. Campbell, "Divorce among Mormon Polygamists: Extent and Explanations," Utah Historical Quarterly 46 (1978),: 4 - 2 3 . I b i d , p. 6, bases its figures on Quinn, " T h e Mormon Hierarchy," p p . 2 4 8 - 9 1 . Quinn, pp. 154-56, provides information on some of Brigham Young's wives who were not publicly acknowledged and bore him no children.

38 Hulett, " T h e Mormon Polygamous Family," p p . 11, 406, a n d Burgess-Olson, "Early U t a h M o r m o n Families," pp. 5 9 - 6 8 . Housing patterns of leaders ran the gamut from Brigham Young, second president of the church, who set up most of his wives a n d children in two large houses, to John Taylor, third president of the church, who eventually established all his wives in separate houses. For a discussion of Brigham Young's remarkable household, see Clarissa Young Spencer

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The primary reason that polygamy never became fully standardized in Utah was the short period of time that it existed before the intense antipolygamy persecution of the late nineteenth century led the Mormon church to discontinue the practice. Had there been greater time for the new cultural patterns to develop free of external pressure, plural marriage probably would have continued to adapt itself to the changing conditions of the Great Basin region. Just how the new marriage practices would eventually have stabilized will now never be known, however.

After the mainstream of the Mormon church broke decisively with polygamy practice at the turn of the century, a small number of dissidents did continue to practice polygamy, but the church as a whole moved on to find new ways of expressing its underlying family ideals through monogamous marriage. Today, somewhat paradoxically, Mormons are among the most "traditional" of any group in their attitudes toward family life and the role of women.39 IV What is the significance of this extraordinary nineteenth-century Mormon experiment with plural marriage? Was the effort simply a freakish American sideshow, a rather unpleasant and unappealing aberration, or does it raise larger issues that are of concern today?

As the largest and best sustained attempt in nineteenth-century America to create an alternative to monogamous marriage and family life, Mormon polygamy does suggest larger issues worthy of further exploration. At the most basic level, investigations such as those of Ivins, Burgess-Olson, Smith and Kunz, and others are needed to show how monogamous and polygamous Mormon marriages in early Utah differed from each other. To what extent were the distinctive features of nineteenth-century Mormon family life due to the existence of polygamy and to what extent were they a product of the broader Mormon drive and Mabel Harmer, Brigham Young at Home (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1947), especially p p . 15-80.

39 For bibliographic introductions to the extensive literature on the political campaign against Mormon polygamy, see James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latterday Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book C o , 1976), p p . 681-87, and Bitton, " M o r m o n Polygamy: A Review Article," pp. 106-11. T h e best book-length treatment is Gustive O . Larson, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1971).

A convincing scholarly analysis of the persistence and recurrence of splinter Mormon polygamous groups since the Manifesto of 1890 remains to be written. A study of the relationship of such groups to the emotional and intellectual upheavals caused when the main body of Latter-day Saints gave up the practice of polygamy could shed m u c h light on the development of modern Mormonism. For an analysis with implications for such an investigation, see Lawrence Foster, "From Frontier Activism to Neo-Victorian Domesticity: M o r m o n Women in the Nineteenth a n d Twentieth Centuries," Journal of Mormon History 6 (1979) : 3 - 2 1 .

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for cultural and religious autonomy? How did the life experiences of monogamous wives differ from those of first wives or of subsequent wives in polygamous families?

A second area worthy of further investigation is a comparison of the experiences of Mormon plural wives with the experiences of other women on the frontier or in the larger Victorian society. Recent research by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, for instance, suggests that at least in the economic sphere, Mormon women were largely indistinguishable from other women in the frontier West.40 Similarly, Mormon women appear to have been remarkably closely in touch with general currents of thought and practice in Victorian society. At times, in fact, they seem to have been in advance of popular trends. In what ways were Mormon women in contact with the larger society, and what role did polygamy play in that contact?

Finally, Mormon polygamy of the nineteenth century raises comparative and cross-cultural questions of much significance for the present.

The problems of women acting as heads of single-parent families, for example, bear much resemblance to the problems of women in some polygamous families. The issue of easy divorce and its effect on family life are also worthy of comparison. And, of course, the Mormon experience provides an American example of polygamy that could be compared with polygamy as it functions in non-Western societies today, as studied by anthropologists such as Remi Clignet.41 These and other questions may fruitfully be investigated by using the nineteenth-century Mormon experience as a reference point. Perry Miller could as easily have been speaking of the Mormons as of the New England Puritans when he wrote of their experiment as an "ideal laboratory": "It was relatively isolated, the people were comparatively homogenous and the forces of history played upon it in ways that can more satisfactorily be traced than in more complex societies. Here is an opportunity, as nearly perfect as the student is apt to find, for extracting certain generalizations about the relationship of thought or ideas to communal experience."42 Scholars have only begun-to make use of the rich Mormon experience to understand the nature and significance of women's varied experiences in nineteenth-century America.

40 Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, "Women's Work on the Mormon, Frontier," Utah Historical Quarterly 49 (1981): 276-90.

41 Remi Clignet, Many Wives, Many Powers: Authority and Power in Polygamous Families (Evanston, 111.: Northwestern University Press, 1970).

42 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), foreword.

Saints, Slaves, and Blacks: The Changing Place of Black People within Mormonism.

By NEWELL G. BRINGHURST. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981. Xx + 255 pp. $27.50.)

On June 8, 1978, the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints issued a statement that changed the long-standing LDS practice of denying, the priesthood to black males. Saints, Slaves, and Blacks is a synthesis of the origins of the former policy and Mormon-black relations, in the ensuing years. The book is based upon a wealth of primary research and builds upon the work of such authors as Lester Bush and Stephen Taggart.

The bulk of the book covers the period 1820-65. The author examines Mormon ideas about blacks and how tiiose beliefs were transformed into racially discriminatory practices affecting religious as well as secular life. He accurately casts LDS racial attitudes and practices within the framework of the larger white American society and shows that Mormons, like the majority of white society, subscribed to the ideas of white superiority and nonwhite inferiority. Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, reflected this view in several of his writings. Smith, in a manner similar to nineteenth-century defenders of slavery, linked the concept of black inferiority and bondage to biblical writings, tracing the genealogy of blacks to Cain or Ham and Canaan. Brigham Young, successor to Joseph Smith, employed the alleged genealogical connection not only to explain black bondage in Utah but also to the denial of the

priesthood practice which fully crystallized between 1852 and 1865.

Attention is given to the vacillating position of LDS leaders on the issues of slavery and abolitionism. The author is quite correct in his assertion that Brigham Young never intended for slavery to flourish in Utah. Unfortunately, he does not completely examine the reasons why Utah would not have been a slave state. More important man a general dislike for slavery and the fact the majority of the LDS members in the United States came from nonslaveholding areas, were the following considerations. Utah was the new "gathering place" for the Saints. Mormons throughout the world were encouraged to come and help build the new Zion. From Brigham Young's viewpoint, the labor needs were to be fulfilled by free white workers. Young undoubtedly recognized the potential conflict to LDS interests if large numbers of slaves were competing with free white workers.

Recognition of the public's general dislike for abolitionism and concern for the welfare of nonslaveholding Saints living in the slave state of Missouri during the 1830s compelled the Mormon leaders to adopt an antiabolitionist position. This position intensified between 1856 and 1865 as a response to attacks

by Republicans on Mormon polygamy.

The last portion of the book focuses on the issue of blacks and their changing

Book Reviews and Notices place in the church from 1865 to 1980.

Professor Bringhurst indicates that by 1910 church leaders had imposed sanctions against black Saints that restricted their full participation in Mormon rites prior to the recent change on the priesthood issue. For example, Elijah Able received the priesthood approximately ten years before black denial had become a regular practice. Despite having held the priesthood for more than forty years, Abie's request for temple sealings and endowments was refused by Brigham Young as well as Young's successor, John Taylor. Missionary efforts among blacks in the United States and abroad were generally discouraged until the 1960s.

For the most part the book reads well.

A tremendous amount of material is handled deftly and succinctly. Still there are problems. On page 23 Bringhurst writes that one of the reasons Mormons rejected the goals of abolitionism was due to . . . "the abolitionist desire to absorb these emancipated blacks into' the mainstream of American society. . . ."

Only a small number of abolitionists supported that idea. In fact, the majority of white abolitionists adhered to' a belief in white superiority. A major criticism by black abolitionists of their white counterparts was the underling position placed upon blacks in the movement.

291 The discussion on perpetuation of priesthood denial and civil rights focuses too narrowly on blacks and Mormons, particularly in the area of events in Utah.

Little attention is given to the racial climate nationally and internationally between 1877 and 1920. Mormon religious proscriptions against blacks occurred during a time when American blacks experienced the most intense and overt racial prejudice and discrimination since the Civil War. It was also a time when European nations as well as the United States were employing "the white man's burden" idea to rationalize imperialistic ventures into Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Against this background Mormons appear more typical than atypical in the area of racial beliefs and practices. Non-Mormon whites in Utah were equally discriminatory against black Utahns in secular relations. For many Mormons, religious beliefs about blacks sustained secular consideration and vice versa.

T h e above criticisms are far outweighed by the overall quality of the book. It is the most complete account on the subject and should be read by those interested in race relations or Afro-American, western, and religious history.

RONALD G. COLEMAN

University of Utah

The Mormon People: Their Character and Traditions. Edited by T H O M A S G. ALEXANDER. Charles Redd Monographs in Western History, No. 10. (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1980. Viii + 127 pp. Paper, $6.95.)

The Mormon People: Their Character and Traditions is a book worth reading for anyone with an interest in the Mormons as a people or as a religious group. It overcame a personal bias against another group of essays compiled into a book because its interesting material fits correctly into this format.

Thomas G. Alexander, the editor, combined the topics of historical geog-

raphy, religious poetry, Mormon nineteenth-century social history, religious education, and temple architecture into a book of collected essays. This "Mulligan stew" approach to Mormon cultural history is intellectually nourishing. The individual articles are solid in their scholarship and style. The standard topics of Mormonism are there, i.e., polygamy and temples; these are supported by studies

292 of population, poetry, and Primaries as they influenced Mormon culture.

Lowell C. Bennion's "Mormon Country a Century Ago: A Geographer's View" is worth the price of the book.

Focusing on Mormon and non-Mormon population centers, Bennion emphasized how the various inhabitants of Utah shaped their surroundings. The use of maps makes it interesting and easy to understand.

Emma Lou Thayne in "The Chiaroscuro of Poetry" decries the fact that published Mormon poetry has become an official tool to proclaim the virtues of Mormon life rather than an introspective artistic exploration. Alexander's disclaimer of this in the notes on the article is as interesting as Thayne's thesis.

Poetry as religious propaganda has a provenance going back at least to Eliza R. Snow.

Utah Historical Quarterly It would seem that any series of articles on Mormons would include selections on plural marriage and temples.

This book has two such articles whose contribution is more of supplying structure to the book than substance.

Jill Mulvay Derr's "Sisters' and Little Saints: One Hundred Years of Mormon Primaries" has some interesting implications. The Mormon religious education system is the key to understanding the character of many Mormons.

The Mormon People is a book of essays that should be a welcome addition to the library of any serious student of Mormonism. The Charles Redd monograph series will be making a contribution to Mormon history scholarship if it continues to publish books like this.

MARK MCKIERNAN

Columbus, Ohio

American Labor in the Southwest: The First One Hundred Years. Edited by JAMES C. FOSTER. (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982. Xii + 236 pp. Cloth, $18.50; paper, $9.85.)

The reader who expects the title of a book to define the boundaries and give some premonition of the territory to be covered will find this title overly ambitious and to some degree misleading.

American Labor in the Southwest: The First One Hundred Years is a volume of fourteen essays selected from a number of papers presented at a conference on the western labor movement held in March 1977 in Phoenix. Twelve of the essays were written by history professors and two by individuals who were involved first-hand in labor unions.

Edited by James C. Foster while on the faculty of Arizona State University, the essays are divided into' five general categories: The Western Federation of Miners, The Industrial Workers of the World, The Rise of Unionized Farm Workers, Mexican Labor North and South of the Border, and Labor and

Politics. Each section is preceded by an introduction that provides the historical context and necessary background for the more specialized essays that examine a variety of topics such as the United Farm Workers of America, the Bisbee deportation of 1917, the Mine Mill and Smelter Workers Union in the southwestern copper industry, and the changing attitudes toward labor by Arizona Sen. Carl Hayden. One author, David R. Maciel, in his essay "Mexican Migrant Workers in the United States," does paint a broader swath as he outlines in five time periods the major characteristics of the Mexican migrant worker from 1880 to 1980.

One of the most interesting essays is the candid, personal reflection of Msgr.

Charles O. Rice who describes his efforts to expel Communists from the trade union movement in 1948. In retrospect

Book Reviews and Notices Monsignor Rice concludes " . . . I wasted a lot of time on a crusade that did more harm than good . . . the American trade union movement would be healthier today . . . if a strong broad-based Communist minority had been able to survive in the trade unions." (pp. 233, 232.)

However, as James C. Foster notes, "labor's leftward cant has always been upsetting to many Westerners" (p. 7).

What distills out of the collection of essays is the generally conservative nature of organized labor in the West and the characteristically defensive posture in which labor was usually found.

Although none of the essays deals with Utah specifically, two items in the book will be of interest to students of Utah's labor history. In his introduction Foster discusses J. Kenneth Davies's thesis in Deseret's Sons of Toil, noting that as far as leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints1 were concerned, ". . . the socialist collectivism preached by much of the Rocky Mountain labor movement had a distinctively unpleasant ring" (p. 7). And in one of the best essays in the volume Foster examines six different theories put forth by historians to explain the fall of the Western Federation of Miners after World War I. Quantitatively analyzing the six explanations, Foster finds most accurate a thesis introduced by John Brinley in his 1972 Ph.D. dissertation on the Western Federation of Miners completed at the University of Utah.

Essentially the WFM failed because of America's antiquated labor laws which did not provide labor the right to bargain collectively and tiiereby opened the door for management to' use a variety of tactics to rid itself of the union.

This volume contains a number of informative and stimulating essays; however, as with many similar publications, the strength of the volume lies in the individual essays, to which scholars will turn for further insights on the topic

293 covered, rather than in a series of essays that build on each other and make a book such as this of interest and value to students and the general public. There are a number of excellent examples of edited essays in which both objectives are attained. Generally this is accomplished when an outline of subjects to be covered is developed and scholars are invited to participate with papers to be published within this framework rather than choosing essays for publication after they are delivered at a conference.

Unfortunately, the title of this work implies that it is directed to the general reader and students. The essays deal with more than just American labor, as attention is given to Mexican and Hawaiian workers, and the Southwest stretches from Kansas and Oklahoma to Alaska and Hawaii while ignoring such states as Utah and Colorado. Two important groups are not covered, the railroad workers and the coal minersâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; despite the hyperbole that " . . .the miner was the West after 1849" (p. 1)'. A number of mistakes and oversights mar the book. To mention two: Utah is excluded from the list of states from which unions participated in the organization of the Western Federation of Miners in Butte, Montana, in 1893 (p. 15); and essays contain references to papers presented at the 1977 conference but not published in this collection.

Despite the problems and shortcomings of this volume, there is great merit in the individual essays and introductory statements. Particularly valuable are the editor's contention that there is more to western history than cowboys and Indians and the implication that scholars should continue to examine the western labor experience and publish their collected studies on specific industries, groups, and areas.

ALLAN K E N T POWELL

Utah State Historical Society

294

Utah Historical Quarterly

American Indians and Christian Missions: Studies in Cultural Conflict. By HENRY WARNER BOWDEN. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Xx + 255 pp. $14.95.)

This small edition purports to present a study of missions (and missionaries) and American Indians. There is no complete work depicting the extent of missionary contact in major areas of Indian control before European expansion.

It was therefore hoped that this book, limited by its very size, would at least outline the major areas and tribes that were influenced by European missions —whether they be French, Spanish, or English.

What evolved is a commentary based in part on a limited New Mexico area where all people, grouped by die author as Pueblo, are visualized as one tribe.

Pueblo people do have many common characteristics, but to exclude the Hopi is a grievous error. And to exclude other major tribes in Arizona and especially California seriously limits mis study.

Concentrating on Pueblo (a more generic term rather than referring to one tribe), an examination of some of the rituals and daily life is made. What the missionaries did in interrupting this old culture is fairly well documented.

Following the same pattern as; in the chapter concerning Franciscans and Pueblos, the author then portrays life among the northern New York State Indians and their contacts with the French. Most of what he relates has already been well covered in previous histories. Just why he selected an Atlantic Coast tribe—the Massachuset—is confusing. That tribe today, extinct as a

major entity (not because of the missionaries but through acculturation into colonial society), is far from any current northeastern Indian representation. Why the Penobscots or Narragansets were not included is a mystery. Many accounts have related English attempts at pacification and discussed the few missionaries, notably John Eliot, who made positive efforts with eastern New England tribes.

The last half of the book is a recapitulation, over the last three centuries, of effects of tribal changes, some due to missionary activity, but most a result of the westward push and federal policies of Anglo-Americans who desired new lands as their inherent right.

This work could have served as a valuable guide if it had concentrated on cultural changes effected by missionaries wim one extant tribe. The author has utilized many first-rate primary sources that can serve as a resource for further study. However, to accurately portray the relationship of missions and Native American tribes will take greater study in a far more voluminous analysis than this short book. There is no doubt that the author has excellent theological qualifications, but to use one group or tribe as representative of the entire region is not only misleading but also erroneous for the historian and theologian.

KARL E. GILMONT

American Bibliographical Center Chesterfield, Virginia

Architectural Photography: Techniques for Architects, Preservationists, Historians, Photographers, and Urban Planners. By JEFF DEAN. (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1981. X + 132 pp. $19.95.)

Infrequently does one encounter a book whose author seems both thoroughly without arrogance and able to turn a relatively complex array of equipment

and technique into an easily digestible state. Not afraid of sharing opinions or experience, Dean lists seven "ways I have ruined 4x5 films." Careful reading

Book Reviews and Notices of such luminaries as Adams and Eisenstaedt reveals they have ruined some film as well. The point is: Dean displays a refreshing humility born of experience.

This writer would revel in a day afield with him, sharing common interests and solutions to visual problems.

About half the book deals with photographic hardware. Although this reviewer would rather have seen the space in technique, example, and "how to" illustrations, many will find the equipment review a strong point. In covering 35mm, medium, and large format cameras and lenses a solid base is laid for rational decision-making prior to purchasing a photographic system. That system, it should be noted, will have to serve needs ranging far beyond architecture even for architects, historians, and preservationists.

The point is well made that the Various formats are more complementary than competitive. Ideally, one uses the optimum tools for each specific job.

However, few have the equipment or skills available to execute the ideal.

Dean rightly points out that on some occasions one is ahead simply hiring a specialist. View cameras and perspective control lenses for some other cameras are superb tools, but even without them serviceable and even excellent images can be produced by the meticulous worker in 35mm. Nevertheless, it is most evident that for maximum picture control the serious architectural photographer simply must opt for the 4-by-5 or larger view camera. The cost, perhaps surprisingly, can be about equivalentâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a 4-by-5 view camera and moderate wide-angle lens and a 35mm body and perspective control lens.

Perspective control, the crux of competent architectural rendering in photography, is covered for 35mm in chapter 3.

Those pesky converging vertical lines caused by raising the film plane and lens "to get it all in" can be corrected in numerous ways beyond purchasing a

295 $600 lens. The text dismisses tilting the enlarging easel as inconvenient for repetition, but a master print and copy negative can be made. Use of a standard wide-angle lens square to the horizontal plane at a distance sufficient to include the top of the structure, then cropping the excess foreground from the print, is a viable alternative. A high vantage point and perhaps longer focal length lens and distance should also be seriously considered. A nearby hill or structure may offer a perch for paralleling planes.

Use of a vehicle rooftop platform and/ or ladder should not be dismissed as impractical. When the pain of an unsuccessful image, travel to a distant retake, or an expensive lens purchase are considered, those options are very practical indeed!

Chapter 7, Sun and Sky, is written with a keenly developed sense of geography. The sun is given credit as the most important photographic tool. Such simple but essential ingredients as time of day and year or angle of sunlight, weatiier fronts, and facade orientation are called to the reader's attention. Conscious and careful preplanning of the image in the mind and the viewfinder prior to releasing any shutters is ultimately more important than equipment.

I share Dean's frustration in his shot of the 1859 courthouse in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. A car's tail end intrudes below a Greek Revival column. I chased cars from the front of a mining town opera house for two hours one early Sunday morning before conceding "this just wasn't the day."

The photographs reproduced in the book range from magnificent and inspiring (I prefer such direct and elegant shots as "Shack" p. 2, "Hoxie House" p. 52, and "Bardon's Building" p. 106) to indifferent and awful ("Wisconsin State Capitol Setting" p. 4, and "Mt. Vernon" p. 109). The range appears to be intentional and provides useful instruction regarding final results. Infra-

296 red is to my taste overdone (the lightened foliage usually frames the subject and thus detracts from the center of attentionâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the structure), and the blackand-white prints from color internegatives lack a crispness that could be retained with black-and-white slow film internegs.

Other chapters include Basics and Composition (quite good introductions), and Interiors ("do the best you can with what you have"), After Exposure (processing and storage), and Special Considerations (HABS and National Register survey specifications, rectified photography for scalable prints, and dissolve slide presentationsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;â&#x20AC;˘ all very useful).

An appendix lists equipment information sources and helpful organizations, and the bibliography suggests the author

Utah Historical Quarterly gleaned his practical advice from some reputable sources in addition to his own experience.

If an architect, preservationist, historian, photographer, urban planner, or combination thereof, or a group employing same, is about to assess their needs for photographic tools, they will doubtless save the price of the book in spared mistakes by nimble acquisition of it.

If their experience in photography is broader or their interests far more eclectic than "architecture," they may be better served by a more general basic or advanced tome on photographic tools, materials, and techniques.

GARY B. PETERSON

Bountiful, Utah

Energy from the West: A Technology Assessment of Western Energy Resource Development. By MICHAEL D. DEVINE, et al. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1981. Xviii + 362 pp. Cloth, $25.00; paper, $9.95.)

Undertaking a review of this hefty, fact-filled volume is something like capsulizing the World Almanac. Based on the largest of five projects of Oklahoma University's science-public policy program, the book explores consequences of energy development in Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, and North and South Dakota.

The picture that emerges is marked by conflicts. The West is rich in natural resources but poor in water, the most essential one. Developing the wealth of raw materials runs head-on into the obstacles of protecting clean air and water and scenic advantages.

The federal government's ownership and control of about 35 percent of the total land area and substantial chunks of energy resources is one main source of conflict in the eight states. For example, 59 percent of the coal, uranium, and geothermal energy, plus 80 percent of the oil-shale, are federally controlled. (Fig-

ures listed, subject to verification, are likely to change under the Reagan-WattGorsuch "revolution.")

Westerners generally resist intervention by outsiders, whether they be from the government or the Sierra Club, says the treatise. As boom conditions develop westerners may prove less easy to categorize. In any respect, the western hand is out by tradition for all the goodies available, without strings of course. Cited are southern Utah officials who insist on local decisions as to air quality, with emphasis on resource development and economic benefits.

A 1978 U.S. News & World Report survey indicates that the people of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming consider the energy crisis serious but strongly oppose the idea of clean air and water at any price. Utahns and Wyomingites are the most prodevelopment in the region and Montanans the least. Thus, priorities of economic and conservation aims vary

297

Book Reviews and Notices considerably. This is reflected in severance taxes collected. These taxes on coal in the eight-state region range from 30 percent in Montana to 5 percent in New Mexico to no tax in Utah. There is no evidence that high taxes discourage development in the states, says the study.

But they do affect prices and create differences that could prove serious. Wisconsin Power & Light is challenging Montana's coal tax in the courts and some midwestern congressmen threaten controls over the excessiveness of the "Blue-eyed Arabs."

Water needs for energy also vary greatly. Coal-fired electric generation requires more water than any of the synthetic fuel technologies for equivalent power, says the study, and more than slurry coal pipelines. Irrigation generally accounts for 80-85 percent of the total water consumption in the West. A growing, important question is whether energy industries will be able to acquire

enough water and if so at what expense to irrigated agriculture. Some states, notably Utah (for the Uinta Basin), try to ensure adequate water for industrial growth. Since agriculture can profitably pay only about $25 per acre-foot of water, trouble is ahead with industries which are able to pay $200 or more per acre-foot.

Energy from the West is not easy, narrative reading, but it is sure to prove most useful as a source book. It is well indexed and impressively supplied with lengthy bibliographies for each of the twelve chapters. Much of the information in the charts is told in Fradkin's A River No More (1981) and Bernard DeVoto's works of nearly forty years ago.

But if you need basic information it is here in handy reference form.

ERNEST H. LINFORD

Laramie,

Wyoming

Preserving Your American Heritage: A Guide to Family and Local History. By NORMAN E. WRIGHT. (Provo, Ut.: Brigham Young University Press, 1981. Viii + 285 pp. Paper, $9.95.)

Norman E. Wright, a professor of family and local history at Brigham Young University as well as an active member of the National Genealogical Society, has brought extensive personal experience and professional training together in the preparation of this fine study. It should prove to be a welcome addition to the library of anyone interested in the subject matter he addresses.

Preserving Your American Heritage is an extensively revised edition of his earlier book entitled Building an American Pedigree (1974). Although more in-depth treatment of many of the subjects entertained herein can be found elsewhere, as a general survey this book must rank among the best to date.

Wright's avowed intent is to place family history and genealogy in their

"proper perspective" as allied research areas. To put this as simply as possible, the author would like his readers to recognize that both areas are closely related and that the efforts of the family historian and the genealogist can be mutually beneficial. Ideally, in fact, the same individual may well wish to pursue the two simultaneously. Family history, when used effectively, can enliven, genealogy. It could be argued, though such was not the purpose of this book, that the researcher who concentrates only on lineage, for whatever purpose, has accomplished something of very limited value: a personal rehearsal of ancestry.

On the other hand, the individual who incorporates family and local history not only animates the past on a highly personal level but also gains a more com-

298 plete understanding of his or her progenitors as h u m a n beings and not merely names on a group sheet. It is in this m a n n e r that one develops a sense of heritage.

All of this may sound intriguing on paper, but the obvious question is " W h e r e do I begin?" From chapter 1 on to his conclusion, Wright attempts to answer this query. After supplying some fundamental concepts inherent in such investigations â&#x20AC;&#x201D; such as defining direct ancestor or collateral relatives (terms seldom used outside of genealogical societies or the appropriate L D S Sunday School class) â&#x20AC;&#x201D; the a u t h o r then introduces the necessary methods, procedures, and sources. Although m u c h of this material may largely serve as a refresher for the experienced researcher, it is the most essential portion of Preserving Your American Heritage to the novice. I n a readable and easily digested m a n n e r the author leads his students through an overview of potential sources, a primer on evaluating evidence, and the most effective means of notekeeping a n d documentation. With the groundwork laid, the next logical step, as discussed in the third chapter, is "Getting a Proper Start." Before embarking on a family history, Wright encourages the compilation of a personal history. By listing all of the important facts stored in the memory, a surprisingly good beginning can usually be made. O n c e this knowledge has been tapped, then it is suggested that any documentation and memorabilia originating with the family be surveyed. These sources consist of not only the obvious, such as journals, letters, or photographs, but m a y also encompass life insurance policies, employment records, and a host of other unusual, but useful, documents. Another successful approach, touched upon but rather inadequately discussed, is oral history. D o not ignore those grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins w h o may have more to offer than you ever dreamed possible.

Utah Historical Quarterly A notable strength of this book is the listing of numerous secondary sources the genealogist/family historian might wish to consult, ranging from exhaustive guides to the Library of Congress and genealogical dictionaries to appropriate periodicals and local histories. A quick reference to a few pages in Preserving Your American Heritage could save hours of personal study. A n d if there is anything the busy researcher needs to avoid it is duplicating the effort of others! Last, b u t certainly not least, N o r m a n Wright has thoroughly covered the use of vital, church, a n d cemetery records, public documents, a n d other miscellaneous sources. This segment of the book, which is well structured and ably written, should prove the most helpful to veteran researchers. If it does little else for these individuals it will provide a handy brief guide to a variety of topics. F o r the beginner it will continue to call forth unrealized avenues of information. Perhaps die most intriguing section of this entire study, at least for many readers, will be the approximately forty pages that discuss the North American Indian. T h e product of over a decade of experience in assisting Brigh a m Young University students of this ethnic heritage to search out their genealogy, the history of this project is fascinating. T h e use of m a n y less traditional sources and approaches may even prove helpful to individuals of varying backgrounds in accomplishing their own family histories.

T h e strengths of Wright's study are in genealogy and family history. For the most part, local history is treated as only an auxiliary to these two topics.

T h e reader whose m a i n interest is the community would be well advised to consider a n u m b e r of excellent books on the subject available through the American Association for State a n d Local History. Another area that seemed to merit m u c h more attention was that of oral history. This is a methology extreme-

299

Book Reviews and Notices

unfortunate. These few weaknesses aside, Preserving Your American Heritage should be read a n d regularly consulted by family historians and genealogists.

ly useful in family a n d local history b u t scarcely mentioned herein a n d for which not even the most rudimentary direction in practical application is offered. I n stead, t h e reader is referred, in passing, to Allan J . Lichtman's excellent primer entitled Your Family History (1978).

For a study t h e preface designates as a "practical guide," such a n oversight is

M. G U Y BISHOP

Wayne State College Wayne, Nebraska

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NICHOLAS

P.

Blocks: Pioneer HARDE-

MAN. (Baton R o u g e : Louisiana State University Press, 1981. X i v + 271 p p . $20.00.)

Although t h e origin of the Indians' "maize, 'that which sustains life,' " continues t o puzzle present-day botanists, this plant's domestication by natives of the Americas surely ranks a m o n g t h e most culturally significant achievements of mankind. F o r both Indians a n d E u ropean settlers corn w a s a w a y of life; its planting, cultivating, harvesting, storing, shelling, a n d grinding were p a r t of the very rhytiim of life, like t h e passing seasons or t h e arterial pulse.

Even more fascinating, perhaps, Lhan corn's ancestry a n d annual rearing is its utility. Corn is eaten or d r u n k in myriad forms from grits and popcorn a n d johnny cake to whiskey; i t fattens livestock; its cobs are fashioned into pipes, bottle stoppers, a n d back scratche s ; a n d in addition to its thousand a n d one homely uses, corn boasts more t h a n five h u n d r e d industrial uses. It's ubiq-

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uitous—just examine your cupboards at h o m e !

If a fact or fable about corn exists ouitside die covers of this book, i t would be amazing. Anyone o u g h t t o be able to peruse this well-written volume with pleasure a n d profit.

Bull Creek. By J E S S E D . J E N N I N G S a n d DOROTHY

SAMMONS-LOHSE.

Univer-

sity of U t a h Anthropological Papers, no. 105. (Salt L a k e City: University of U t a h Press, 1982. X i v + 152 p p .

Paper, $20.00.)

Bull Creek Valley, south of Hanksville, U t a h , contains a n unusual concentration of F r e m o n t sites. T h e research reported here took place i n 1976 a n d 1977 under t h e auspices of t h e University of U t a h D e p a r t m e n t of Anthropology. T h e excavations a t Bull Creek help to flesh, o u t a picture of t h e S a n Rafael Fremont, especially their architecture, a n d to reinforce the conclusion t h a t water was t h e principal consideration in locating a community. Students of t h e Fremont will w a n t to a d d Bull Creek to their libraries.

300

Utah Historical Quarterly

Slim Buttes, 1876: An Episode of Great Sioux War. By JEROME G R E E N E . ( N o r m a n : University Oklahoma Press, 1982. Xvi + 192 $12.95.)

the A. of pp.

T h e centennial summer of 1876 witnessed t h e shattering defeat of Custer's troops a t t h e Little Big H o r n River.

Eleven weeks later a t Slim Buttes came the army's first t r i u m p h in t h e Sioux War. Traveling fast and with insufficient provisions, Gen. George Crook's troops accomplished a difficult expedition, subsisting o n a slim ration of stringy horsemeat from discarded mounts. Although Slim Buttes marked t h e turning point in t h e war, t h e victory was tainted by controversy and grim reminders of war's horrors for both victor and vanquished.

Rails

East

Stations.

to Promontory,

the

Utah

By A N A N S. R A Y M O N D a n d

RICHARD E. F I K E . (Salt Lake City: Bureau of L a n d Management, 1981.

X + 1 3 4 p p . Free.)

M u c h of t h e first transcontinental railroad grade in U t a h is abandoned.

This illustrated monograph deals with that portion of the grade built by t h e Central Pacific between Lucin, near t h e Nevada border, to Promontory. This section was seldom used after the completion of the Lucin Cutoff in 1904.

Railroad a n d ghost town buffs, among others, will enjoy this excellent publication.

American

Frontier

OVERLAND

Tales.

By H E L E N

HOWARD.

(Missoula:

M o u n t a i n Press Publishing. Company, 1982. X v + 277 p p . Paper, $8.95; cloth, $15.95.)

M a n y of t h e fifteen accounts compiled here originally appeared in Journal of the West, Montana, the Magazine of Western History, a n d similar publications. Researched a n d well written, die stories will provide readers with hours of entertaining a n d enlightening reading. " T h e Puzzle of Baptiste Charbonn e a u " is especially interesting.

Missionaries, Miners, and Indians: Spanish Contact with the Yaqui Nation of Northwestern New Spain, 1533-1820.

By E V E L Y N

HU-DEHART.

( T u c s o n : University of Arizona Press, 1981. Viii 4- 152 p p . Paper, $9.95; cloth, $19.95.)

This, t h e first i n a projected multivolume history of the Yaqui Indians of northern N e w Spain, reveals t h e drama of cultural conflict over nearly three centuries. Although a "conquered" people, t h e Yaquis showed great tenacity in refusing to b e assimilated into the dominant culture. T h e book also discusses t h e conflicting interests of the Jesuits and those w h o Controlled t h e mines, the Yaqui rebellion of 1740, a n d die expulsion of the Jesuits from N e w Spain in 1767. F o u r a n d a half centuries after the first Spanish contact with t h e m the Yaquis remain Yaquis, not Mexicans.

UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIETY Department of Community and Economic Development Division of State History BOARD OF STATE HISTORY MILTON C. ABRAMS, SmitMeld, 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 DORMAN, 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 MRS. 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 Society is 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.

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