Frank J. Cannon

“ I propose, in this narrative, to show that the leaders of the Mormon Church have broken their covenant to the nation; that they have abused the confidence of the Gentiles of Utah and betrayed the trust of the people under their power, by using that power to prevent the state of Utah from becoming what it had engaged to become. I propose to show that the people of Utah, upraised to freedom by the magnanimity of the nation, are being made to appear traitorous to the generosity that saved them ”

“ We sat around his couch on the veranda, and for two hours he talked to us as clearly and as forcibly as ever. He spoke of the Church and of its mission in the world, with all the hope of a religious altruist. From the humblest beginnings, it had grown to the greatest power. From the depths of persecution, it had risen to win favor from the wisest among men. It had abolished poverty for hundreds of thousands, by its sound communal system. In its religious solidarity, it had become a guardian and administrator of equal justice within all the sphere of its influence. ”

“ He knew what a trial it would be to the "whole household of Israel." "We have sought," he said, "to live our religion—to harm no one—to perform our mission in this world for the salvation of the living and the dead. We have obeyed the principle of celestial marriage because it came to us from God. We have suffered under the rage of the wicked; we were driven from our homes into the desert; our prophets have been slain, our holy ones persecuted—and it did seem to me that we were entitled to the constitutional protection of the courts in the practice of our religion." ”

“ Inveigled into a plural marriage by the authority of a clandestine religious dogma—encouraged by his elders, seduced by the prospect of their favor, and impelled perhaps by a daring impulse to take the covenant and bond that shall swear him into the dangerous fellowship of the lawlessly faithful—he finds himself, at once, a law breaker who must pay the Church hierarchy for his protection by yielding to them every political right, every personal independence, every freedom of opinion, every liberty of act. ”

“ The members of the Mormon hierarchy continually boast that they are sustained in their power—and in their abuses of that power—"by the free vote of the freest people under the sun." By an amazing self deception the Mormon people assume that their government is one of "common consent;" and nothing angers them more than the expression of any suspicion that they are not the freest community in the world. ”

“ In short—as my father pointed out—Utah, at that time, expressed the only full-bodied social proposition in the United States. There never had been in America another community whose future, in the economic aspects, offered so clear a solution of problems which still remain generally unsettled. It was as if a segment of the great circle of modern humanity had been transported to another world, otherwise unpopulated, and there with the experience gained through centuries of human travail—had attempted the establishment of a just, beneficent and satisfying social order. ”

“ In polygamy, the men and women alike had been compelled to suffer on its account by the grim trials of the life itself and by the hatred of all civilization arrayed against it. They had grown to value their marriage system by what it had cost them. They had been driven by the contempt of the world to argue for its sanctity, to live up to their declarations, and to raise it in their esteem to what it professed to be, the celestial order that prevailed in the Heavens! ”

“ How can such leaders, directing the Church to purposes that have become so cruel, so selfish, so dangerous and so disloyal—how can they maintain their power over followers who are themselves neither criminal nor degraded? That is a question which has given the pause of doubt to many criticisms of the Mormon communism of our day. That is the consideration which has obtained from the nation the protection of tolerance under which the Prophets flourish. ”

“ If the Mormon, in his later years of manhood, dares to doubt, he must either reveal his disloyalty to the ward teachers or continue to deny it, from month to month, and remain a supine servant of authority. If he reveals it, he knows that the news of his defection will permeate the entire circle with which he is associated in politics, in business and in religion. If his superstition does not hold him, his worldly prudence will. He knows that all the aid of the community will be withdrawn from him; every voice that has expressed affection for him will speak in hate ”

“ An Englishman, well-educated, a linguist, an impressive orator, a persuasive writer, he had lived a life that was one long incredible adventure of romance and almost miraculous achievement. As a youth he had been sent by the Mormon leaders to California to wash out gold for the struggling community; and he had sent back to Utah all the proceeds of his labor, living himself upon the crudest necessaries of life. ”

“ The great doctrine of the Mormon faith is obedience; the one proof of grace is conformity. So long as a man pays a full tithe, contributes all the required donations, and yields unquestioningly to the orders of the priests, he may even depart in a moral sense from any other of the Church's laws and find himself excused. But any questioning of the rulership of the Prophets—the rightfulness of their authority or the justice of its exercise is apostasy, is a denial of the faith, is a sin against the Holy Ghost. ”

“ No denial was made by the Church authorities of any of the charges which I had made against Smith. No trial was made of the truth of those charges. As a free citizen of "one of the freest communities under the sun," I was officially ostracized by order of the religious despot of the community for daring to utter what everyone knew to be the truth about him.
For myself, of course, no edict of excommunication had any terrors; but the aim of the authorities was to make me suffer through the sufferings of my family; and, in that, they succeeded. ”

“ The man who is tempting her knows. He has the word of an apostle, the example of the Prophet, the secret teaching of the Church. He courts her as any other religious young girl might be courted—with little attentions, at the meetings, over the music books—and he has, to aid him, a religious exaltation in her, induced by his plea that she is to enter into the mystery of the holy covenant, to become one of the most faithful of a persecuted Church, to defy the wicked laws of its enemies. She is just as happy in her betrothal as any other innocent girl of her age. ”

“ The Mormon system of religious communism has long been known as one of the most interesting social experiments of modern civilization; here is an intimate study of it, not only in its success but in the failure that has come upon it from the selfish ambitions of its leaders. The power of the Mormon hierarchy has been the theme of much imaginative fiction; but here is a story of church tyranny and misgovernment in the name of God, that outrages the credibilities of art. ”

“ The Mormon leaders had been for years struggling to save their community from poverty. Proscribed by the Federal laws, their home industries suffering for want of finances, fighting against the allied influences of business in politics, these leaders had been taught to feel a fearful respect for the power that had oppressed them. They were now being offered the aid and countenance of their old opponents. Our community, so long the object of the world's disdain, was to advance to favor and prosperity along the easy road of association with the most influential interests of the country. ”

“ The American people are used to meeting prominent Mormons who are models of demeanor who are hearty of manner; who carry a kindly light in their eyes; who have a spontaneity that precludes hypocrisy or even deep purpose. These are not the men who make the Church diplomacy—they simply obey it. It is part of that diplomacy to send out such men for contact with the world. But the ablest minds of the Church, whether they are of the hierarchy or not, construct its policies. ”

“ When the trials of her life afflict her and she finds no relentment in the world's disdain, she sees no avenue of retreat. To break the relation is to imply at once that it was not ordained of God, and to cast a darker ignominy upon her unfortunate children. Her only hope lies in her continued submission to her husband and his Church, even after she has mentally and morally rejected the doctrine that betrayed her. A more pitiably helpless band of self-immolants than these Mormon women has never suffered martyrdom in the history of the world. ”

“ It was upon this rock that the whole enterprise, the whole experiment in religious communism, now threatened to split. Not that polygamy was so large an incident in the life of the community—for only a small proportion of the Mormons were living in plural marriage. And not that this practice was the cardinal sin of Mormonism—for among intelligent men, then as now, the great objection to the Church was its assumption of a divine authority to hold the "temporal power," to dictate in politics, to command action and to acquit of responsibility. ”

“ By this time it was abundantly evident that some of the Church leaders intended to rule their people in politics with an absolutism as supreme as any that Utah had ever known in the old days. And for these leaders to maintain their authority—despite the covenant of their amnesty, the terms of Utah's statehood and the provisions of the constitution—and to maintain that authority against the robust American sentiment that would be sure to assert itself—it was necessary that they should have the most effective political protection afforded by any organization in the whole country. ”

“ His "sin" will become known to the whole community, and he will be looked at askance by his friends and his companions.
After he has taken his vows as a priest, how shall he dare to violate them? He knows that if he loses his faith on a mission—in other words, if he dares to make any inquiry into the authenticity of the mission which he is performing—he becomes a deserter from God in the very ranks of battle. He knows that he will be held forever in dishonor among his people; that he will be looked upon as one worse than dead ”

“ It is given to them as the secret explanation of President Roosevelt's protection of the Mormon tyranny—a protection of which Apostle Hyrum Smith boasted in a sermon in the Salt Lake tabernacle (April 5, 1905) in these equivocal words: "We believe—and I want to say this—that in President Roosevelt we have a friend, and we believe that in the Latter-Day Saints President Roosevelt has the greatest friendship among them; and there are no people in the world who are more friendly to him, and will remain friendly unto him just so long as he remains true, as he has been, to the cause of humanity." ”

“ Usually before he is twenty he is sent on a mission to proclaim his gospel—the only one he has ever heard in his life—to "an unenlightened nation" and "a wicked world." For, in addition to being taught that the Mormons are the best, most virtuous, most temperate, most industrious, and most God-fearing of all peoples—a thing that is dinned into his ears from the pulpit every Sunday in the year—he has been convinced by equal iteration that the rest of the world is a festering mass of corruption. ”

“ I feel that it is incumbent upon me, therefore, at whatever pain to myself, to relate the whole unhappy truth of the affair, as much to defend the memory of the dead as to denounce the betrayal of the living, to expose a public treason against the community not less than to correct a private wrong done to the good name of those whom it is my right to defend. ”

“ You have never performed a Mission for the Church, and I have sometimes wondered if you cared anything about your religion. You have never obeyed the celestial covenant, and you have kept yourself aloof from the duties of the priesthood, but it may have been a providential overruling. I have talked with some of the brethren, and we feel that if relief does not soon appear, our community will be scattered and the great work crushed. The Lord can rescue us, but we must put forth our own efforts. Can you see any light? ”