Autobiographical Notes, circa 1850-1880 [A-22]

356 TULLIDGE'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.

said that he was a man of excellent business qualities.

CHAPTER III.

UTAH OBTAINS AN HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE THROUGH HER COMMERCIAL MEN.

IT was the merchants of Utah who first brought the Mormon community fairly into socialistic importance. And this affirmation is true of them, both in their results at home and in the influence which they exercised abroad for the good of the people and the glory of Utah. Moreover, in the general sense of the public weal, this affirmation is as true of the Walker Brothers and Godbe and Lawrence, as it is of Jennings and Hooper or Eldredge and Clawson. The very construction of society and the necessities and aims of commerce convert the enterprises and life work of this class of men into the public good. Over a quarter of a century, for instance, the Walker Brothers and Godbe and Lawrence have been identified with the material prosperity and destiny of this Territory. The welfare of the country is their own good as a class;—the glory of the commonwealth glorifies their houses and augments their own fortunes. Of all men, the life-work and enterprise of the class who establish commerce, build railroads, develop the native mineral resources of the country, and construct the financial power of the State, must per force tend to the public prosperity as well as conserving and preserving society. And if this is the case with those influential men of commerce and great enterprises who have gone outside the pale of the Church, yet are still identified with the community in all their essential interests, how much more, specially speaking, is it the case with those men who have remained inside the pale of the Church and built up her commercial and financial power? The Church owes to her apostles of commerce and finance more than many would like to confess; and yet in this point of their extraordinary service to the Church is at once the significance and potency of "Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution." This will be strikingly illustrated in the circumstantial history of "Z. C. M. I.," towards which we are traveling in these preparatory commercial views.

Often has it been told what the community has done for the merchants, and as often have those same merchants—who built up the commercial and financial power of the Church—been ungraciously twitted that they have made their money out of "this people." Let us look at the other side now, and ask something of what the merchants have done for the community, and what "this people" have made out of the merchants? And this line of review of our commercial history is very necessary to be understood, insomuch as it will be suggestive of what the community already owe to the existence of "Z. C. M. I." And, furthermore, the remarkably successful example of that unique Institution during the last twelve years, under the united incorporation of these apostles temporal with the apostles spiritual, will foreshadow the vast results which the community will derive in the future in the growth and augmentation of the power and resources of said Institution.

A cursory view has been given of the destitute condition of the Mormon people during the first period of the settlement of these Valleys. As late as 1856, there was famine in Utah, and the community was barely preserved by the leaders wisely rationing the whole and dividing among the people their own substance. But it was neither the economy and wisdom of the leaders, nor the plentiful harvests that followed, that redeemed Utah from the depths of her poverty, and the anomalous isolation of a people reared in lands of civilization and plenty. She was redeemed from her social destitution by a train of Providential circumstances on the one hand, and the extraordinary activities of her merchants on the other. As we have seen, the Providence came in a United States Army; the temporary existence of Camp Floyd; the departure of the troops, leaving their substance to the community; the needs of the Overland Mail line; the construction of the telegraph lines; and then again the arrival of another U. S. army under Colonel Connor, and the establishment of Camp Douglas with several thousand soldiers to disburse their money in Salt Lake City after their pay days, besides the constant supplies which the camp needed from our country, and often labor from our citizens. It was then, under these changed and propitious circumstances, that our Utah mer-

On the 23 of July I started for St Louis to purchase a stock of paper for the "Times & Seasons" and arrived at St Louis. on the 2nd of August after a very uncomfortable voyage during which I took a very severe cold which settled into bilious fever.

See book marks 3

TULLIDGE'S QUARTERLY MAGAZINE.

No. III.—APRIL, 1881.—Vol. I.

UTAH'S COMMERCE AND CO-OPERATION.

CHAPTER I.

THE INITIAL VIEW OF OUR COMMERCE.

THE history of Utah commerce is very unique. In some respects, there is not a State or Territory in America whose commercial history will compare with that of our Territory. Its character has been as peculiar as its commonwealth, and that has given to it a typing quite uncommon in its genius; yet the typing in accord with the co-operative policies which the age has devised in solving the problem between capital and labor. There is also much stirring romance in its history. Its story and incidents are almost as romantic as the commerce of Arabia whose mammoth caravans, in their journeys across the deserts, have given subject and narrative to the most gorgeous romances in the whole range of literature. The journeys of the trains of these merchants of the West over the Rocky Mountains and the vast arid plains between Salt Lake City and the Eastern States, and their arduous task and adventurous experiences will fitly compare with the history of the merchants of the East in olden times when civilization herself was fostered by commerce; and, moreover, in the early days of Utah, it took as much commercial courage, perseverance and ability to establish the commerce of this Territory as it did that of any nation known in history. On the very face of the record, we may discern that the men who did this work were no ordinary men. They were capable of making their mark in any land; and if Utah, in the early days, afforded them great opportunities, it was their boundless energies and commercial ambitions that first created those opportunities and made a people comparatively affluent who had been buried in isolation and in the depths of poverty. Thus considered, the biographies of our commercial men have a peculiar charm of interest which gives a dignity to the personal record of their lives far above that of the ordinary history of self-made men and successful financiers. Indeed, the history of our commercial men is substantially the history of Utah commerce.

But the initial exposition of Utah commerce is undoubtedly that derived from her peculiar commonwealth, and the extraordinary history of the Mormon people who settled these valleys; and this will lead us directly through various phases of development to the commercial culmination to be illustrated in "Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution." To type our commercial history for the popular understanding, it may be described as Israelitish; and so its characteristic inscription of "Holiness to the Lord" is neither fanciful nor presumptuous, but fundamental and typical. It may be confessed that the inscription has been often burlesqued by the "Gentile;" but the sociologist would quickly read in it a volume concerning the genius and commonwealth of a people expressed in a gigantic commercial institution which, in its vast activities, influence and special methods, may become famous as the greatest marvel in the history of modern commerce.

And, just in this initial view, we must keep in sight the men who founded the Institution and especially those who are the proper representatives of the commerce of the Mormon people. It would be a very false-sighted view to consider "Z. C. M. I." as a colossal commercial monument of the Church apart from those commercial founders. That institution, in fine, is the organic embodiment of the life-activities of such men as William Jennings, William H. Hooper, Horace S. Eldredge, Hyrum B. Clawson, William C. Staines, Godbe and Mitchell