I know that he might have desired the Senatorship as a public vindication, since, in the old days of quarrel, he had been legislated out of his place in the House of Representatives; and, for the first and only time in my life, I undertook to philosophize some comfort for him—out of the fact that to the position of authority which he held in Utah a Senatorship was a descent. He replied dryly: "I understand, my son—perfectly." The fact was that he needed no comfort from me or any other human being. He seemed all—sufficient to himself, because of the abiding sense he had of the constant presence of God and his habit of communing with that Spirit, instead of seeking human intercourse or earthly counsel. He did not need my affection. He did not need, much less seek, the approbation of any man. In the events to which this conversation was a prelude, he acted without explaining himself to me or to anyone else, and apparently without caring in the slightest what my opinion or any other man's might be of his course or of the motives that prompted it.

Some months later, in the office of the Presidency (at a business meeting with him, Colonel Clayton and Joseph F. Smith), I excused myself from attending any further sittings of the committee for that day, because I had to go to Provo to receive the Republican nomination for Congress.

My father said: "I am sorry to hear it. I thought Judge Zane—or someone else would be nominated. I wished you to be free to help with these business matters. Why have you not consulted us?"

I reminded him that I had told him, some weeks before, that I expected to be nominated for Congress this year—and that I was practically certain, if elected, of going to the Senate when we were granted statehood. "I talked with you, then, as my father," I said. "But I'm sure you'll remember that I have not consulted you as a leader of the Church, or any of your colleagues as leaders of the Church, on the subject of partisan politics since the People's Party was dissolved."

He accepted this mild declaration of political independence without protest, and I went to Provo, happily, a free man. The Republicans nominated me by acclamation, and the chairman of the committee that came to offer me the nomination was Colonel Wm. Nelson, then managing editor of the Salt Lake Tribune, a Gentile, a former leader of the Liberal Party, an opponent of Mormonism as practiced, who had fought the Church hierarchy for years. Here was a new evidence that we were now beyond the old quarrels—a further guarantee that we were prepared to take our place among the states of the Union, free of parochialism and its sectarian enmities.

The campaign gave every proof of such political emancipation. The people divided, on national party lines, as completely as any American community in my experience. The Democrats, having nominated Joseph L. Rawlins, had the prestige that he had gained in helping to pass the Enabling Act; a Democratic administration was in power in Washington; Apostle Moses Thatcher, Brigham H. Roberts, and other members of the Church inspired the old loyalty of the Mormons for the Democracy. But the Republicans had been re-enforced by the dissolution of the Liberal Party, whose last preceding candidate (Mr. Clarence E. Allen) went on the stump for us. The Smith jealousy of Moses Thatcher divided the Church influence; and though charges of ecclesiastical interference were made on both sides, such interference was personal rather than official. Mr. Rawlins was defeated, and I was elected delegate in Congress from the territory—with the United States Senatorship practically assured to me.

In the spring of 1895 the constitutional convention at Salt Lake City formulated a provisional constitution for the new Utah; and, in the Fall of the year, a general election was held to adopt this constitution and to elect officers who should enter upon their duties as soon as Utah became a state. The election was marked by a most significant and important incident.

The Democrats, in their convention, nominated for Congress, Brigham H. Roberts, one of the first seven "presidents of the seventy," and for the United States Senate, Joseph L. Rawlins and Apostle Moses Thatcher. Immediately, at a priesthood meeting of the hierarchy, Joseph F. Smith denounced the candidacies of Roberts and Thatcher; and the grounds for the denunciation were subsequently stated in the "political manifesto" of April, 1896, in which the First Presidency announced, as a rule of the Church, that no official of the Church should accept a political nomination until he had obtained the permission of the Church authorities and had learned from them whether he could "consistently with the obligations already entered into with the Church, take upon himself the added duties and labors and responsibilities of the new position."

This action, I knew, was the result of the old jealousy of Thatcher which the Smiths had so long nursed. But it was also in line with the Church's pledge, to keep its leaders out of politics. By it, the hierarchy bound themselves and set the people free. The leaders, thereafter, according to their own "manifesto," could not enter politics without the consent of their quorums; and, therefore, by any American doctrine, they could not enter politics at all. Thatcher and Roberts revolted against the inhibition as an infringement of their rights as citizens, and it was so construed by the whole Democratic party; but everyone knew that a Mormon apostle had no rights as a citizen that were not second to his Church allegiance, and the political manifesto simply made public the fact of such subservience, authoritatively. We Republicans welcomed it, with our eyes on the future freedom of politics in Utah; Thatcher and Roberts refused to accept the dictation of their quorums, and what was practically an "edict of apostasy" went out against them. They were defeated. The Republican candidates (Heber M. Wells, as governor, and Clarence B. Allen, as member of Congress) were elected. Thatcher, subsequently refusing to accept the "political manifesto," was deposed from his apostolic authority, and deprived of all priesthood in the Church. Roberts recanted and was reconciled with the hierarchy.

[FOOTNOTE: He was afterwards elected to the House of Representatives and was refused his seat as a polygamist.]

The Republicans elected forty-three out of sixty-three members of the legislature, and everyone of these had been pledged to support me, for the United States Senate, either by his convention, or by letter to me, or by a promise conveyed to me by friends; and none of these pledges had I solicited.

The rumors of my father's candidacy now became more general—although he was a Democrat, although the new "political manifesto" bound him, although it was doubtful whether the Senate would allow him to be seated. Two influences were urging his election. One was the desire of the Smith faction to have the First Councillor break the ice at Washington for Apostle John Henry Smith, who was ambitious to be a Senator and was disqualified by the fact that he was a Church leader and a polygamist. The other was the desire of some Eastern capitalists to have my father's vote in the Senate to aid them in the promotion of a railroad from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles. A preliminary agreement for the construction of the road had already been signed by men who represented that they had close affiliations with large steel interests in the East, as one party, and my father as business representative of a group of associates, including the Presidency of the Church. The Church's interest in the project was communistic, and so was my father's. But his vote and influence in the Senate would be valuable to the promotion of the undertaking, and he had received written assurances from Republican leaders, senators and politicians, that if he were elected he would be allowed his seat.

As a result of our Republican success in the two political campaigns that had just ended, I felt that I represented the independent votes of both Mormons and Gentiles; and I decided to confront the First Presidency (as such a representative) and try to make them declare themselves in the matter of my father's candidacy. Not that I thought his candidacy would be so vitally important for I did not then believe the Church authorities had power to sway the legislature away from its pledges. But every day, at home or abroad, I was being asked: "Are you sure that the Church's retirement from politics is sincere?" My friends were accepting my word, and I wished to add certainty to assurance that the Church leaders intended to fulfill the covenant of their personal honor and respect the constitution of the state by keeping out of politics.

Without letting them know why I wished to see them, I procured an appointment for the interview. When we were all seated at the table I explained: "I'm going to Washington to attend to my duties as delegate in Congress. Before I return, Utah will be admitted to statehood, and the legislature will have to elect two United States Senators. As you all know, I've been a candidate for one of these places. It has been assured to me by the probably unanimous vote of the Republican caucus when it shall convene." I laid my clenched hand on the table, knuckles down, with a calculated abruptness. "The first senatorship from Utah is there," I said.

"If it's to be disturbed by any ecclesiastical direction, I want to know it now, so that the men who are supporting me may be aware of what they must encounter if they persist in their support. I ask you, as the Presidency of the Church: what are you going to do about the Senatorship?" And I opened my hand and left it lying open before them, for their decision.

It was evident enough, from their expressions, that this was a degree of boldness to which they were unaccustomed. It was, evident also that they were unprepared to reply to me. My father remained silent, with his usual placidity, waiting for the others to fail to take the initiative. President Woodruff blinked, somewhat bewildered, looking at my hand as if the sight of its emptiness and the assumption of what it held, confused him. Joseph F. Smith, frowning, eyed it askance with a darting glance, apparently annoyed by the mute insolence of its demand for a decision which he was not prepared to make.

My father, at length, looking at me imperturbably, asked: "Are you inquiring of our personal view in this matter, Frank?"

The question contained, of course, a tacit allusion to my refusal to consult the Church leaders about politics. I answered: "No, sir. I already have your personal view. That is the only personal view I have ever asked concerning the Senatorship. And I have purposely refrained from any allusions to it of late, with you, because I wished to lay it before the Presidency, as a body, formally, in order that there might be no possible misunderstanding."

"In that case," he said, "the matter rests with President Woodruff."

The President, thus forced to an explanation, made a very characteristic one. Several of the Church's friends in the East, he said, had urged father's name for the Senatorship, but it was impossible to see how he could be spared from the affairs of the priesthood. Zion needed him—and so forth.

Apparently, to President Woodruff, the question of the Senatorship was resolvable wholly upon Church considerations. His mind was so filled with zealous hope for the advancement of "the Kingdom of God on Earth," that he seemed quite unaware of the political aspects of the case, the violation of the Church's pledge, and the difficulties in the Senate that would surely attend upon my father's election.

In the general discussion that ensued, both Joseph F. Smith and my father spoke of the appeal that had been made to them on behalf of the business interests of the community, with which the financial interests of the East were now eager to co-operate. But both followed the President's example in dismissing the possibility of the First Councillor's candidacy as infringing upon his duties in the Church. I pointed out to them that such a candidacy would be considered a breach of faith, that it would raise a storm of protest. They accepted the warning without comment, as if, having decided against the candidacy, they did not need to consider such aspects of it. I kept my hand open before them until my father said, with some trace of amusement: "You'd better take up that senatorship, Frank. I think you're entitled to it."

I took it up, satisfied that there would be no more Church interference in the matter. The decision seemed to me final and momentous. I felt that the new Utah had faced the old and had been assured of independence.

About this same time (although I cannot place it accurately in my recollection), President Woodruff, speaking from the pulpit, declared that it was the right of the priesthood of God to rule in all things on earth, and that they had in no wise relinquished any of their authority. The sermon raised a dangerous alarm in Salt Lake City, and I was immediately summoned from Ogden (by a messenger from Church headquarters) to see the proprietor and the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune—which paper, it was feared, might oppose Utah's admission to statehood, construing President Woodruff's remarks to mean that the Church's political covenants were to be broken.

I found Mr. P. H. Lannan, the proprietor of the paper, anxious, indignant and ready to denounce the Church and fight against the admission to statehood. "When I heard of that sermon," he said, "my heart went into my boots. We Gentiles have trusted everything to the promises that have been made by the leaders of the Church. If the Tribune had not supported the movement for statehood, the Gentiles would never have taken the risk. I feel like a man who has sold his brethren into slavery."

I assured him (as I was authorized to do) that President Woodruff was not speaking for our generation of the Mormon people nor for his associates in the leadership of the Church. I pleaded that it was the privilege of an old man (and President Woodruff was nearly ninety) to dream again the visions of his youth; his early life had been spent in the belief that a Kingdom of God was to be set up in the valleys of the mountains, governed by the priesthood and destined to rule all the nations of the earth; he had planted the first flag of the country over the Salt Lake Valley; he was still living in days that had passed for all but him, and cherishing hopes that he alone had not abandoned. But if the Tribune and the Gentiles would be magnanimous in this matter, they would add to the gratitude that already bound the younger generations of the Church to the fulfillment of its political promises.

Mr. Lannan responded instantly to the appeal to his generosity, and after consultation with the editor-in-chief (Judge C. C. Goodwin) and the managing editor (Colonel Wm. Nelson) the Tribune continued to trust in Mormon good faith.

I reported the result of my conference to Church headquarters. The news was received with relief and gratitude. And, in a long conversation with the authorities, I was told that it would be incumbent on us of the younger generation to see that all the Church's covenants to the nation should be scrupulously observed.

I accepted my part of the charge with a light heart, and late in November, 1895, I took train for Washington for convening of Congress. Of the incidents of my brief services as delegate I shall write nothing here, since those incidents were merely introductory to matters which I shall have to consider later. But I was greeted with a great deal of cordiality by the Republicans who credited me with having brought a state and its national representation into the Republican party, and they assured me that my own political future would be as bright as that of my native state!

President Cleveland, on January 4, 1896, proclaimed Utah a sovereign state of the Union, and its admission to statehood ended, of course, my service as a territorial delegate. I stood beside his desk in the White House to see him sign the proclamation—the same desk at which he had received me, some eight years before, when I came beseeching him to be merciful to the proscribed people whose freedom he was now announcing. Perhaps the manumission that he was granting, gave a benignity to his face. Perhaps the emotion in my own mind transfigured him to me. But I saw smiles and pathos in the ruggedness of his expression of congratulation as he said a few words of hope that Utah would fulfill every promise made, on her behalf, by her own people, and every happy expectation that had been entertained for her by her friends. His enormous rigid bulk, a little bowed now by years of service, seemed softened, as his face was, to the graciousness of clement power. He gave me the pen with which he had signed the paper, and dismissed me to some of the happiest hours of my life.

I walked out of the White House dispossessed of office, but now, at last, a citizen of the Republic. I stood on the steps of the White House, to look at the city through whose streets I had so many times wandered in a worried despair, and I saw them with an emotion I would not dare transcribe. I do not know that the sun was really shining, but in my memory the scene has taken on all the accumulated brightnesses of all the radiant days I ever knew in Washington. And I remember that I saw the Washington Monument and the Capitol with a sense of almost affectionate personal possession!

In an excited exultation I went to thank the men who had helped us in the House and the Senate—to wire jubilant messages home—to send Governor Wells the pen with which the President had signed his proclamation, and to procure from friends in the War Department the first two flags that had been made with forty-five stars—the star of Utah the forty-fifth. Wherever I went, some sinister aspect seemed to have gone out of things; and I remember that I enjoyed so much the sense of their new inhostility, that I planned to delay my return to Utah until I had made a pilgrimage to every spot in Washington where I had despaired of our future.

All this may seem almost sentimental to you, who perhaps accept your citizenship as an unregarded commonplace of natural right. But, for me, the freeing of our people was an emancipation to be compared only to the enfranchisement of the Southern slaves and greater even than that, for we had come from citizenship in the older states, and we could appreciate our deprivation, smart under our ostracism, and resent the rejection that set us apart from the rest of the nation as an inferior people unfit for equal rights.

I sat down to my dinner, that evening, with the appetite that comes from a day of fasting and emotional excitement; and I recall that I was planning a visit of self-congratulation to Arlington, for the morrow, when one of the hotel bell-boys brought me a telegram. I opened it eagerly—to enjoy the expected message of felicitation from home.

It was in cipher, and that fact gave me a pause of doubt, since the days of political mysteries and their cipher telegrams were over for us, thank God! It was signed with President Woodruff's cipher name.

I went to my room to translate it, and I did not return to my dinner. The message read: "It is the will of the Lord that your father shall be elected Senator from Utah."

I do not need to explain all the treacherous implications of that announcement. As soon as I had recovered my breath, I wired back, for such interpretation as they should choose to give: "God bless Utah. I am coming home,"—and packed my trunk, for trouble.



Chapter VII. The First Betrayals



Before I reached Utah, my friends, Ben Rich and James Devine, met me, on the train. The news of President Woodruff's "revelation" had percolated through the whole community. The Gentiles were alarmed for themselves. My friends were anxious for me. All the old enmities that had so long divided Utah were arranging themselves for a new conflict. And Rich and Devine had come to urge me to remember my promise that I would hold to my candidacy no matter who should appear in the field against me.

Of my father's stand in the crisis Rich could give me only one indication: after a conference in the offices of the Presidency, Rich had said to President Woodruff: "Then I suppose I may as well close up Frank's rooms at the Templeton"—the hotel in which my friends had opened political headquarters for me—and my father, accompanying him to an anteroom, had hinted significantly: "I think you should not close Frank's rooms just yet. He may need them."

Rich brought me word, too, that the Church authorities were expecting to see me; and soon as I arrived in Salt Lake City, I hastened to the little plastered house in which the Presidency had its offices.

President Woodruff, my father, and Joseph F. Smith were there, in the large room of their official apartments. We withdrew, for private conference, into the small retiring room in which I had consulted with "Brother Joseph Mack" when he was on the underground—in 1888—and had consulted with President Woodruff about his "manifesto," in 1890. The change in their circumstances, since those unhappy days, was in my mind as I sat down.

President Woodruff sat at the head of a bare walnut table in a chair so large that it rather dwarfed him; and he sank down in it, to an attitude of nervous reluctance to speak, occupied with his hands. Smith took his place at the opposite end of the board, with dropped eyes, his chair tilted back, silent, but (as I soon saw) unusually alert and attentive. My father assumed his inevitable composure—firmly and almost unmovingly seated—and looked at me squarely with a not unkind premonition of a smile.

President Woodruff continued silent. Ordinarily, anything that came from the Lord was quite convincing to him and needed no argument (in his mind) to make it convincing to others. I could not suppose that the look of determination on my face troubled him. It was more likely that something unusual in the mental attitudes of his councillors was the cause of his hesitation; and with this suspicion to arouse me I became increasingly aware (as the conference proceeded) of two rival watchfulnesses upon me.

"Well?" I said. "What was it you wanted of me?"

Smith looked up at the President. And Smith had always, hitherto, seemed so unseeing of consequences, and, therefore, unappreciative of means, that his betrayal of interest was indicative of purpose. I thought I could detect, in the communication which his manner made, the plan of my father's ecclesiastical rivals to remove him from the scene of his supreme influence over the President, and the plan of ambitious church politicians to remove me from their path by the invocation of God's word appointing father to the Senate.

"Frank," the President announced, "it is the will of the Lord that your father should go to the Senate from Utah."

As he hesitated, I said: "Well, President Woodruff?"

He added, with less decision: "And we want you to tell us how to bring it about?"

It was evident that getting the revelation was easy to his spiritualized mind, but that fulfilling it was difficult to his unworldliness.

"President Woodruff," I replied, "you have received the revelation on the wrong point. You do not need a voice from heaven to convince anyone that my father is worthy to go to the Senate, but you will need a revelation to tell how he is to get there."

He seemed to raise himself to the inspiration of divine authority. "The only difficulty that we have encountered," he said, "is the fact that the legislators are pledged to you. Will you not release them from their promises and tell them to vote for your father?"

"No," I said. "And my father would not permit me to do it, even if I could. He knows that I gave my word of honor to my supporters to stand as a candidate, no matter who might enter against me. He knows that he and I have given our pledges at Washington that political dictation in Utah by the heads of the Mormon Church shall cease. Of all men in Utah we cannot be amenable to such dictation. If you can get my supporters away from me—very well. I shall have no personal regrets. But you cannot get me away from my supporters."

This inclusion of my father in my refusal evidently disconcerted President Woodruff; and, as evidently, it had its significance to Joseph F. Smith.

I went on: "Before I was elected to the House of Representatives, I asked my father if he intended to be a candidate for the Senate. I knew that some prominent Gentiles, desiring to curry favor at Church headquarters had solicited his candidacy. I had been told that General Clarkson and others had assured him by letter that his election would be accepted at Washington, and elsewhere. I discussed the matter with him fully. He agreed with me that his election would be a violation of the understanding had with the country; and he declared that he did not care to become again the storm center of strife to his people, nor did he feel that he could honorably break our covenant to the country. With this clear understanding between us, I made my pledges to men who, in supporting me, cast aside equally advantageous relations which they might have established with another. I can't withdraw now without dishonor."

My father said: "Don't let us have any misunderstandings. As President Woodruff stated the matter to me, I understood that it would be pleasing to the Lord, if the people desired my election to the Senate and it wouldn't antagonize the country."

"Yes, yes," the President put in. "That's what I mean."

Smith said, rather sourly: "The people are always willing to do what the Lord desires—if no one gives them bad counsel."

Both he and my father emphasized the fact that the business interests of the East were making strong representations to the Presidency in support of my father's election; and I suspected (what I afterwards found to be the case) that both Joseph F. Smith and Apostle John Henry Smith, were by this time, in close communication with Republican politicians. There was a calm assumption, everywhere, that the Church had power to decide the election, if it could be induced to act; and this assumption was a deplorable evidence, to me, of the willingness of some of our former allies to drag us swiftly to the shame of a broken covenant, if only they could profit in purse or politics by our dishonor. I would not be an agent in any such betrayal, but I had to refuse without offending my father's trust in the divine inspiration of President Woodruff's decision and without aiding the Smiths in their conspiracy.

Either at this conference or one of the later ones, two or three apostles came into the room; and among them was Apostle Brigham Young, son of the Prophet Brigham who had led the Mormons to the Salt Lake Valley. When he understood my refusal to abandon my candidacy, he said angrily: "This is a serious filial disrespect. I know my father never would have brooked such treatment from me." And I retorted: "I don't know who invited you into this conference, but I deny your right to instruct me in my filial duty. If my father doesn't understand that the senatorship has lost its value for me—that it's a cross now—then my whole lifetime of devotion to him has been in vain."

My father rose and put his arm around my shoulders. "This boy," he said, "is acting honorably. I want him to know—and you to know—that I respect the position he has taken. If he is elected, he shall have my blessing."

That was the only understanding I had with him—but it was enough. I could know that I was not to lose his trust and affection by holding to our obligations of honor; and—an assurance almost as precious—I could know that he would not consciously permit legislators to be crushed by the vengeance of the Church if they refused to yield to its pressure.

A few days after my arrival in Utah, and while this controversy was at its height, my father's birthday was celebrated (January 11, 1896), with all the patriarchal pomp of a Mormon family gathering, in his big country house outside Salt Lake City. All his descendants and collateral relatives were there, as well as the members of the Presidency and many friends. After dinner, the usual exercises of the occasion were held in the large reception hall of the house, with President Woodruff and my father and two or three other Church leaders seated in semi-state at one end of the hall, and the others of the company deferentially withdrawn to face them. Towards the end of the program President Woodruff rose from his easy chair, and made a sort of informal address of congratulation; and in the course of it, with his hand on my father's shoulder, he said benignly: "Abraham was the friend of God. He had only one son on whom all his hopes were set. But the voice of the Lord commanded him to sacrifice Isaac upon an altar; and Abraham trusted the Lord and laid his son upon the altar, in obedience to God's commands. Now here is another servant of the Most High and a friend of God. I refer to President Cannon, whose birthday we are celebrating. He has twenty-one sons; and if it shall be the will of the Lord that he must sacrifice one of them he ought to be as willing as Abraham was, for he will have twenty left. And the son should be as willing as Isaac. We can all safely trust in the Lord. He will require no sacrifice at our hands without purpose."

I remarked to a relative beside me that the altar was evidently ready for me, but that I feared I should have to "get out and rustle my own ram in the thicket." I received no reply. I heard no word of comment from anyone upon the President's speech. It was accepted devoutly, with no feeling that he had abused the privileges of a guest. Everyone understood (as I did) that President Woodruff was the gentlest of men; that he had often professed and always shown a kindly affection for me; but that the will of the Lord being now known, he thought I should be proud to be sacrificed to it!

Among the legislators pledged to me were Mormon Bishops and other ecclesiasts who had promised their constituents to vote for me and who now stood between a betrayal of their people and a rebellion against the power of the hierarchy. I released one of them from his pledge, because of his pathetic fear that he would be eternally damned if he did not obey "the will of the Lord." The others went to the Presidency to admit that if they betrayed their people they would have to confess what pressure had been put upon them to force them to the betrayal. I went to notify my father (as I had notified the representatives of every other candidate) that we were going to call a caucus of the Republican majority of the legislature, and later I was advised that President Woodruff and his Councillor's had appointed a committee to investigate and report to them how many members could be counted upon to support my father's candidacy. The committee (composed of my uncle Angus, my brother Abraham, and Apostle John Henry Smith) brought back word that even among the men who had professed a willingness to vote for my father there was great reluctance and apprehension, and that in all probability his election could not be carried. With President Woodruff's consent, my father then announced that he was not a candidate. I was nominated by acclamation.

When I called upon my father at the President's offices after the election, he said to me before his colleagues: "I wish to congratulate you on having acted honorably and fearlessly. You have my blessing." He turned to the President. "You see, President Woodruff," he added, "it was not the will of the Lord, after all, since the people did not desire my election!"

I have dwelt so largely upon the religious aspects of this affair because they are as true of the Prophet in politics today as they were then. At the time, the personal complication of the situation most distressed me—the fact that I was opposing my father in order to fulfill the word of honor that we had given on behalf of the Mormon leaders. But there was another view of the matter; and it is the one that is most important to the purposes of this narrative. In the course of the various discussions and conferences upon the Senatorship, I learned that the inspiration of the whole attempted betrayal had come from certain Republican politicians and lobbyists (like Colonel Isaac Trumbo), who claimed to represent a political combination of business interests in Washington. Joseph F. Smith admitted as much to me in more than one conversation. (I had offended these interests by opposing a monetary and a tariff bill during my service as delegate in Congress—a matter which I have still to recount). They had chosen my father and Colonel Trumbo as Utah's two Senators. I made it my particular business to see that Trumbo's name was not even mentioned in the caucus. The man selected as the other senator was Arthur Brown, a prominent Gentile lawyer who was known as a "jack-Mormon" (meaning a Gentile adherent to Church power), although I then believed, and do now, that Judge Chas. C. Goodwin was the Gentile most entitled to the place, because of his ability and the love of his people.

I was, however, content with the victory we had won by resisting the influence of the business interests that had been willing to sell our honor for their profit, and I set out for Washington with a determination to continue the resistance. I was in a good position to continue it. The election of two Republican Senators from Utah had given the Republicans a scant majority of the members of the Upper House, and the bills that I had fought in the Lower House were now before the Senate.

These bills had been introduced in the House of Representatives, immediately upon its convening in December, 1895, by the committee on rules, before Speaker Reed had even appointed the general committees. One was a bill to authorize the issuance of interest-bearing securities of the United States at such times and in such sums as the Executive might determine. The other was a general tariff bill that proposed increases upon the then existing Wilson-Gorman bill. The first would put into the hands of the President a power that was not enjoyed by any ruler in Christendom; the second would add to the unfair and discriminatory tariff rates then in force, by making ad valorem increases in them. Many new members of Congress had been elected on the two issues thus created: the arbitrary increase of the bonded indebtedness by President Cleveland to maintain a gold reserve; and the unjust benefits afforded those industries that were least in need of aid, by duties increased in exact proportion to the strength of the industrial combination that was to be protected.

The presentation of the two bills by the Committee on Rules—with a coacher to each proposing to prevent amendment and limit discussion—raised a revolt in the House. A caucus of the insurgent Republican members was held at the Ebbitt Hotel, and I was elected temporary chairman. We appointed a committee to demand from Speaker Reed a division of the questions and time for opposition to be heard. We had seventy-five insurgents when our committee waited on. Reed; and most of us were new men, elected to oppose such measures as these bills advocated. He received us with sarcasm, put us off with a promise to consider our demands, and then set his lieutenants at work among us. Under the threat of the Speaker's displeasure if we continued to "insurge" and the promise of his favor if we "got into line," forty-one (I think) of our seventy-five deserted us. We were gloriously beaten in the House on both measures.

Some of the older Republican members of the House came to ask me how I had been "misled"; and they received with the raised eyebrow and the silent shrug my explanation that I had been merely following my convictions and living up to the promises I had made my constituents. I had supposed that I was upholding an orthodox Republican doctrine in helping to defend the country from exploitation by the financial interests, in the matter of the bond issue, and from the greed of the business interests in the attempt to increase horizontally the tariff rates.

I do not need, in this day of tariff reform agitation, to argue the injustice of the latter measure. But the bond issue—looking back upon it now—seems the more cruelly absurd of the two. Here we were, in times of peace, with ample funds in the national treasury, proposing to permit the unlimited issuance of interest-bearing government bonds in order to procure gold, for that national treasury, out of the hoards of the banks, so that these same banks might be able to obtain the gold again from the treasury in return for paper money. The extent to which this sort of absurdity might be carried would depend solely upon the desire of the confederation of finance to have interest-bearing government bonds on which they might issue national bank notes, since the Executive was apparently willing to yield interminably to their greed, in the belief that he was protecting the public credit by encouraging the financiers to attack that credit with their raids on the government gold reserve. The whole difficulty had arisen, of course, out of the agitation upon the money question. The banks were drawing upon the government gold reserve; and the government was issuing bonds to recover the gold again from the banks.

I had been, for some years, interested in the problem of our monetary system and had studied and discussed it among our Eastern bankers and abroad. The very fact that I was from a "silver state" had put me on my guard, lest a local influence should lead me, into economic error. I had grown into the belief that our system was wrong. It seemed to me that some remedy was imperative. I saw in bimetallism a part of the remedy, and I supported bimetallism not as a partisan of free coinage but as an advocate of monetary reform.

The arrival of Utah's two representatives in the Senate (January 27, 1896) gave the bimetallists a majority, and when the bond-issue bill came before us we made it into a bill to permit the free coinage of silver. (February 1). A few days later, the Finance Committee turned the tariff bill into a free-coinage bill also. On both measures, five Republican Senators voted against their party—Henry M. Teller, of Colorado; Fred T. Dubois, of Idaho; Thos. H. Carter, of Montana; Lee Mantle, of Montana; and myself. We were subsequently joined by Richard F. Pettigrew of South Dakota. Within two weeks of my taking the oath in the Senate we were read out of the party by Republican leaders and Republican organs.

All this happened so swiftly that there was no time for any remonstrances to come to me from Salt Lake City, even if the Church authorities had wished to remonstrate. The fact was that the people of Utah were with us in our insurgency, and when the financial interests subsequently appealed to the hierarchy, they found the Church powerless to aid them in support of a gold platform. But they obtained that aid, at last, in support of a tariff that was as unjust to the people as it was favorable to the trusts, and my continued "insurgency" led me again into a revolt against Church interference.

The thread of connection that ran through these incidents is clear enough to me now: they were all incidents in the progress of a partnership between the Church and the predatory business interests that have since so successfully exploited the country. But, at the time, I saw no such connection clearly. I supposed that the partnership was merely a political friendship between the Smith faction in the Church and the Republican politicians who wished to use the Church; and I had sufficient contempt for the political abilities of the Smiths to regard their conspiracy rather lightly.

Believing still in the good faith of the Mormon people and their real leaders in authority, I introduced a joint resolution in the Senate restoring to the Church its escheated real estate, which was still in the hands of a receiver, although its personal property had been already restored. In conference with Senators Hoar and Allison,—of the committee to which the resolution was referred—I urged an unconditional restoration of the property, arguing that to place conditions upon the restoration would be to insult the people who had given so many proofs of their willingness to obey the law and keep their pledges. The property was restored without conditions by a joint resolution that passed the Senate on March 18, 1896, passed the House a week later, and was approved by the President on March 26. The Church was now free of the last measure of proscription. Its people were in the enjoyment of every political liberty of American citizenship; and I joined in the Presidential campaign of 1896 with no thought of any danger threatening us that was not common to the other communities of the country.

But before I continue further with these political events, I must relate a private incident in the secret betrayal of Utah—an incident that must be related, if this narrative is to remain true to the ideals of public duty that have thus far assumed to inspire it—an incident of which a false account was given before a Senate Committee in Washington during the Smoot investigation of 1904, accompanied by a denial of responsibility by Joseph F. Smith, the man whose authority alone encouraged and accomplished the tragedy—for it was a tragedy, as dark in its import to the Mormon community as it was terrible in its immediate consequences to all our family.

By his denial of responsibility and by secret whisper within the Church, Smith has placed the disgrace of the betrayal upon my father, who was guiltless of it, and blackened the memory of my dead brother by a misrepresentation of his motives. I feel that it is incumbent upon me, therefore, at whatever pain to myself, to relate the whole unhappy truth of the affair, as much to defend the memory of the dead as to denounce the betrayal of the living, to expose a public treason against the community not less than to correct a private wrong done to the good name of those whom it is my right to defend.

Late in July, 1896, when I was in New York on business for the Presidency, I received a telegram announcing the death of my brother, Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. We had been companions all our lives; he had been the nearest to me of our family, the dearest of my friends but even in the first shock of my grief I realized that my father would have a greater stroke of sorrow to bear than I; and in hurrying back to Salt Lake City I nerved myself with the hope that I might console him.

I found him and Joseph F. Smith in the office of the Presidency, sitting at their desks. My father turned as I entered, and his face was unusually pale in spite of its composure; but the moment he recognized me, his expression changed to a look of pain that alarmed me. He rose and put his hand on my shoulder with a tenderness that it was his habit to conceal. "I know how you feel his loss," he said hoarsely, "but when I think what he would have had to pass through if he had lived I cannot regret his death."

The almost agonized expression of his face, as much as the terrible implication of his words, startled me with I cannot say what horrible fear about my brother. I asked, "Why! Why—what has happened?"

With a sweep of his hand toward Smith at his desk—a gesture and a look the most unkind I ever saw him use—he answered: "A few weeks ago, Abraham took a plural wife, Lillian Hamlin. It became known. He would have had to face a prosecution in Court. His death has saved us from a calamity that would have been dreadful for the Church—and for the state."

"Father!" I cried. "Has this thing come back again! And the ink hardly dry on the bill that restored your church property on the pledge of honor that there would never be another case—" I had caught the look on Smith's face, and it was a look of sullen defiance. "How did it happen?"

My father replied: "I know—it's awful. I would have prevented it if I could. I was asked for my consent, and I refused it. President Smith obtained the acquiescence of President Woodruff, on the plea that it wasn't an ordinary case of polygamy but merely a fulfillment of the biblical instruction that a man should take his dead brother's wife. Lillian was betrothed to David, and had been sealed to him in eternity after his death. I understand that President Woodruff told Abraham he would leave the matter with them if he wished to take the responsibility—and President Smith performed the ceremony."

Smith could hear every word that was said. My father had included him in the conversation, and he was listening. He not only did not deny his guilt; he accepted it in silence, with an expression of sulky disrespect.

He did not deny it later, when the whole community had learned of it. He went with Apostle John Henry Smith to see Mr. P. H. Lannan, proprietor of the Salt Lake Tribune, to ask him not to attack the Church for this new and shocking violation of its covenant. Mr. Lannan had been intimately friendly with my brother, and he was distressed between his regard for his dead friend and his obligation to do his public duty. I do not know all that the Smiths said to him; but I know that the conversation assumed that Joseph F. Smith had performed the marriage ceremony; I know that neither of the Smiths made any attempt to deny the assumption; and I know that Joseph F. Smith sought to placate Mr. Lannan by promising "it shall not occur again." And this interview was sought by the Smiths, palpably because wherever the marriage of Abraham H. Cannon and Lillian Hamlin was talked of, Joseph F. Smith was named as the priest who had solemnized the offending relation. If it had not been for Smith's consciousness of his own guilt and his knowledge that the whole community was aware of that guilt, he would never have gone to the Tribune office to make such a promise to Mr. Lannan.

All of which did not prevent Joseph F. Smith from testifying—in the Smoot investigation at Washington in 1904—that he did not marry Abraham Cannon and Lillian Hamlin, that he did not have any conversation with my father about the marriage, that he did not know Lillian Hamlin had been betrothed to Abraham's dead brother, that the first time he heard of the charge that he had married them was when he saw it printed in the newspapers!

[FOOTNOTE: See Proceedings before Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections, 1904, Vol. 1, pages 110, 126, 177, etc.]

If this first polygamous marriage had been the last—if it were an isolated and peculiar incident as the Smiths then claimed it was and promised it should be—it might be forgiven as generously now as Mr. Lannan then forgave it. But, about the same time there became public another case—that of Apostle Teasdale—and as this narrative shall prove, here was the beginning of a policy of treachery which the present Church leaders, under Joseph F. Smith, have since consistently practiced, in defiance of the laws of the state and the "revelation of God," with lies and evasions, with perjury and its subornation, in violation of the most solemn pledges to the country, and through the agency of a political tyranny that makes serious prosecution impossible and immunity a public boast.

The world understands that polygamy is an enslavement of women. The ecclesiastical authorities in Utah today have discovered that it is more powerful as an enslaver of men. Once a man is bound in a polygamous relation, there is no place for him in the civilized world outside of a Mormon community. He must remain there, shielded by the Church, or suffer elsewhere social ostracism and the prosecution of bigamous relations. Since 1890, the date of the manifesto (and it is to the period since 1890 that my criticism solely applies) the polygamist must be abjectly subservient to the prophets who protect him; he must obey their orders and do their work, or endure the punishment which they can inflict upon him and his wives and his children. Inveigled into a plural marriage by the authority of a clandestine religious dogma—encouraged by his elders, seduced by the prospect of their favor, and impelled perhaps by a daring impulse to take the covenant and bond that shall swear him into the dangerous fellowship of the lawlessly faithful—he finds himself, at once, a law breaker who must pay the Church hierarchy for his protection by yielding to them every political right, every personal independence, every freedom of opinion, every liberty of act.

I do not believe that Smith fully foresaw the policy which he has since undoubtedly pursued. I believe now, as I did then, that in betraying my brother into polygamy Smith was actuated by his anger against my father for having inspired the recession from the doctrine; that he desired to impair the success of the recession by having my brother dignify the recrudescence of polygamy by the apostolic sanction of his participation; and that this participation was jealously designed by Smith to avenge himself upon the First Councillor by having the son be one of the first to break the law, and violate the covenant. I saw that my brother's death had thwarted the conspiracy. Smith was so obviously frightened—despite his pretense of defiance—that I believed he had learned his needed lesson. And I accepted the incident as a private tragedy on which the final curtain had now fallen.



Chapter VIII. The Church and the Interests



Meanwhile, I had been taking part in the Presidential campaign of 1896, and I had been one of the four "insurgent" Republican Senators (Teller of Colorado, Dubois of Idaho, Pettigrew of South Dakota and myself) who withdrew from the national Republican convention at St. Louis, in fulfillment of our obligations to our constituents, when we found that the convention was dominated by that confederation of finance in politics which has since come to be called "the System." I was a member of the committee on resolutions, and our actions in the committee had indicated that we would probably withdraw from the convention if it adopted the single gold platform as dictated by Senator Lodge of Massachusetts acting for a group of Republican leaders headed by Platt of New York, and Aldrich of Rhode Island. At the most critical point of our controversy I received a message from Church headquarters warning me that "we" had made powerful friends among the leading men of the nation and that we ought not to jeopardize their friendship by an inconsiderate insurgency. Accordingly, in bolting the convention, I was guilty of a new defiance of ecclesiastical authority and a new provocation of ecclesiastical vengeance.

President Woodruff spoke to me of the matter after I returned to Utah, and I explained to him that I thought the Republican party, under the leadership of Mark Hanna and the flag of the "interests," had forgotten its duty to the people of the nation. I argued, to the President, that of all people in the world we, who had suffered so much ourselves, were most bound to bow to no unfairness ourselves and to oppose the imposition of unfairness upon others. And I talked in this strain to him not because I wished his approval of my action but because I wished to fortify him against the approach of the emissaries of the new Republicanism, who were sure to come to him to seek the support of the Church in the campaign.

Some days later, while I was talking with my father in the offices of the Presidency, the secretary ushered in Senator Redfield Proctor of Vermont. I withdrew, understanding that he wished to speak in private with President Woodruff and his councillors. But I learned subsequently that he had come to Salt Lake to persuade the leaders of the Church to use their power in favor of the Republican party throughout the intermountain states.

Senator Proctor asked me personally what chance I thought the party had in the West. I pointed out that the Republican platform of 1892 had reproached Grover Cleveland for his antagonism to bimetallism—"a doctrine favored by the American people from tradition and interest," to quote the language of that platform—and the Republicans of the intermountain states still held true to the doctrine. It had been repudiated by the St. Louis platform of June, 1896, and the intermountain states would probably refuse their electoral votes to the Republican party because of the repudiation.

Senator Proctor thought that the leaders of the Church were powerful enough to control the votes of their followers; and he argued that gratitude to the Republican party for freeing Utah ought to be stronger than the opinions of the people in a merely economic question.

I reminded him that one of our covenants had been that the Church was to refrain from dictating to its followers in politics; that we had been steadily growing away from the absolutism of earlier times; and that for the sake of the peace and progress of Utah I hoped that the leaders would keep their hands off. I did not, of course, convince him. Nor was it necessary. I was sure that no power that the Church would dare to use would be sufficient at this time to influence the people against their convictions.

Joseph F. Smith, soon afterward, notified me that there was to be a meeting of the Church authorities in the Temple, and he asked me to attend it. Since I had never before been invited to one of these conferences in the "holy of holies," I inquired the purposes of the conclave. He replied that they desired to consider the situation in which our people had been placed by my action in the St. Louis convention, and to discuss the perceptible trend of public opinion in the state. I saw, then, that Senator Proctor's visit had not been without avail.

On the appointed afternoon, I went to the sacred inner room of the temple, where the members of the Presidency and several of the apostles were waiting. I shall not describe the room or any of the religious ceremonies with which the conference was opened. I shall confine myself to the discussion—which was begun mildly by President Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow, then president of the quorum of apostles.

To my great surprise, Joseph F. Smith made a violent Republican speech, declaring that I had humiliated the Church and alienated its political friends by withdrawing from the St. Louis convention. He was followed by Heber J. Grant, an apostle, who had always posed as a Democrat; and he was as Republican and denunciatory as Smith had been. He declaimed against our alienation of the great business interests of the country, whose friendship he and other prominent Mormons had done so much to cultivate, and from whom we might now procure such advantageous co-operation if we stood by them in politics.

President Woodruff tried to defend me by saying that he was sure I had acted conscientiously; but by this time I desired no intervention of prophetic mercy and no mitigation of judgment that might come of such intervention. As soon as the President announced that they were prepared to hear from me, I rose and walked to the farther side of the solemn chamber, withdrawn from the assembled prophets and confronting them. Having first disavowed any recognition of their right as an ecclesiastical body to direct me in my political actions, I rehearsed the events of the two campaigns in which I had been elected on pledges that I had fulfilled by my course in Congress, in the Senate, and finally in the St. Louis convention. That course had been approved by the people. They had trusted me to carry out the policies on which they had elected me to Congress. They had reiterated the trust by electing me to the Senate after I had revolted against the Republican bond and tariff measures in the lower House. I could not and would not violate their trust now. And there was no authority on earth which I would recognize as empowered to come between the people's will and the people's elected servants.

The prophets received this defiance in silence. Their expressions implied condemnation, but none was spoken—at least not while I was there. President Woodruff indicated that the conference was at an end, so far as I was concerned; and I withdrew. Some attempts were subsequently made to influence the people during the campaign, but in a half-hearted way and vainly. The Democrats carried Utah overwhelmingly; only three Republican members of the legislature were elected out of sixty-three.

It was this conference in the Temple which gave me my first realization that most of the Prophets had not, and never would have, any feeling of citizenship in state or nation; that they considered, and would continue to consider, every public issue solely in its possible effect upon the fortunes of their Church. My father alone seemed to have a larger view; but he was a statesman of full worldly knowledge; and his experience in Congress, during a part of the "reconstruction period," and throughout the Tilden-Hayes controversy, had taught him how effectively the national power could assert itself. The others, blind to such dangers, seemed to feel that under Utah's sovereignty the literal "kingdom of God" (as they regard their Church) was to exercise an undisputed authority. Unable, myself, to take their viewpoint, I was conscious of a sense of transgression against the orthodoxy of their religion. I was aware, for the first time, that in gaining the fraternity of American citizenship I had in some way lost the fraternity of the faith in which I had been reared. I accepted this as a necessary consequence of our new freedom—a freedom that left us less close and unyielding in our religious loyalty by withdrawing the pressure that had produced our compactness. And I hoped that, in time, the Prophets themselves—or, at least, their successors—would grow into a more liberal sense of citizenship as their people grew. I knew that our progress must be a process of evolution. I was content to wait upon the slow amendments of time.

My hope carried me through the disheartening incidents of the Senatorial campaign that followed upon the election of the legislature—a campaign in which the power of the hierarchy was used publicly to defeat the deposed apostle, Moses Thatcher, in his second candidacy for the United States Senate. But the Church only succeeded in defeating him by throwing its influence to Joseph L. Rawlins, whom the Prophets loved as little as they loved Thatcher; and I felt that in Rawlins' election the state at least gained a representative who was worthy of it.

What was quite as sinister a use of Church influence occurred among the Mormons of Idaho, where I went to help Senator Fred. T. Dubois in his campaign for re-election. He had aided us in obtaining Utah's statehood as much as any man in Washington. He had accepted all the promises of the Mormon leaders in good faith—particularly their promise that no Church influence should intrude upon the politics of Idaho. Yet in his campaign I was followed through the Mormon settlements by Charles W. Penrose, a polygamist, since an apostle of the Church, and at that time editor of the Church's official organ, the Deseret News.

I supposed that he was lying in his claim to represent the Presidency; and as soon as I returned to Salt Lake, I went to Church headquarters and asked whether Penrose had been authorized to say (as he had been saying) that he was sent out to prevent my making any misrepresentations of the political attitude of the Presidency.

Joseph F. Smith replied, "Yes,"—speaking for himself and apparently for President Woodruff.

"And when"—I demanded—"when did I ever claim to represent or misrepresent you in politics? Haven't I always said that I don't recognize you as politicians—and always denied that you have any right to dictate the politics of our people?"

President Woodruff interposed gently:

"Well, you know, Frank, we have no criticism to pass on you, but we were advised that you might tell the voters of Idaho we were friendly to Senator Dubois, and so we sent Brother Penrose, at the request of President Budge" (a Mormon stake president in Idaho) "to counsel our people. And Brother Penrose says you attacked him in one of your meetings, and said he was not a trustworthy political guide."

President Woodruff's mildness was always irresistible. "If that's all he told you I said about him," I replied, "he didn't do justice to my remarks." And I explained that I had described Penrose as "a lying, oily hypocrite," come to advise the Idaho Mormons that the Presidency wished them to vote a certain political ticket although the Presidency had no interest in the question and although I myself had taken to Washington the Presidency's covenant of honor that the Church would never attempt to interfere in Idaho's political affairs.

Smith sprang to his feet angrily. "I don't care what has been promised to Dubois or anyone else," he said. "He was the bitterest enemy our people had in the old days, and I'll never give my countenance to him in politics while the world stands. He sent many a one of our brethren to prison when he was marshal of the territory, and I can't forget his devilish persecutions—even if you can."

I closed the conversation by remarking that not one among us would have had a vote as a citizen either of Utah or of Idaho if Dubois and men of his kind had not accepted our pledges of honor; and if we were determined to remember the persecutions and not the mercy, we ought to go back to the conditions from which mercy had rescued us.

I left for Washington, soon after, with an unhappy apprehension that there were evil influences at work in Utah which might prove powerful enough to involve the whole community in the worst miseries of reaction. I saw those influences embodied in Joseph F. Smith; and because he was explosive where others were reflective, he had now more influence than previously—there being no longer any set resistance to him. The reverence of the Mormon people for the name of Smith was (as it had always been) his chief asset of popularity. He had a superlative physical impressiveness and a passion that seemed to take the place of magnetism in public address. But he never said anything memorable; he never showed any compelling ability of mind; he had a personal cunning without any large intelligence, and he was so many removes from the First Presidency that it seemed unlikely he would soon attain to that position of which the power is so great that it only makes the blundering more dangerous than the astute.

I was going to Washington, before Congress reconvened, to confer with Senator Redfield Proctor. He wished to see me about the new protective tariff bill that was proposed by the Republican leaders. I wished to ask him not to use his political influence in Idaho against Senator Fred. T. Dubois, who had been Senator Proctor's political protege. I knew that Senator Proctor had once been given a semi-official promise that the Mormon Church leaders would not interfere in Idaho against Dubois. I wished to tell Proctor that this promise was not being kept, and to plead with him to give Dubois fair play—although I knew that Senator Dubois' "insurgency" had offended Senator Proctor.

He received me, in his home in Washington, with an almost paternal kindliness that became sometimes more dictatorial than persuasive—as the manner of an older Senator is so apt to be when he wishes to correct the independence of a younger colleague. He explained that the House was Republican by a considerable majority; a good protective tariff bill would come from that body; and a careful canvass of the Senate had proved that the bill would pass there, if I would vote for it. "We have within one vote of a majority," he said. "As you're a devoted protectionist in your views—as your state is for protection—as your father and your people feel grateful to the Republican party for leading you out of the wilderness—I have felt that it was proper to appeal to you and learn your views definitely. If you'll pledge your support to the bill, we shall not look elsewhere for a vote—but it's essential that we should be secure of a majority."

I replied that I could not promise to vote for the measure until I should see it. It was true that I had been a devoted advocate of protection and still believed in the principle; but I had learned something of the way in which tariff bills were framed, and something of the influences that controlled the party councils in support of them. I could not be sure that the new measure would be any more just than the original Dingley bill, which I had helped to defeat in the Senate; and the way in which this bill had been driven through the House was a sufficient warning to me not to harness myself in a pledge that might be misused in legislation.

Senator Proctor did me the honor to say that he did not suppose any improper suggestion of personal advantage could influence me, and he hoped I knew him too well to suppose that he would use such an argument; "but," he added, "anything that it's within the 'political' power of the party to bestow, you may expect; I'm authorized to say that we will take care of you."

As I still refused to bind myself blindly, he said, with regret: "We had great hopes of you. It seems that we must look elsewhere. I will leave the question open. If you conclude to assure us of your vote for the bill, I shall see that you are restored to a place in Republican councils. If I do not hear anything from you, it will be necessary to address ourselves to one or two other Senators who are probably available."

It is, of course, a doctrine of present-day Republicanism that the will of the majority must rule within the party. An insurgent is therefore an apostate. The decision of the caucus is the infallible declaration of the creed. In setting myself up as a judge of what it was right for me to do, as the sworn representative of the people who had elected me, I was offending against party orthodoxy, as that orthodoxy was then, and is now, enforced in Washington.

I was given an opportunity to return to conformity. I was sent a written invitation to attend the caucus of Republican Senators after the assembling of Congress; and, with the other "insurgents," I ignored the invitation. It was finally decided by the party leaders to let the tariff bill rest until after the inauguration of the President-elect, William McKinley, with the understanding that he would call a special session to consider it; and, in the interval, the Republican machine, under Mark Hanna, was set to work to produce a Republican majority in the Senate.

Hanna was elected Senator, at this time, to succeed John Sherman, who had been removed to the office of Secretary of State, in order to make a seat for Hanna. The Republican majority was produced. (Senator Dubois had been defeated). And when the special session was called, in the spring of 1897, my vote was no longer so urgently needed. I was invited to a Republican caucus, but I was unwilling to return to political affiliations which I might have to renounce again; for I saw the power of the business interests in dictating the policy of the party and I did not propose to bow to that dictation.

When the tariff bill came before the Senate, I could not in conscience support it. The beneficiaries of the bill seemed to be dictating their own schedules, and this was notably the case with the sugar trust, which had obtained a differential between raw and refined sugar several times greater than the entire cost of refining. I denounced the injustice of the sugar schedule particularly. A Mr. Oxnard came to remonstrate with me on behalf of the beet sugar industry of the West. "You know," he said, "what a hard time we're having with our sugar companies. Unless this schedule's adopted I greatly fear for our future."

I replied that I was not opposing any protection of the struggling industries of the country, or of the sugar growers, but I was set against the extortionate differential that the sugar trust was demanding. Everybody knew that the trust had built its tremendous industrial power upon such criminally high protection as this differential afforded, and that its power now affected public councils, obtained improper favors, and terrorized the small competing beet sugar companies of the West. I argued that it was time to rally for the protection of the people as well as of the beet sugar industry.

He predicted that if the differential was reduced the protection on beet sugar would fail. I laughed at him. "You don't know the temper of the Senate," I said. "Why, even some of the Democrats are in favor of protecting the beet sugar industry. That part of the bill is safe, whatever happens to the rest."

"Senator Cannon," he replied, with all the scorn of superior knowledge, "you're somewhat new to this matter. Permit me to inform you that if we don't do our part in supporting the sugar schedule, including the differential, the friends of the schedule in the Senate will prevent us from obtaining our protection."

"That," I retorted angrily, "is equivalent to saying that the sugar trust is writing the sugar schedule. I can't listen with patience to any such insult. The Senate of the United States cannot be dictated to, in a matter of such importance, by the trust. I will not vote for the differential. I will continue to oppose it to the end. If you're right—if the trust has such power—better that our struggling sugar industry should perish, so that we may arouse the people to the iniquitous manipulation that destroyed it."

I continued to oppose the schedule. Soon after, I received a message from the Church authorities asking me to go to New York to attend to some of their financial affairs. I entered the lobby of the Plaza Hotel on Fifth Avenue about nine o'clock at night; I was met, unexpectedly, by Thomas R. Cutler, manager of the Utah Sugar Company, who was a Bishop of the Mormon Church; and he asked, almost at once, how the tariff bill was progressing at Washington.

I had known Bishop Cutler for years. I knew that he had labored with extraordinary zeal and intelligence to establish the sugar industry in Utah. I understood that he had risked his own property, unselfishly, to save the enterprise when it was in peril. And I had every reason to expect that he would be as indignant as I was, at the proposal to use the support of the beet sugar states in behalf of their old tyrant.

I told him of my conversation with Oxnard. "I'm glad," I said, "that we're independent enough to refuse such an alliance with the men who are robbing the country."

A peculiar, pale smile curled Bishop Cutler's thin lips. "Well, Frank," he replied, "that's just what I want to see you about. We"—with the intonation that is used among prominent Mormons when the "we" are voicing the conclusions of the hierarchy—"wouldn't like to do anything to hurt the sugar interests of the country. I've looked into this differential, and I don't see that it is particularly exorbitant. As a matter of fact, the American Sugar Refining Company is doing all it can to help us get our needed protection, and we have promised to do what we can for it, in return. I hope you can see your way clear to vote for the bill. I know that the brethren"—meaning the Church authorities—"will not approve of your opposition to it."

I understand what his quiet warning meant, and when we had parted I went to my room to face the situation. Already I had been told, by a representative of the Union Pacific Railway, that the company intended to make Utah the legal home of the corporation, and to enter into a close affiliation with the prominent men of the Church. I had been asked to participate, and I had refused because I did not feel free, as a Senator, to become interested in a company whose relations with the government were of such a character. But I had not foreseen what this affiliation meant. Bishop Cutler's warning opened my eyes. The Church was protecting itself, in its commercial undertakings, by an alliance with the strongest and most unscrupulous of the national enemies.

I saw that this was natural. The Mormon leaders had been for years struggling to save their community from poverty. Proscribed by the Federal laws, their home industries suffering for want of finances, fighting against the allied influences of business in politics, these leaders had been taught to feel a fearful respect for the power that had oppressed them. They were now being offered the aid and countenance of their old opponents. Our community, so long the object of the world's disdain, was to advance to favor and prosperity along the easy road of association with the most influential interests of the country.

I remembered the long hard struggle of our people. I remembered the days and nights of anxiety that I myself had known when we were friendless and proscribed. Here was an open door for us, now, to power and wealth and all the comfort and consideration that would come of these. Other men better than I in personal character, more experienced in legislation than I, and wiser by natural gift, were willing to vote for the bill; and Bishop Cutler, a man whom I had always esteemed, the representative of the men whom I most revered, had urged me, for them, to support the bill, under suggestion of their anger if I refused to be guided by their leadership.

I saw why the "interests" were eager to have our friendship; we could give them more than any other community of our size in the whole country. In the final analysis, the laws of our state and the administration of its government would be in the hands of the church authorities. Moses Thatcher might lead a rebellion for a time, but it would be brief. Brigham H. Roberts might avow his independence in some wonderful burst of campaign oratory, but he would be forced to fast and pray and see visions until he yielded. I might rebel and be successful for a moment, but the inexorable power of church control would crush me at last. Yet, if I surrendered in this matter of the tariff, I should be doing exactly what I had criticized so many of my colleagues for doing—for more than one man in the House and the Senate had given me the specious excuse that it was necessary to go against his conscience, here, in order to hold his influence and his power to do good in other instances.

I did not sleep that night. On the day following, I transacted the financial affairs that I had been asked to undertake, and then I returned to Washington. My wife met me at the railway station, and—if you will bear with the intimacy of such psychology—the moment I saw her I knew how I would vote. I knew that neither the plea of community ambition, nor the equally invalid argument of an industrial need at home, nor the financial jeopardy of my friends who had invested in our home industries, nor the fear of church antagonism, could justify me in what would be, for me, an act of perfidy. When I had taken my oath of office I had pledged myself, in the memory of old days of injustice, never to vote as a Senator for an act of injustice. The test had come. By all the sanctities of that old suffering and the promise that I had made in its spirit, I would keep the faith.

When the tariff bill came to its final vote in the Senate, I had the unhappy distinction of being the only Republican Senator who voted against it. A useless sacrifice! And yet if it had been my one act of public life, I should still be glad of it. The "interests" that forced the passage of that bill are those that have since exploited the country so shamefully. It is their control of Republican party councils that has since caused the loss of popular faith in Republicanism and the split in the party which threatens to disrupt it. It is their control of politics in Utah that has destroyed the whole value of the Mormon experiment in communism and made the Mormon Church an instrument of political oppression for commercial gain. They are the most dangerous domestic enemy that the nation has known since the close of the Civil War. My opposition was as doomed as such single independence must always be—but at least it was an opposition. There is a consolation in having been right, though you may have been futile!

My father, visiting Washington soon afterwards, took occasion to criticize my vote publicly, in a newspaper interview; but he was content, by that criticism, to clear himself and his colleagues of any responsibility for my act. "You made a great mistake," he told me privately. "You are alienating the friends who have done so much for us." He added as if casually—with an air of off-handedness that was significant to me—"You lay yourself open to attack from your political enemies. When a man's head is high, it is easily hit." I was afterwards to understand how serious a danger he then foresaw and thus predicted.

Many reports soon reached me of attacks that were being made upon me by the ecclesiastical authorities, particularly by Joseph F. Smith and Apostle Heber J. Grant. The formal criticism passed upon me by my father was magnified to make my tariff vote appear an inexcusable party and community defection. A vigorous and determined opposition was raised against me. And in this, Smith and his followers were aided by the perfect system of Church control in Utah—a system of complete ecclesiastical tyranny under the guise of democracy.

Practically every Mormon man is in the priesthood. Nearly every Mormon man has some concrete authority to exercise in addition to holding his ordination as an elder. Obedience to his superiors is essential to his ambition to rise to higher dignity in the church; and obedience to his superiors is necessary in order to attract obedience to himself from his subordinates. There can be no lay jealousy of priestly interference in politics, because there are no laymen in the proper sense of the word. A man's worldly success in life is largely involved in his success as a churchman, since the church commands the opportunities of enterprise, and the leaders of the Church are the state's most powerful men of affairs. It is not uncommon, in any of our American communities, for men to use their church membership to support their business; but in Utah the Mormons practically must do so, and even the Gentiles find it wise to be subservient.

Add to this temporal power of the Church the fact that it was establishing a policy of seeking material success for its people, and you have the explanation of its eagerness to accept an alliance with the "interests" and of its hostility to anyone who opposed that alliance. The Mormons, dispossessed of their means by the migration from Illinois, had been taught the difficulty of obtaining wealth and the value of it when once obtained. They fancied themselves set apart, in the mountains, by the world's exclusion. They were ambitious to make themselves as financially powerful in proportion to their numbers as the Jews were; and it was a common argument among them that the world's respect had turned to the Jews because of the dependence of Christian governments upon the Jewish financiers.

The exploitation of this solid mass of industry and thrift could not long be obscured from the eyes of the East. The honest desire of the Mormon leaders to benefit their people by an alliance with financial power made them the easy victims of such an alliance. With the death of the older men of the hierarchy, the Church administration lost its tradition of religious leadership for the good of the community solely, and the new leaders became eager for financial aggrandizement for the sake, of power. Like every other church that has added a temporal scepter to its spiritual authority, its pontiffs have become kings of a civil government instead of primates of a religious faith.



Chapter IX. At the Crossways



In 1897, the Church, freed of proscription, with its people enjoying the sovereignty of their state rights, had—as I have already said—only one further enfranchisement to desire: and that was its freedom from debt. The informal "finance committee" of which I was a member, had succeeded in concentrating the bulk of the indebtedness in the East, on short term loans, and had brought a certain order out of the confusion of the older methods of administration. But, in 1897, my father proposed a comprehensive plan of Church finance that included the issuance of Church bonds and the formation of responsible committees to regulate and manage the business affairs of the Church, so that the bonds might be made a normal investment for Eastern capital by having a normal business method of administration to back them. The idea was tentatively approved by the Presidency, and I was asked to draw up the plan in detail.

To this end there were placed in my hands sheets showing the assets, liabilities, revenues and disbursements of the Church. They gave a total cash indebtedness of $1,200,000, approximately. The revenues from tithes for the year 1897 were estimated at a trifle more than a million dollars—the total being low because of the financial depression from which the country was just recovering. The available property holdings—exclusive of premises used for religious worship, for educational and benevolent work, and such kindred purposes—were valued at several millions (from four to six), although there was no definite appraisal or means of obtaining appraisal, since the values would largely attach only when the properties were brought into business use. I was advised that the incomes of the Church would probably increase at the rate of ten per cent per annum, but I do not know by what calculations this ratio was reached.

The disbursements were chiefly for interest on debt, for the maintenance of the temples and tabernacles, for educational and charitable work, for missionary headquarters in other countries, and for the return of released missionaries. The missionaries themselves received no compensation; they were supposed to travel "without purse or scrip;" their expenses were defrayed by their relatives, and they had to pay out of their own pockets for the printed tracts which they distributed. Neither the President nor any of the general authorities received salaries. There was an order that each apostle should be paid $2,000 a year, but this rule had been suspended, except, perhaps, in the cases of men who had to give their whole time to religious work and who had no independent incomes. Some occasional appropriations had been made for meeting houses in communities that had been unable to erect their own chapels of worship, but for the most part there were few calls made upon the Church revenues to support its religious activities, its priests or its propaganda.

Our proposed committees, therefore, were a committee on missionary work, one on publication, one on colonization, one on political protective work for the Mormons in foreign countries, and most important—a finance committee selected from the body of apostles, with the addition of some able men connected with financial institutions. As a basis for the work of the finance committee, we proposed the establishment of an interest fund, a sinking fund, and a scale of percentage disbursements for the various community purposes. These committees were to be appointed by the Conferences of the people, and the committee reports were to be public. President Woodruff eagerly accepted the plan as relieving the Presidency of administrative cares that were becoming too great for the quorum to carry. Joseph F. Smith did not at once awake to the real meaning of the proposal; but when the scheme was submitted in its matured details, he spoke of the danger of allowing power to pass from the hands of the "trustee in trust" in business matters. His idea was sufficiently clear in its resistance to any diffusion of authority, but it was correspondingly void of any suggestion of substitute. For the time being he was pacified by the assurance that the "Kingdom of God" and the rule of its prophets would not be endangered by the organization of committees and the submission of financial plans to the general knowledge, and even to the consent, of the people.

It was, of course, evident to the First Councillor that this scheme of Church administration would give the Mormon people a measure of responsible government, and the proposal was a part of his wisdom as a community leader seeking the common welfare. While we had been a people on whom the whole world seemed to be making war, a dictatorship had been necessary; but now that we had arrived at peace and liberty, a concentration of irresponsible power would surely become dangerous to progress. Without, therefore, impairing the religious authority of the Prophet, the First Councillor was willing to divide the temporal power of the Church among its members.

He was as silent, about these aims, with me as with all others; but I had learned to understand him in his silences; and, in joining with him in his work of reform, I was as sure of his purpose as I have since been sure of the disaster to the Mormon people that has come of the failure to effect the reform.

When the Presidency had approved of the flotation of bonds, I went with my father to New York to aid him in interesting Eastern capitalists in the investment. We interviewed Judge John F. Dillon and Mr. Winslow Pierce, of the law firm of Dillon and Pierce, attorneys for some of the Union Pacific interests; and through them we met Mr. Edward H. Harriman, Mr. George J. Gould and members of the firm of Kuhn Loeb and Company. It was interesting to watch the encounters between the Mormon prophet and some of these astutest of the nation's financiers; for it was as if one of the ancient patriarchs had stepped down from the days of early Israel to discuss the financial problems of his people with a modern "captain of industry." He described a condition of society that was, to Wall Street, archaic. He spoke with a serene assurance that the order of affairs in Utah was constituted in the wisdom of the word of God. He was listened to, with the interest of curiosity, as the chief living exponent of the Mormon movement, its processes and its aims; and I was impressed by the fact that these men of the world had a large and splendid sympathy for any wholesome social effort designed to abolish poverty and establish a quicker justice in the practical affairs of the race.

It was of the abolition of poverty and the justice of the social order among the Mormons, that the First Councillor chiefly spoke. "Your clients," he said to Judge Dillon, "make their investments frequently in railroad stocks and bonds. What are the underlying bases of the values of railroad securities? Largely the industry and stability of the communities through which the railroad lines shall operate. Then, in reality, the security is valuable in proportion to the value of the community in its steadfastness, its prosperity and the safety of its productive labor. In your railroad investments you are obliged to take such considerations as a secondary security. In negotiating this Church loan with your clients, you can offer the same great values as a primary security. Probably no where else in the world is there a people at once so industrious and so stable as ours."

It was the boast of the Mormons that there had not been an almshouse or an almstaker in any of their settlements, up to the time of the escheat proceedings by the Federal officials; and this was literally true. Every man had been helped to the employment for which he was best fitted. If an immigrant, in his former estate, had been a silk-weaver, efforts were made to establish his industry and give it public support. If he had been a musician of talent, a little conservatory was founded, and patronage obtained for him. When the growth of population made it necessary to open new valleys for agriculture, the Church, out of its community fund, rendered the initial aid; in many instances the original irrigation enterprises of small settlements were thus financed; and the investments were repaid not only directly, by the return of the loan, but indirectly, many times over, by the increased productiveness and larger contributions of the people. Co-operation, in mercantile, industrial and stock-raising undertakings, assured the support and patronage of each community for its own particular enterprise, prevented destructive competition and checked the greed of the individual—for the more he toiled for himself, the larger the share of the general burden he had to carry.

It was the First Councillor's theory that when people contributed to a common fund they became interested in one another's material welfare. The man who paid less in tithes this year than last was counselled with as to why his business had been unsuccessful, and the wise men of his little circle aided him with advice and material help. The man who contributed largely was glad of a prosperity from which he yielded a part—in recognition of what the community had done for him and in a reverent gratitude to God for making him "a steward of mighty possessions"—but he was anxious that his neighbor also should be a larger contributor each year.

The whole system of tithe-paying was built upon a series of purported "revelations" received by Joseph Smith, the original Prophet. It was declared to be the will of God that all men, as stewards of their possessions, should give of their increase annually into "the storehouse of the Lord," which should always be open for the relief of the poor. Inasmuch as the man who received help—or whose widow and children did so—had been a tithe-payer during all his productive years, there was none of the feeling of personal humiliation on the part of the recipient, nor any of the feeling of condescending charity on the part of the giver, in the distribution of funds to the needy. And it was astonishing how few the needy were—because of the abstemious lives, the industry, and the thrift of the workers.

The Church tribunals heard and settled all disputes over property or personal rights not involving the criminal law. Expensive litigation was thus avoided. Society was saved the cost of innumerable courts. There were many counties in which no lawyer could be found; and everywhere, among the Mormons, it was considered an act of evil fellowship, amounting almost to apostasy, for a man to bring suit against his brother in the civil tribunals.

In short—as my father pointed out—Utah, at that time, expressed the only full-bodied social proposition in the United States. There never had been in America another community whose future, in the economic aspects, offered so clear a solution of problems which still remain generally unsettled. It was as if a segment of the great circle of modern humanity had been transported to another world, otherwise unpopulated, and there with the experience gained through centuries of human travail—had attempted the establishment of a just, beneficent and satisfying social order.

I am here repeating this argument—this exposition—because the financial absolutism of the Prophets of the Church has since ruined the whole Mormon experiment in communism, put the Mormon paupers into the public poor houses, used the tithes to support the large financial ventures of the Prophet's favorites, and turned the Church's "community enterprises" into monopolistic exploitations of the Mormon people. And this change began even while our negotiations were pending in New York—for they were prolonged, for various reasons, into the summer of 1898, and they were interrupted finally by the death of President Woodruff.

As soon as I received word of his illness I took train for Utah. The news of his death met me on the journey home. Since I derived my authority solely from him, upon my arrival in Salt Lake I went to the Cashier of the Church, gave him the keys and the password to the safety deposit box in New York, and withdrew from any further participation in the Church's financial affairs. When I came to the office of the Presidency I found that my father had removed his desk; and this was an indication to me of what was happening in the inner circles of Church intrigue.

The president of the quorum of apostles invariably succeeds to the Presidency of the Church, although it is left to the apostles to decide, and their choice is supposed to be directed by inspiration. His election is subsequently ratified by the General Conference; but this ratification is a mere form, because the conference must either accept the choice of the apostles or rebel against "the revelation of God."

Apostle Lorenzo Snow was president of the quorum of apostles, and therefore in line for the Presidency. But usually, after the death of a President, a considerable period was allowed to elapse before the selection of his successor, with the government resting in the quorum of apostles meanwhile, even for a term of years. As soon as I arrived in Salt Lake, Apostle Snow asked me to a private interview (in the same small back room of the President's offices), inquired about the financial negotiations that I had been conducting, and asked me whether it was not essential to the success of our business affairs that as soon as possible the Church should elect a President, empowered as "trustee in trust." I replied that it was. He invited me to attend a conference of the apostles and give my views upon the situation to them.

This seemed to me an act of rather shallow cunning, for I knew I was too unimportant a person to be so consulted unless he thought my report would aid his intrigue. Such intriguing was offensive to the religious traditions of the Church; and it outraged my feeling for President Woodruff, who was hardly cold in death before this personal and worldly ambition caught at the reins of his office. Snow had been a man of small weight in the government of the Church. He had known none of the responsibilities of great leadership. He was eighty-four years old.

However, it was impossible for us to maintain the Church's credit in the East unless our community were represented by some choate authority, since our credit rested on the belief that the Mormon people were ready to consecrate all their possessions at any time to the service of the Church at the command of the President. I advised the apostles of this fact. Snow was elected President on September 13, 1898, eleven days after Woodruff's death. He followed the usual precedent in choosing my father and Joseph F. Smith as his Councillor's.

But he took possession of his new authority with the manner of an heir entering upon the ownership of a personal estate for which he had long waited—and which he proposed to enjoy to the full for his remaining years. In a most literal sense he held that all the property of the people of the Church was subject to his direction, as chief earthly steward of "the Divine Monarch," and he proceeded to exercise his assumed prerogatives with an autocracy that made even Joseph F. Smith complain because the Councillor's were never asked for counsel. As resident apostle of Box Elder County and president of the Box Elder "stake of Zion," Snow had already shown his ambition as a financier, disastrously; and it was as the financial head of the Church that he was chiefly to rule during his term of absolutism.

Of all the Church leaders whom I had known he was the only man who showed none of the robustness of the Western experience. Tall, stately, white-bearded, elegant and courtly, he prided himself most obviously on his manners and his culture. He rarely spoke in any but the most subdued and silken tones of suavity. He walked with a step that was almost affected in its gentility. If he had any passions, he held them in such smooth concealment that the public credited him with neither force nor unkindness. He had been a great traveler (as a missionary); he had written his autobiography, somewhat egotistically; he was devoted to the forms of his religion, like a mediaeval Prince of the Church and an elegante. But under all the artificialities of personal vanity and exterior grace, he proved to have a cold determination that seemed more selfishly ambitious than religiously zealous.

At once, upon his accession to power, he notified us that he did not intend to carry out any such plan as we had suggested for the administration of the Church's finances. It meant a diffusion of authority; and he held that the best results had been obtained by keeping all power in the hands of the Prophet, Seer and Revelator, and of those whom he might appoint to work with him. Joseph F. Smith, at a meeting of the Presidency, was even more positive. No good, he said, could come of publishing the affairs of the community to the people of it; those affairs were purely the concern of the Prophets; the Lord revealed His will to the Prophets and they were responsible only to Him.

My father necessarily bowed to the President's decision. "It is within the authority of the Prophet of the Lord," he counselled me, "to determine how he will conduct the business of the Church. President Snow has his own ideas."