National Reports

...The campus itself has been organized as a stake of the Mormon church, and the whole student body is arranged as a replica of church organization...

...of the temporal and spiritual life, the system of tithing by the faithful Mormons (contributing 10 per cent of income to the church), and an ingrained sense of loyalty to the welfare of the Mormon community...

...In fact, what one sees in Utah today is the latest stage in the transformation of a state—and indeed of an American sub-culture...

...If the church sends down the word that a certain man is not acceptable, he is dead...

...He proudly recalls that in collecting the $3 million fee ordered by the courts, he distributed a good part of it to legal associates, and promptly sent the church more than $100,000 in tithing...

...When the Depression hit, for example, Utah went Democratic in 1932...

...Rejected by American society, as then constituted, the Mormons decided to build a society based on their own religious concepts...

...To earn their right of uncontested settlement the Mormons enlisted a battalion in the Mexican War, with the approval of President Polk...

...According to union leaders the Democratic victories of 1958, or the labor contributions in them, were made possible by the enlistment, for the first time, of the Mormon women who plunged into campaigning with their union husbands, their churchly zeal directed into new channels...

...When Elbert Thomas was defeated in 1950 he ascribed his defeat to the powerful opposition of the church leadership...

...While clinging to their religious affiliations—their children enter the Mormon priesthood, their wives perform church work, and in some areas of the state, union men are bishops—many of the organized labor representatives regard the church leadership as mainly antiunion...

...Of Utah's three institutions of higher education, the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Utah State at Logan are state-owned and supported...

...Nevertheless, union leadership and membership in Utah is also Mormon, many of them bearing distinguished pioneer Mormon names...

...For a while, church leaders, brought up in an agricultural society and guardians of the agrarian virtues, resisted the introduction of foreign industry, such as the U.S...

...A comparatively new organizational force, the trade unions, has become a key area of liberal political and social aspiration...

...In this article Herling explores relations between the Latter Day Saints of Utah and the present-day saints of the Republican right wing, and shows the transformation of an American subculture under the impact of new and powerful forces...

...The church's doctrinal code is widely and willingly observed by them as a personal way of life...

...His successor, the incumbent Wallace F. Bennett, is a former President of the National Association of Manufacturers, whose economic philosophy was more closely attuned to that of the dominant church leadership...

...the council of Apostles is its board of directors...

...Headed by Dr...

...The election to Congress of David King, over an entrenched Republican Congressman with strong church backing, was regarded as even more significant than the Moss victory because King, son of a former U.S...

...You are not to teach the multiplication table without the spirit of God...

...We are unique in the sense our students are not being indoctrinated...

...On Federal aid to education: "We are against it...

...But the change he heralds is not invariably cheered in other high Mormon places...

...The Presidency of the church, in effect, is the executive committee of an interstate business empire...

...Many Mormons and non-Mormons skeptically discern a considerable gap between the nonpartisan theory and the actual practice...

...But Utah's patterns of social relationships and modes of political expression are shifting...

...A highly skillful lawyer, he fought through the courts the claims of the Ute Indians, and after more than 15 years of litigation, Congressional persuasion and sheer persistence, he won a $32-million claim against the Federal Government, the largest such judgment won against the United States...

...his followers threatened by mobs...

...Though sometimes blurred by the impact of personalities, political distinctions have been steadily maintained in Utah, even through church fiat...

...At five-year intervals a complete ward census is taken, and sent to Salt Lake City headquarters...

...Apostle Brown had politically out-wrestled Apostle Benson...

...Half our people, students and faculty, are Latter Day Saints...

...All have freedom of thought, with no authoritative or dictatorial over-lordship...

...Since then, of course, political differences have sharpened and become more meaningful...

...Until then the labor vote was a vague body which floated along Democratic lines...

...They now affect the ultimate reaches of church leadership and the state's expanding population...

...Developments in Utah have convinced them that it will no longer be easily possible, officially or obliquely, for the conservative church leaders to sustain customary social or political patterns against new and insistent pressures...

...The first Labor Temple in Salt Lake was built in 1894, but the unions were generally regarded as beyond the pale...

...Opposition to this conservative control today characterizes Utah's liberal transformation...

...A group of wards constitutes a stake, which is headed by a president...

...To many Mormons and non-Mormons they appear to have equated conservative business philosophy with pragmatic church policy...

...In a state-supported institution you just don't do that...

...At the pinnacle operate the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles and associated officials, a total of 32, who constitute the "General Authorities...

...Ernest L. Wilkinson, president of BYU for the past seven years, has become the dynamic force...

...Despite Benson's dedicated efforts to keep Utah Republican, 1958 brought the surprise victory in a three-way election to the U.S...

...What happens in Utah, the center of the Mormon church, fans out as well to affect the attitudes of Mormons in the intermountain states and in California, where the Mormons have also grown fruitful and multiplied...

...Olpin and Wilkinson were undergraduate friends at Brigham Young University nearly 40 years ago...

...Though bowing to the inevitable, the church had not prepared the Mormons for the hazards of life in a "gentile" steel mill...

...For the church not only commands their time as missionaries, it exacts a tenth of their income and literally owns and operates the biggest diversified industrial empire in the Mountain States...

...How completely can the Mormon church exercise control...

...The influx of new large-scale "gentile controlled" industries, like U.S...

...In the decades which have succeeded the bearded old patriarch, the Mormon church has not only multiplied many times over, it has come to dominate, in a way unique in this republic, the social, political and business life of an entire state...

...Along with tighter control over faculty, he announced firmly that faculty advancement will depend on concrete evidence of church activity, including compulsory tithings...

...He was replaced by Elbert Thomas, liberal civil-libertarian professor at the University of Utah, a devout Mormon, too, but not as highly placed in the church as Smoot...

...At first many devout Mormon workers regarded certain safety regulations as interference with their personal freedom...

...They harnessed the traditional Mormon sense of mission to their political activity...

...Most continue to follow their private businesses...

...The venerable Republican Senator, Reed Smoot, once high-tariff architect and Apostle of the church, was swept from office despite a stern front-page editorial in the church-owned daily newspaper demanding his return...

...Many have gone out on two-year missions for the church...

...Here, more than a century ago, Brigham Young, the implacable organizer of the Mormon church, announced with finality: "This is the place...

...Now, the issue is whether a church-supported school should try to educate all the people or only those of its own membership...

...Though the leadership of the Mormon church is fairly described as predominantly conservative and Republican, many churchmen find, in the state's political past, plenty of evidence that the church cannot buck a major trend...

...On the other hand, the church can influence, but not control, a Democratic convention...

...They are not usually "gentiles" as non-Mormons are called, and proportionately they include no more Jack Mormons —the term for non-observing Mormons—than do other cross-sections of the population...

...Originally organized to provide life's necessities for "the peculiar people" on a self-sufficient basis, the Mormon church today directly owns or substantially controls—inside and outside of Utah—enterprises in merchandising, banking, insurance, broadcasting, publishing, food processing, hotels and real estate management...

...Today, the clash of these two friends and careers dramatizes the nature of the political and intellectual hand-to-hand encounter now going on between the liberal and the conservative in Utah...

...In education, in economics or in politics, Utah is in transition...

...The bishops, presidents of stakes, and thousands of church functionaries are mainly businessmen, professionals, farmers and others who devotedly serve the church without salary...

...Because he had over the years gained a strong personal following, most polls predicted Lee's election, with Moss running third in Salt Lake county...

...The third, Brigham Young University at Provo, is the official church university...

...Corroboration of church power after elections—no matter which party wins—is not hard to find...

...The Mormon domain is divided into wards or parishes, with an average of about 650 persons to a ward...

...We shall have wars right up to the millennium...

...Although Wilkinson holds strong cards because of his identification with the church leadership, his frank proselytizing of students and faculties at the University of Utah, the oldest state university west of the Mississippi, has aroused deep resentment...

...That year, the church leaders, not sure whether the next president of the United States would be William Mc-Kinley or William Jennings Bryan, decided to play it safe by assigning church members to both parties...

...Organized labor became an operating political influence in the state...

...These businesses, competitive, and run for profit, are directed by church authorities...

...Thus, religious expediency determined the party lines in Utah's first years of statehood...

...It is certainly fought with determination by a senior fellow Apostle, Ezra Taft Benson, Utah's...

...In recent years their number has increased...

...Many Mormons with successful business careers are drawn back to Salt Lake City to manage the enterprises...

...Today, the power of the Mormon church rests on the interdependence John Herling, a nationally syndicated labor columnist, is publisher of Labor Letter, an authoritative periodical on U.S...

...Republican and President Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture...

...Senate of Frank E. Moss, a Mormon and liberal Democrat, who defeated both fellow Mormon Arthur Watkins, the incumbent Republican, and J. Bracken Lee, a former Republican state governor and mayor of Price, Utah...

...But they chafe at what they regard as refusal of the leading Mormon churchmen to accept unions as essential to modern life as they now welcome the large new enterprises employing industrial workers...

...Short, articulate and self-confident, Wilkinson has been called the "Napoleon" of Mormon education, "an academic imperialist...

...While liberal Mormon churchmen and Mormon-led unions vie with conservative church leaders and business men for the political allegiance of the rank-and-file Mormons, another major collision between the liberal and the orthodox has been taking place in the field of education...

...Salt Lake City, the capital, with almost a third of the state's population, is about 55 per cent Mormon...

...Mormons comprise 70 per cent of Utah's 800,000 population...

...The leaders of the Latter Day Saints simply decided they would seek refuge in a place nobody else could possibly want...

...Powerful social and industrial forces thrust them into intellectual and political integration with the rest of the nation...

...He wants to draw strength from areas where other institutions are strong...

...In the 1958 election, however, his extremism cost him the regular Republican support...

...He had slashed away at the Eisenhower Administration as latter-day New Dealism...

...His guide, he says, is the maxim of the first president of the University...

...On the United Nations: "I see no hope there...

...This might be a strange way to arrive at a political conclusion elsewhere in the United States, but not in Utah...

...One close observer put it this way: "The Mormon church can control a state Republican convention...

...But the Bracken Lee phenomenon is a political variable of continuing influence, and a few months ago, he was able to recapture some of his personal support in a consolation prize campaign when he was elected mayor of Salt Lake City in the non-partisan city election...

...At the same time, they deny that they wish the church to run, or be run, along Democratic lines...

...Over each presides a bishop...

...A. Ray Olpin, also a Mormon, the University of Utah, located in Salt Lake City, prides itself on its high academic standards, complete academic freedom and full faculty participation...

...They reject the idea of an all-embracing political church...

...While interlocking business and political careers of innumerable Mormon church leaders might justify such a conclusion, Mormon spokesmen carefully point out that officially the church does not take sides in partisan politics...

...We don't have a University policy, but, of course, I have spoken for it...

...it pervades their state and municipal governments, their educational system and their means of livelihood...

...Outside Salt Lake, communities are almost completely Mormon...

...Utah thereby became the permanent home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a severely disciplined theocratic society, but one with a coldly pragmatic view toward the economics of existence...

...trade unions...

...On unionism: "We believe no organization should tell a man how long or how hard or under what conditions he should work...

...Olpin said...

...Church pressure was regarded as decisive in swinging enough Democrats, now a majority in the State House of Representatives, to form a coalition with the Republicans in voting down the repeal of the "right-to-work" law...

...Frankly suspicious of modern trends in education, Wilkinson says with a chuckle: "The faculty here enjoys full participation—in carrying out the policies of this Administration...

...Wilkinson has his fac-utly in a constant dither, tries to tell them what to do...

...The policies, he makes clear, are not only church doctrine...

...Key leaders bring a conservative business point of view into the church community...

...Steel plant at Provo...

...It's unfortunate that Ernest is so competitive, and with publicly supported institutions," Dr...

...But the Wilkinson drive has strong opposition, less articulate in BYU but waxing stronger outside...

...Mormons had been hard driven and persecuted in one place after another...

...Utah is the creation of the Mormon pioneers...

...Because the Mormons are a strongly inter-related people, the struggle over ideas and interest takes on an extra dimension of personal pressure...

...Also in 1958, what signalled an important rearrangement in the political attitude of many Utahns was Apostle Brown's appearance as the keynote speaker at the state Democratic convention...

...We have a theological doctrine of 'free agency' which teaches that every man has a right to do as he pleases...

...Benson is on apostolic leave of absence because of his Cabinet duties, but religious obligation and political anxiety frequently send him back to Salt Lake City with a prayer in his heart and a political speech on his lips...

...My church has rejected me," he said brokenly to fellow Mormons...

...As a liberal Democrat I welcome this change," says Apostle Brown, a vigorous man of 76...

...The belief that church influence has been loaded against them distresses many of the 50,000 trade unionists in the state...

...This may be divided into several parts...

...Senator, won in a straight two-way contest...

...Lee, a non-Mormon (his wife is Mormon), is a free-wheeling campaigner whose extreme isolationism and conservatism have frequently been rewarded with the support of the Mormon business community...

...No longer can Mormons stand isolated from the mainstream of national development...

...Because Apostle Brown now interprets the church attitude toward social reform quite differently from some of his colleagues, he regards the resurgence of the Democratic party in his state as fitting and proper, and in fact, consonant with religious good...

...Each ward keeps a filing system up to date by monthly visits to every Mormon home...

...As to a right-to-work law, we are very much for it...

...As head of the unified church school system Wilkinson is responsible for the world-wide system of Mormon education...

...No government or person should tell him what to do...

...Significant political changes are taking place in Utah," said Hugh B. Brown, one of the Twelve Apostles, "but you mustn't conclude that all my brethren agree with me that the change is for the good...

...He accepts no salary as University president...

...He considers himself a modern success story...

...This liberal upsurge among the rank-and-file members of the church has become a rising chorus...

...Wilkinson ticks off his own beliefs, on which he and Bracken Lee frequently see eye to eye...

...This time, Utah unions employed what was for them a new political technique...

...The liberals, usually but not always Democratic, do not want to see a dominant church control all aspects of state life, and, as has usually happened, along Republican or, for that matter, Bracken Lee lines...

...The word had gone down that the "Brethren" wanted it that way, and a strong anti-union position readily finds responsive warmth among church men and women at top administrative levels...

...The great majority of Utah's trade unionists are faithful Mormons, pay their tithes, fast offerings and assessments...

...This actually happened in 1896 when Utah was at last admitted to the Union as the 45th state...

...95 per cent of the 258 state and county officials are Mormon, and the same percentage holds for all candidates, winners or losers, Democrats or Republicans...

...In church education, Dr...

...The First Presidency is presently made up of three men: the President himself, the gentle and revered David O. McKay, and his two counsellors, one—the strong-willed J. Reuben Clark, a rock-ribbed Republican octogenarian who was once President Herbert Hoover's Under-Secretary of State, and the second— Henry D. Moyle, a conservative Democrat, a former oil company executive, who once lost out in a gubernatorial primary to a liberal Democrat...

...One union spokesman remarked deprecatingly that the Mormon church is the only church organization in the United States whose leadership supports the "right to work," or anti-union shop law, as a matter of policy...

...Steel, has attracted many workers from other states, and has added variety to the population...

...To older unions in the building trades, teamsters, coal and metal miners are now added steel, smelter, electronic and missile workers...

...several Apostles had first won their reputations in public utilities, oil companies or the professions...

...The Mormon church has always encouraged education as a religious and secular duty...

...To Apostle Hugh Brown, the personification, in one department at least, of changing Utah, this means Democratic victory in 1960, Bracken Lee's political resurrection notwithstanding...

...Every Mormon in good standing (in or out of Utah) must belong to a ward organization...

...in contrast, organized labor can control a Democratic convention...

...In many ways the 1958 election is regarded as the turning in the battle between liberals and conservatives...

...Joseph Smith, founder of the church, was murdered...