n the
early nineties, Dr. Josiah Strong, of New York City, viewed the Mormon
system with an interested admiration. He saw that by contribution, and
co-operation, and arbitration, the energies of the people were conserved
and the products of their prosperity more equally distributed than under
the conditions of economic war then prevalent elsewhere. He thought he
saw in Utah a possible solution of some of the social problems of our
civilization. But, a few years ago, he confessed that the Mormon system
was no longer worthy of study. It had been destroyed by the greed of
its rulers. Community contributions were being used for individual
commercialism and the aggrandizement of leaders. The aged and infirm
poor, who had contributed through all the working period of their
lives, were being thrust into poor houses. The ambition of the earlier
Prophets, to make the people great in their community prosperity and
happiness, has been lost in the new desire of the head of the Church
to exhibit that greatness only in his own person. The Mormon people had
become the working slaves of a financial and political and religious
autocracy, and Mormonism was no longer anything but a hopeless failure
as a social experiment.

It is difficult to say how much of this failure was due to the character
of the present Prophet, and how much to the national conditions that
are threatening the success of democracy in every state of the Union.
It would seem that the conditions were ideal for the production of
just such a man as Smith, and that Smith was by nature fitted for the
greatest growth under just such conditions. He came to power with none
of the feeling of responsibility to his people which the earlier leaders
showed. He considered that the people lived for him, not that he lived
for the people. He regarded the Mormon system as an establishment of his
family, to which he had the family right of inheritance; and he waited
with a sulky impatience for the deaths of the men who stood between him
and the control of his family's Church. It was as if he accepted his
predecessors as exercising their powers, during an inter-regnum, by the
consent of the Mormon people, but saw himself acceding to the throne by
family right and the order of divinity.

He had no financial ability; he had no considerable property when he
became president of the Church at sixty-three. Nor did he need any
such ability. The continuous inflow of money--to be used without
ac