Just before the subpoenas were issued in the Smoot investigation, I met John R. Winder (then First Councillor to President Smith) on the street in Salt Lake City, and he expressed the hope that when I went "to Washington on the Smoot case," I would not "betray" my "brethren." I assured him that I was not going to Washington as a witness in the Smoot case; that the men whom he should warn, were at Church headquarters. He replied, with indignant alarm, "I don't see what 'the brethren' have to do with this!"
But when the subpoenas arrived for Smith and the hierarchy, alarm and indignation assumed a new complexion. The authorities, for themselves, and through the mouths of such men as Brigham H. Roberts, began to boast of how they were about to "carry the gospel to the benighted nation" and preach it from the witness stand in Washington. The Mormon communities resounded with fervent praises to God that He had, through His servant, Apostle Smoot, given the opportunity to His living oracles to speak to an unrighteous people! And when the Senators decided that they would not summon polygamous wives and their children en bloc to Washington to testify (because it was not desired to "make war on women and children") some of Joseph F. Smith's several wives even complained feelingly that they "were not allowed to testify for Papa."
The first oracular disclosure made by the Prophets, on the witness stand, came as a shock even to Utah. They testified that they had resumed polygamous cohabitation to an extent unsuspected by either Gentiles or Mormons. President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he had had eleven children borne to him by his five wives, since pledging himself to obey the "revealed" manifesto of 1890 forbidding polygamous relations. Apostle Francis Marion Lyman, who was next in succession to the Presidency, made a similar admission of guilt, though in a lesser degree. So did John Henry Smith and Charles W. Penrose, apostles. So did Brigham H. Roberts and George Reynolds, Presidents of Seventies. So did a score of others among the lesser authorities. And they confessed that they were living in polygamy in violation of their pledges to the nation and the terms of their amnesty, against the laws and the constitution of the state, and contrary to the "revelation of God" by which the doctrine of polygamy had been withdrawn from practice in the Church!
President Joseph F. Smith admitted that he was violating the law of the State. He was asked: "Is there not a revelation that you shall abide by the law of the State and of the land?" He answered, "Yes, sir." He was asked: "And if that is a revelation, are you not violating the laws of God?" He answered: "I have admitted that, Mr. Senator, a great many times here."
Apostle Francis Marion Lyman was asked: "You say that you, an apostle of your Church, expecting to succeed (if you survive Mr. Smith) to the office in which you will be the person to be the medium of Divine revelations, are living, and are known to your people to live, in disobedience of the law of the land and the law of God?" Apostle Lyman answered: "Yes, sir." The others pleaded guilty to the same charge.
But this was not the worst. There had been new polygamous marriages. Bishop Chas. E. Merrill, the son of an apostle, testified that his father had married him to a plural wife in 1891, and that he had been living with both wives ever since. A Mrs. Clara Kennedy testified that she had been married to a polygamist in 1896, in Juarez, Mexico, by Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., in the home of the president of the stake. There was testimony to show that Apostle George Teasdale had taken a plural wife six years after the "manifesto" forbidding polygamy, and that Benjamin Cluff, Jr., president of the Church university, had taken a plural wife in 1899. Some ten other less notorious cases were exposed—including those of M. W. Merrill, an apostle, and J. M. Tanner, superintendent of Church schools. It was testified that Apostle John W. Taylor had taken two plural wives within four years, and that Apostle M. F. Cowley had taken one; and both these men had fled from the country in order to escape a summons to appear before the Senate committee.
President Joseph F. Smith, in his attempts to justify his own polygamy, gave some very involved and contradictory testimony. He said that he adhered to both the divine revelation commanding polygamy and the divine revelation "suspending" the command. He said he believed that the principle of plural marriage was still as "correct a principle" as when first revealed, but that the "law commanding it" had been suspended by President Woodruff's manifesto. He said that he accepted President Woodruff's manifesto as a revelation from God, but he objected to having it called "a law of the Church;" he insisted that it was only "a rule of the Church." He admitted that the manifesto forbidding polygamy had never been printed among the other revelations in the Church's book of "Doctrine and Covenants," in which the original revelation commanding polygamy was still printed without note or qualification of any kind. He admitted that this anti-polygamy manifesto was not printed in any of the other doctrinal works which the Mormon missionaries took with them when they were sent out to preach the Mormon faith. He claimed that the manifesto was circulated in pamphlet form, but he subsequently admitted that the pamphlet did not "state in terms" that the manifesto was a "revelation." He finally pleaded that the manifesto had been omitted from the book of "Doctrine and Covenants" by an "oversight," and he promised to have it included in the next edition!
[FOOTNOTE: He did not keep his promise. The manifesto was not added to the book of revelations until some time later, after considerable protest in Utah.]
In short, it was shown, by the testimony given and the evidence introduced, not only that the Church authorities persisted in living in polygamy, not only that polygamous marriages were being contracted, but that the Church still adhered to the doctrine of polygamy and taught it as a law of God.
President Joseph F. Smith denied the right of Congress to regulate his "private conduct" as a polygamist. "It is the law of my state to which I am amenable," he said, "and if the officers of the law have not done their duty toward me I can not blame them. I think they have some respect for me."
A mass of testimony showed why the officers of the law did not do their duty. During the anti-polygamy agitation of 1899 (which ended in the refusal of Congress to seat Brigham H. Roberts) a number of prosecutions of polygamists had been attempted. In many instances the county attorney had refused to prosecute even upon sworn information. Wherever prosecutions were had, the fines imposed were nominal; these were in some cases never paid, and in other cases paid by popular subscription. It was testified that in Box Elder County subscription lists had been circulated to collect money for the fines, but that the fines were never paid, though the subscriptions had been collected. All the prosecutions had been dropped, at last. It was pleaded that there was a strong Gentile sentiment against these prosecutions, because of the hope that no new polygamous marriages were being contracted; but it was shown also, that the Church authorities controlled the enforcement of the law by their influence in the election of the agents of the law.
The Church controlled, too, the making of the law. For example, testimony was given to show that in 1896 the Church authorities had appointed a committee of six elders to examine all bills introduced into the Utah legislature and decide which were "proper" to be passed. In the neighboring state of Idaho, the legislature, in 1904, unanimously and without discussion passed a resolution for a new state constitution that should omit the anti-polygamy test oath clauses objectionable to the Mormons; and in this connection it was testified that the state chairman of both political parties in Idaho always went to Salt Lake City, before a campaign, to consult with the Church authorities; that every request of the authorities made to the Idaho political leaders was granted; that six of the twenty-one countries in Idaho were "absolutely controlled" by Mormons, and the "balance of power" in six counties more was held by Mormons; and that it was "impossible for any man or party to go against the Mormon Church in Idaho." Apostle John Henry Smith testified that one-third of the population of Idaho was Mormon and one-fourth of the population of Wyoming, and that there were large settlements in Nevada, Colorado, California, Arizona and the surrounding states and territories.
A striking example of the power of the Church as against the power of the nation was given to the Senate committee by John Nicholson, chief recorder of the temple in Salt Lake City. He had failed to produce some of the temple marriage records for which the committee had called. He was asked whether he would bring the books, on the order of the Senate of the United States, if the First Presidency of the Church forbade him to bring them. He answered: "I would not." He was asked: "And if the Senate should send the Sergeant-at-Arms of the Senate and arrest you and order you to bring them" (the records) "with you, you would still refuse to bring them, unless the First Presidency asked you to?" He answered, "Yes, sir."
It was shown that classes of instruction in the Mormon religion had been forced upon teachers in a number of public schools in Utah by the orders of the First Presidency. (These orders were withdrawn after the exposure before the committee.) Church control had gone so far in Brigham City, Box Elder County, Utah, that in a dispute between the City Council and the electric lighting company of the city, the local ecclesiastical council interfered. In the same city, two young men built a dancing pavilion that competed with the Church-owned Opera House; the ecclesiastical council "counselled" them to remove the pavilion and dispose of "the material in its construction;" they were threatened that they would be "dropped" if they did not obey this "counsel;" and they compromised by agreeing to pay twenty-five percent of the net earnings of their pavilion into the Church's "stake treasury." In Monroe ward, Sevier County, Utah, in 1901, a Mormon woman named Cora Birdsall had a dispute with a man named James E. Leavitt about a title to land. Leavitt went into the bishop's court and got a decision against her. She wrote to President Joseph F. Smith for permission either to appeal the case direct to him or "to go to law" in the matter; and Smith advised her "to follow the order provided of the Lord to govern in your case." The dispute was taken through the ecclesiastical courts and decided against her. She refused to deed the land to Leavitt and she was excommunicated by order of the High Council of the Sevier Stake of Zion. She became insane as a result of this punishment, and her mother appealed to the stake president to grant her some mitigation. He wrote, in reply: "Her only relief will be in complying with President Smith's wishes. You say she has never broken a rule of the Church. You forget that she has done so by failing to abide by the decision of the mouthpiece of God." She finally gave up a deed to the disputed land and was rebaptized in 1904. (Letters of the First Presidency were, however, introduced to show that it had been the policy of the presidency—particularly in President Woodruff's day—not to interfere in disputes involving titles to land.)
It was testified that a Mormon merchant was expelled from the Church, ostensibly for apostasy, but really because he engaged in the manufacture of salt "against the interests of the President of the Church and some of his associates;" that a Mormon Church official was deposed "for distributing, at a school election, a ticket different from that prescribed by the Church authorities"—and so on, interminably.
Witness after witness swore to the incidents of Church interference in politics which this narrative has already related in detail. But no attempt was made to show the Church's partnership with the "interests;" and the power of the Church in business circles was left to be inferred from President Smith's testimony that he was then president of the Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, the State Bank of Utah, the Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company, the Utah Sugar Company, the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company, the Utah Light and Power Company, the Salt Lake and Los Angeles Railroad Company, the Saltair Beach Company, the Idaho Sugar Company, the Inland Crystal Salt Company, the Salt Lake Knitting Company, and the Salt Lake Dramatic Association; and that he was a director of the Union Pacific Railway Company, vice-president of the Bullion-Beck and Champion Mining Company, and editor of the Improvement Era and the Juvenile Instructor.
It was shown that Utah had not been admitted to statehood until the Federal government had exacted, from the Church authorities and the representatives of the people of Utah, every sort of pledge that polygamy had been forever abandoned and polygamous relations discontinued by "revelation from God"; that statehood had not been granted until solemn promise had been given and provision made that there should be "no union of church and state," and no church should "dominate the state or interfere with its functions;" and that the Church's escheated property had been restored upon condition that such property should be used only for the relief of the poor of the Church, for the education of its children and for the building and repair of houses of worship "in which the rightfulness of the practice of polygamy" should not be "inculcated."
Therefore the testimony given before the Senate committee by these members of the Mormon hierarchy, showed that they had not only broken. their covenants and violated their oaths, but that they had been guilty of treason. What was the remedy? Jeremiah M. Wilson, a lawyer employed by the Church authorities in 1888 to argue, before a Congressional committee, in behalf of the admission of Utah to statehood, had pointed out the remedy in these words:
"It is idle to say that such a compact may be made, and then, when the considerations have been mutually received—statehood on the one side and the pledge not to do a particular thing on the other—either party can violate it without remedy to the other. But you ask me what is the remedy, and I answer that there are plenty of remedies in your own hands.
"Suppose they violate this compact; suppose that after they put this into the constitution, and thereby induce you to grant them the high privilege and political right of statehood, they should turn right around and exercise the bad faith which is attributed to them here—what would you do? You could shut the doors of the Senate and House of Representatives against them; you could deny them a voice in the councils of this nation, because they have acted in bad faith and violated their solemn agreement by which they succeeded in getting themselves into the condition of statehood. You could deny them the Federal judiciary; you could deny them the right to use the mails—that indispensable thing in the matter of trade and commerce of this country. There are many ways in which peaceably, but all powerfully, you could compel the performance of that compact."
This argument by Mr. Wilson in 1888 was recalled by the counsel for the protestants in the investigation. It was recalled with the qualification that though Congress might not have the power to undo the sovereignty of the state of Utah it could deal with Senator Smoot. And it was further argued: "The chief charge against Senator Smoot is that he encourages, countenances, and connives at the defiant violation of law. He is an integral part of a hierarchy; he is an integral part of a quorum of twelve, who constitute the backbone of the Church.... He, as one of that quorum of twelve apostles, encourages, connives at, and countenances defiance of law."
On June 11, 1906, a majority of the committee made a report to the Senate recommending that Apostle Smoot was not entitled to his seat in the Senate. They found that he was one of a "self-perpetuating body of fifteen men, uniting in themselves authority in both Church and state," who "so exercise this authority as to encourage a belief in polygamy as a divine institution, and by both precept and example encourage among their followers the practice of polygamy and polygamous cohabitation;" that the Church authorities had "endeavored to suppress, and succeed in suppressing, a great deal of testimony by which the fact of plural marriages contracted by those who were high in the councils of the Church might have been established beyond the shadow of a doubt;" and that "aside from this it was shown by the testimony that a majority of those who give law to the Mormon Church are now, and have been for years, living in open, notorious and shameless polygamous cohabitation." Concerning President Woodruff's anti-polygamy manifesto of 1890, the majority of the committee reported that "this manifesto in no way declares the principle of polygamy to be wrong or abrogates it as a doctrine of the Mormon Church, but simply suspends the practice of polygamy to be resumed at some more convenient season, either with or without another revelation." They found that Apostle Smoot was responsible for the conduct of the organization to which he belonged; that he had countenanced and encouraged polygamy "by repeated acts and in a number of instances, as a member of the quorum of the twelve apostles;" and that he was "no more entitled to a seat in the Senate than he would be if he were associating in polygamous cohabitation with a plurality of wives."
The report continued: "The First Presidency and the twelve apostles exercise a controlling influence over the action of the members of the Church in secular affairs as well as in spiritual matters;" and "contrary to the principles of the common law under which we live, and the constitution of the State of Utah, the First Presidency and twelve apostles dominate the affairs of the State and constantly interfere in the performance of its functions.... But it is in political affairs that the domination of the First Presidency and the twelve apostles is most efficacious and most injurious to the interests of the State.... Notwithstanding the plain provision of the constitution of Utah, the proof offered on the investigation demonstrates beyond the possibility of doubt that the hierarchy at the head of the Mormon Church has, for years past, formed a perfect union between the Mormon Church and the State of Utah, and that the Church, through its head, dominates the affairs of the State in things both great and small." And the report concluded: "The said Reed Smoot comes here, not as the accredited representative of the State of Utah in the Senate of the United States, but as the choice of the hierarchy which controls the Church and has usurped the functions of the State in Utah. It follows, as a necessary conclusion from these facts, that Mr. Smoot is not entitled to a seat in the Senate as a Senator from the State of Utah."
On the same day a minority report was presented by Senators J. B. Foraker, Albert J. Beveridge, Wm. P. Dillingbam, A. J. Hopkins and P. C. Knox. They found that Reed Smoot possessed "all the qualifications prescribed by the Constitution to make him eligible to a seat in the Senate;" that "the regularity of his election" by the Utah legislature had not been questioned; that his private character was "irreproachable;" and that "so far as mere belief and membership in the Mormon Church are concerned, he is fully within his rights and privileges under the guaranty of religious freedom given by the Constitution of the United States." Having thus summarily excluded all the large and troublesome points of the investigation, these Senators decided that there remained "but two grounds on which the right or title of Reed Smoot to his seat in the Senate" was contested. The first was whether he had taken a certain "endowment oath" by which "he obligated himself to make his allegiance to the Church paramount to his allegiance to the United States;" and the second was whether "by reason of his official relation to the Church" he was "responsible for polygamous cohabitation" among the Mormons.
As to the first charge, the minority found that the testimony upon the point was "limited in amount, vague and indefinite in character and utterly unreliable, because of the disreputable character of the witnesses"—oddly overlooking the fact that one of these witnesses had been called for Apostle Smoot; that no attempt had been made to impeach the character of this witness; that the other witnesses had been denounced, by a Mormon bishop, named Daniel Connolly, as "traitors who had broken their oaths to the Church" by betraying the secrets of the "endowment oath;" and that all the Smoot witnesses who denied the anti-patriotic obligation of the oath refused, suspiciously enough, to tell what obligation was imposed on those who took part in the ceremony.
The charge that Smoot, as an apostle of the Church, had been responsible for polygamous cohabitation was as easily disposed of, by the minority report. He had himself, on oath, "positively denied" that he had "ever advised any person to violate the law either against polygamy or against polygamous cohabitation," and no witness had been produced to testify that Apostle Smoot had ever given "any such advice" or defended "such acts." True, it was admitted that he had "silently acquiesced" in the continuance of polygamous cohabitation by polygamists who had married before 1890; but it was contended that to understand this acquiescence it was "necessary to recall some historical facts, among which are some that indicate that the United States government is not free from responsibility for these violations of the law."
In short, although Reed Smoot was one of a confessed band of law-breaking traitors, he was of "irreproachable" private character. Although the band had been guilty of every treachery, none of the band had admitted that Smoot had encouraged them in their villainies. Smoot had only "silently acquiesced"—and in this he had been no guiltier than the intimidated bystanders and the gagged victims of the outrages. Although the gang had stolen the machinery of elections and used it to print a Senatorial certificate for Smoot, there was nothing to show that the form of the certificate was not correct. Moreover, the band operated in politics as a religious organization, and the constitution of the United States protects a man in his right of religious freedom!
While these disclosures of the Smoot investigation were shocking the sentiment of the whole nation, the Prophets carried on the conspiracy of their defense with all the boldness of defiant guilt. In Salt Lake City, the office of the United States Marshal and even the post-office were watched for the arrival of subpoenas from Washington; men were posted in the streets to give the alarm whenever the Marshal should attempt to serve papers; and before he entered the front door of a Mormon's house, the Church sentry had entered by the back door to warn the inmates. If the Federal power had been moving in a foreign land, it could not have been more determinedly opposed by local authority. Notorious polygamists, wanted as witnesses before the Senate committee, made a public flight through Utah, couriered, flanked and rear-guarded by the power of the hierarchy. One of these law-breakers (who, it was known, had been subpoenaed) went from Salt Lake City to take secret employment in one of the Church's sugar factories in Idaho. When he was discovered there and served with the Senate requisition, he gave his word that he would appear at Washington, and then he fled with his new polygamous wife to a polygamous Mormon settlement in Alberta, Canada—a fugitive, honored because he was a fugitive, and officially sustained as a ward of the Church.
Apostles John W. Taylor and Mathias F. Cowley left the country, to escape a summons to Washington; and President Smith pleaded that he had no control over their movements, and promised that he would, if possible, bring them back to comply with the Senate subpoenas. He knew, as every Mormon and every well-informed Gentile knew, that the slightest expression of a wish from him would be the word of God to those two men. They would have gloried in going to Washington to show the courage of their fanaticism. They would never have left the country without instructions from their President. But they could not have married plural wives after the manifesto, and solemnized plural marriages for other polygamists, without Smith's knowledge and consent; their testimony would have placed the responsibility for these unlawful practices upon the Prophet; and the penalty would have fallen on the Prophet's Senator.
They not only fled, but they allowed themselves in their absence to be made the scapegoats of the hierarchy. They were proven guilty of "new polygamy" before the Senate committee; and, for the sake of the effect upon the country, they were ostensibly deposed from the apostolate by order of the President, who, by their dismissal from the quorum, advanced his son Hyrum in seniority. But their apparent degradation involved none of the consequences that Moses Thatcher had suffered. They continued their ministrations in the Church. They remained high in favor with the hierarchy. They claimed and received from the faithful the right to be regarded as holily "the Lord's' anointed" as they had ever been. They still held their Melchisedec priesthood. One of them afterward took a new plural wife. It seems to be well authenticated that the other continued to perform plural marriages; and every Mormon looked upon them both—and still looks upon them—as zealous priests who endured the appearance of shame in order to preserve the power of the Prophet in governing the nation.
Another crucial point in President Smith's responsibility was his solemnization of the plural marriage between Apostle Abraham H. Cannon and Lillian Hamlin, of which I have already written. One of the women of the dead apostle's family was subpoenaed to give her testimony in the matter. She thrice telephoned to me that she wished to consult me; but she was surrounded by such a system of espionage that again and again she failed to keep her appointment. At last, late at night, she arrived at my office—the editorial office of the Salt Lake Tribune—having escaped, as she explained, in her maid's clothes. The agents of the hierarchy had been subtly and ingeniously suggesting to her that she was perhaps mistaken in her recollection of the facts to which she would have to testify, and she was distressed with the doubt and fear which they had instilled into her mind. I could only adjure her to tell the truth as she remembered it. But on her journey to Washington she was constantly surrounded by Church "advisers;" and the effect of their "advice" showed in the testimony that she gave—a testimony that failed to prove the known guilt of the Prophet.
For the Gentiles, there had begun a sort of "reign of terror," which can be best summed up by an account of a private conference of twelve prominent non-Mormons held as late as 1905. That conference was called to consider the situation, and to devise means of acquainting the nation with the desperate state of affairs in Utah. It was independent of the political movement that had already begun; it aimed rather to organize a social rebellion, so that we might not be dependent for all our opposition upon the annual or semi-annual campaigns of politics.
The meeting first agreed upon the following statement of facts:
"Utah's statehood, as now administered, is but a protection of the Mormon hierarchy in its establishment of a theocratic kingdom under the flag of the republic. This hierarchy holds itself superior to the Constitution and to the law. It is spreading polygamy throughout the ranks of its followers. Through its agents, it dominates the politics of the state, and its power is spreading to other common-wealths. It exerts such sway over the officers of the law that the hierarchy and its favorites cannot be reached by the hand of justice. It is master of the State Legislature and of the Governor.
"By means of its immense collection of tithes and its large investments in commercial and financial enterprises, it dominates every line of business in Utah except mines and railroads; and these latter it influences by means of its control over Mormon labor and by its control of legislation and franchises. It holds nearly every Gentile merchant and professional man at its vengeance, by its influence over the patronage which he must have in order to be successful. It corrupts every Gentile who is affected by either fear or venality, and makes of him a part of its power to play the autocrat in Utah and to deceive the country as to its purposes and its operations. Every Gentile who refuses to testify at its request and in its behalf becomes a marked and endangered man. It rewards and it punishes according to its will; and those Gentiles who have gone to Washington to testify for Smoot are well aware of this fact. Unless the Gentiles of Utah shall soon be protected by the power of the United States they will suffer either ruin or exile at the hands of the hierarchy."
When this declaration had been accepted, by all present, as truly expressing their views of the situation, it was decided that they should confer with other leading Gentiles, hold a mass meeting, adopt a set of resolutions embodying the declaration on which they had agreed, and then dispatch the resolutions to the Senate committee, as a protest against the testimony of some of the Gentiles in the Smoot case, and as an appeal to the nation for help.
But although all approved of the declaration and all approved of the method by which it was to be sent to the nation, no man there dared to stand out publicly in support of such a protest, to offer the resolutions, or to speak for them. The merchant knew that his trade would vanish in a night, leaving him unable to meet his obligations and certain of financial destruction. The lawyer knew not only that the hierarchy would deprive him of all his Mormon clients, but that it would make him so unpopular with courts and juries that no Gentile litigant would dare employ him. The mining man knew that the hierarchy could direct legislation against him, might possibly influence courts and could assuredly influence jurors to destroy him. And so with all the others at the conference.
They were not cowards. They had shown themselves, in the past, of more than average human courage, loyalty and ability. All recognized that if the power of the hierarchy were not soon met and broken it would grow too great to be resisted—that another generation would find itself hopelessly enslaved. Every father felt that the liberties of his children were at stake; that they would be bond or free by the issue of the conflict then in course at Washington. And yet not one dared to throw down the gauntlet to tyranny—to devote himself to certain ruin. They had to prefer simple slavery to beggary and slavery combined. They had to hope silently that the power of the nation would intervene. They could work only secretly for the fulfillment of that hope.
At first, in President Roosevelt they saw the promise of their salvation. He had opposed the election of Apostle Smoot. When the report of the apostle's candidacy had first reached Washington, the President had summoned to the White House Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah and Senator Mark Hanna, who was chairman of the National Republican committee; and to these two men he had declared his opposition to the candidacy of a Mormon apostle as a Republican aspirant for a Senatorship. At his request Senator Hanna, as chairman of the party, signed a letter of remonstrance to the party chiefs in Utah, and President Roosevelt, at a later conference, gave this letter to Senator Kearns to be communicated to the state leaders. Senator Kearns transmitted the message, and by so doing he "dug his political grave" as the Mormon stake president, Lewis W. Shurtliff, expressed it.
Colonel C. B. Loose of Provo went to Washington on behalf of the Church authorities. He was a Gentile, a partner of Apostle Smoot and of some of the other Mormon leaders in business undertakings, a wealthy mining man, a prominent Republican. It was reported in Utah that his arguments for Smoot carried some weight in Washington. President Roosevelt was to be a candidate for election; and the old guard of the Republican party, distrustful of the Roosevelt progressive policies, was gathering for a grim stand around Senator Mark Hanna. Both factions were playing for votes in the approaching national convention. I have it on the authority of a Mormon ecclesiast, who was in the political confidence of the Church leaders, that President Roosevelt was promised the votes of the Utah delegation and such other convention votes as the Church politicians could control. The death of Senator Hanna made this promise unnecessary, if there ever was an explicit promise. But this much is certain. President Roosevelt's opposition to Apostle Smoot, for whatever reason, changed to favor.
The character and impulses of the President were of a sort to make him peculiarly susceptible to an appeal for help on the part of the Mormons. He had lived in the West. He knew something of the hardships attendant upon conquering the waste places. He sympathized with those who dared, for their own opinions, to oppose the opinions of the rest of the world. He had received the most adulating assurances of support for his candidacies and his policies. It would have required a man of the calmest discrimination and coolest judgment to find the line between any just claim for mercy presented by the Mormon advocates of "religious liberty" and the willful offenses which they were committing against the national integrity.
I have received it personally, from the lips of more than one member of the Senate committee, that never in all their experience with public questions was such executive pressure brought to bear upon them as was urged from the White House, at this time, for the protection of Apostle Smoot's seat in the Senate. The President's most intimate friends on the committee voted with the minority to seat Smoot. One of the President's closest adherents, Senator Dolliver, after having signed a majority report to exclude Smoot and having been re-elected, in the meantime, by his own State legislature, to another term in the Senate—afterwards spoke and voted against the report which he had signed. Senator A. J. Hopkins of Illinois, who had supported Smoot consistently, found himself bitterly attacked, in his campaign for reelection, because of his record in the Smoot case, and he published in his defense a letter from President Roosevelt that read: "Just a line to congratulate you upon the Smoot case. It is not my business, but it is a pleasure to see a public servant show, under trying circumstances, the courage, ability and sense of right that you have shown."
After the outrageous exposures of the violations of law, the treason and the criminal indifference to human rights shown by the rulers of the Church, if an early vote had been taken by the committee and by the Senate itself, the antagonism of the nation would have forced the exclusion of the Apostle from the upper House. Delay was his salvation. More to the President's influence than to any other cause is the delay attributable that prolonged the case through a term of three years. During that time the unfortunate Gentiles of Utah learned that, instead of receiving help from the President, they were to have only the most insuperable opposition. They believed that the President was being grossly misled; that it was, of course, impossible for him to read all the testimony given before the Senate committee, and that the matters that reached him were being tinged with other purpose than the vindication of truth and justice. But it was impossible to obtain the opportunity of setting him right. Even the women who were leading the national protest against the polygamous teaching and practices of Smoot's fellow apostles were told that the President had made up his mind and could not be re-convinced.
The Mormon appeal to his generosity was not confined to Washington. On his travels he met President Smith more than once—the Prophet being accompanied by a different wife each time—and naturally Smith made every effort to impress President Roosevelt with his earnestness, the purity of his life, and the high motives that actuated the exercise of his authority. And at this sort of pretense the Lord's anointed are expert. They themselves may be crude in ideas and coarse in method, but their diplomacy is a growth of eighty years of applied devotion and energy.
The American people are used to meeting prominent Mormons who are models of demeanor who are hearty of manner; who carry a kindly light in their eyes; who have a spontaneity that precludes hypocrisy or even deep purpose. These are not the men who make the Church diplomacy—they simply obey it. It is part of that diplomacy to send out such men for contact with the world. But the ablest minds of the Church, whether they are of the hierarchy or not, construct its policies. And given a system whose human units move instantly and unquestioningly at command; given a system whose worldly power is available at any point at any moment; given a system whose movement may be as secret as the grave until result is attained—and the clumsiest of politicians or the crudest of diplomats has a force to effect his ends that is as powerful for its size as any that Christendom has ever known.
Among the emissaries of the Church who were deputed to "reach" President Roosevelt, was our old friend Ben Rich, the gay, the engaging, the apparently irresponsible agent of hierarchical diplomacy. And I should like to relate the story of his "approach," as it is still related in the inner circle of Church confidences. Not that I expect it to be wholly credited—not that I doubt but it will be denied on all sides—but because it is so characteristic of Church gossip and so typical (even if it were untrue) of the humorous cynicism of Church diplomacy.
When President Roosevelt was making his "swing around the circle," Rich was appointed to join him, found the opportunity to do so, and (so the story is told) delighted the President by the spirit and candor of his good fellowship. When they were about to part, the President is reported to have said, "Why don't you run for Congress from your state? You're just the kind of man I'd like to have in the House to support my policies." And here (as the Mormons are told) is the dialogue that ensued:
Rich: "I have no ambition that way, Mr. President. For many reasons it's out of the question although I'm grateful for the flattering suggestion."
The President: "Then let me appoint you to some good office. You're the kind of man I'd like to have in my official family."
Rich (impressively and in a low tone): "Mr. President, I'd count it the greatest honor of my life to have a commission from you to any office. I'd hand that commission down to my children as the most precious heritage. But—I love you too much, Mr. President, to put you in any such hole. I'm a polygamist. It would injure you before the whole country."
The President (leaning forward eagerly): "No! Are you a polygamist? Tell me all about it."
Rich. "The Lord has bestowed that blessing on me. I wish you could go into my home and see how my wives are living together like sisters—how tender they are to each other—how they bear each other's burdens and share each other's sorrows—and how fond all my children are of Mother and Auntie."
The President: "Well—but how can women agree to share a husband?"
Rich: "They do it in obedience to a revelation from the Lord—a revelation that proclaimed the doctrine of the eternity and the plurality of the marriage covenant. We believe that men and women, sealed in this life under proper authority, are united in the conjugal relation throughout eternity. We believe that the husband is tied to his wives, and they to him; that their children and all the generations of their children will belong to him hereafter. We believe in eternal progression; that as man is, God was; and as God is, man shall be. We believe that by obedience to this revealed covenant, we will be exalted in the celestial realm of our Father, with power in ourselves to create and people worlds. It is a never ending and constantly increasing intelligence and labor. If I keep my covenants to my wives and they to me, in this world, all the powers and rights of our marriage relation will be continued and amplified to us in the life to come; and we, in our turn, will be rulers over worlds and universes of worlds."
Then—according to the unctuous gossip of the devout—President Roosevelt saw the true answer to his own desire to know what was to become of his mighty personality after this world should have fallen away from him! He saw, in this faith, a possible continuation throughout eternity of the tremendous energies of his being! He was to continue to rule not merely a nation but a world, a system of worlds, a universe of worlds! And it is told—sometimes solemnly, sometimes with a grin—that, in the Temple at Salt Lake, a proxy has stood for him and he has been baptized into the Mormon Church; that proxies have stood for the members of his family and that they have been sealed to him; and finally that proxies have stood for some of the great queens of the past (who had not already been sealed to Mormon leaders) and that they have been sealed to the President for eternity!
[FOOTNOTE: It is a not uncommon practice in the Mormon Church thus to "do a work" for a Gentile who has befriended the people or otherwise won the gratitude of the Church authorities.]
This may sound blasphemous toward Theodore Roosevelt—if not toward the Almighty—but it is told, and it is believed, by hundreds and thousands of the faithful among the Mormon people. It is given to them as the secret explanation of President Roosevelt's protection of the Mormon tyranny—a protection of which Apostle Hyrum Smith boasted in a sermon in the Salt Lake tabernacle (April 5, 1905) in these equivocal words: "We believe—and I want to say this—that in President Roosevelt we have a friend, and we believe that in the Latter-Day Saints President Roosevelt has the greatest friendship among them; and there are no people in the world who are more friendly to him, and will remain friendly unto him just so long as he remains true, as he has been, to the cause of humanity."
The Smiths have their own idea of what "the cause of humanity" is.
As early as 1903, before the Smoot investigation began, the Utah State journal (of which I became editor) was founded as a Democratic daily newspaper, to attempt a restoration of political freedom in Utah and to remonstrate against the new polygamy, of which rumors were already insistent. I was at once warned by Judge Henry H. Rolapp (a prominent Democrat on the District bench, and secretary of the Amalgamated Sugar Company) that we need not look for aid from the political or business interests of the community, inasmuch as our avowed purpose had already antagonized the Church. He delivered this message in a friendly spirit from a number of Democrats whose support we had been expecting. And the warning proved to be well-inspired. Although a number of courageous Gentiles, like Colonel E. A. Wall of Salt Lake City, gave us material aid—and although there was no other Democratic daily paper in Utah (unless it was the Salt Lake Herald, owned by Senator Clark of Montana)—the most powerful Church Democratic interests stood against us, and we found it impossible to make any effective headway with the paper.
After the Prophets began to give their awful testimony at Washington, the Democratic National Convention of 1904 (which I attended as a delegate from Utah) considered a resolution in opposition to polygamy and the Church's rule of the state. This resolution was as vigorously fought by some Utah Gentiles as by the Mormon delegates, on the grounds that it would defeat the Democratic party in Utah. It carried in the convention. Upon returning to Salt Lake City I called a meeting of the Democratic state committee (of which I was chairman) and urged that we make our state campaign on the issue of ecclesiastical domination, in consonance with the party's national platform. Of the whole committee only the secretary, Mr. P. J. Daly, supported the proposal. The others considered it "an attempt to establish a quarantine against Democratic success." Some of them had been promised by members of the hierarchy that the party was to have "a square deal this time." Others had fatuously accepted the assurances of ecclesiasts that "it looked like a Democratic year." In short, the Democratic party in Utah, like the Republican party, proved to be then, as it is now, less a political organization than the tool of a Church cabal. We found that we could no more hope to move the Democratic machine against the hierarchy than to move the Smoot-Republican machine itself.
But when Joseph F. Smith, before the Senate committee, admitted that he was violating "the laws of God and man" and tried to extenuate his guilt with the plea that the Gentiles of Utah condoned it, he issued a challenge that no American citizen could ignore. The Gentiles of Utah had been silent, theretofore, partly because they were ignorant of the extent of the polygamous offenses of the hierarchy, and partly because they were hoping for better things. Smith's boast made their silence the acquiescence of sympathy. A meeting was called in Salt Lake City, in May, 1904, and under the direction of Colonel William Nelson, editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, the principles of the present "American party" were enunciated as a protest against the lawbreaking tyranny of the Church leaders. Later, as it became clear that the opponents of the Smith misrule must organize their own party of progress, committees were formed and a convention was held (in September, 1904) at which a full state and county ticket was put in the field, in the name of the American Party of Utah.
We agreed that no war should be made on the Mormon religion as such; that no war should be made on the Mormon people because of their being Mormons; that we would draw a deadline at the year 1890, when the Church had effected a composition of its differences with the national government, and all the citizens of Utah, Mormon and Gentile alike, had accepted the conditions of settlement; that we would find our cause of quarrel in the hierarchy's violation of the statehood pledges; and that when we had corrected these evil practices we should dissolve, because (to quote the language used at the time) we did not wish "to raise a tyrant merely to slay a tyrant."
In the idea that we would fight upon living issues—that we would not open the graves of the past to dig up a dead quarrel and parade it in its cerements—the American party movement began. Its first enlistment included practically all the Gentiles in Salt Lake City who resented the claim of the Prophet that they acquiesced in his crimes and his treasons. But the most promising sign for the party was its attraction of hundreds of independent Mormons of the younger generation. As one Mormon of that hopeful time expressed it: "The flag represents the political power. The golden angel Moroni, at the top of the Temple, represents the ecclesiastical authority. I will not pay to either one a deference which belongs to the other. I know how to keep them apart in my personal devotion."
This was exactly what the Church authorities would not permit. It would have destroyed all the special and selfish prerogatives of the Mormon hierarchs. It would have subverted their claim of absolute temporal power. It would have set up the nation and the state as the objects of civic devotion—instead of the Kingdom of God.
Although we of the American party disavowed and abstained from any attack upon the Mormon Church as such—and confined ourselves to a war upon the treasons, the violations of law, the breaches of covenant and the other offenses of the Church leaders, as the practices of individuals—these leaders dragged the whole body of the Church as a wall of defense around them, and in countless sermons and printed articles declared that the Church and its faith were the objects of our assault. In other words, though Smith claimed in Washington—and Smoot continues to claim before the nation—that the Church is not responsible for the crimes of its Prophets, whenever a criticism or a prosecution is directed against any of these men, they all unite in declaring that the Church is being persecuted; and the members of the hierarchy rouse all their followers, and use all their agencies, in a successful resistance.
There was no blithesomeness in the campaign. It was not lightened by any humor. It was a hopeless assault on the one side and a grim overpowering resistance on the other. The American party, being organized as a protest, had at first little regard for offices. It sought to promulgate the principles of its cause for the enlightenment of the citizens of Utah and for the preservation of their rights. Some of the Gentiles who did not join us felt, perhaps, as strong an indignation as those who did, but they were entangled in politics with the hierarchs, or had business connections that would be destroyed. These men, in course of time, became the most dangerous opponents of our progress. (The average Mormon is obedient and supine enough in the presence of his Prophets, but he is a man of personal independence compared with the sycophantic Gentile who accepts political or commercial favors from the Church chiefs and yet continues to deny the existence of the very power to which he bends the knee.) Of the rebellious but discreet Mormons many came to the leaders of our party to say: "I think you're quite right. I, myself, have suffered under these tyrannies. I have no sympathy with new polygamy. But, as you know, I'm attorney for some of the Church interests"—or "I'm in business with high ecclesiasts"—or "I'm heavily in debt to the Church bank"—or "I'm closely connected by marriage with one of the Prophets"—"and I can do you more good by my quiet efforts than by coming out into the open. I'd be treated as an apostate. All my influence would be gone." And in most cases he preserved his influence, and we lost him. The Church had effective ways of recovering his support.
For many reasons the American party looked for its recruits chiefly among Republicans, the Democracy being almost entirely Mormon. And in the first flush of enthusiasm some of our leaders laughed at the boast of the Republican state chairman that, for every Republican he lost, he would get two Mormon Democrats to vote the Republican ticket. (This was Hon. William Spry, a Mormon, since made Governor of Utah, for services rendered the hierarchy.) But the claim proved anything but laughable. He got probably four Mormon Democrats for every Republican he lost. As usual the hierarchy "delivered the goods" to the national organization in power.
According to our best calculations we got from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred Mormon votes. And, during this campaign and those that followed, I was approached by hundreds of Mormons who commended our work and gave private voice to the hope that we might succeed in freeing Utah so that they themselves might be free. After I joined the staff of the Salt Lake Tribune, as chief editor, these came to my office by stealth and in obvious fear. I could not blame them then, nor do I now. The cost of open defiance was too great.
One woman, the first wife of a prominent Mormon physician, came to me to enlist in the work of the party. (Her husband was living with a young plural wife.) We accepted her aid. Her husband cut off her monthly allowance, and she had to take employment as a book canvasser, so that she might be able to earn her living. One Mormon who came out openly for us, was superintendent of a business owned by Gentiles. He was somewhat prominent as an ecclesiast, and he was a Sunday School worker in his ward. He reconciled his wife and daughters to his revolt against the recrudescence of polygamy and the tyranny of the Church's political control. He carried with him the sympathy of his brother, who was a newspaper editor. He won over some of his personal friends to pledge their support to our cause. He seemed too sturdy ever to retreat, too independent in his circumstances to be driven, and with too clear a vision to be led astray by the threats, the power, or the persuasions of the hierarchy. Yet, before long he came to confess that he could not continue to help us openly. His employers—his Gentile employers—had notified him that his work in the American party would be dangerously injurious to their business. They were in hearty accord with his views; they recognized his right as a citizen to act according to his convictions; but—they dared not provoke a war of business reprisals with the commercial and financial institutions of the Church. He must either cease his active opposition to the Church leaders, or lose his place of employment.... He retired from the fight.
Another Mormon who joined us was Don. C. Musser, a son of one of the Church historians. He had been a missionary in Germany and in Palestine. He had been a soldier in the Philippines, and he had edited the first American newspaper there. His contact with the world and his experience in the military service of the United States had given him a high ideal of his country; and a feeling of loyalty to the nation had superseded his earlier devotion to the Prophets. His family was wealthy, but he was supporting himself and his young wife by his own efforts in business. As soon as he came out openly with the American party, his father's home was closed against him. His business connections were withdrawn from him. He found himself unable to provide for his wife, who was in delicate health. After a losing struggle, he came to tell us that he could no longer earn a living in Utah; that he had obtained means to emigrate; that he must say good-bye. And we lost him.
Two other young men—the son and the son-in-law of an apostle—came to me and asked helplessly for advice. They admitted that the practices of the hierarchy were, to them, a violation of the covenant with the nation, a transgression of the revelation from God given to Wilford Woodruff, and destructive of all the securities of community association. But would I advise them to sacrifice their influence in the Church by joining the "American movement" publicly? Or had they better retain their influence and use it within the Church to correct the evils that we were attacking?
With awful sincerity they spoke of conditions that had come under their own eyes, and related instances to show how mercilessly the polygamous favorites of the Church were permitted to prey on the young women teachers in Church schools. They spoke of J. M. Tanner, who was at that time head of the Church schools, a member of the general Board of Education, and one of the Sunday School superintendents. According to these young men—and according to general report—Tanner was marrying right and left.
I knew of a young Mormon of Brigham City, who had been a suitor for the hand of L——, a teacher at the Logan College. He had been away from Utah for some time, and he had returned hoping to make her his wife. Stopping over night in Salt Lake, on his way home, he saw Tanner and L—— enter the lobby of the hotel in which he sat. They registered as man and wife and went upstairs together. He followed—to walk the floor of his room all night, struggling against the impulse to break in, and kill Tanner, and damn his own soul by meddling with the man who had been ordained by the Prophets to a wholesale polygamous prerogative.
He had kept his hands clean of blood, but he had been living ever since with murder in his heart. Could these two sons of the Church do more to remedy such horrors by using their influence to have Tanner deposed, or by sacrificing that influence in an open revolt against the conditions that made Tanner possible? I could only advise them to act according to their own best sense of what was right. They did use their influence to help force Tanner's deposition, but we lost the public example of their opposition to the crimes of the hierarchy.
I relate these incidents as typical of the different kinds of pressure that were brought to bear upon the independent Mormons who wished to aid us, and of the local difficulties against which we had to contend. Washington, of course, gave us no recognition. And we did not succeed in reaching the ear of the nation. Here and there a newspaper noted our effort and paid some small heed to our protest, but the overwhelming success of the Republican party—and the dumb-driven acquiescence of the Democracy—in Utah and the neighboring Church-ruled states, left the agitation with little of political interest for the country at large.
And yet the struggle went on. Animated by the spirit of the Salt Lake Tribune, the leading newspaper of the community, the American party entered the city elections in the fall of 1905 and carried them against the hierarchy's Democratic ticket, with the help of the independent Mormons, under cover of the secret ballot. Emboldened by this success we proposed to move on the state and county offices, with the hope of gaining some members of the legislature and some of the judicial and executive offices, through which to enforce the laws that the Church leaders were defying. But here we failed. Outside of Salt Lake the rule of the Prophets was still absolute and unquestioned. The people bowed reverently to Joseph F. Smith's dictum: "When a man says 'You may direct me spiritually but not temporally,' he lies in the presence of God—that is, if he has got intelligence enough to know what he is talking about." The state politicians knew that they would destroy themselves by joining an organization opposed by the all-powerful-Church; and sufficient warning of this doom appeared to them in the fact that no member of the American party could obtain any recognition in Federal appointments. The Church had meanwhile dictated the election of another United States Senator (George Sutherland) to join Apostle Smoot, and Senator Kearns was retired for his opposition to the hierarchy. [FOOTNOTE: When Senator Aldrich was carrying the tariff bill of 1910 through the Senate, for the greater profit of the "Interests," Smoot and Sutherland did not once vote against him. Smoot supported him on every one of the one hundred and twenty-nine votes and missed none. Sutherland voted with him one hundred and seventeen times and was recorded as not voting on the remaining twelve. Only two other senators made anything like such a despicable record.]
It began to be more and more apparent that whatever success we might achieve locally, the power of the financial and political allies of the Prophets in Washington, aided by the executive "Big Stick" of the President, would beat us back from any attempt to rouse the state or the nation to our support.
Smoot was in a happy position: all the senators who represented the "Interests" were for him, and all the senators who represented the supposed progressive sentiment of Theodore Roosevelt were also for him. The women of the nation had sent a protest with a million signatures to the Senate; but they had not votes; they received, in reply, a public scolding. Long before the Senate voted on its committee's report, many of the notorious "new" polygamists of the Church returned from their exile in foreign missions and began to walk the streets of Salt Lake with their old swagger of self-confident authority. We foresaw the end.
Early in December, 1906, Senator J. C. Burrows of Michigan, chairman of the committee that had investigated Smoot, called up the committee's report and spoke upon it in a denunciation of Smoot. Senator Dubois of Idaho followed, two days later, with a supplementary attack, and censured President Roosevelt for "allowing his name and office" to be used in defense of the Mormons. After an interval of a month, Senator Albert J. Hopkins, of Illinois, undertook to reply with a defense of Smoot that reduced the Apostle's excuses to the absurd. Smoot, he declared, had opposed polygamy, "even from his infancy;" there was "nothing in the constitution" prohibiting "a State from having an established Church;" the old practices of Mormonism were dying out; and Smoot, as an exponent of the newer Mormonism, was largely responsible for the improvement.
This bold falsehood was received with laughter by the members who had heard the testimony before the Senate committee or read the record of its sittings; but it was wired to all newspapers; and the contradictions that followed it failed (for reasons) to get the same publicity. It was repeated by Senator Sutherland (January 22, 1907); and he had the audacity to add that the Mormon Church, as well as Smoot, was opposed to polygamy; that the "sporadic cases" of new polygamy were "reprehended by Mormon and Gentile alike;" that polygamous marriages in Utah had been forbidden by the Enabling Act, but that polygamous cohabitation had been left to the state; and that the latter was rapidly dying out. And Sutherland knew, as every public man in Utah knew, that almost every word of this statement was untrue.
Senator Philander C. Knox, of Pennsylvania (February 14, 1907) took up the lie that Smoot had been "from his youth against polygamy," and he added to it a legal argument that the Senate could only expel a member, by a two-thirds vote, if he were guilty of crime, offensive immorality, disloyalty or gross impropriety during his term of service. Senator Tillman (February 15) accused President Roosevelt of protecting Smoot in return for a pledge of Mormon support given previous to the last campaign. Apostle Smoot (February 19) declared that cases of "new" polygamy were rare; that they were not sanctioned by the Church; that every case since 1890 "has the express condemnation of the Church;" and that he himself had always opposed polygamy. On February 20, the question was forced to a vote after a debate that repeated these falsehoods, in spite of all disproof's of them. And Apostle Smoot was retained in his seat by a vote of fifty-one to thirty-seven, counting pairs.
After this event, no growth of organization was immediately possible to the American party. Having gained political control of Salt Lake City and given it good municipal government, we were able to hold a local adherency; but hundreds of Mormons, who still vote the American city ticket, vote for the Church in state elections, because, though they want reform, they are not willing to risk the punishment of their relatives and the leaders of the Church to attain that reform. And when the national government granted its patent of approval to the hierarchy—by holding the hierarchy's appointed representative in the Senate as its prophetic monitor—nearly all the people of the intermountain country lost heart in the fight. Thousands of Gentiles, who knew the truth and had fought for it for years, argued despairingly: "If the nation likes this sort of thing—I guess it's the sort of thing it likes. I'm not going to ruin myself financially and politically by keeping up a losing struggle with these neighbors of mine, and fight the government at Washington besides. If the administration wants to be bossed by the Prophet, Seer and Revelator, I can stand it."
The nation, having accepted responsibility for past polygamy, now, by accepting Senator Smoot, gave its responsible approval to the new polygamy and to the commercial and political tyrannies of the Church. In the old days the Mormons had claimed immunity for their practice of polygamy on the ground that the constitution of the United States protected them in the exercises of their faith. The Supreme Court of the country determined that the free-religion clause of the constitution did not cover violations of law; and the Church deliberately abandoned its claim of religious immunity. But now a majority of the Senate, supported by President Roosevelt, took the old ground—which the Supreme Court had made untenable and the Mormons themselves had vacated—and practically declared that violations of law were a part of the constitutional guaranty!