Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins, Frank J. Cannon

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• Publié par: ponos
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 53
• Langue: English

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of Under the Prophet in Utah, by Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Under the Prophet in Utah The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft Author: Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins Release Date: May 30, 2009 [EBook #7066] Language: English Character set encoding: ASCII *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNDER THE PROPHET IN UTAH *** Produced by David Schwan, Monique Cameron, and David Widger UNDER THE PROPHET IN UTAH The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft By Frank J. Cannon Formerly United States Senator from Utah and Harvey J. O'Higgins Author "The Smoke-Eaters," "Don-a-Dreams," etc. Contents Note Introduction Forward Chapter I. Chapter II. Chapter III. Chapter IV. Chapter V. Chapter VI. Chapter VII. Chapter VIII. Chapter IX. Chapter X. Chapter XI. Chapter XII. Chapter XIII. Chapter XIV. Chapter XV. Chapter XVI. Chapter XVII. Chapter XVIII. Chapter XIX. Chapter XX. In the Days of the Raid On A Mission to Washington Without A Country The Manifesto On the Road to Freedom The Goal—And After The First Betrayals The Church and the Interests At the Crossways On the Downward Path The Will of the Lord The Conspiracy Completed The Smoot Exposure Treason Triumphant The Struggle For Liberty The Price of Protest The New Polygamy The Prophet of Mammon The Subjects of the Kingdom Conclusion Note When Harvey J. O'Higgins was in Denver, in the spring of 1910, working with Judge Ben B. Lindsey on the manuscript of "The Beast and the Jungle," for Everybody's Magazine, he met the Hon. Frank J. Cannon, formerly United States Senator from Utah, and heard from him the story of the betrayal of Utah by the present leaders of the Mormon Church. This story the editor of Everybody's Magazine commissioned Messrs. Cannon and O'Higgins to write. They worked on it for a year, verifying every detail of it from government reports, controversial pamphlets, Mormon books of propaganda, and the newspaper files of current record. It ran through nine numbers of the magazine, and not so much as a successful contradiction was ever made of one of the innumerable incidents or accusations that it contains. It is here published in book form at somewhat greater length than the magazine could print it. It is a joint work, but the autobiographic "I" has been used throughout, because it is Mr. Cannon's personal narrative of his personal experience. Introduction This is the story of what has been called "the great American despotism." It is the story of the establishment of an absolute throne and dynasty by one American citizen over a half-million others. And it is the story of the amazing reign of this one man, Joseph F. Smith, the Mormon Prophet, a religious fanatic of bitter mind, who claims that he has been divinely ordained to exercise the awful authority of God on earth over all the affairs of all mankind, and who plays the anointed despot in Utah and the surrounding states as cruelly as a Sultan and more securely than any Czar. To him the Mormon people pay a yearly tribute of more than two million dollars in tithes; and he uses that income, to his own ends, without an accounting. He is president of the Utah branch of the sugar trust, and of the local incorporation's of the salt trust; and he supports the exaction's of monopoly by his financial absolutism, while he defends them from competition by his religious power of interdict and excommunication. He is president of a system of "company stores," from which the faithful buy their merchandise; of a wagon and machine company from which the Mormon farmers purchase their vehicles and implements; of lifeinsurance and fire-insurance companies, of banking institutions, of a railroad, of a knitting company, of newspapers, which the Mormon people are required by their Church to patronize, and through which they are exploited, commercially and financially, for the sole profit of the sovereign of Utah and his religious court. He is the political Boss of the state, delivering the votes of his people by revelation of the Will of God, practically appointing the United States Senators from Utah—as he practically appoints the marshals, district attorneys, judges, legislators, officers and administrators of law throughout his "Kingdom of God on Earth"—and ruling the non-Mormons of Utah, as he rules his own people, by virtue of his political and financial partnership with the great "business interests" that govern and exploit this nation, and his Kingdom, for their own gain, and his. He lives, like the Grand Turk, openly with five wives, against the temporal law of the state, against the spiritual law of his Kingdom, and in violation of his own solemn covenant to the country—which he gave in 1890, in order to obtain amnesty for himself from criminal prosecution and to help Utah obtain the powers of statehood which he has since usurped. He secretly preaches a proscribed doctrine of polygamy as necessary to salvation; he publicly denies his own teaching, so that he may escape responsibility for the sufferings of the "plural wives" and their unfortunate children, who have been betrayed by the authority of his dogma. And these women, by the hundreds, seduced into clandestine marriage relations with polygamous elders of the Church, unable to claim their husbands—even in some cases disowning their children and teaching these children to deny their parents—are suffering a pitiful self-immolation as martyrs to the religious barbarism of his rule. Demanding unquestioning obedience in all things, as the "mouthpiece of the Lord," and "sole vice-regent of God on Earth," he enforces his demands by his religious, political and financial control of the faith, the votes and the property of his fellow-citizens. He is at once—as the details of this story show—"the modern 'money king,' the absolute political Czar, the social despot and the infallible Pope of his Kingdom." Ex-Senator Cannon not only exposes but accounts for and explains the conditions that have made the Church-controlled government of Utah less free, less of a democracy, a greater tyranny and more of a disgrace to the nation than ever the corporation rule of Colorado was in the darkest period of the Cripple Creek labor war. He shows the enemies of the republic encouraging and profiting by the shame of Utah as they supported and made gain of Colorado's past disgrace. He shows the piratical "Interests," at Washington, sustaining, and sustained by, the misgovernment of Utah, in