Copyright 1913, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CHAPTER 35

THE KINGDOM ENDURES

AT the principal corner of Temple Square in Salt Lake City rises a figure of bronze on a pedestal of granite -- the monument to Brigham Young. The great business manager of Mormonism is standing in calm but alert attitude, as he so often stood in life. His back is turned on the great temple -- symbolic of the fervid faith of the people he ruled so long. His face is to the south, that his eyes may look upon Zion's Bank, and Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution; and toward these his open hand is outstretched. Whether he is conferring a blessing or demanding a dividend the sculptor has not made clear.

That statue of the real founder of Mormonism, with the spiritual things of the church behind him, and the material values of the world before, is symbolic of the empire which he built. That, likewise, has turned from doctrines to dividends. Behind that also is the temple, and before it are the courts of Dives. In the past are heroic faith and steadfast endurance. In the present, and looming larger in the near future, are banks and stores and factories and railroads, procured tariffs, and secret rebates.

In avarice as in heroism, the kingdom is but the lengthened shadow of the bronze caliph on his pedestal. Its glories and its failings are his own.

At the death of Brigham, there was promise of a change. Under his successor, John Taylor, the kingdom seemed to turn a while from that worship of material success which Brigham frankly avowed, Taylor demanded a sharp accounting from Brigham's estate. He separated the funds which he held as trustee from those of his own private fortune. He sought to exalt the devotional side of his church-state, and to curb its increasing anxiety for wealth and political power.

For a time, he and his immediate successor seemed to make progress along this line. But the bent wood sprang back into place; the essential nature of the organization which Brigham had bequeathed to the kingdom triumphed over the passing whim of a passing potentate; and soon the succession came to one who had no quarrel with moneychangers, provided they were ready to share their profits with the anointed of the Lord.

Joseph F. Smith, present president of the Mormon church and ruler of the Mormon kingdom, is likewise president of, or officer in, a score of financial, commercial, and manufacturing institutions. To give an up-to-date list of his enterprises is impossible, for this prophet, seer, and revelator to all the world has not lately been on the witness stand. The last detailed information on this point is contained in his testimony before the Senate committee which was investigating the right of Apostle Reed Smoot to sit in the United States Senate. At that time, Joseph F. Smith was president of Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution, one of the strongest commercial organizations in the West. He was president of Zion's Savings Bank and Trust Company, where the humble Mormon people keep their savings. He was president of the State Bank of Utah, the chief commercial bank of the hierarchy. He was president of the Salt Lake Knitting Company, which manufactures the sacred undergarments that each Mormon wears through life after he takes his endowments. He was president of the Utah Light and Power Company, which got a fifty-year blanket franchise on the streets of Salt Lake City, and then sold out to the Harriman interests. He was president of the Utah Sugar Company, a local branch of the sugar trust; of the Inland Salt Company, which sustains the same relation to the national salt trust; of the Consolidated Wagon and Machine Company, which is a selling trust in agricultural implements. He was president of a summer resort, of a dramatic association, of a railroad.

More important than all else, Joseph F. Smith was and is master of a tithing fund of approximately $4,000,000 per year; an unfailing river of liquid capital, which rises in springs of faith on a hundred thousand farms and workshops, and flows through appointed channels to that secret, silent reservoir of gold, from which only the Mormon sultan and his designated favorites may dip. As head of the kingdom, Joseph F. Smith is absolute master and owner of this vast income and its yet vaster accumulations; and no human being can hold him to account for a dollar. Courts have decided, in substance, that Smith is trustee for God, rather than for the people; and therefore nothing less than Divine authority is competent to compel an opening of the books. Since he is likewise the only man now living through whom God deigns to hold converse with the world, Smith's grip on the tithing fund seems fairly secure.

And this, too, is Brigham's handiwork. He would not take pride in it, but he could not deny it. He might claim, and truly, that when he was master of the tithes, no destitute Mormon was sent to the poorhouse in his old age, and make scathing comparison with the records of today. He might claim, again with truth, that he built the kingdom over which he tyrannized, and that the wealth which he dispensed with such arbitrary hand was in some sort his own creation. He might rage as of old at the present sultan, whose rule is an accident of inheritance, not a triumph of personality; and whose wealth is the gift of a church, not the product of his financial genius. But these are changes which come in any monarchy; they do not lessen Brigham's responsibility for creating the system which has fallen into such hands. He designed and enforced this tax on faith and industry; he asserted and maintained an irresponsible despotism in the midst of the freest republic on earth. The perversion of that theocracy, the misuse of that tax, come back at last to the "Lion of the Lord," and claim heirship in his household.

As in finance, so in other matters. After Brigham's death, pressure by the federal government compelled his successors to yield their pretensions for a time. They renounced the practice of polygamy. They pledged their sacred honour to take the church out of politics. By these means, they gained surcease from persecution, restoration of citizenship and of property, and the boon of statehood-for which Brigham had worked so long. Then, they resumed the practices and politics which they had renounced. They bought their independence -- and stole back the purchase price.

Joseph F. Smith, the present head of the kingdom, has begotten twelve children by five wives since he pledged his word and oath to abstain from polygamous living. To the best of their ability, his faithful subjects have followed his example. Nowhere in the kingdom, perhaps, can be found new households of the dimensions known to Brigham and to Heber Kimball; but probably there are more plural wives in that kingdom now than ever before.

The political control of the hierarchy is so absolute that a Mormon official has been reduced to the ranks for circulating at a school election a different ticket from the one favored by his church superiors; and at Washington an Apostle sits in the Senate as ambassador of the polygamous kingdom -- an ambassador who has a highly important vote in the Senate of the republic to which he is accredited.

Throughout the whole range of political activities in the Mormon kingdom, the present polygamous ruler is supreme and almost unquestioned. The legislatures of a dozen states are influenced by his will. Governors court his favor. Visiting Presidents of the United States give to him as much deference as they receive. And national parties carefully avoid offence to his authority.

And for this also Brigham is responsible. He encouraged contempt for the United States. He talked -- and almost proved -- that within the Mormon dominion there could be no rulership except as subordinate to that of the Mormon prophet. He concentrated all the power of devotion which his people could feel into an idolatrous loyalty to the head of the church, leaving no emotion to be wasted upon national patriotism. And what he set in the plastic time of his kingdom has become its fixed and immovable character.

Through more than forty years of service and of sovereignty, Brigham builded his kingdom; and the indignant might of civilization has not wrecked his handiwork. It stands today, inscrutable in its very simplicity; a theocracy encysted in a republic, an ancient clan turned into a modern trust. It endure adversity, it thrives on neglect, and it waits in confidence for the day when the faith of Joseph and the works of Brigham shall march to dominion over the entire earth. And on his pedestal, Brigham waits also, with outstretched hand.