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Religion, Politics, and Sugar
The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company 1907-1921
By Matthew C. Godfrey Utah State University Press
Copyright © 2007 Utah State University Press
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-87421-658-5
Chapter One
Introduction
In 1890, Wilford Woodruff, president, prophet, seer, and revelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormons, gathered members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles around him. Along with the First Presidency, consisting of Woodruff and his two counselors, the apostles constituted the governing body of the church, responsible for the spiritual welfare of its members. Yet on this day, Woodruff had temporal matters on his mind. He had called the apostles together to send some of them on missions to raise money for the Utah Sugar Company, a fledgling enterprise that had approached the church for financial help. LDS authorities, including Heber J. Grant and Joseph F. Smith, accepted Woodruff's call and spent the next several weeks approaching Utah businessmen for money, raising a considerable sum. In addition to these funds, Woodruff pledged LDS resources to the company. Why was the prophet so intent on involving the church in this business? As he later related, "The inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this factory. Every time I think of abandoning it, there is darkness; and every time I think of building it, there is light."
Although some might question the veracity of a claim to divine revelation on behalf of sugar beets, Woodruff's actions were not surprising. Since the early 1850s, Latter-day Saints, including Brigham Young and John Taylor, Woodruff's predecessors as presidents of the church, had attempted to manufacture sugar, albeit unsuccessfully. Neither Young nor Taylor had ever evidenced a divine commission to establish the sugar industry, however, which perhaps was the reason for their failure. Now that Woodruff insisted that the Lord had revealed his will in the matter, success was all but assured. With the help of God and the financial backing of the church, Woodruff would triumph where Young and Taylor had not.
Nearly twenty years later, church-supported sugar companies dotted Utah and Idaho. In 1907, three of the largest-the Western, the Idaho, and the Utah sugar companies-merged to form a $13 million corporation known as the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. For the next seven decades, this corporation, together with the Amalgamated Sugar Company, another church-supported firm, dominated the sugar industry in the Intermountain West. So engrained did beets become in Utah that high schools even used names such as "Beetdiggers" for their mascots. The production of beet sugar was a large-scale enterprise in twentieth-century Utah, generating millions of dollars for investors and providing high cash returns for farmers, who, for many years, generally drew their main source of cash income from sugar beets. In the second decade of the twentieth century, nearly one-third of Utah farmers grew sugar beets. By 1920, 93,603 acres of sugar beets were growing in the state and factories there produced $28 million worth of beet sugar, making the crop "the securest portion of the agricultural picture" for Utah's farmers.
During those years, the LDS church retained a firm interest in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Church presidents served simultaneously as presidents of Utah-Idaho Sugar, and members of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Presiding Bishopric (the leadership entity responsible for the church's temporal affairs) sat on the corporation's board of directors. Apparently, God, in his determination to see the beet sugar industry succeed, wanted his spiritual leaders to oversee the business.
But in 1890, few could have foreseen the economic impact that beet sugar would have on the Intermountain West. Indeed, for the first thirty years of its existence, the Utah Sugar Company and its offspring, Utah-Idaho, faced a rocky path to success. These years-roughly 1890 to 1920-corresponded to a social, political, and economic transitional period in Utah history. Because of increased pressure from the federal government, and in an effort to gain statehood for Utah Territory, Latter-day Saints were forced to abandon polygamy, a main tenet of their religion, in 1890. At the same time, church leaders asked them to split their allegiance between the Republican and Democratic parties instead of voting as a religious bloc.
Having met these conditions, Congress granted Utah statehood in 1896. This event precipitated a transformation of Utah's economy, where it became not only more commercialized than in the past, but also more national in scope and in market. This occurred not just because of statehood, but also because of a growing migration to Utah of non-Mormons and an increasing urbanization of northern Utah settlements. Facing these realities, and understanding that the United States at large did not regard church influence in economic affairs as conducive to democracy and freedom, LDS leaders sought, at least in some ways, to reduce the religion's role in economic activities in order to ensure that all Utahns, Mormon or non-Mormon, had the same economic opportunities. But these changes did not come easy. "For men and women with identities so tightly entwined with their faith, this was more than politics," historian Elliott West noted. "Changing the orientation of the Church required them to shift the very sense of who they were."
Numerous scholars have explored the church's abandonment of polygamy and the political pluralization of Utah; this book does not attempt to address those issues. Instead, this study examines a field less thoroughly explored, at least in its specifics-that of economic change between 1896 and 1930. Historians have generally divided Utah's economic history up to the Second World War into three different periods. The first, lasting until 1869, was characterized by isolation and self-sufficiency, and consisted of economic affairs largely promoted by the LDS church. The second-from 1869 to 1896 (beginning with the coming of the transcontinental railroad to Utah and ending with statehood)-saw the growth of two different economies, one consisting of Mormon cooperative endeavors and the other of non-Mormon mining and speculation. The third, lasting from 1896 to the beginning of the Second World War, saw the end of Mormon cooperation and dominance, the merging of Mormon and non-Mormon efforts, and the integration of the state's economic practices into the national economy. Historians, most notably Leonard Arrington, have exhaustively studied the first two periods of Mormon economic history, although recent examinations indicate that new schools of thought have much to offer to our financial understanding of those years. Yet scholars have largely ignored the third period, which, in some ways, is the most pivotal one of all, as it deals with how an economy largely regional in nature became more national in scope.
The founding of the Utah Sugar Company in 1889 coincided with the fading of cooperation and self-sufficiency from the LDS economy, two activities that had dominated Mormon economics almost since the arrival of the Latter-day Saints in the Great Basin in 1847, and arguably even before. Joseph Smith, founder of the church, preached that the ultimate divine society would live the Law of Consecration, whereby members would relinquish all of their property and goods to the church and receive a stewardship in return, eliminating classes and disparities of wealth. Members attempted to live this law for a time in the 1830s, but abandoned it after only a few years. Brigham Young, Smith's successor who led the Saints to Utah, advocated a more practical form of the Law of Consecration. First, he counseled Saints to boycott non-Mormon merchants and traders. Second, he advocated the creation of cooperatives in LDS communities, where members would pool their means to produce a product that would replace goods sold by non-Mormons or imported from the eastern United States. These, in turn, would promote the region's self-sufficiency. In some instances, cooperatives morphed into the communalist United Order, communities of Saints in which property was centralized and members labored according to their talents for the prosperity of all. All of these endeavors had one thing in common: they interposed the church as the central organization of economic activity.
When Young died in 1877, many of his economic ideas died with him. John Taylor, the next Mormon president, was more liberal in his beliefs. Taylor abandoned cooperatives and the United Order in favor of boards of trade, organizations that maintained the church's dominant economic position while also allowing for more expansion of the regional economy. The boards of trade consisted of a central organization-Zion's Central Board of Trade-as well as community organizations centered in Mormon stakes. Prominent Mormon businessmen and ecclesiastical leaders governed these boards, which functioned to establish uniform prices for products and to market goods outside of the Wasatch Front. Essentially, Taylor foresaw the boards as a way to expand private production and employment and to regulate competition in Utah's economy. Yet these boards lasted only until 1884, when they abruptly died out, leading to several years where the church did not play as large a role in the economy. The abandonment of the boards of trade and the resulting de-emphasis on church economic control came at least partly from necessity; during Taylor's presidency, the federal government attempted to eradicate polygamy from Utah by confiscating church property and resources and by attempting to arrest prominent Latter-day Saints. Such actions forced leaders such as Taylor underground to avoid arrest. In that environment, the church did not have the means to act as the central economic authority.
By the time Wilford Woodruff assumed the presidency in 1889, the fight over polygamy, including government confiscation of church properties and resources, had intensified. Woodruff eliminated much of the contention by issuing the Manifesto in 1890, declaring that the LDS church would no longer practice polygamy. This was a significant step in order for Utah Territory to achieve statehood (which occurred in 1896), and it enabled the church to begin to regain some of its property. Yet the LDS church still faced a huge indebtedness in the late 1800s and early 1900s because of the polygamy fight and the nationwide Panic of 1893, leaving it helpless to do much on the economic front. Woodruff invested in several enterprises, including sugar, in order to get these industries off the ground, but the church's influence was not as pronounced during the 1890s as it had been in the 1860s and 1870s, especially since many of these businesses had to turn to outside capital for help. Indeed, the church would not be able to lift itself out of debt until Lorenzo Snow, who succeeded Woodruff, emphasized in 1899 the importance of church members paying a tithe of 10 percent of their incomes. Even then, it took several years for the LDS church to pay off its obligations and become financially sound. Mormons no longer had as many qualms about patronizing non-Mormon businesses, at least in Salt Lake City, and by the mid-1910s, observers were noting that non-Mormons controlled a majority of banks and department stores in Salt Lake City. In those industries where the church retained a presence, LDS leaders sometimes took pains to ensure that the enterprises did not unduly restrain competition.
But in the sugar industry, the LDS role remained strong throughout the 1900s; Mormon leaders were not afraid to exercise influence on the industry's behalf. Although the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company turned to eastern interests for financial support in the early 1900s, the LDS church bought out those investors in 1914 and cemented its control of the enterprise. High church authorities sat on the governing board of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company throughout this period; members of the church's First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Presiding Bishopric still made public requests for financial support; and lower leaders, such as stake presidents (who governed local Mormon organizations that corresponded roughly to dioceses) and bishops (which led the wards, or congregations, that composed the stakes) made similar pronouncements. Accordingly, members took the advice (or were they commandments?) of their spiritual guides by purchasing beet sugar and growing beets solely for Utah-Idaho Sugar.
Given these circumstances, this book seeks to answer several questions revolving around the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company and its operations from 1890 to 1920. First, why did LDS church leaders use ecclesiastical influence in behalf of sugar at a time when they were trying to maintain competition in other industries, and what forms did this influence take? Second, what ramifications did this have for the church and for Utah-Idaho Sugar? Third, how did the integration of Utah's economy into the national scene affect Utah-Idaho Sugar, and how did the LDS influence either help or hinder that assimilation?
It is important to note that sugar was not the only industry in which the LDS church retained a presence during this time. Salt, insurance, and entertainment industries also benefited from continued church involvement, as did Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institute (ZCMI), a merchandising firm originally begun as part of the cooperative movement in the nineteenth century. But there are several reasons why answering questions about LDS influence in the sugar beet industry is both important and necessary. For one thing, beet sugar-through the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company and its sister corporation, Amalgamated Sugar-was one of the most significant, if not the most significant agricultural industry in the Intermountain West in this time period, when agriculture still dominated that region's economy. It represented the increasing industrialization of agriculture in the area, as factories sprang up across the Intermountain West to extract sugar from beets. It also embodied the commercialization of Utah's economy in the years following statehood: Utah-Idaho Sugar relied on eastern capital for funding, marketed its product outside of the Intermountain West, and focused on profitability rather than self-sufficiency. In addition, it showed how agriculture in the American West could be a "big business," just as the notorious Standard Oil Company or U.S. Steel, and how such businesses could take advantage of national trends in their policies.
On a national level, Utah-Idaho Sugar was part of an industry that, to many Americans between 1890 and 1920, seemed to personify the evils of capitalism and the corporate world. Many sugar concerns combined themselves horizontally into trusts that monopolized business and prevented competition. The Sugar Trust, for example, had formed in the 1880s through a combination of eastern sugar corporations, but had been abolished by the federal government as an illegal trust under the Sherman Antitrust Act. The corporation merely reformed as the American Sugar Refining Company in 1891 and continued the same practices, leading to further indictments under the Sherman Act of 1890. In so doing, American Sugar prevented others from gaining a foot in the industry and forced consumers to accept prices and wages that it dictated, not those based on competition.
But the lust for sugar was an ancient thing. A Hindu legend explained that sugar cane had first entered the world as part of an earthly paradise created by deity for an Indian prince. Whatever its origins, it first became popular as a luxury item for royalty and the rich in the Middle East, and by the 1300s, it had invaded Europe. When Europeans first began exploring the North and South American continents, they brought sugar cultivation with them. At this time, crop production was based on slave labor, something that continued as plantations became established in the Caribbean. Indeed, the sugar industry became noted for its exploitation of workers, even as it became more popular among lower classes in North America. By the time of the Civil War, it was grown in Louisiana and other locations in the United States, making it more readily available to average consumers.
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Excerpted from Religion, Politics, and Sugar by Matthew C. Godfrey Copyright © 2007 by Utah State University Press. Excerpted by permission.
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