port its religious activities, its priests or
its propaganda.

Our proposed committees, therefore, were a committee on missionary work,
one on publication, one on colonization, one on political protective
work for the Mormons in foreign countries, and most important--a finance
committee selected from the body of apostles, with the addition of some
able men connected with financial institutions. As a basis for the work
of the finance committee, we proposed the establishment of an interest
fund, a sinking fund, and a scale of percentage disbursements for the
various community purposes. These committees were to be appointed by the
Conferences of the people, and the committee reports were to be public.
President Woodruff eagerly accepted the plan as relieving the Presidency
of administrative cares that were becoming too great for the quorum to
carry. Joseph F. Smith did not at once awake to the real meaning of the
proposal; but when the scheme was submitted in its matured details,
he spoke of the danger of allowing power to pass from the hands of the
"trustee in trust" in business matters. His idea was sufficiently
clear in its resistance to any diffusion of authority, but it was
correspondingly void of any suggestion of substitute. For the time being
he was pacified by the assurance that the "Kingdom of God" and the
rule of its prophets would not be endangered by the organization
of committees and the submission of financial plans to the general
knowledge, and even to the consent, of the people.

It was, of course, evident to the First Councillor that this scheme
of Church administration would give the Mormon people a measure of
responsible government, and the proposal was a part of his wisdom as a
community leader seeking the common welfare. While we had been a people
on whom the whole world seemed to be making war, a dictatorship had
been necessary; but now that we had arrived at peace and liberty, a
concentration of irresponsible power would surely become dangerous to
progress. Without, therefore, impairing the religious authority of the
Prophet, the First Councillor was willing to divide the temporal power
of the Church among its members.

He was as silent, about these aims, with me as with all others; but I
had learned to understand him in his silences; and, in joining with him
in his work of reform, I was as sure of his purpose as I have since been
sure of the disaster to the Mormon people that has come of the fail