usy of priestly interference in
politics, because there are no laymen in the proper sense of the word.
A man's worldly success in life is largely involved in his success as
a churchman, since the church commands the opportunities of enterprise,
and the leaders of the Church are the state's most powerful men of
affairs. It is not uncommon, in any of our American communities, for men
to use their church membership to support their business; but in Utah
the Mormons practically must do so, and even the Gentiles find it wise
to be subservient.

Add to this temporal power of the Church the fact that it was
establishing a policy of seeking material success for its people, and
you have the explanation of its eagerness to accept an alliance with the
"interests" and of its hostility to anyone who opposed that alliance.
The Mormons, dispossessed of their means by the migration from Illinois,
had been taught the difficulty of obtaining wealth and the value of it
when once obtained. They fancied themselves set apart, in the mountains,
by the world's exclusion. They were ambitious to make themselves as
financially powerful in proportion to their numbers as the Jews were;
and it was a common argument among them that the world's respect had
turned to the Jews because of the dependence of Christian governments
upon the Jewish financiers.

The exploitation of this solid mass of industry and thrift could not
long be obscured from the eyes of the East. The honest desire of the
Mormon leaders to benefit their people by an alliance with financial
power made them the easy victims of such an alliance. With the death
of the older men of the hierarchy, the Church administration lost its
tradition of religious leadership for the good of the community solely,
and the new leaders became eager for financial aggrandizement for
the sake, of power. Like every other church that has added a temporal
scepter to its spiritual authority, its pontiffs have become kings of a
civil government instead of primates of a religious faith.

Chapter IX. At the Crossways

In 1897, the Church, freed of proscription, with its people enjoying the
sovereignty of their state rights, had--as I have already said--only one
further enfranchisement to desire: and that was its freedom from debt.
The informal "finance committee" of which I was a member, had succeeded
in concentrating the bulk of the indebtedness in the East, on short term
loans, and had brought a cert