Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 19

THE WAY OF A SULTAN

BRIGHAM was now established as ruler of a compact little principality. He believed his realm capable of almost indefinite expansion; he had proved its ability to support his colony, and leave a substantial surplus for export. The crop of 1849 gave him and his people their first glimpse of the possibilities of irrigated farming; and Brigham was not slow to grasp the political significance of this economic fact. Trade with gold-seekers was a passing incident, and not an essential part of his programme. He was glad to get needed supplies for his people, sorry that contact with Gentiles had become unavoidable, hopeful that the rush across the plains would cease and leave Zion to herself. But neither the profits nor the dangers of overland traffic made much change in the basic features of his plan.

He had two purposes in life; two purposes so fused together that his unanalytic mind doubtless thought them one. He would build the Mormon colony into a strong, self-supporting, self-sufficing church-state; and he would keep that state absolutely subject to his rule. In pursuit of the first purpose, he laboured to encourage immigration, to spread settlements that would preempt the whole Rocky Mountain region for the church's own, to direct and diversify industry. In furtherance of the second and no less vital aim, he kept every thread of community affairs in his own hands, formed what was substantially a church aristocracy, whose fortunes were linked with his own, and perfected the most inescapable system of discipline and espionage ever applied to the entire body of either church or state in modern times.

At the conference held in October, 1849, several important measures were taken to hasten immigration. Foremost of these was the beginning of the "Perpetual Immigration Fund." Five thousand dollars were raised to make a start in this work. The money was used to assist in the immigration of poor but desirable converts, particularly from the British Isles. It was not given them, but loaned; and they were required to pay back the loan either in cash or by labour at the earliest opportunity. This, to be sure, put the immigrant to some extent in the power of the church which had advanced his passage-money; and there were cases in which this power was used in a needlessly harsh manner. But broadly speaking, the assisted immigration of the Mormon church was at that period as free from abuses of this particular kind as any similar movement ever devised.

Besides raising money for immigration, there was a new outburst of missionary activity. Proselyting had not been neglected, even during the darkest hour of the church; and the troubles of the peripatetic Zion did not seem to discourage converts. In 1849, it was estimated that there were 30,000 Mormons in Britain alone. But Mormon missionaries were required to be colonization agents as well as evangelists, and this part of the work had lagged. Nine dignitaries of the church were despatched by this October conference of 1849, to labour in the Lord's vineyard in Britain; three went to France, two to Italy, two to Denmark, and one to Sweden. Brigham's partiality for the British mission never showed more strongly than in thus assigning more missionaries to England than to the entire continent; but he would have been justified in still greater concentration of effort.

While making preparations to gather the faithful into the fold, Brigham was equally concerned that the fold should be ready to receive them. It was his intention to "stake out" every desirable location in the inter-mountain country, to get it in possession and under control of the Saints before intruding Gentiles should come to disturb the chosen of the Lord. In the spring of 1849, while crops were still uncertain and the colonists were on short rations, a settlement had been made at Provo. In November, 1849, after the conference referred to, the Sanpete and Toole valleys were settled. Ogden was founded the next summer, and soon stakes were planted in every desirable valley of Utah. In the winter of 1849-50, Parley P. Pratt was sent with an exploring party to spy out the land toward the south; and in the course of his march, he passed through the valley of Mountain Meadows. John D. Lee or even Bishop Klingensmith would have been a more appropriate discoverer of this site, in view of what happened there some years later. But Fate writes her dramas in her own discursive fashion, and seldom tries to stage all the characters in the first scene.

The manner in which these settlements were made shows the controlled, directed life of the Mormon community. Utah was peopled by a planned colonization like that of early French Canada, rather than by haphazard overflow like that which settled the rest of the United States. No solitary dreamer followed a whisper of a fairer valley further on; no restless pioneer pushed out from the settlements to venture lone-handed into the wilds. In two or three cases a prominent man of the church led his feudal retainers on a colonizing expedition; but that was the nearest approach to individualism. When a new settlement was desired, Brigham would proclaim that fact, and call for volunteers. If volunteers were slow in coming forward, a scolding sermon or perhaps a more personal word of authority would hasten the movement. If men offered for distant settlements who were not wanted, they were told to stay at homeand they stayed. Brigham prescribed the numbers and equipment of each new colony, saw that the required trades were represented among "volunteers," and gave detailed instructions to the head of each expedition concerning location, colony government, intercourse with Indians, and even about crops.

In the matter of Indian management, Brigham scored a decided success. The red men of Utah were not so warlike as those who occupied the Atlantic coast and the Mississippi valley at the coming of the white man. But the nature of the country, its wide deserts and narrow oases, made it difficult for the Indians to retreat before advancing settlements, and tended to bring matters to a sharp issue while the whites were still few in numbers. Brigham met this difficulty in direct, practical fashion. His standing motto, adopted early and retained to the end of his life, was that it is cheaper to feed Indians than to fight them. He had difficulty in getting all his lieutenants to take the same view, and there were some clashes between red men and white; clashes not at all remarkable either for the skill of the combatants or the number of the corpses. But few settlements made in regions where Indians were numerous had as little trouble as those of the Mormons.

Nor did Brigham's supervision of affairs end with such broad matters as directing settlements and outlining Indian policy. He was no believer in the plan of letting people follow their natural bent. In his political gospel, all men were born free to join the Latter Day Saints, and equal in obligation to serve that terrestrial Zion. From the time he entered the valley until the settlement had grown too large for any one to keep in touch with all its activities, Brigham ordered, altered, directed, supervised, and took toll from every work of any importance in his little empire. Practically every industry of the valley was directed by him, and established at his order; and the men who engaged in it were chosen by him. In many of these industries, he was chief owner, either for himself or for the church. The distinction was doubtless clear in his mind when these partnerships were formed; but it did not remain so. Long before his death, there had ceased to be any definite line between the properties which Brigham held for himself, and those which he held for God Almighty; and in such cases of uncertainty, he usually gave himself the benefit of the doubt.

It is not easy to see why Brigham thought the manufacture of liquor a necessary branch of industry; but that he did so reckon it is clear. The church discipline, as explained before, frowns on the use of liquors; and Brigham's personal habits were abstemious; -- far more so than those of some of his followers. In later life, when weakened by illness, he used occasionally to take a glass of sweetened wine and water. That was about the extent of his drinking. Yet as early as the winter of 1849-50, the manufacture of whiskey known as "valley tan" was begun; and Brigham had an interest in the distillery. The stuff turned out by this establishment was no worse than the usual "moonshine," and the canny church authorities used to lessen the likelihood of drunkenness and increase church profits at a stroke by mixing the precious brew with water. Gentiles who bought this stuff used to wax eloquent on the amount one had to swallow to arrive at the "glorious refects thereafter," though a few bibulous-minded Saints appeared to have no such difficulty. When the community was short of seed after the crop failure some years later, Brigham proclaimed severe penalties for any one who should use either grain or potatoes to make whiskey.

The first effort to establish a wine industry in Utah is more excusable. A colony of Swiss vineyardists came to Utah, and settled in the southern part of the territory -- the part still known as "Dixie." Winemaking was the only industry they knew; they wished to continue it, and Brigham encouraged and helped them. "Dixie wine" and "valley tan" were at one time among the chief articles of export. Like those ancient Jews who sold to the stranger meat which it was unlawful for them to eat themselves, the Saints had no scruples about contributing to the drunkenness of the Gentile world.

While building up divers forms of simpler manufactures, Brigham never forgot that the chief reliance of his people must be on agriculture. Within a comparatively short time, the Mormons had learned the science and art of irrigation; and they practised it with increasing success. In the epistle sent out from Winter Quarters in 1847, Brigham had called on the gathering faithful to bring with them trees and shrubs; and this command was obeyed almost from the first. At least as early as 1849, the Mormons began planting orchards. The planting had little in common with the scientific, commercial orchard business of some irrigated regions to-day; but it served the needs of its time. Utah had thriving apple, peach, and pear orchards thirty years before any other arid state, except California; and in some lines of horticulture, even California was left behind. Every American settler of that day deemed it necessary to his salvation to become a landowner. The Mormons accepted this wise gospel, and demanded that every landowner should in addition be a tree-planter. Not only orchard, but shade and ornamental trees, were brought into the valley. Conspicuous among these last was, and is, the Lombardy poplar. This tree flourishes in northern Utah even more luxuriantly than in northern France, and has become as essential a part of landscapes in the Salt Lake valley as it has been for centuries in the valley of the Seine.

In agriculture, too, Brigham's insistent domination was felt. When he travelled from his palace in Salt Lake City to one of the outlying provinces, he was always expected to preach from the local pulpit. Half the time -- or more -- his sermon would consist of a round scolding on the bad fences of the community, or the choked-up character of their irrigation ditches, or the poor quality of bulls and rams kept for breeding. Brigham had that faculty so vital to a dictator, an incessant and minute though not always accurate observation. In the march across the plains it was said that he could hear the squeak of an ungreased wagon wheel and note a badly fitted ox-yoke twice as far as any other man in the party; and this same instant notice was manifest in his management of his people. To him, it was an economic crime for men to buy anything they could grow or make. The soundness of this view of things is open to dispute; but Brigham held it religiously, and the community followed his will. Each man must raise his vegetables, his wheat, his potatoes, and, if possible, his wool. Macaulay has said that while we may make shift to live under the rule of a tyrant, to be governed by a busybody is more than human nature could bear. Macaulay is a sound historian -- so sound that the half-educated generation which followed on his own deemed him ignorant -- but he failed to make one necessary qualification of his dogma. Human nature can bear anything that is imposed upon it in the name of religion, and upheld by a vigorous and interested priesthood.

There were advantages in this centralized control of industry, especially while the system was new. The diversified experience and quick intelligence which can be bred only under a regime of individualism were at Young's command; and he managed these qualities in a manner that for a season seemed to the advantage of all concerned. The entire weight of church authority was put behind any industry which he wished to establish in the valley. The tithing fund usually furnished a part of the necessary capital, and church command brought the custom. There was no industrial quarrelling, no slip between cup and lip. Brigham saw that the wool-clip was ready when needed by the woollen mills; and that the tannery started by church order was supplied with hides. Not even a despotic authority can entirely control the mercantile activities of men, but the church's constant hectoring kept the people buying home products wherever the difference between these and the "Babylonish" things imported from outside was not too great.

The personal element likewise helped for a time in the success of church-managed industry. Brigham was a splendid judge of men -- though his prejudices led him into some blunders; and he could shift and alter the directing force of local industry at will. He allowed no misfits in the community, so far as his education and intellect enabled him to recognize misfits. If a man were pursuing a vocation for which he was not adapted, Brigham found something else for him to do. If the manager of a mill were unsatisfactory, Brigham called him on a mission, and put another man in his place. To be called on a mission was a compliment that kept the deposed superintendent from feeling injured, and work better suited to his qualities was found for him when he returned.

So far as one-man management of communities can succeed, the Brighamized industry of the Salt Lake valley was successful. It enforced industry, it lessened friction, it diversified occupations. More important still, it went far toward abolishing the curse of poverty. As soon as starvation ceased to menace the entire community, it ceased to threaten any one in that community. The moment prosperity arrived in the valley, it was distributed, in some measure, to all.

But the effect of this paternal system soon showed itself in a uniform, self-satisfied mediocrity. The little kingdom did not utterly crystallize, because the wicked world kept intruding upon it, and compelling it to reshape itself in newer and better forms. But it came as near to crystallization as this outside pressure and infiltration would permit. There was little invention, and less experiment. The grist-mill in Cache valley or Sanpete valley was merely a smaller or larger replica of the grist-mill at Salt Lake City. The orchard of one farm showed only accidental differences from the orchard of the rest.

Manufactures were developed to a point where they satisfied the crude wishes of a frontier community, and could undersell merchandise that had to bear the long wagonhaul across the plains. Having reached this point, manufacturing development stopped almost altogether; and when the railroad, a score of years later, brought genuine competition to the valley of the Saints, the product of these church-nourished industries was deserted for the better and cheaper goods from the "shops of Babylon."

Had Brigham's successors been endowed with the same abilities and inspired by the same motives as his own, many evils now grossly apparent in the Mormon church-state might have been minimized or averted. But the fundamental evil of blind submission of the many to arbitrary control by the few would have remained the same.