FLASHBACK 2004: The economic endeavors of the LDS Church made an impression on socialist intelligentsia.
Mormon Manifesto
By Phyllis Barber
In commemoration of City Weekly's 40th anniversary, we are digging into our archives to celebrate. Each week, we FLASHBACK to a story or column from our past in honor of four decades of local alt-journalism. Whether the names and issues are familiar or new, we are grateful to have this unique newspaper to contain them all.
Title: Mormon Manifesto
Author: Phyllis Barber
Date: March 18, 2004
The Dreamers
"I have a dream," said Martin Luther King, Jr. on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal." In 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote in their Communist Manifesto:
"In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
John Winthrop preached to the Puritans as they sailed for New England in the 1600s: "Wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man ... willing to abridge our selues of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities...alwayes haueing before our eyes...our Community as members of the same body."
There have been many with a dream of new societies and new worlds: the Shakers, the Campbellites, the Harmonists, the Zoar Community of Separatists, Findhorn in the U.K., the Builders in western Nevada, the Brotherhood of the Sun in Santa Barbara, Calif. There have been the socialists and communists, wanting to lift labor out of the bondage to capitalism, asking for the collective ownership of the instruments of production and for a greater restriction of inheritance so that every person has an equal chance. And there have been the followers of religious ideals speaking in terms of the New Jerusalem, the Kingdom of God here on earth, the True Order of Heaven, the implication being that every person is a child of God or a sliver of God's scattered light waiting to be re-gathered.
In a world of labels, these efforts and these wishes have been often labeled as Utopia—an ideally perfect place: socially, politically and morally.
The Utopian dream is as old as the air we breathe and the hills we walk, a generous impulse in the hearts and minds of humankind. Those who would have it dream of harmony among the entire body of a community: That all humans are treated with dignity, respect and true equality, economic and otherwise.
Many have tried in earnest to create such a place. Some have met with moderate success for a period. Most have failed with time. Human nature seems to have its own ideas about the best way to conduct business. Early leaders of the Utah Territory, attempting to build the City of God in these high mountains, plateaus, deserts and valleys, were no exception to this fact.
The Brigham City Experiment Observed by Socialists
Recently, a friend mentioned a conversation she'd had in the early '90s. In this casual interchange with a man from London in Salt Lake City to work on a CD-ROM contract for the LDS genealogical vaults in Little Cottonwood Canyon, Verabel Cluff told him she'd been born and raised in Brigham City, Utah.
"Brigham City," he said, his eyes lighting with interest. "I've heard about Brigham City many times. I used to live in a commune in London founded by Karl Marx. In the 1800s, Marx actually sent someone to Utah to look at the communalistic society created there with such success."
Trying to track this man and this commune has, so far, been a thankless task, but in the search a fascinating piece of the Utah puzzle emerges. While the Union and Confederate generals led men into a brutal civil war, a quietly elegant corner of Utah history was unfolding which is not well known, not even among the majority of Utah residents.
At a fall church conference in 1854, Brigham Young called Lorenzo Snow to take 50 families to Box Elder, a tiny settlement on the Box Elder Creek, and organize a system of cooperative living in which the people would produce everything they consumed.
A member of the Quorum of the Twelve in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Snow was close to Joseph Smith from the Church's beginnings, and was eminently suited to understand the Prophet's grand vision. From 1861 until the mid-'80s, when Snow was arrested for unlawful cohabitation under the Edmunds Anti-Polygamy Act of 1882, he led the effort to build a community based on common ownership founded on spiritual guidance.
Establishing the Brigham City Co-op, Snow and his board of directors were so successful that their efforts served as a prototype for Brigham Young when he officially launched the United Order in 1874, trying to implement "the Lord's law" at last.
"Brigham City people don't ever talk about this," said Verabel Cluff, a daughter of the Call family, which played a major part in the town's history.
"It's like it's an embarrassment, probably because it seems so closely connected to polygamy."
Whether or not Marx actually cast his eye in the direction of Brigham City at the time he was studying the idea of the commune, the idea is not far-fetched. This cooperative community received a good deal of attention from European socialists, one Brontier O'Brien wrote in the Weekly Newspaper, founded by radical journalist George William MacArthur Reynolds, that the "Mormons had created a soul under the rib of death." Working from a sensationalist, radical, working-class approach popular in the North of England, the newspaper was a successful Sunday publication based in Manchester. And it was in Manchester that Engels lived for many years, where he maintained a correspondence with Marx and continued to bail him out of financial ruin.
"Reynolds, Bradlaugh, Holyoak, Barker, O'Brien and others [English socialists] held the Mormons up to admiration ..." read a clip from Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine in January 1883.
John McCormack, a historian at Salt Lake Community College writing a book on socialism in Utah with co-author John Sillitoe, recounts that well-known socialist Eugene V. Debs, who actually garnered 1 million votes during a run for U.S. President on the Socialist Party ticket in the 1890s, investigated the possibility of establishing a Utopian colony in a Western state, possibly Utah. Debs was aware of the United Order and what had gone on in Brigham City. His hope was the socialism could start small—"a pocket edition of the New Jerusalem"—then grow in numbers and influence until taking over the politics of one state and expanding like yeast from that point until, McCormack writes, "a whole state resolved itself into a socialistic polity, and other states followed suit until the entire United States became a socialistic commonwealth."
According to the Chicago Record, "Mr. Debs says that ... the workings of the original cooperative scheme of the Mormons ... was perfect until the spirit of commercial came upon the leaders of the church ... that the work of the Mormons in building up Utah out of a desert has not been fully understood, because the public knows Mormonism only by its upholding of polygamy. The details of the cooperative scheme of the Mormons, however, show that it was perfect."
In the view of the Deseret News, the goals of such a plan were worthy, "a harmonious combination for mutual benefit is the only hope for the industrial classes." But Utahns worried that because Debs' plan was not based on religious principles it would fail and leave its several thousand adherents, who'd been drawn here to be a part of the colony, "unemployed and consequently feeling discouraged and discontent."
According to well-known Utah historians Leonard Arrington, Feramorz Fox and Dean May, authors of Building the City of God, Edward Bellamy, a famous 19th-century novelist with socialist leanings, spent several days with Snow in Brigham City to better understand the workings of the Cooperative. When his novel Looking Backward appeared in 1888, Bellamy's allusions to the cooperative experiments of Brigham City were obvious to anyone familiar with them. Because of the "rising tide of social and humanistic idealism that was opposing the dominant materialistic commercialism, and the nationwide hunger for a nobler social order," says an Internet source edited by Jim Zwick, the book struck a chord with the nation's readers and was an extraordinary success. Bellamy became the "recognized leader of the Nationalistic or Marxian Socialistic movement in the Republic."
But what is this thing in Utah that caused so much excitement in so many places? Could the early economic experiments of Utah be considered radical socialism?
The History of the United Order
To offer an encapsulated history from Building the City of God, it was in February 1831 that Joseph Smith gave a revelation to the followers of his new religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This became known as The Law of Consecration and Stewardship, also known as "the Lord's law," the "Order of Enoch," or the First United Order. This was meant to be a major instrument in reorganizing the social and economic patterns of his followers. Because much of society seemed to "disintegrate from the excesses of individualism and pluralism," Smith wanted to build a haven for unity among a people "fragmented by their individualistic search for economic well-being." Based on the principle that everything on the earth and the earth itself belonged to the Lord, "every member of the church was asked to 'consecrate' or deed all his property, both real and personal, to the bishop of the church. The bishop would then grant an 'inheritance' or 'stewardship' to every family out of the properties received, the amount depending on the wants and needs of the family as determined jointly by the bishop and the prospective steward." This Law was intended to redistribute the wealth and place "all family heads on an equal footing," based on the belief that one person shouldn't have more possessions than another because that's where "the world lieth in sin."
Several attempts were made to live this Law of Consecration in the 1830s when church members tried to settle in the three Missouri counties of Clay, Jackson and Caldwell. But their efforts were frustrated every time because of frontiersmen accustomed to having free run of these fringes of civilization. They were annoyed, aggravated and angered by the colonizing efforts of Mormons attracted to the rich soil and plentiful game. Eventually, organized "armed mobs" drove them away. Therefore, though attempted several times in earnest, the system of cooperative living proposed by Joseph Smith never formed strong roots until after Smith's martyrdom and the exodus to Utah Territory in 1847.
The Brigham City Experiment
Enter Brigham City. According to Kathleen Bradford, research specialist at the Brigham City Museum-Gallery who compiled a pamphlet, "Brigham City Historic Tour," habitation actually began when a man named William Davis settled with his family and a few friends along the Box Elder Creek in 1851. A fort was built for protection from Indian attacks, but the winter was severe, the insects were voraciously hungry in warm weather, and their husbandry seemed more a matter of survival than a settling into something comfortable or long-lasting.
When Snow was sent north to establish a self-sustaining community, he was very careful in his choice of the 50 families who would be the instruments in the fine tuning of Smith's vision. He selected carpenters, blacksmiths, millers, musicians, furniture makers, teachers, tradesmen and artisans with a broad range of ability and necessary skills to build a successful city. By the summer of 1855, all of the 50 families had arrived and transformed the settlement to an energetic town renamed Brigham City—after Brigham Young, of course.
During the late 1850s, small businesses were independently established, but in 1865, Snow asked the merchants to unite their businesses "for the common interest of the community." A cooperative was incorporated in compliance with territorial laws, and became known as the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association, commonly known as the Brigham City Co-op. Dividends were not distributed, but rather reinvested into the cooperative for the establishment of home industries, which flourished under this system.
Snow wrote in a letter that this was a challenge for some: "It required ... effort on the part of our stockholders to reconcile their feelings with a knowledge of their duty and obligations as elders of Israel and servants of God."
Rumor has it that some of the "Saints" bolted for Wyoming so they wouldn't have to share their belongings, but the majority stayed behind and maintained a generally cooperative attitude toward the building of the Kingdom of God in Zion.
Under the leadership of Snow, who served as president, a board of seven directors and 126 stockholders, the industry of this cooperative was staggering. Using winter labor when the fields lay under snow, the group first built a two-story $10,000 tannery building that produced "valley-tan ... pronounced by competent judges equal to the best Eastern oak-tanned leathers" and then a $35,000 woolen factory which eventually did a $40,000 annual business in yarns, blankets and men's and women's wear. The rope factory used hemp grown on the co-op farm, a model dairy of 500 cows was built at Collinston, which produced 40,000 pounds of cheese for exportation alone in 1875, silkworms were raised and fed on several thousand mulberry trees planted for the manufacture of silk, a 125-acre cotton farm was created in southern Utah to raise cotton for use in the woolen factory, and Snow sent a group of Danes to establish Flaxville (now called Mantua) to raise flax for sewing thread and grain sacks. Many other "departments," too numerous to mention in a brief article, were also established.
Remains of this effort still stand today, quietly reminding passers-by of the thriving industry of yesteryear—the gristmill, woolen mill and the planing mill, among others. The co-op store building at 5 North Main was first taken over by Deseret Savings Bank of Salt Lake City and deeded to the First National Bank Company in 1901. All or part of the main floor has housed a banking business since that time, and it currently houses a Wells Fargo branch. The original outer wall at the back of the bank is still intact, though Snow's home, which was situated at a diagonal across the street, has been destroyed for a parking lot.
The Organizing of Other Retail Cooperatives in Utah
Some historians claim that the Brigham City Mercantile & Manufacturing was no doubt the prototype for retail cooperatives established in numerous Mormon settlements, such as the Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution—ZCMI—in Salt Lake City, the Provo Cooperative Woolen Factory, the Spanish Fork Cooperative, among others. But none of them accomplished anything on the scale of Brigham City.
Following the spirit of Joseph Smith's earlier vision, President Young began his drive to organize the United Order in every Mormon settlement, "a step that would follow logically, if the Brigham City example were pursued, from the prior establishment of retail cooperatives in the settlements."
According to Arrington, Fox and May, "Brother Snow has led the people along, and got them into the United Order without their knowing it." Brigham City was a "full economic community held together by clear ties of common economic interest," rather than a community where the United Order was imposed on top of an already functioning economy with individualistic and capitalistic leanings extant, as was done in many other Utah communities. But in actuality, it wasn't reaching the highest plane of communal living conceived of by Joseph Smith: "Be one; and if ye are not one, ye are not mine."
One of the most vital and scholarly proponents of Joseph Smith's ideas, Orson Pratt, preached to those who would hear him that they had failed to live the Law of Consecration and Stewardship "because of the hardness of our hearts, and the blindness of our minds. ..."
Citing that the uniting of temporal assets was a notable practice of the earliest Christians, he exhorted his listeners that "nothing is more certain ... than that the Saints must eventually become perfect enough to consent to the great principles of equality in regard to property."
And Brigham Young seemed to have felt the eyes of his dear friend and beloved prophet, Joseph Smith, looking over his shoulder, when he announced in 1874 that the Saints would be asked that the property of the Church be united rather than divided.
The Establishment of the United Order in 1874
Compared to the Orderville United Order, where settlers in Southern Utah's Kane County established a more advanced form of cooperation by giving all they had to the community, and by actually breaking bread together in a communal dining hall and by wearing their own homespun so no one would have anything finer than the next person, Brigham City seemed more of a consumer's cooperative, more of an economic experiment.
But, Orderville aside, the intention of the Brigham City experiment was to build a community where the people would produce everything they consumed. It played an integral part in preparing the way for a more perfect law of communal living.
When Young instituted the United Order in 1874, Brigham City wasn't asked to make changes in the order of its business, though it did adopt the name of the Brigham City United Order. Members of the United Order were expected to "fully dedicate their time and talents to the development of the new system," and though Young foresaw the day when people would be able to live by a higher law of sacrifice—by putting their private holdings voluntarily into a common fund—he didn't expect it of the members at that time. Communities were established in St. George, Kanab, Orderville, Hyrum, Pleasant Grove and elsewhere, but there was "rarely no wholesale overhaul of their economic activities." With the outstanding exception of Orderville, it appears they accepted the United Order of Enoch on practical, rather than ecclesiastical, terms.
Why the United Order Failed
Ultimately, most of the attempts at living the United Order didn't meet with much success. These efforts were plagued by human frailty, a nationwide depression in 1873 which created a scarcity of cash, the death of Young in 1877, plus the arrival of the Transcontinental Railroad and the subsequent influx of new people and ideas. The hardest blow of all was the federal government's pursuit of polygamist church leaders, who were the backbone of the cooperative system. And because of the necessity of becoming a state and integrating into the larger reality of the United States of America, there was a seismic shift from the earlier bunker mentality. Surviving in isolation was no longer possible.
Brigham City itself suffered some major setbacks when fire destroyed the woolen mill. Unabashed, the citizens rebuilt the factory in short order, according to Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, but were left with a debt of $30,000. Crickets invaded the crops; a Marsh Valley, Idaho, sawmill operation was halted by the illegal arrest and imprisonment of the workmen; the federal government imposed a penalty tax on the scrip used at the cooperative. The Brigham City Co-op found itself faced with "anxieties, disappointments and embarrassment," according to Snow's sister, Eliza.
"When [the Mormons] sought to institute the United Order, they seemed unable to prosper," says Hamilton Gardner in a 1922 article in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. "...in fact this was the one conspicuous failure of Brigham Young in economic matters. Where the Shakers endured for 121 years, the Ephrata Community for 175 years ... the life of the United Order, except for the single instance of Orderville, must be measured."
Maybe the Shakers and the Ephrata Community succeeded because they were fewer in number, kept to themselves and didn't make big waves. Both were led by charismatic leaders—Mother Ann Lee and Conrad Beissel—as Mormonism had been, but both practiced celibacy and both dwindled down to a precious few after limited years of vitality. The comparison seems unbalanced, as neither of these communities were as ambitious as the Mormons who were proselytizing, colonizing and expanding geographical horizons at every possible turn. Gardner failed to mention Brigham City, perhaps because he didn't look back far enough at what was happening before Brigham Young announced the implementation of the United Order.
Lorenzo Snow's Foresightedness as to the Problems of the United Order
In 1877, the year Young died, the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association was thriving and attracting widespread attention in Utah and elsewhere.
But, according to Arrington in "Cooperative Community in the North: Brigham City, Utah," a 1965 article in the Utah Historical Quarterly, it became apparent to Snow that further growth could bring "incalculable management problems." Given the responsibility of making decisions normally made by families and individual businesses, SNow felt the weight of the responsibility growing top-heavy.
In a letter found in the Scribbling Book of Brigham City, Snow wrote: "When Israel left their leeks and onions by the direction of Moses they looked to him for their supplies, and became very quarrelsome and troublesome whenever they failed. This is a feature ... I contemplate with no small degree of anxiety, viz. Concentrating a multitude of individual responsibilities upon one man or a few men ... Is there not danger of getting an elephant on our hands ... that our wisdom and ability cannot manage or support? In other words, may we not drift into responsibilities that would be difficult or even impossible to discharge?"
It would seem that Snow was wise beyond his years, wise beyond many who have taken it into their hands to lead others into Utopia, more foresighted than perhaps Mao, Lenin, Rajneesh, Beissel and others. He foresaw the difficulty of a handful of people taking the responsibility for others' self-interest.
But, still and at the same time, there seems to be this dream, this hope that people will be different and treat each other wisely, fairly, judiciously, with compassion. There seems to be this hope that the New Dawn will come and that the scales will fall from all of our eyes, that we can see clearly, that we can rise above the fray and join hands and agree that, "Yes, we are One. All of us are equal."
But is this Utopia possible, even for a few minutes? It seems that the wheel keeps rolling and that people are caught beneath it, caught inside their inevitable humanness. Even so, it's still true that everyone has their stellar moments, that human effort like the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association has its divine spark in the constellation. That fact alone sustains the hope, even the temptation to believe, that it's possible to build, to rise up to, or to be surprised by a more perfect world in this enigmatic existence in which we find ourselves.
Editor's note: Phyllis Barber is the author of two collections of short stories, two juvenile books, And the Desert Shall Blossom, a novel about the building of the Hoover Dam, plus the award-winning How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir. In researching this article, she discovered that her great-great grandfather, Jonathan C. Wright, was on the original board of directors of the Brigham City Mercantile and Manufacturing Association.
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