He receives between two and three million dollars a year in t.i.thes, gives no accounting of them, and has no responsibility for them, except to G.o.d and his own conscience. He is able to use this sum, in bulk, at any given point, with a weight of financial pressure that would overbalance any other such single power in the community. As "trustee in trust" for the Church, he has the added income from stocks and previous investments; and he has practical control of the wealth of all the leading men of the Church to a.s.sist him, if he should call upon them for a.s.sistance. He uses his financial dictatorship to support monopoly against the a.s.sault of Gentile opposition, and he compels the Gentile to pay tribute as the Mormon does.
He backs his financial power with his control of legislation. He can not only prevent the pa.s.sage of any laws against his favored monopolies, but (as in the case of the smelters) he can reduce independents to submission by threatening them with procured laws to penalize them. He largely controls the "labor troubles" of the State by controlling the obedience of the Mormon laboring men. He can influence judges, officers of the law and all the agents of local government by his power as political "Boss," and the same influence extends, through his representatives at Washington, to the local activities of Federal authority. He can check and govern public opinion among his subjects by announcing "the will of G.o.d" to them through the officers of the Church in every department of religious administration. He is, therefore, at once the modern "money king," the absolute political Czar the social despot and the infallible Pope of his "Kingdom!"
Just as men fight for the retention of a throne and the maintenance of a dynasty, so he and his courtiers defend his rule and maintain his autocracy with every weapon of absolutism. And just as royalty, while possessed of unlimited wealth, has never lacked mercenaries, press bureaus, and all the sycophantic defenders of a crown, so Smith is able to command an array of service as great as any ever brought to the defense of a social system. This singular and enormous power stands solidly against any movement of domestic reform; and, by its alliance with the national rulers in finance and politics, it is saved from the danger of "foreign" intervention. Like every other such absolutism, it is crushing out the life of its subjects; for, in spite of the industry, the thrift, and the abstemiousness of the Mormon people, they are sinking under the burden of imposed exaction"s. Although Utah became a territory in 1853, and had its well-settled towns at that time, and was organized in a compact social body for the upbuilding of its material prosperity before any of the surrounding states had received an organic act as a territory, Utah has now lost its leadership, and the individual initiative and enterprise of the typical Western community have been relatively lost.
In this process of degeneration, one of the most promising modern experiments in communism has been frustrated and brought to ruin. In the early nineties, Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York City, viewed the Mormon system with an interested admiration. He saw that by contribution, and co-operation, and arbitration, the energies of the people were conserved and the products of their prosperity more equally distributed than under the conditions of economic war then prevalent elsewhere. He thought he saw in Utah a possible solution of some of the social problems of our civilization. But, a few years ago, he confessed that the Mormon system was no longer worthy of study. It had been destroyed by the greed of its rulers. Community contributions were being used for individual commercialism and the aggrandizement of leaders. The aged and infirm poor, who had contributed through all the working period of their lives, were being thrust into poor houses. The ambition of the earlier Prophets, to make the people great in their community prosperity and happiness, has been lost in the new desire of the head of the Church to exhibit that greatness only in his own person. The Mormon people had become the working slaves of a financial and political and religious autocracy, and Mormonism was no longer anything but a hopeless failure as a social experiment.
It is difficult to say how much of this failure was due to the character of the present Prophet, and how much to the national conditions that are threatening the success of democracy in every state of the Union.
It would seem that the conditions were ideal for the production of just such a man as Smith, and that Smith was by nature fitted for the greatest growth under just such conditions. He came to power with none of the feeling of responsibility to his people which the earlier leaders showed. He considered that the people lived for him, not that he lived for the people. He regarded the Mormon system as an establishment of his family, to which he had the family right of inheritance; and he waited with a sulky impatience for the deaths of the men who stood between him and the control of his family"s Church. It was as if he accepted his predecessors as exercising their powers, during an inter-regnum, by the consent of the Mormon people, but saw himself acceding to the throne by family right and the order of divinity.
He had no financial ability; he had no considerable property when he became president of the Church at sixty-three. Nor did he need any such ability. The continuous inflow of money--to be used without accountability to anyone--and the wealth of opportunity offered by the men who wished his aid in exploiting his people, made it unnecessary that he should have any creative financial vision. He needed only to move, with his opportunity, along the line of least resistance which was also, with him, the line of choice.
He had, through all his years, shown an obvious envy of any member of the Church whose circ.u.mstances were better than his own. It was apparent in his manner that he regarded such success in the community as an encroachment upon the Smith prerogatives. As soon as he came to power, he accepted every opportunity of self-aggrandizement as a new Smith prerogative. And the system of modern capitalism appealed at once to his ambition. By the older method of t.i.thes and conscription"s, he could collect only from the devotees of the Church; by the larger exploitation he could levy tribute upon the Gentiles too.
And he was aided by the Mormons themselves. They had been brought together, in obedience to "a command of G.o.d," in order that the community, by avoiding the sins of the world, might be saved from the plagues that were to descend upon the world because of its injustice.
They were a credulous people, ignorant of the sins of modern finance, and prepared by industry and isolation to be exploited. Their previous leaders had observed, as a warning only, the modern aspiration for vast wealth obtained by economic injustice; but that aspiration made an instant appeal to Smith"s ambition; and it is the peculiar iniquity of conditions in Utah today that his ambition has betrayed his people to the very evils which they were originally organized to escape.
In an earlier time it was the pride of the leader that the community in the large was advancing and the average of conditions improving. Today the leader a.s.sumes that as he grows richer the people are prospering and "the revelations of G.o.d" being vindicated in practice. He speaks with pride of "our" growth and wealth under "the benign authority of the Almighty" and His "temporal revelations"--because he himself has been enriched by the perversion of these same laws--very much as the "captain of industry" elsewhere boasts of the "prosperity" of the country, because the few are growing so rich at the expense of the many.
Along with this strain of commercial greed in Smith, there is an equally strong strain of religious fanaticism that justifies the greed and sanctifies it, to itself. He believes (as Apostle Orson Pratt taught, by authority of the Church): "The Kingdom of G.o.d is an order of government established by divine authority. It is the only legal government that can exist in any part of the universe. All other governments are illegal and unauthorized.... Any people attempting to govern themselves by laws of their own making, and by officers of their own appointment, are in direct rebellion against the Kingdom of G.o.d." Smith believes that over this Kingdom the Smiths have been, by Divine revelation, ordained to rule. He believes that his authority is the absolute and unquestionable authority of G.o.d Himself. He believes that in all the affairs of life he has the same right over his subjects that the Creator has over His creatures. He believes that he has been appointed to use the Mormon people as he in his inspired wisdom sees fit to use them, in order the more firmly to establish G.o.d"s Kingdom on Earth against the Powers of Evil.
He believes that the people of the American Republic, "being governed by laws of their own making and by officers of their own appointment," are in direct rebellion against "his Kingdom of G.o.d." He believes that the national government is destined to be broken in pieces by his power; that it has only been preserved from destruction by the concessions recently made by the Federal authorities; and that it can only continue to save itself so long as it shall recognize Smith"s amba.s.sadors at Washington--and so allow him to work out its destruction in the fullness of time.
But with all this insanity of pretension he has a sort of cowardly shrewdness, acquired in his days of hiding "on the underground." On the witness stand in Washington he denied that he had had any direct communication with G.o.d by revelation; and then he returned to Utah and pleaded from the pulpit that on this point he had lied in Washington in order to escape saying what his "inquisitors" had wished him to say in order to "get him into a trap." He preaches in Utah that to deny the doctrine of polygamy is to reject the teaching of Jesus Christ; before the Senate committee he was coward enough to put the blame of his polygamous cohabitation upon his five wives. In Washington he claimed that the Gentiles of Utah condoned polygamous cohabitation and had a liberal sympathy for the Church; but at St. George, Utah, for example (in September, 1904), he was reported by a Church newspaper as saying: "The Gentiles are coming among us to buy our homes and land. We should not sell to them, as they are the enemies of the Kingdom of G.o.d." He is that most perfect of all hypocrites--the fanatic who believes that he is lying in the service of the Almighty.
In the early spring of 1888, I was in Washington, where measures of proscription were then being prepared against our people; and, early in the morning, as I walked up Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue, I saw Joseph F. Smith approaching me. For several years he had been "on the underground" under the name of "Joseph Mack"--now in the Hawaiian Islands with one wife; now hidden, with another, among the faithful in some Mormon village; or again with a third, in Washington (which was probably as safe a place as any) presiding secretly over the Church lobby. As he pa.s.sed me, with his head down, preoccupied, I said: "Good morning, President Smith."
He jumped as if I had been a Deputy Marshal with such a sudden start of fear that his silk hat rolled on the pavement and his umbrella dropped from his hand. He drew back from me as if he were about to take to his heels. Then he recognized me, of course, and was quickly rea.s.sured; but his embarra.s.sment continued for some time, awkwardly.
But a short time ago the President of the United States stood in the Salt Lake Tabernacle (which is "Joseph Mack"s" capitol and vatican) and addressed a mult.i.tude that had a.s.sembled not more to honor the Chief Executive of the nation than to pay their almost idolatrous tribute of devotion to the head of their Church, who was reigning there in the pulpit with President Taft. "Joseph Mack" no longer fears Deputy Marshals--he appoints them; and the present United States Marshal of Utah would refuse to serve a paper under the direction of the entire power of the United States government if "Joseph Mack" forbade the service. He no longer fears the proscriptions of legislators at Washington; they come to him, through the leaders of their parties, and arrange with him for the support of the trans-Mississippi states in which the influence of his Church control is determinative. He no longer hides his wives, at the ends of the earth, and visits them by stealth; they occupy a row of houses along one of the princ.i.p.al streets of Salt Lake City, and the pilgrim and the tourist alike admire his magnificence as they go by. He is still a law-breaker. He stands even more in defiance of the authority of the nation than he did in 1888, and he hates that authority as much as ever. But he is today not only the Prophet of the Church; he is the Prophet of Mammon; and all the powers and princ.i.p.alities of Mammon now give him gloriously: "All Hail!"
Chapter XIX. The Subjects of the Kingdom
But what of the Mormon people? How can such leaders, directing the Church to purposes that have become so cruel, so selfish, so dangerous and so disloyal--how can they maintain their power over followers who are themselves neither criminal nor degraded? That is a question which has given the pause of doubt to many criticisms of the Mormon communism of our day. That is the consideration which has obtained from the nation the protection of tolerance under which the Prophets flourish. For not only are the Mormon men and women obviously as worthy as any in the United States: there is plainly much of community value in their social life; there is manifestly a great deal of efficiency for human good in their system and in the leadership by which it is directed; and this good is so apparent that it appeals easily to the sympathetic conscience and uninformed mind of the country at large.
Let me try, then, to exhibit and to a.n.a.lyze the causes that keep such a virtuous and st.u.r.dy people loyally supporting the leadership of men so unworthy of them that if the people were as bad as the ends to which they are being now directed, modern Mormonism would be destroyed by its own evils.
In the first place, the average Mormon chief is sincere in his pretensions and self-justified in his aims. Usually, he has been born, in the Church, to a family that sees itself set apart, in holiness, from the rest of humanity, as the direct heirs of the ancient prophets or even as the lineal descendants of Christ. From his earliest age of understanding, he is taught the divine splendor of his birth and impressed with the high duties of his family privilege in being permitted to bear a part in preparing the earth for the second coming of the Savior. He is taught that, though all the world may be saved and nearly all the people of this sphere will in some eternity work out a measure of salvation, he and 143,999 others are to be a band of the elect who shall stand about the Savior, on Mount Zion, in the final day.
He is taught that, next to Christ, Joseph Smith, the founder of the faith, has performed the largest mission for the salvation of the world; that in the councils of the G.o.ds, when the Creator measured off the ages of the human race on this earth, to the Savior was apportioned "the meridian of time," and to Joseph Smith, the Prophet, was given the "last dispensation," which is "the fullness of times," in order that the world, having apostatized from the atonement and the redemption, might be saved to heaven by Joseph, "the Choice Seer."
He is taught that the disciples of the Mormon Prophet are literally the disciples of Jesus Christ; that the laws of right and wrong are within the direction and subject to the authority of the Prophet, to be changed, enlarged or even revoked by his commandment; that all human laws are equally subject to his will, to be made or unmade at his order; that he can condemn, by his excommunication, any man or any nation to the vengeance of the Almighty here and hereafter; and that he can p.r.o.nounce a blessing upon the head of any man, or the career of any people, by virtue of which blessing power shall be held in this world righteously and the man elevated to sit at the right hand of G.o.d in the world to come. He is taught that the greatest sin which can be committed--next to the denial of Christ--is to raise hand or voice against "the Lord"s anointed," the Mormon prophets. And, for morality, he is taught from his infancy, that he must scrupulously practice those special virtues of his cult, industry, thrift, purity (except as in later life he shall be inducted into the practice of the new polygamy) honesty in business, and charity toward his needy fellow-men.
Formed in character by this teaching, as a steady inculcation throughout his youth, he comes to manhood strong of body, determined of mind, practicing rigidly and intolerantly his petty virtues of abstinence from the use of tobacco, tea and coffee, proclaiming with fanatical zeal the gospel as it has been proclaimed to him, and self-justified in all that he says or does by the large measure of sincerity in his delusions.
And that is, in some degree, the common training of all Mormons. Every Mormon boy attends Sunday School as soon as he is old enough to lisp his song of adoration to Joseph, the Kingly Prophet, and to the Savior with whom Joseph is early a.s.sociated in his childish mind. At six years of age, he enters the Primary a.s.sociation; at twelve he is in the Young Men"s Mutual Improvement a.s.sociation; at fourteen or even earlier, he stands in the fast-day meeting and repeats like a creed: "Brethren and Sisters, I feel called upon to say a few words. I am not able to edify you, but I can say that I know this is the Church and Kingdom of G.o.d, and I bear my testimony that Joseph Smith was a Prophet and that Brigham Young was his lawful successor, and that the Prophet Joseph F. Smith is heir to all the authority which the Lord has conferred in these days for the salvation of men. And I feel that if I live my religion and do nothing to offend the Holy Spirit I will be saved in the presence of my Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. With these few words I will give way.
Praying the Lord to bless each and every one of us is my prayer in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen."
At fourteen he becomes a Deacon of the Church. Between that age and twenty, he becomes an Elder. Very soon thereafter he becomes "a Seventy"
and perhaps a high priest. He takes upon himself "covenants in holy places." He becomes "a priest unto the Most High G.o.d"--frequently before his eighteenth year. Usually before he is twenty he is sent on a mission to proclaim his gospel--the only one he has ever heard in his life--to "an unenlightened nation" and "a wicked world." For, in addition to being taught that the Mormons are the best, most virtuous, most temperate, most industrious, and most G.o.d-fearing of all peoples--a thing that is dinned into his ears from the pulpit every Sunday in the year--he has been convinced by equal iteration that the rest of the world is a festering ma.s.s of corruption.
Often he goes abroad, to some country whose language and customs he must learn and upon the charity of whose toilers he must depend for his maintenance. He goes with an implicit reliance upon G.o.d, strong in the small virtues that have been taught him from the time he knelt at his mother"s knee. He sees, probably for the first time, the afflictions and the sins among mankind; and he keeps himself unspotted from them, congratulating himself that these grossnesses are unknown to his sheltered home-life and to the religion which he holds as the ideal of his soul. He proclaims his belief that G.o.d has spoken from the Heavens, through the Mormon Prophet, in this last day, to restore the gospel of Christ from which the peoples of the earth have wandered. He "bears testimony" to the whole world, and he binds himself to the authority of his Church by proclaiming his belief in it.
When he returns home, after years of service, he is called to the stand in the tabernacle to give a report of his work. He finds waiting for him a ready advancement in the offices of the Church, according as he may show himself worthy of advancement or as the power of family or the favor of ecclesiastical authority may obtain it for him. He marries a girl who has had a training almost identical with his own. She, too, has borne her testimony before she reached years of responsibility. She has taken her vows as a priestess at the age when he was dedicating himself a priest. She may even have performed a foreign mission. They have both been promised that they shall become kings and queens in the eternal world. They are bound by their covenants to obey their superior priests.
They cannot disregard their Church affiliations without recanting their vows. The only way they can adhere to their covenants with their Almighty Father--the only way they can demonstrate their acceptance of the atoning power of the Redeemer"s sacrifice--is by yielding such obedience to the Prophet as they would pay to the Father and the Son if They were on earth in Their proper persons. To deviate from this faithfulness is to be marked as a Judas Iscariot by all the Latter-Day Saints.
As soon as the Mormon becomes the head of a family--in addition to all the testimonies and performances which he must give as proof of his continued adherence--he must submit himself and his household to the examination and espionage of the ward teachers, who invade his home at least once a month. They enter absolutely as the proprietors of the house. If the husband is there, they ask him whether he performs his duties in the Church; whether he holds family prayer morning and evening; whether he "keeps the word of wisdom"--that is, does he abstain from the use of alcohol, tobacco, tea and coffee--whether he pays a full t.i.the and all the prescribed donations to the Church; whether he has any hard feelings against any of his brethren and sisters; and finally, does he devoutly sustain the Prophet as the ruler of G.o.d"s Kingdom upon earth. These questions, so far as they apply, are put to each member of the family above the age of eight years. Should the husband be away, all the inquiries concerning him are made of the wife. If both parents are absent, the questions concerning them are put to their children!
This one branch of the ecclesiastical service is sufficient of itself to mark the Mormon Church as the most perfectly disciplined inst.i.tution among mankind. The teachers" quorum in any neighborhood consists of some tried elders, usually of considerable ability and experience. With these are a.s.sociated numerous young men, many of them returned missionaries.
The fact that they have countless other duties in the Church and many other and weightier responsibilities, is not permitted to excuse them from performing strictly this important labor. Perhaps a dozen or twenty families are a.s.signed to a couple of teachers. They are required to visit each of these families once every month. And if they discover any lapse of fidelity, they report at once to the Bishop.
No one who has not seen them on their rounds will believe with what an air of divinely privileged authority they enter a home and force its secrets of conscience--with what an imposing and arrogant zeal--with what a calm a.s.sumption of spiritual over-lordship and inquisitorial right. Some few years ago after my public criticisms of Joseph F. Smith had been followed by my excommunication, two teachers, on their monthly rounds, came to my home in the evening and made their way calmly to the library where I was sitting with some members of my family. I had just returned from a long absence abroad, and the visit was an untimely intrusion at its best; but we observed the obligations of hospitality with what courtesy we could, and merely evaded the familiar questions which they began to put to us. Finally, the elder of the two teachers, a man of some local prominence in the Church, undertook to "bear testimony" to the wickedness of anyone who opposed the divine rule of Joseph F. Smith; and when I cut him short with a request that he leave the house, he was as shocked and surprised as if he had been Milton"s Archangel Michael, after "the fall," and I, a defiant Adam, showing him the door.
In addition to the visitations of the ward teachers, some members of the Ladies Relief Society call upon every family usually once a month, not only to gather donations for the poor, but to have a little quiet talk with the wife and mother of the household. These women of the Relief Society are genuine "Sisters of Charity." In most cases they have themselves plenty of household cares, yet they give much of their time to visiting the sick, supplying the wants of the needy or ministering to the miseries of the afflicted; and if it were not for them and their n.o.blework, the Mormon poor would fare ill in these days of Mormon Church grandeur. Outside of their monthly visitations, they have definite preaching to do. At the meetings of their organization, they "bear testimony" that Joseph was a Prophet--and so on. They have the quarterly stake conferences to attend. Their traveling missionaries go from Salt Lake to the four quarters of the globe to inst.i.tute and maintain the discipline of the organization and to teach the methods of its practical work in Nursing Schools, mother"s cla.s.ses and the like. They make up one of the n.o.blest bodies of women a.s.sociated with any social movement of humanity. And in their zeal and submissiveness they are so innocently meek and "biddable" that they can listen with reverence to young Hyrum Smith publicly lecturing the grandmothers of the order for occasionally partaking of a cup of thin tea.
Under such a system of teaching, discipline and espionage, how can the average Mormon man or woman develop any independence of thought or action? At what time of life can he a.s.sert himself? Before he has attained the age of reason he has declared his faith in public. If he shall then, in his teens, express any doubt, the priests are ready for him. "You have borne your testimony many times in the Church," they say sternly. "Were you lying then, or have you lost the Spirit of G.o.d through your transgressions?" If he reveals any doubt to the ward teachers, they will overwhelm him with argument, and either absolutely reconvert him or silence him with authority. The pressure of family love and pride will be brought to bear upon him. The ecclesiastical authorities will move against him. He knows that every one of his relatives will be humiliated by his unfaithfulness. His "sin" will become known to the whole community, and he will be looked at askance by his friends and his companions.
After he has taken his vows as a priest, how shall he dare to violate them? He knows that if he loses his faith on a mission--in other words, if he dares to make any inquiry into the authenticity of the mission which he is performing--he becomes a deserter from G.o.d in the very ranks of battle. He knows that he will be held forever in dishonor among his people; that he will be looked upon as one worse than dead; that he will ruin his own life and despoil his parents of all their eternal comfort and their hope in him.
While I was editing the Salt Lake Tribune, a son of one of the famous apostles came to me with some anxious inquiries, and said: "Frank, I have been working in the Church and teaching this gospel so a.s.siduously for nearly forty years that I have never had time to find out whether it"s true or not!"
If the Mormon, in his later years of manhood, dares to doubt, he must either reveal his disloyalty to the ward teachers or continue to deny it, from month to month, and remain a supine servant of authority. If he reveals it, he knows that the news of his defection will permeate the entire circle with which he is a.s.sociated in politics, in business and in religion. If his superst.i.tion does not hold him, his worldly prudence will. He knows that all the aid of the community will be withdrawn from him; every voice that has expressed affection for him will speak in hate; every hand that has clasped his in friendship will be turned against him. And into this very prudence there enters something of a moral warning. For he has seen how many a man, deprived of the a.s.sociation and fraternity of the Church, feeling himself shunned in a lonely ostracism, has not been strong enough to endure in rect.i.tude and has fallen into dissipation. Every instance of the sort is rehea.r.s.ed by the faithful, with many exultant expressions of mourning, in the hearing of the doubter. And finally, it is the prediction of the priests that no apostate can prosper; and though the Mormon people are charitable and do not intend to be unjust, they inevitably tend to fulfill the prophecy and devote the apostate to material destruction.
The great doctrine of the Mormon faith is obedience; the one proof of grace is conformity. So long as a man pays a full t.i.the, contributes all the required donations, and yields unquestioningly to the orders of the priests, he may even depart in a moral sense from any other of the Church"s laws and find himself excused. But any questioning of the rulership of the Prophets--the rightfulness of their authority or the justice of its exercise is apostasy, is a denial of the faith, is a sin against the Holy Ghost. The man who obeys in all things is promised that he shall come forth in the morning of the first resurrection; the man who disobeys, and by his disobedience apostatizes, is condemned to work out, through an eternity of suffering, his offense against the Holy Spirit. At the first sign of defection--almost inevitably discovered in its incipiency--the rebel is either disciplined into submission or at once pushed over "the battlements of Heaven!"
By such perfect means, the leaders, chosen under a pretense of revelation from G.o.d, maintain an una.s.sailable sanct.i.ty in the eyes of the people, who are themselves priests. These people implicitly believe that the voice of the leader is the voice of G.o.d. They follow with a pa.s.sionate devotion that is made up of a fanatical priestly faith and of a sympathy that sees their Prophets "persecuted" by an ungenerous, impure and vindictive world. We love that for which we suffer; and it has become the inheritance of the Mormons to love the priesthood, for whose protection their parents and grandparents suffered, and under whose oppressions they now suffer themselves.
Joseph Smith, the original Prophet, was slain in the Carthage jail; to the Mormon mind this is proof that he was the anointed of G.o.d and that he sealed his testimony with his blood, as did the Savior. John Taylor, afterwards President of the Church, was not slain at Carthage, but only wounded; and this to the Mormons is proof that he was of the eternal kindred of the Prophets, because, under G.o.d"s direction, he gave his blood to their defense. But Willard Richards, a companion of Smith and Taylor, was not even injured at Carthage; and this is accepted as proof that G.o.d had charge of his holy ones, and would not permit wicked men to do them harm. When the people left Nauvoo and journeyed through Iowa, some of the citizens of that state would not harbor them; and this is argued as evidence that the Mormon movement was G.o.d"s work, since the hand of the wicked was against it; but in some localities of Iowa the emigrants were aided, and this also is proof that the Mormon movement was G.o.d"s work, since the hearts of the people were melted to a.s.sist it. When Johnston"s army was sent to Utah, it was proof that the Mormon Church was the true Church, hated and persecuted by a wicked nation; when Johnston"s army withdrew without a battle, it was a new guarantee of the divinity of the work; and it is even believed among the Mormons that the Civil War was ordained from the heavens, at the sudden command of G.o.d, to compel Johnston"s withdrawal and save G.o.d"s people.
In the same way the persecutions of "the raid," and the cessation of those persecutions--the early trials of poverty and the present abundance of prosperity--the threat of the Smoot investigation and the abortive conclusion of that exposure--are all argued as proofs of the divinity of a persecuted Church or given as instances of the miraculous "overruling" of G.o.d to prosper his chosen people. No matter what occurs, the Prophets, by applying either one of these formulae, can translate the incident into a new proof of grace; and their followers submissively accept the interpretation.
On the night of April 18, 1905, Joseph F. Smith and some eight of his sons sat in his official box at the Salt Lake theatre to watch a prize fight that lasted for twenty gory rounds. The Salt Lake Tribune published the fact that the Prophet of G.o.d, and vicegerent of Christ, had given the approval of his "holy presence" to this clumsy barbarity.
A devout old lady, who had been with the Church since the days of Nauvoo, rebuked us bitterly for publishing such a falsehood about President Smith. "How dare you tell such wicked lies about G.o.d"s servants?" she scolded. "President Smith wouldn"t do such a wicked thing as attend a prize fight. And you know that no man with any sense of decency would take his young sons to look at such a dreadful thing!"
Some time later, when the facts in the case had come to her, in her retirement, from her friends, the editor called upon her to quiz her about the incident. She said: "I"m sure I don"t see what business it is of the outside world anyhow what President Smith does. He has a right to go to the theatre if he wants to. I don"t believe they would have anything but what"s good in the Salt Lake theatre. It was built by our people and they own it. And if it wasn"t good, President Smith wouldn"t have taken his boys there."
And this was not merely the absurdity of an old woman. It is the logic of all the faithful. The leaders cannot do wrong--because it is not wrong, if they do it. No criticism of them can be effective. No act of theirs can be proven an error. If they do not do a thing, it was right not to do it; and it would have been a sin if it had been done. But if they do that thing, then it was right to do it; and it would have been a sin if it had not been done.
This reliance upon the almighty power and prophetic infallibility of the leaders prevents the Mormon people from truly appreciating the dangers that threaten them. It keeps them ignorant of outside sentiment. It makes them despise even a national hostility. And it has left them without grat.i.tude, too, for a national grace. Before these people can be roused to any independence of responsible thought, it will be necessary to break their trust in the ability of their leaders to make bargains of protection with the world; and then it will still be necessary to force the eyes of their self-complacency to turn from the satisfied contemplation of their own virtues. "You will never be able to reach the conscience of the Mormons," a man who knows them has declared. "I have had my experiences with both leaders and people. If you tell them "You"re ninety-nine-and-one-half per cent. pure gold," they will ask, surprised and indignant: "What? Why, what"s the matter with the other half per cent?""
Chapter XX
Conclusion