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GREAT BASIN KINGDOM
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GREAT BASIN
K IN G D O M
An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints
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LEONARD J. ARRIN GTON
University of Nebraska Press
Lincoln and London
Copyright (g) *958 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 58-12961
Manufactured in the United States of America
International Standard Book Number 0-8032-5006-1
First Bison Book printing October, 1966
Most recent printing shown by first digit below:
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Bison Book edition published by arrangement with the Harvard University
Press.
To Grace
And it shall come to pass in the last days,
That the mountain of the Lord’s house
Shall be established in the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow unto it.
THE BIBLE (Isaiah 2:2)
Great things are done when men and mountains meet;
This is not done by jostling in the street.
WILLIAM BLAKE
Preface
,A.t a time when government is exercising a potent influence in molding
the economy of all of us, and when “advanced” countries are sending bil
lions of dollars, and some of their finest experts, to underdeveloped areas to
stimulate economic growth and expansion, it does not seem out of place to
discuss the role of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in devel
oping the economy of the Mountain West. While the general nature of the
Mormon recipe for development has long been recognized to include sys
tematic planning, organized cooperation, patient sacrifice of consumption
in favor of investment, and pious devotion to the ideal of the Kingdom of
God on earth, the economic institutions and policies of the church, though
well-documented, have never been described in detail. This book attempts
in some measure to fill that gap.
The economic development of Mormon Country is of particular signifi
cance for four reasons: (i) It illustrates the problems associated with the
settlement and growth of an isolated, mountainous, and semi-arid region.
(2) It dramatizes the strengths and weaknesses of attempting a comprehen
sive development program without outside capital. (3) It represents one of
the few regional economies in modern history founded for a religious pur
pose, dominated by religious sentiments, and managed by religious leaders.
(4) It offers an interesting case study of American pioneering experience
generally. The present volume may be said to suggest the positive role
which a government, whether secular or theocratic, if sufficiently strong,
can play in the building of a commonwealth. It also bears out the contention
of Max Weber and others that much can be learned by systematically
observing the relationship between religion and economic life.
Great Basin Kingdom represents an attempt to give meaning to an
American experience that often has been obscured by sectarian controversy.
Despite their assertions of “peculiarity,” much of what was done by the
Mormons was truly American. To paraphrase Alfred Marshall, the Latter-
day Saints were “a leading species of a larger genus.” Just as Mormonism
often has been regarded as a typically American religion, so Mormon eco
nomic experience, to use the words of Thomas O’Dea, presents a distilla
tion, a heightening, a more explicit formulation, and a summation of Ameri
viii PREFACE
can experience generally. As Ralph Barton Perry observed in Characteristi
cally American: “Mormonism was a sort of Americanism in miniature; in
its republicanism, its emphasis on compact in both church and polity, its
association of piety with conquest and adventure, its sense of destiny, its
resourcefulness and capacity for organization.” It was not only a Mormon
dream, but the dream of many Americans to build on this continent a King
dom of God. It was the dream of all Americans, as Goethe said, to escape
from the past of European man, and to build a new society. Thus, while the
focus of this study is narrowed down to a region whose population even
today is less than two million, and while the events here discussed have made
no great splash in American, much less world, history, many of the problems
confronted by the Mormons, many of the solutions hit upon, many of the
policies and institutions, were representative of human experience generally.
Although the findings of other scholars have not been neglected, every
attempt has been made in this work to use primary materials. The Mormon
pioneers were avid diarists and record-keepers, and almost everything they
left has been preserved. The necessity of using only the material of interest
to the economic historian, however, does a certain amount of injustice to the
originals, which often are replete with descriptions of religious experiences,
discussions of theology, and evidences to the writers of divine favor. Because
of the relative inaccessibility of much of the source material, quotations are
used more frequently than usual in a work of this kind.
One reader of these pages has expressed his delight and fear that Great
Basin Kingdom will be regarded and used as an economic history of Utah
to 1900 — delight, because it introduces an important and neglected phase
of Utah history; fear, because the work should not be considered as anything
but a study of Mormon (as opposed to non-Mormon) economic policies,
practices, and institutions. I do not pretend that this is an economic history
of Utah in the same sense that, say, Frederick Merk’s Economic History of
Wisconsin During the Civil War Decade is a study of that interesting state.
The critical omissions — e.g., Utah’s mining history after 1869 — were made
purposefully in order to make possible the detailed treatments of the more
unique and lesser known economic activities, institutions, and responses of
the Mormons. The book is largely a study of Mormon concepts, and of the
efforts of church leadership to develop an economy in harmony with those
concepts.
The approach to Mormonism in this book is that religion, as with all
social institutions, must be judged according to its usefulness in attacking
the ageless problems of humanity. That leaders of the Mormon Church
throughout the nineteenth century attempted in a systematic way to improve
the economic welfare of their followers as a group, seems undeniable. If, as
the Mormons believe, Joseph Smith was personally commissioned by God
