Organizing Farmers in Utah

Organizing Farmers in Utah: Charles G. Patterson and the Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, 1917–1922

BY MATTHEW C. GODFREY

In 1917, Charles G. Patterson, a Utah attorney, spearheaded the organization of the Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers (IASBG) to serve as an advocate for beet farmers in the Intermountain West. With the advent of the First World War, the price of sugar had gone up, but Patterson believed that sugar companies were not passing the increased profits on to farmers and that someone needed to look out for the growers’ interests. He had previously published pamphlets castigating leaders of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, many of whom were also high leaders in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (also known as Mormons), which held a large amount of stock in the company. Believing that Utah-Idaho Sugar leaders were using their ecclesiastical connections to force Latter-day Saint farmers into growing beets for the company for whatever price the corporation dictated, Patterson wanted the IASBG to fight for fairer beet prices. Although other organizations such as the U.S. Farm Bureau already represented farmers’ interests in matters such as beet prices, Patterson believed they had largely been co-opted by sugar interests and that an independent organization was necessary.

Born in the midst of a battle over beet prices in 1918, the IASBG lasted only a few years before folding. This was in part because it was painted by ecclesiastical and business leaders as a radical socialistic organization—a depiction that prevented it from ever gaining much influence over farmers. Yet even though it operated for only a brief period of time, the agitation the organization made over beet prices pushed Utah-Idaho Sugar to increase the amount it paid farmers for the crop. Its brief history thus provides a window into power relationships between farmers and industry in the 1910s and 1920s—relationships that were complicated in Utah and Idaho by the influence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the sugar industry. It also suggests that even farmers’ organizations not heavily supported because of their “radicalism” could have an impact on the well-being of agrarians.

Sugar beets siloed at Garland, Utah, 1905. Covering beets with straw and dirt helped to preserve them through the winter. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 3481.

By the time of the IASBG’s organization, the beet sugar industry was still relatively new in Utah. Industrialists in Germany and France had pioneered the extraction of sugar from beets in the early nineteenth century, but it did not become viable in the United States until the 1880s. In 1889, the Utah Sugar Company organized. Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—the predominant religion in Utah—were instrumental in generating support for the fledgling beet sugar corporation and in helping to finance the company when it fell on hard times. Believing the growing of sugar beets to be an important cash opportunity for Utah farmers, church leaders also became important figures in the company’s hierarchy, which produced a web of conflicts between the financial interests of the church, its leaders, and its agrarian members.

At the church’s April 1891 general conference, for example, George Q. Cannon, a counselor in the church’s governing First Presidency and a stockholder in the Utah Sugar Company, expressed concern that Latter-day Saint farmers were not supporting the corporation by growing enough beets, ostensibly because they did not believe the company was paying enough for the vegetable. As an ecclesiastical leader, he told the congregation that “men should be willing—even if at a sacrifice, as some anticipate would be the case—to raise the beets at the price proposed” by the company. He then appealed to farmers “on behalf of the company . . . to devote a portion of your land to the culture of sugar beets this coming spring.”1 In such an instance, Cannon clearly believed that his personal financial interests—and those of other church leaders—should be supported by Latter-day Saints.

This melding of business and religion continued in 1907 when the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company formed from a merger of three companies.2 Joseph F. Smith, the president of the Church of Jesus Christ, served as the corporation’s president, and members of the church’s governing Quorum of the Twelve Apostles also served on

the board of directors. The church as an entity held stock in the company as well.3 The involvement of these church officials—and the church itself—in a commercial enterprise ignited a debate about religious influences on the industry’s competition and business practices. The debate accelerated after the outbreak of the First World War in 1914 curtailed the production of beet sugar in both France and Germany. This presented opportunities for U.S. firms to increase their production and market share. Recognizing this, leaders of Utah-Idaho Sugar, including Charles W. Nibley, presiding bishop of the church and the largest stockholder in the company, advocated an aggressive plan of factory expansion in Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, and Nevada. Other entrepreneurs had similar ideas, and new beet sugar enterprises appeared in the 1910s in areas where Utah-Idaho Sugar already had beet contracts with farmers.4

At the same time, a high demand for sugar and the decrease in production in Germany and France led to higher sugar prices for consumers; they rose from four cents a pound in the early 1910s to more than seven cents by 1915.5 Although the increase led sugar companies to provide more money to farmers for their beets, some growers believed that the corporations were making more in profits than they were passing on.6 However, individual voices did not hold much sway. Individuals such as Charles G. Patterson thus began calling for the organization of sugar beet farmers in Utah. “The reason the sugar company has been so arbitrary in its past dealings with the farmers is that it knew there was no organization among them,” one pamphlet declared. “There could be no unanimity of action among [farmers] and consequently nothing for the company to fear.”7

The extent of sugar beet farming in the Intermountain West meant that there were numerous beet growers cultivating the crop. The land and farming techniques of growers were conducive to the growing of beets; one U.S. Department of Agriculture report stated that Utah was “the ideal beet-sugar state” because “methods of cultivation, irrigation, drainage, and fertilization were superior to those prevailing in ordinary farm districts in other parts of the country.”8 By 1920, 93,603 acres of sugar beets were under cultivation in Utah by 8,123 growers, producing $28 million worth of beet sugar. One publication called sugar beets “the securest portion of the agricultural picture” for Utah farmers.9 The beets that growers produced mainly went to two companies that had a stranglehold on the beet sugar industry in the Intermountain West: Utah-Idaho Sugar and the Amalgamated Sugar Company, both of which were largely controlled financially and administratively by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.10

In the 1910s, farmers’ organizations were not a novel idea. Associations such as the Grange, for example, had existed for years. In Utah, some organizations had formed around the turn of the century to serve farmers in regional locations. One of these was the Cache Valley Farmers Association, which had made attempts as early as 1905 to get an increase in what agrarians were paid for their beets. This association “provided a forum for discussion but little else,” in part because growers in Cache Valley who were not part of the association refused to hold out for increased prices.11

Another organization that promised to help Utah farmers was the Farm Bureau, which came into being in the 1910s across the United States. Initially seen as a way to provide farmers with more access to agricultural education and scientific advancements through state extension services, the bureau soon became an organization of advocacy for farmers.12 The first farm bureau in Utah was established in 1915 in Weber County, and additional county bureaus were organized thereafter. In December 1916, the Utah State Farm Bureau Federation was formed to bring the county bureaus together.13 Its first order of business, according to one newspaper article, was to establish a committee “to meet with representatives of the sugar companies to get equitable rates for sugar beets.”14

Indeed, in 1916 there was much discussion about prices for beets. Part of this was fueled by a pamphlet published by Charles G. Patterson, a Utah attorney affiliated with the Progressive political party. Patterson was born in 1871 in North Carolina and had converted to the Latter-day Saint faith in 1890. He had served as a bishop in the church but by 1915 had become openly critical of church leaders, declaring that they unduly influenced both politics and economics in Utah.15 That year, Patterson openly protested Reed Smoot’s seating in the U.S. Senate because he secured it by virtue of his ecclesiastical position as a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.16 The attorney James H. Wolfe, writing to James S. Martin of the National Reform Association, supported Patterson’s efforts and argued that “the financial and political power of the small group of people (the First Presidency and the twelve apostles)” was more troubling than the church’s past practice of polygamy. Anything that could be done to combat such financial and political power, in both Wolfe and Patterson’s minds, would be desirable.17

Field of beets belonging to the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Garland, Utah, August 1913. Rows of beets like this one were common along the Wasatch Front, signaling the prominence—and profitability—of the sugar industry. Shipler Commercial Photographers Collection, no. 14632.

Patterson’s 1916 pamphlet Business, Politics and Religion in Utah protested both the church’s influence in the sugar industry and the perceived unfair, dishonest, and unethical practices of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Patterson spent most of the pamphlet arguing that the price that Utah-Idaho charged for its sugar in the Intermountain West was exorbitant and unfair. Given that some of the sugar consumed in Utah was homegrown and produced, he especially objected to Utah-Idaho’s adherence to the industry practice of adding shipping costs from the eastern seaboard to the price of sugar, even when that sugar was produced locally. Patterson also claimed that the corporation could pay “reasonable dividends on the capital invested and accumulate a sufficient surplus to meet every contingency” by charging consumers $3.50 per hundred-pound bag of sugar. Instead, it charged between $8 and $10 per bag—something Patterson equated to extortion and robbery.18

In addition to his critiques about the price of sugar, Patterson attacked the low price that Utah-Idaho paid farmers for their beets, asserting that company leaders sought to keep other beet sugar enterprises from getting a foothold in Utah and Idaho because “they were afraid another crowd would pay the farmer a fairer price for his beets.” Because Utah-Idaho Sugar had such strong ties to the Church of Jesus Christ, and because corporate leaders had asked for community support when the sugar business was still in its infancy, Patterson believed that the company’s actions were indefensible. “The sugar company never fails to take all it possibly can from the people its officers profess to love so much,” he declared. “If these men justify their actions in this matter by saying that what they have done is only business,” Patterson continued, “the reply is that they should not complain if the people whose confidence they have betrayed, begin to apply some business methods for their own protection.”19

The gist of Patterson’s arguments was that an organization with both power and money was serving corporate interests rather than the interests of the larger community. These were essentially the main points that muckrakers— journalists seeking to expose corrupt practices of business—and those in the Progressive and Democratic political parties were making against big businesses such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Refining Company and Andrew Carnegie’s U.S. Steel.20 Patterson’s complaints about the price of sugar were also not unique; since 1910, high prices for food products were hot political issues, with the Democrats winning the White House and both houses of Congress in 1912 on a pledge to reduce the price of commodities, including sugar. The outbreak of the First World War led to another spike in food prices, and President Woodrow Wilson blamed industrial combinations as the culprits.21 For Patterson, though, the main points seemed to be that it was unfair of Utah-Idaho Sugar to add freight costs to its sugar prices, even though that was a standard that everyone in the sugar industry used; that the company should pay farmers more for beets; and that Utah-Idaho leaders had a special obligation to protect the interests of their community because its officials were also officers in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Patterson’s pamphlet caught the attention of Presiding Bishop Charles W. Nibley, who, in his ecclesiastical position, was responsible for the church’s financial affairs and who was personally involved with Utah-Idaho Sugar. Nibley wrote a rebuttal for the Salt Lake Tribune that, as characterized by Anthon H. Lund of the First Presidency, was “a defense of the Sugar factories . . . against some scurrilous writings by one Patterson.”22 Although not mentioning Patterson or his pamphlet by name, Nibley declared in the piece that “a number of publications have been issued and distributed among the people, evidently intended to inflame the public mind, to create hostility and bitterness toward the manufacturers of beet sugar in this and adjoining states, and also to put the Mormon church, which has always had a very considerable interest in this great industry, in a bad light before the people.”23 Nibley admitted that Utah-Idaho Sugar did not pay farmers as much for their beets as did manufacturers in California, Montana, and Colorado. He attributed this in part to the higher sugar content of the beets grown in those states and in part to the cost that Utah-Idaho Sugar had to pay to get its sugar to market, which was more than Colorado sugar producers had to pay.24

Yet Nibley contended that even with these lower prices Utah-Idaho still paid a fair price for beets and was not a monopolistic entity because “in any part of the Union . . . there is the opportunity for anyone to build factories and manufacture sugar.” However, Nibley continued, if there was already a sugar factory serving a region, it was “malignant waste” for anyone to come into that area and construct another factory. Anyone had the right to do so, “but is it good business or good sense to build two factories where one will do all that there is to do?” Because Utah-Idaho officials stood “ready to extend their business and build factories wherever sufficient beets can be produced to warrant the erection of a factory,” he saw no need for any other company to try to gain a foothold in Utah-Idaho’s territory. “If the farmer was being oppressed and was not getting a fair price for his beets,” Nibley argued, “then there might be some reason for the farmers co-operating to try to force the building of a factory that would pay them more.” But because Utah-Idaho Sugar paid “about as fair” a price “as could well be expected,” there was no need for any kind of competition with the company.25

Charles Nibley in his later years, ca. late 1920s or early 1930s. A prominent leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Nibley—the largest shareholder in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in the 1910s—championed Utah-Idaho Sugar’s factory expansion in the Intermountain West and vigorously countered Charles Patterson’s writings in the press. Utah State Historical Society, photograph no. 13199.

Indeed, Nibley continued, beet prices had gone up by fifty cents per ton in the past year, reflecting the increased price of sugar to consumers. In adjusting the beet price upward, Nibley claimed, the sugar company was assuming a significant risk. Farmers received a flat rate for their beets; if sugar prices suddenly plummeted, the company would be faced with a situation where it could not recoup the price it had paid the farmers. “The beet grower has a price fixed for his product that he can absolutely depend upon,” Nibley stated, but “the sugar company has no certainty as to that at all.” To Nibley, “it would be more fair if the farmer were to receive payment for his beets according to the yearly average price of sugar.” Because the farmer received a flat rate and the price of sugar could fluctuate throughout the year, “the sugar companies take chances with respect to the price of their product which the beet growers do not take at all.”26

After reading Nibley’s explanations in the Salt Lake Tribune, Patterson privately responded to the presiding bishop, especially contesting the arguments about competition and monopoly. According to Patterson, on these points Nibley was merely using “the same arguments which have been advanced since the beginning of the formation of monopolies and trusts”—arguments that had “been passed upon time after time by courts of all classes in this land and have uniformly been held to be unsound.” They were especially objectionable because nineteenth-century church leaders Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff had initially justified the church’s participation in the sugar industry by telling church members it would increase their self-sufficiency and prevent them from “paying tribute to outsiders in supplying their temporal wants.” Patterson objected that, although not an eastern monopoly, Nibley’s policies were still creating a stranglehold on Utah and Idaho citizens. Patterson also found Nibley’s opposition to the formation of new sugar companies to be hypocritical, given that previously Nibley had led an effort to establish a sugar factory in Lewiston, Utah, even though the Amalgamated Sugar Company already had a factory in the area. Nibley had eventually brokered a deal to sell the Lewiston factory to Amalgamated Sugar. “No one objects to you as an owner of sugar factories any more than we object to any man owning property,” Patterson concluded. “It is a man’s method of securing things which we complain about.”27 In addition to writing Nibley directly, Patterson published a revised edition of his Business, Politics and Religion pamphlet to respond to Nibley.28

When the Utah State Farm Bureau was formed, Patterson also hoped that it would facilitate the granting of higher prices for beets to growers.29 However, although the sugar companies increased the price for beets from $5.50 per ton in 1916 to $7 per ton in 1917, some farmers were not satisfied—and neither was Patterson.30 According to another pamphlet Patterson published in 1917, the price of sugar had increased by 60 percent, but the raising of beet prices to $7 represented only a 55 percent increase. “This leaves you with a smaller proportion of the profits of the business,” he declared.31

Dissatisfied with the Farm Bureau’s efforts to represent farmers and effectively negotiate with sugar companies, Patterson—together with members of the West Side Commercial Club in Granger, Utah—began exploring the creation of a new association to provide “organized protection to the beet growers.”32 In August 1917, a notice was sent to beet farmers in Utah and Idaho, requesting their presence at a meeting in Utah’s state capitol building on Saturday, August 23, where a new association would be formed. This was necessary, the notice stated, because sugar manufacturers were “unfair, unjust, unpatriotic, unchristian and inhuman” in their dealings with beet growers. They had “exploit[ed] the men, women and children of the state,” in part by never giving farmers “a fair price for sugar beets.” According to the notice, “the beet farmer is being skinned worse on his 1917 contract than he has ever been in the past.”33

When August 23 came, more than two hundred people attended the organizational meeting, “crowd[ing] the floor and the balconies” of the House of Representatives room at the state capitol. According to one newspaper report, speakers “bitterly assail[ed] prominent members of the Mormon church who form the directing force of the Utah-Idaho Sugar company,” stating “that growers had been oppressed by the company and that the rights of the individual had been ignored.” The increase in the amount the companies paid growers for their beets was characterized as “hush money” and not a good faith effort to distribute to farmers the increased profits from sugar.34 With such declarations, the attendees incorporated the Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers; Patterson was appointed its secretary. The organization would be funded by a per capita annual membership fee of $5 and “an assessment not to exceed 20 cents a ton on the beets raised by each member.” According to N. P. Peterson, IASBG’s appointed president, the establishment of the organization meant that sugar companies would have to “deal with the growers on a sound business basis.”35

Two days after the formation of the IASBG, the organization held another meeting to discuss the price of beets in 1918.36 Officials from the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company had already made a proposal to offer farmers a flat rate of $7 per ton for beets containing 15 percent sugar. In what was noted as “a radical departure in policy,” the company also stated that after it had collected $1 per hundred pounds of sugar in profit, it would equally divide “all other profits above that figure . . . between the farmers and the company.” Because this proposal gave farmers something they had wanted in the past—a share of the profits from the higher prices of sugar—one publication stated that growers would “welcome with hearty approval” Utah-Idaho’s proposal.37

The publication was wrong—at least in terms of the reaction of the IASBG. In September 1917, the association sent a petition to Herbert Hoover, head of the U.S. Food Administration. Responsible for ensuring the country had enough agricultural goods available at fair prices during the war, Hoover pleaded with sugar beet growers to maintain and increase the acreage they planted to beets. Believing that Utah-Idaho’s proposal of $7 per ton meant that farmers would have to take a loss if they grew beets, the IASBG asked Hoover to investigate these charges and ensure that the beet growers received a fair price for their beets.38

Perhaps spurred on by the petition, Utah-Idaho Sugar and its sister company, Amalgamated Sugar, presented another proposal to beet growers in a meeting held in Salt Lake City in October. Under this proposal, farmers would have two options. They could either receive $7 per ton for beets and then split the profits 50–50 once the sugar companies had received $5.50 a bag for manufacturing, or they could accept a flat rate of $8.50 per ton. Representatives from the different county and state farm bureaus of Utah and Idaho recommended that the farmers accept the proposal, with J. W. Jones, a sugar beet investigator for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stating that “$8.50 a ton was a fair price for the flat rate.”39 Farmers at the meeting were willing to accept the recommendation.

The IASBG, however, objected to the proposal and to the fact that it had apparently been communicated to Hoover that all beet farmers had agreed to it. The association sent a telegram to Hoover stating that he had “been wrongly advised as to conditions” in Utah and that “differences between sugar manufacturers and beet growers in Utah and Idaho” were so large that they threatened sugar production in those two states.40 In a separate communication to W. W. Armstrong, the Food Administration’s representative in Utah, the IASBG declared that the October meeting was “a ‘packed’ meeting of the ‘so-called’ farm bureau” that “did not represent the growers of either Utah or Idaho and had no authority to act for or on their behalf.” Instead, the association alleged that the sugar companies “engineered the conventioned [sic], ‘packed’ it, and directed the proceedings to further their own greed for profits.” Rather than a good faith effort to try to increase the amount of money farmers received for their beets, IASBG saw the manufacturers’ proposal as an attempt “to stampede the growers into submission.”41

The major issue with the price of sugar beets was how much it cost a farmer to actually grow them. The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company estimated that it cost somewhere between $3.80 and $4.50 a ton to grow beets, meaning that a farmer would receive a net profit of around $76 an acre (or between $4 and $5 per ton, assuming that an acre of land produced fifteen tons of beets) at payment of $8.50 per ton.42 Members of the IASBG disputed that. Joseph Smith, one of the association’s officials, claimed that it cost farmers $9.59 a ton to grow sugar beets.43 This was reiterated in a pamphlet the IASBG published in 1918, which stated that it cost farmers about $9.80 per ton to grow beets. The pamphlet also declared that Farm Bureau representatives who negotiated the price of beets were aware of this cost but, because they were under the control of the sugar companies, refused to press for a higher price.44 It is difficult to determine which side was correct in their figures, but it does appear that the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company’s estimate of $4.50 per ton may have been closer to reality than the IASBG’s figure, at least in comparison to a January 1919 article in the Utah Farmer. That article gave figures for seven different farmers who had grown sugar beets. One farmer produced beets at a cost of $46 per acre and another at a cost of $79.40 per acre. Throwing out these two extremes, the other farmers produced beets at an average cost of $64.11 per acre, or $4.27 per ton.45 It is unclear how representative the farmers used as examples in the article were, but it does appear that the IASBG’s figures for raising beets was high.

Although Patterson portrayed himself and the IASBG as the true representatives of beet growers, others believed that they were only trying to gain notoriety, publicity, and power by creating discord between farmers and sugar companies. In making their critiques of Patterson and his organization, such detractors used rhetoric that immediately cast suspicion on IASBG motives. Because of the First World War, patriotism in the United States was at a high level, and many Americans were distrustful of organizations that they believed threatened democracy. Especially of concern was the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 that placed a socialist government in place in Russia. Worried that democracy and capitalism could likewise be overthrown in the United States, organizations seen as socialist or with socialistic tendencies became frightening to many Americans.46 The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a labor organization formed in 1905 that preached the necessity of the working class taking over industrial means of production, was one of the main targets of concern. Since Patterson and the IASBG seemed to be attacking capitalism and business, opponents to the IASBG raised the specter of socialism and the IWW to scare farmers away.

Ian Turner, a Wobbly wearing a hat with a card labeled “Bread or Revolution” attached to the brim, 1914. The perceived association of the IASBG with radical labor elements, including the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), meant that the organization never gained widespread support among farmers. Library of Congress, LC-USZ62–22190.

In a December 1917 letter to U.S. Senator William H. King from Utah, for example, Charles W. Nibley stated that Patterson was “not a beet raiser” but instead was “an I. W. W. agitator.” Accordingly, he was “utterly unreliable and unworthy of notice.”47 An editorial in a Utah newspaper in the small southcentral Utah town of Richfield presented the same view, depicting Patterson and his organization as bearing “some of the earmarks of the Townley non-partisan league, the I. W. W., and the Bolsheviki element that is making efforts to gain a foothold in America.”48 Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also provided commentary in the Church’s general conferences that, although not directed specifically at Patterson or the IASBG, referred negatively to such organizations. The apostle Melvin J. Ballard, for example, declared in the October 1919 general conference that church members could not “solve the problems between capital and labor by joining unions, by joining the non-partisan league, by joining socialism.” He continued, “The very foundation of the Church depends upon the success of the tillers of the soil, the workers, and our interest is for them, and yet we do not become selfish nor sordid to join with one group of laborers against the interests of all others.”49

Despite negative characterizations of Patterson and the IASBG, the ideas espoused by Patterson were not necessarily socialistic or in line with the IWW’s aims. Essentially, Patterson believed that farmers—who, in his mind, invested as much to grow sugar beets as companies did to manufacture sugar—should receive an equal share of the profits from the increased price of sugar. He was not espousing the overthrow of democracy, a redistribution of property, or the evils of a capitalistic system—just a more equitable distribution of profits. Yet because he was attacking a business and its leaders who happened to also be high officials in the Latter-day Saint church, he was painted as a radical reactionary by those leaders and also—as evidenced by the Richfield Reaper article—by rural residents of Utah who were largely members of the church. This characterization of Patterson was particularly effective. Opposition to socialists, Wobblies, and radicals in the state was strong, especially from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was trying to disassociate from its own radical and “un-American” practices of the past.50 In addition to this war of words, socialists and Wobblies in Utah were subject to violence and limitations on their rights to speak in public.

Many listening to Nibley and newspapers disparaging Patterson and the IASBG found it easy to accept the socialistic depictions, in part because of Patterson’s vociferous opposition to the Latter-day Saint church. Indeed, the influence of religion on the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was one of Patterson’s primary criticisms. Although churches in the United States turned to business for organizational ideas, and although some churches operated publishing entities and engaged in other commercial enterprises to further their evangelical mission, the predominant church in Utah had long taken a firm hand in economic affairs and directly managed and controlled industries such as sugar and salt production.51 Having religious leaders develop business policies that seemed to ignore the best interests of the farmers and consumers of Utah and Idaho—many of whom were members of the church—was abhorrent to Patterson.

Accordingly, pamphlets from Patterson and the IASBG frequently addressed the religious aspect of sugar manufacturing in the Intermountain West. One 1917 pamphlet, for example, excoriated church officials leading Utah-Idaho Sugar as “Pharisees” and declared that, because of the church’s interest, the corporation was “NOT AS OTHER SUGAR COMPANIES ARE.”52 Another declared that were Jesus to be on the earth, “He would take these sugar manufacturers and judge them by the words they utter or by the acts they perform.”53 Yet another counseled farmers to guard against Latter-day Saint officials trying to use ecclesiastical influence to persuade farmers to ignore independent beet sugar concerns. Speaking about these leaders, the pamphlet directed farmers to “forget everything about them except that they are HIRED by the sugar company to boost for it.”54 Patterson’s frequent criticisms rankled many Latter-day Saints who believed in supporting church leadership. Patterson’s response to such unease was that a “member of the L. D. S. Church who thinks that he can advance the cause of his religion by covering up the sins of his leaders misinterprets the spirit of his gospel, libels the intelligence of the world’s enlightened millions and brings into disrepute and dishonor the church he would elevate.”55

Officials such as Nibley regarded Patterson’s complaints as unfair. “My chief offense seems to be that I bought some stock” in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, Nibley stated, “and luckily for me that stock advanced in price.” He continued, “If the Gentile had made the purchase he would be a shrewd, keen, wide awake, honorable business man.” But because Nibley was a Latter-day Saint, he was seen as “a thief and a robber.” “We are the most jealous and unreasonable people towards one another that exists anywhere,” Nibley declared. He did not believe that Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, and Francis M. Lyman—all high church officials and Utah-Idaho Sugar officers—could ever be “engaged in the most despicable work of extortion” that Patterson and others claimed they were. Nibley thus continued to refer to Patterson and those who disagreed with Utah-Idaho’s policies as “foolish scribblers.” They produced nothing but “scurrilous stuff” attempting to cause discontent with capitalism in general.56

The characterizations of Patterson as a radical and discontented Latter-day Saint would ultimately decrease his influence among farmers. Because of such opposition, Patterson’s movement was almost doomed to fail from the start—which was ironic, given the Latter-day Saint focus in the nineteenth century on the value of cooperation in industry. As the church tried to move more into the mainstream in the twentieth century, however, its leaders—including Nibley and Joseph F. Smith—became enthusiastic proponents of capitalism over cooperation.57

Because of the perception of Patterson as a radical fomenting discontent, Senator King, acting on what Nibley had told him, informed Herbert Hoover that the IASBG was not truly representative of farmers in the Intermountain West. Even still, IASBG president N. P. Peterson earned an audience with Hoover in Washington, D.C., where the two agreed “that the matters complained of by the Intermountain association” could be resolved by appointing a committee with a representative of the growers, a representative of the manufacturers, and three representatives from the Food Administration. Although it does not appear that such a committee was ever formed, a series of meetings was held in Utah toward the end of January 1918 attended by representatives of farmers from the county farm bureau (and apparently not the IASBG) and manufacturers. Perhaps acting on the IASBG’s claims that a price of $8.50 per ton for sugar beets would not cover growers’ costs of production, participants debated the possibility of higher prices for beets. They ultimately agreed on $9 per ton for beets with the provision that if the price of sugar went higher than what it currently was, growers would receive “one half of the advance over the present price.”58 Because participants had taken four days and nights to determine the price, the Farm Bureau told farmers they were obligated to accept it as fair and grow as many sugar beets as possible.59

The IASBG was not willing to acquiesce, and at a meeting held in Tremonton, Utah, Patterson and other officers told farmers that they should hold out for $10 a ton. The growers pushed back, not convinced that it was in their best interest to seek that price or that Patterson truly wanted to see them prosper. Instead, some of them believed that Patterson was only looking out for his own interests. According to a newspaper report from the small northern Utah town of Brigham City, “Patterson was asked if he was not working for a selfish motive other than a patriotic one and upon being pressed admitted that his organization would ask a bonus of 20 cents per ton on beets raised by all the farmers, in lieu of its activity in securing the advanced price for the farmers.” After hearing this, the newspaper reported, “nearly all of the 300 farmers present at the meeting arose and left the hall.”60

However, at least one Box Elder County farmer—Moroni Mortenson of Bear River—disputed this report, stating that such assertions were “unfair” and “untruthful” and that “uncalled for attacks” on Patterson needed to stop. According to Mortenson, the assertion that most of the growers left the meeting was “an absurdity,” and those that did leave did so “because of the lateness of the hour and the distance to drive home.”61 Mortenson’s statement seems to have some truth; the 20 cents per ton charge had been in the IASBG’s bylaws as a membership fee, reported in newspapers upon the IASBG’s organization, and not something the association was trying to hide.62 Regardless, most Utah farmers decided that the $9 per ton price was adequate. Nine dollars per ton thus became the price for beets in 1918.

Meanwhile, opposition to the IASBG increased—even though the organization’s agitation on behalf of farmers had impacted the price growers were receiving for their beets. J. A. Brock, the representative of the Sugar Division of the Food Administration in Utah, warned agriculturists about organizations such as the IASBG. “Certain individuals appear to be trying to discredit the work of the state farm bureau,” he declared. These individuals were either outsiders or “professional agitators” and were “distinctly unfriendly to American sugar production.” To Brock, such “agitators” wanted “to cripple one of the nation’s important energy producing industries” and were not truly interested in the welfare of farmers. They were unpatriotic enemies of the United States.63 For individuals such as Brock, the Farm Bureau seemed a much safer place for farmers to find representation because the bureau depicted itself “as a rock against radicalism” and an antidote to “bolshevism.”64 Farmers who joined the bureau were generally “from the more progressive and more prosperous class[es]” as well; they tended to be from the wealthier walks of life.65

To combat these characterizations, Patterson and the IASBG published pamphlets in 1918 explaining their motives and desires for sugar beet farmers. One of these, the lengthy Between the Millstones: The Arguments to the Jury in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Beet Case, detailed the campaign to obtain higher prices for the 1918 beet season and claimed that Armstrong, Brock, and James W. Jones of the U.S. Department of Agriculture were in the pocket of the sugar manufacturers. They used their positions to try to “shut out any opposition” to the proposals of the sugar companies and were directed in all of their actions by the corporations. The pamphlet also took issue with the notion that Patterson and the IASBG were unpatriotic, claiming instead that sugar officials had shown no interest in sacrificing for the greater good of the United States. “It is a notorious fact that those in control of these concerns have unceasingly labored with the Food Administrator to secure the largest measure of profit from the business,” the pamphlet declared. “So far no intimation of sacrifice has emanated from the sugar companies.” If the companies continued to exhibit such a selfish attitude, the IASBG “invite[d] the Government to take over the factories and operate them for the public welfare.”66

The question of the price for sugar beets did not end with the 1918 crop. Instead, it remained an issue with farmers, especially as the price of manufactured sugar steadily increased in 1918 and 1919. As such, the IASBG continued to agitate on behalf of farmers. Patterson wrote an article for the Salt Lake Telegram in March 1919 that argued that there was “a great falling off in acreage of sugar beets” in 1918 primarily because manufacturers did “not adequately” compensate growers for their beets. He advocated cooperation among farmers and manufacturers—primarily in terms of profit-sharing—so that farmers would be more willing to grow beets.67 Patterson and the IASBG also began exploring a more radical idea with other western sugar beet growers: the possibility of farmers, with the backing of the federal government, assuming ownership of sugar factories. A meeting of beet farmers was held in Fort Collins, Colorado, in December 1918 for this purpose, with no conclusive results.68

Patterson also believed that the importation of Mexican labor by the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company was adversely affecting the price of beets. During the First World War, the company took advantage of relaxed restrictions on Mexican immigration and imported large numbers of Mexican workers to help harvest sugar beets. Speaking “in the name of the sugar beet farmers of Utah and Idaho,” Patterson declared that no grower wanted workers from Mexico, because such laborers “liv[ed] in squalor and filth.” The employment of these workers at low wages, he continued, was “used by the sugar companies to hold down the price of the crops produced by American citizens.” “KEEP THE PEONS IN MEXICO,” Patterson concluded. “THEY ARE NOT NEEDED OR WANTED HERE

Piles of beets at a loading station in Salt Lake County, September 1917. Shipler Commercial Photographers Collection, no. 18333.

EXCEPT BY THE GREAT SUGAR CORPORATIONS WHO DESIRE TO EXPLOIT THEM AGAINST AMERICAN FARMERS.”69 Such claims, although overstated (numerous farmers in Utah and Idaho employed Mexican labor),70 indicate that Patterson and the IASBG were interested in protecting only the interests of white farmers and not of ethnic groups participating either as growers or as agricultural labor. They also followed the lead of other labor organizations in the United States, such as the American Federation of Labor, which claimed that the importation of Mexican labor kept wages paid to white labor low.71

In 1919, the IASBG began representing agricultural producers of all crops, not only sugar beet farmers. Accordingly, in summer 1919, the organization changed its name to the Intermountain Farmers Association (IFA) and held conventions “for the purpose of fusing all economic agricultural, horticultural and dairying organizations of the country into one federation.”72 At one of these conventions held at Liberty Park in Salt Lake City, U.S. Senator Thomas P. Gore, a Democrat from Oklahoma, spoke, but fewer than 100 people attended, dampening the enthusiasm of the gathering.73

The IFA continued but had difficulty generating support among growers. Most Utah and Idaho farmers seemed content to allow the more conservative county and state farm bureaus to represent their interests, something that the Farm Bureau actively promoted. According to a front-page article in the Utah Farmer targeting associations such as Patterson’s group, “the Farm Bureau will prevent or make difficult the organization of leagues of farmers which have for their purpose radical changes in our structure of government.” “The farmers have no legitimate interest[s] which are antagonistic to

the legitimate interests of merchants or bankers,” the article continued, and “no advantage should be secured for the farmers which produces an undesirable impediment to any other group of workers.”74 The fact that proponents of the Farm Bureau and agricultural extension services such as Perry G. Holden spoke at the Latter-day Saint general conference only solidified the notion that good Mormon farmers should look to the Farm Bureau for representation.75 Utah-Idaho Sugar officials also refused to attend any meeting with beet growers not organized by the Farm Bureau. Thus, when Patterson held a meeting trying to recruit farmers on the eve of the formation of a Farm Bureau unit in Layton, Utah, only about ninety farmers attended. Of those ninety, only thirty united with Patterson.76

The depictions of the IFA and Patterson as radical, un-American, and intent on subverting capitalism and democracy continued to curtail the organization’s influence. After Patterson organized a branch of the IFA in Richfield, Utah, for example, the Richfield Reaper warned farmers against affiliating with “this alleged I. W. W.-Bolshevik bunch” and stated that “the Farm Bureau will secure for the farmers all that is equitable and just.” “Other organizations of as unsavory a reputation as some that might be mentioned should be let severely alone,” it declared. The newspaper also depicted the IFA as “radical” and “opposed to most everything proposed by the government.”77

Because of his rocky relationship with the church, Patterson also continued to run into problems with Latter-day Saint farmers. Although he had previously served as a bishop, his attacks against church leaders who were officials in Utah-Idaho Sugar soured his ecclesiastical relationships. In 1920, he was excommunicated from the church “for publishing the facts about sugar profiteering by the Mormon prophet,” according to one account.78 This separation of Patterson from the church made him even more untrustworthy in the eyes of Latter-day Saint farmers, and they continued to be reluctant to join an organization led by someone out of harmony with their ecclesiastical leaders.

In the early 1920s, Patterson turned to other ventures to try to help beet growers gain more leverage over sugar companies. In 1920, he was involved with the formation of the Pioneer Sugar Company, a farmers’ cooperative intent on establishing a sugar factory in the Salt Lake Valley. However, the company overextended itself and was never able to build anything.79 Patterson’s name was also floated as a possible candidate for governor in the Farmer-Labor political party—a party that allied with Utah socialists in 1920—and he became secretary of the National Beet Growers Association in 1920.80 He also continued his fight for better sugar prices for farmers—for instance, urging farmers in Blackfoot, Idaho, in 1920 to reject Utah-Idaho Sugar’s proposal for a $12 per ton flat rate for beets. He published at least one other pamphlet attacking Utah-Idaho Sugar and advocating for growers in the 1920s, and he continued to be depicted by sugar company interests as “not a reliable nor responsible man,” “not a good citizen,” and “under surveillance” by the federal government for disloyalty.81

By 1922, Patterson’s influence had waned, and the bottom had dropped out of the sugar industry due to a crash in prices and the effects of curly top, a disease caused by the white fly that severely damaged sugar beet crops. Several beet sugar factories closed in the 1920s, and growing sugar beets became less appealing for farmers. The number of growers cultivating the vegetable declined from 8,123 in 1920 to 6,497 in 1922, and the acreage of beets planted dropped from 93,603 to 58,003 in that same time frame.82

Perhaps realizing the discouraging prospects for sugar growers, and perhaps because of his limited success in organizing Utah farmers, Patterson abandoned his efforts for beet growers in the Intermountain West. After 1922, there is no record of IFA activities in Utah or Idaho.83 By 1924, Patterson and his wife Viola had moved to Portland, Oregon, where Patterson applied to practice law before the Oregon Supreme Court.84 Patterson’s interest in farmers did not wane, however; he had become secretary of the Grange Mutual in Oregon by 1937, and he spoke at Grange meetings on insurance in the 1930s as well.85 Viola died in 1934; Patterson followed in 1953.86

The short history of the IASBG and the IFA shows that these organizations were born in an attempt to reduce the power of sugar manufacturers and to give farmers a stronger voice in the prices they were receiving for sugar beets. Because Charles G. Patterson— one of the main proponents of the organization—spoke and wrote so vociferously against the sugar companies, he and the IASBG were quickly branded as radical and un-American, reducing their influence among Utah farmers. Patterson’s attacks on high church officials who were also leaders in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company increased the distrust with which Latter-day Saint farmers regarded him, and his complete break with the church in 1920 probably cemented the doom of the IFA. The fact that the Farm Bureau only gained in strength during the 1910s as an organization for farmers also made it difficult for Patterson’s independent organization to make much headway, despite his attempts to portray the bureau as in league with the sugar companies. When Utah-Idaho Sugar refused to hold any meetings with sugar growers that were not under the sponsorship of the Farm Bureau, it made Patterson’s efforts to recruit farmers even more difficult. In addition, the devastating crash in sugar prices and the problems generated by the curly top disease meant that fewer farmers were growing sugar beets, which perhaps in their minds, decreased the need for Patterson’s association.

Yet exploring the brief history of Patterson and the organizations he led showcases some of the efforts made in Utah and Idaho to organize farmers in the 1910s. Although conservative organizations such as the Farm Bureau would ultimately win out in the effort to speak on behalf of farmers, it was not the only organization claiming to look out for the interests of growers. Not everyone agreed with the conservative efforts of the Farm Bureau, and the IASBG and the IFA provided an alternative voice—at least for white farmers. And it is clear that Patterson and the IASBG did have a significant impact on the prices farmers received for beets, especially in 1917 and 1918. The history of the IASBG thus provides more information about the influence that a highly controversial organization had in the Intermountain West in the early twentieth century, and about the man largely responsible for it.

Notes

1. “General Conference,” Deseret Evening News, April 6, 1891, p. 4.

2. The history of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company has been told by a number of historians. Leonard J. Arrington provided a history of the company from its formation to 1966, while I wrote a history of government investigations into the corporation in the 1910s. Arrington’s work does not mention Charles G. Patterson or the IASBG. My work briefly discusses Patterson and the association, but it does not provide as much detail as this article as to who Patterson was or the history of the IASBG. Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891–1966 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966); Matthew C. Godfrey, Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2007), 102–11.

3. Godfrey, Religion, Politics, and Sugar, 19, 24, 26–48.

4. Godfrey, 160. For example, the Beet Growers Sugar Company was established in Rigby, Idaho, in 1917, and the Gunnison Valley Sugar Company began operating in Gunnison, Utah, in 1918.

5. Godfrey, 94.

6. C. G. Patterson, Business, Politics and Religion in Utah: The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company Versus The People of Utah and Idaho, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: The F. W. Gardiner Press, 1916), 14–15; “Beet Sugar Costs and Beet Prices,” Facts About Sugar 3 (December 9, 1916): 362.

7. Who Gets the Profits from Sugar Beets?, 2d ed. (Salt Lake City: The F. W. Gardiner Co. Press, 1917), 10.

8. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Progress of the Beet- Sugar Industry in the United States in 1909 (Washington, D.C., 1910), 37.

9. Thomas G. Alexander, “The Burgeoning of Utah’s Economy: 1910–19,” in A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah’s Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, edited Dean L. May, Charles Redd Monographs in Western History No. 4 (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1974), 37–39; Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West, 201.

10. For a history of the Amalgamated Sugar Company, see J. R. Bachman, Story of the Amalgamated Sugar Company (Ogden, UT: Amalgamated Sugar Company, 1962).

11. John L. Powell, “The Role of Beet Growers in the Cache Valley Sugar Beet Industry, 1898–1981” (master’s thesis, Utah State University, 1995), 47–49.

12. Nancy K. Berlage, “Organizing the Farm Bureau: Family, Community, and Professionals, 1914–1928,” Agricultural History 75 (Autumn 2001): 409–10; Louis Bernard Schmidt, “The Role and Techniques of Agrarian Pressure Groups,” Agricultural History 30 (April 1956): 52.

13. V. Allen Olsen, As Farmers Forward Go: A History of the Farm Bureau Federation (Salt Lake City: Utah Farm Bureau Federation, 1975), 8–9; “Head of the State Farm Bureau,” Ogden Daily Standard, December 5, 1916.

14. “Head of the State Farm Bureau,” Ogden Daily Standard, December 5, 1916.

15. It is unclear exactly what Patterson’s status was with the church in the mid-1910s, but he was apparently still a member until 1920 when he was excommunicated. “Mormon Excommunicated,” Christian Statesman 54 (August 1920): 377.

16. C. G. Patterson to Rev. James S. Martin, December 23, 1915, James S. Martin Papers, MSS 567, L. Tom Perry Special Collections and Archives, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter BYU Special Collections); “Protests Against Senator Smoot Have Arrived at Washington,” Sun (Price, UT), December 3, 1915, p. 3. In the 1910s, the National Reform Association, through its periodical the Christian Statesman and the sponsorship of lectures, waged a war against the Latter-day Saints because of plural marriage and what it considered to be the church’s undue influence in politics and business in Utah. See Bradley Kime, “Exhibiting Theology: James E. Talmage and Mormon Public Relations, 1915–20,” Journal of Mormon History 40 (Winter 2014): 212–13; Kenneth L. Cannon II, “‘The Modern Mormon Kingdom’: Frank J. Cannon’s National Campaign against Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37 (Fall 2011): 93–94. For a detailed history of the National Reform Association, see Gaines M. Foster, Moral Reconstruction: Christian Lobbyists and the Federal Legislation of Morality, 1865–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.)

17. James H. Wolfe to Rev. J. S. Martin, December 22, 1915, Martin Papers, BYU Special Collections.

18. Patterson, Business, Politics and Religion in Utah, 13–15.

19. Patterson, 10–11.

20. Richard C. Brown, “The Muckrakers: Honest Craftsmen,” History Teacher 2 (January 1969): 52–53. See also Josephine D. Randolph, “A Notable Pennsylvanian: Ida Minerva Tarbell, 1857–1944,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 66 (Spring 1999): 216; Louis Filler, Muckraking and Progressivism in the American Tradition (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1996), 247.

21. David I. Macleod, “Food Prices, Politics, and Policy in the Progressive Era,” Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 8 (July 2009): 368, 388–89, 392, 399.

22. Anthon H. Lund, Journal, June 19, 1916, in Danish Apostles: The Diaries of Anthon H. Lund, 1890–1921, John P. Hatch, ed. (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006), 612.

23. C. W. Nibley, “Facts are Given about the Sugar Industry,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 25, 1916, p. 32.

24. Nibley.

25. Nibley.

26. Nibley.

27. Charles G. Patterson to Bishop C. W. Nibley, July 5, 1916, box 6, fd. 22, MS 1287, Church History Library, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter CHL).

28. Patterson to Nibley, July 5, 1916; Patterson, Business, Politics and Religion, 21.

29. C. G. Patterson to D. D. McKay, December 5, 1916, in Olsen, As Farmers Forward Go, 9.

30. “Utah Beet Growers to Accept Flat 1917 Rate,” Facts About Sugar 4 (January 13, 1917): n.p.; “Beet Growers to Receive Higher Prices Next Year,” Facts About Sugar 3 (December 23, 1916): 393. Farm Bureau representatives had proposed a “sliding scale rate for beets containing more than 15 per cent sucrose,” but the sugar companies refused to grant it. (“Utah Beet Growers to Accept Flat 1917 Rate,” Facts About Sugar 4 [January 13, 1917]: n.p.) Patterson implied in a 1917 pamphlet that his communications with Nibley were key in getting these increases. (Profit Sharing in the Sugar Business [Salt Lake City: The F. W. Gardiner Co. Press, 1917], 3.)

31. Who Gets the Profits from Sugar Beets?, 6, 17.

32. “Beetgrowers Form Protective Society,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1917, p. 24.

33. “Beet Growers to Fight for Fair Share of Profits,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 16, 1917, second section, p. 1.

34. “200 Organize to Fight for Bigger Share of Profits,” Salt Lake Telegram, August 26, 1917, second section, p. 1.

35. “Beetgrowers Form Protective Society,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1917, p. 24. For a copy of the organization’s bylaws and the text of a speech that Peterson gave at the organizational meeting, see Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, Salvation for the Sugar Beet Grower: The Law Governing Members of the Inter-Mountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers (Salt Lake City: Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, n.d. [1918]), 14–20.

36. “Growers of Sugar Beets Meet Today,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 25, 1917, p. 16.

37. “Utah-Idaho Co. Adopts New Profit Sharing Plan,” Facts About Sugar 5 (August 25, 1917): 147.

38. “U.S. is Asked to Intervene in Sugar Row,” Salt Lake Telegram, September 30, 1917, p. 7; “Government Wants Farmers To Grow More Sugar Beets,” Utah Farmer 4 (November 3, 1917): 10.

39. “Agreement Reached on 1918 Sugar Beet Prices,” Box Elder County Farm Bureau News 1 (November 1, 1917): 1, 3. See also “Sugar Beet Contracts for 1918,” Utah Farmer 4 (October 18, 1917): 2.

40. “Beet Growers Assert They Will Battle Sugar Men to End,” Salt Lake Telegram, December 13, 1917, p. 16.

41. “Beet Growers Appeal from Sugar Prices,” Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1917, p. 1.

42. “Utah Idaho Sugar Will Share Profits with Beet Growers,” Richfield (UT) Reaper, August 25, 1917; “Profits from Sugar Beets as Compared to Wheat,” Utah Farmer 14 (September 22, 1917): 2.

43. “Higher Prices Are Sought for Beets,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 19, 1918, p. 4.

44. Between the Millstones: The Arguments to the Jury in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Beet Case (The People are the Jury) (Salt Lake City: Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, 1918), 123.

45. “What Beet Growers Are Doing,” Utah Farmer 15 (January 11, 1919): 2.

46. David M. Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980), 287–92.

47. Charles W. Nibley to Senator William H. King, December 28, 1917, box 2, fd. 6, MS 1287, CHL.

48. “Another Organizer Makes Appearance Among Dear Farmers,” Richfield Reaper, December 6, 1919, p. 1.

49. Elder Melvin J. Ballard, Sunday, October 5, 1919, in Ninetieth Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1919), 117–18.

50. In the April 1920 general conference, for example, President Heber J. Grant read excerpts of speeches from senators from Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona speaking favorably about the Latter-day Saints. One statement was from Senator Charles Thomas of Colorado. He described in glowing terms a settlement of church members in the San Luis Valley in Colorado because “they obey and support the authorities. Bolshevism, anarchism, and socialism are foreign to the atmosphere of that community. They can not take root in such a soil.” President Heber J. Grant, Sunday, April 4, 1920, in Ninetieth Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1920), 9. For more on church leaders’ opposition to socialism, see John S. McCormick and John R. Sillito, History of Utah Radicalism: Startling, Socialistic, and Decidedly Revolutionary (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2011), 344–45, 348–49, 382–83.

51. For more on the connection between business and American churches in the early twentieth century, see Timothy E. W. Gloege, “Fundamentalism and the Business Turn,” in The Business Turn in American Religious History, edited Amanda Porterfield, Darren E. Grem, and John Corrigan (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 46–58.

52. Profit Sharing in the Sugar Business, 18.

53. See Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, The Insides of the Beet Sugar Manufacturers Union: Take A Look (Salt Lake City: Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, [1918]), 8.

54. Cracking Nuts in Utah: Little Essays on Tender Subjects (Salt Lake City: n.p., 1922), 11.

55. Who Gets the Profits from Sugar Beets?, 22.

56. Charles W. Nibley to William R. Palmer, September 1, 1916, box 2, fd. 5, MS 1287, CHL.

57. For more information on Nibley’s views about business and capitalism, see Matthew C. Godfrey, “The Shadow of Mormon Cooperation: The Business Policies of Charles Nibley, Western Sugar Magnate in the Early 1900s,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 94 (Summer 2003): 130–39.

58. “Nine Dollars a Ton For Sugar Beets This Year,” Utah Farmer 14 (January 26, 1918): 1; “Beet Men Asking for Higher Price,” Ogden Daily Standard, January 17, 1918, p. 2; “Higher Prices Are Sought for Beets,” Salt Lake Tribune, January 19, 1918, p. 4.

59. “Sugar Beet Price for 1918,” Utah Farmer 14 (January 26, 1918): 6.

60. “Beet Growers Will Not Fight for $10 for 1918 Beets,” Box Elder News, January 29, 1918, p. 3.

61. “Says Published Statements Untrue,” Logan (UT) Republican, February 16, 1918, p. 5.

62. Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers, Salvation for the Sugar Beet Grower, 16–20; “Beetgrowers Form Protective Society,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 26, 1917, p. 24.

63. “Sugar Output of Utah and Idaho,” Utah Farmer 14 (February 2, 1918): 14.

64. Samuel R. Berger, Dollar Harvest: The Story of the Farm Bureau (Lexington, MA: Heath Lexington Books, 1971), 93; Godfrey, Religion, Politics, and Sugar, 110.

65. Robert P. Howard, James P. Howard and the Farm Bureau (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1983), 76–77.

66. Between the Millstones, 30–34, 52–53.

67. “Grower Points Out Beet Industry Problems,” Salt Lake Telegram, March 4, 1919, p. 10. Note that Patterson is misidentified as “A. G. Patterson.”

68. “Farmers May Own Sugar Factories,” Idaho Republican, November 26, 1918, p. 4.

69. Intermountain Association of Sugar Beet Growers By C. G. Patterson, Secretary, to Hon. John L. Burnett, Chairman, Committee on Immigration, House of Representatives, January 29, 1919, Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Series A: Subject correspondence files, pt. 2, Mexican Immigration, 1906–1930, reel 8, Research Collections in American Immigration (Bethesda, MD: University Publications of America, 1992), emphasis in the original.

70. An investigation into the condition of Mexican workers in Idaho, for example, revealed that nearly two hundred were employed by farmers in southern Idaho. William J. A. McVety to His Excellency, Moses Alexander, October 24, 1918, box 16, fd. 2, Moses Alexander Papers, AR 2.0011, Idaho State Archives, Boise, Idaho.

71. Lori A. Flores, Grounds for Dreaming: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the California Farmworker Movement (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2016), 20.

72. “Farmers Meet in Salt Lake Today,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 3, 1919, p. 24.

73. “Gore Says League Will Be Accepted,” Salt Lake Tribune, June 5, 1919, p. 22.

74. “Support the Farm Bureaus,” Utah Farmer 16 (August 2, 1919): 1.

75. Ninety-First Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: The Deseret Book Company, 1921), 147–55.

76. “Beetgrowers Urged to Fight U.S. Department,” Salt Lake Herald-Republican, February 21, 1918, p. 2.

77. “Another Organizer Makes Appearance Among Dear Farmers,” Richfield Reaper, December 6, 1919, p. 1.

78. “Mormon Excommunicated,” Christian Statesman 54 (August 1920): 377.

79. “Plan of Pioneer Sugar Company Explained,” Journal (Logan, UT), March 1, 1921, p. 4; “Farmers Cooperative Project Started,” Fort Collins Courier, August 12, 1920, p. 2; Charles L. Schmalz, “Sugar Beets in Cache Valley: An Amalgamation of Agriculture and Industry,” Utah Historical Quarterly 57 (Fall 1989): 379.

80. “Farmer-Labor Ticket Chosen,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 16, 1920, p. 14; “Beet Growers Delegation Stirs Up Discussion on Sugar Profiteering,” Fort Collins Coloradoan, February 21, 1920, p. 1; “Telegram to Beet Growers,” Idaho Republican, March 5, 1920, p. 1; John Sillito, “Socialist Party of Utah,” https://www.uen.org/utah _history_encyclopedia/s/SOCIALIST_PARTY.shtml.

81. “Sugar Factory Representatives and Beet Growers Effect Compromise,” Idaho Republican, March 15, 1920, pp. 1, 8; Cracking Nuts in Utah: Little Essays on Tender Subjects (Salt Lake City: n.p., 1922).

82. Godfrey, Religion, Politics, and Sugar, 198–99; Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West, 105–7, 201.

83. One should not confuse the Intermountain Farmers Association that exists today with the organization Patterson headed. The organization that is still in operation was formed in 1923 as the Utah Poultry Producers Association. The name was changed to the Intermountain Farmers Association in 1960. Paige Wiren, “Utah’s Intermountain Farmers Association,” https://utahstories.com/ 2016/11/utahs-intermountain-farmers-association/.

84. “Former Resident Dies on Coast,” Pleasant Grove (UT) Review, April 13, 1934, p. 5; “New Attorneys in State,” Statesman Journal (Salem, OR), June 11, 1924, p. 5.

85. “State Grange Officers Due Here Tuesday,” Evening Herald (Klamath Falls, OR), September 25, 1937, p. 3; “State Grange Conference,” Medford Mail Tribune, December 10, 1936, p. 5; “County Granges Set State Record,” Eugene Guard (Eugene, OR), October 11, 1935, p. 1.

86. “Former Resident Dies on Coast,” Pleasant Grove Review, April 13, 1934, p. 5; “Oregon Death Index, 1903–1998,” database, FamilySearch, http://FamilySearch.org.