Reed Smoot, The L.D.S. Church and Progressive Legislation, 1903-1933

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If J. Reuben Clark, Jr., will be remembered largely for his involvement in international affairs, another Mormon leader, Reed Smoot, is notable for his contribution both to international relations and domestic American affairs. In 1902, not long after being ordained an apostle, Smoot was elected to the United States Senate, where he served with distinction for thirty years. As a Senator, Smoot shared responsibility for the controversial Smoot-Hawley Tariff of 1931. He also shared J. Reuben Clark’s concern that the United States avoid entangling international alliances. Smoot became a Senator during the “Progressive Era,” in which many social reforms long advocated by liberal political forces began to be achieved through the actions of the federal government. He has often been thought of as too politically conservative to be responsive to the forces of reform, but Professor Thomas G. Alexander demonstrates in the following article that he had the capacity to judge each piece of legislation on its own merits rather than according to some preconceived prejudice. As in the case of]. Reuben Clark, Smoot’s political utterances did not represent an official Church position, but it is important for students of Church history to know where these influential leaders stood on the important issues of their time. 

Reed Smoot’s service as United States Senator from Utah spanned three decades of rapid change.[1] When he entered the Senate in 1903, the United States was an industrial nation of the first magnitude. When he left in 1933, it had become even more highly urbanized, commercially interdependent, and technically advanced. These changes did not come without their social and economic dislocations, and citizens placed new demands on government at all levels to deal with problems which private associations and local governments proved unwilling or unable to solve. As a Senator, Smoot had to sit in judgment on the justice of these appeals. How did this conservative Republican, revered by L.D.S. Church members as a prophet, seer, and revelator and as an Apostle of the Lord, react to the expansion of governmental activities? The story of Senator Smoot shows that a sincere faith in Mormonism is not ideologically inconsistent with support of progressive legislation. 

The man on the street thinks of most governmental activity as new, not old, perhaps because government has expanded so much beyond its traditional scope, and because the federal government has exercised power in areas formerly left to the city, the county, or the state. Actually, since the Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601, in England and America basic responsibility for the care of those unable to care for themselves has rested with government. English settlers brought the tradition to the New World and Americans carried it westward as the nation expanded. Private and religious charitable associations supplemented governmental assistance, but they supported rather than usurped the functions of the state. 

By the same token, the idea that the state should play an active role in regulating and subsidizing business is not new. The British Empire even before the American Revolution had an extensive code of laws regulating commerce. Parliament granted subsidies for various goods and services which the Empire needed and prohibited the production of commodities which might injure other businessmen. American tobacco farmers, for instance, had a monopoly of tobacco sales in the Empire. American iron manufacturers, however, could not export manufactured iron goods to England. 

After the Revolution, Congress instituted similar regulations and subsidies in the new republic. The first tariff act, passed in 1789, subsidized American industry by moderate protectionist features. The Navigation Act of 1789 discriminated against foreign owned ships through port taxes. The Ordinance of 1785 provided federal subsidies for education through grants of land, and this tradition was continued through the First and Second Morrill Acts (1862 and 1890) and various other pieces of legislation. Congress and state legislatures also provided subsidies for the construction of canals, the improvement of rivers and harbors, the building of railroads, and various other worthy projects. 

In addition, free enterprise in America was never free from regulation. Corporations had to secure public charters before they could operate. Not long after the first railroads appeared, New England states began regulating certain activities; and in the last half of the nineteenth century, this control was expanded in the Midwest by the Granger Laws and on the national level by the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887. Congress regulated the merchant marine as well. 

With this tradition to guide them, it is not surprising that when leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints formulated political institutions, they patterned them after those with which they were familiar. The Church practically controlled the Territory of Utah from 1850 to 1858 and dominated the territorial legislature down to 1891. In line with ample precedents, Church leaders, through the legislature, developed a public welfare system, established public educational institutions, set up a hospital for the mentally handicapped, and voted subsidies for various types of economic activities such as sugar refining.[2] The Utah State Constitutional Convention, over which Apostle John Henry Smith presided and in which a number of General Authorities sat, adopted measures for public welfare, restricted certain types of business activities, and adopted provisions designed to improve working conditions for men, women, and children. Church leaders overwhelmingly approved the State Constitution and an overwhelming majority of the people of Utah voted to ratify it.[3]

After statehood came, the people of Utah passed statutes for the regulation of various types of business activity and established such welfare measures as workmen’s compensation and old age and widows’ pensions. Church leaders have on occasion also given positive support to legislation which proposed the use of governmental coercion to regulate certain activities. For example, Church leaders took an active part in the final battle for prohibition in Utah in 1917. In 1922, they worked for an anti-cigarette law.[4] In 1968, the Church leadership appears to have unanimously opposed the proposal presented to the people of Utah that the state permit liquor by the drink, and in 1970 Church leaders threw their support behind a Sunday Closing Law. In practice, all of these laws used the coercive power of the state to promote the special concern of those who supported the law. 

To clarify the following discussion, several definitions seem indispensable. The term progressive legislation is defined as any legislation which is designed to correct inequities in society by restricting the activities of one group of people for the benefit of another.[5] This is to be distinguished from state socialism, which is a system under which the means of production and distribution are owned by the state; from communism, which means a system under which all things are owned in common; and from totalitarian state socialism of the Eastern European states, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. The term economic or business regulation is defined as the restriction by legislation of the liberty of one person or group of persons to engage in certain types of business activity. Subsidy legislation is defined as any measure including tariff acts in which public revenues are used to promote some desired activity at the expense of those taxed. Social legislation is defined as any legislation which is designed to assist one group of people to enjoy what the proponents consider to be a better life by the use of the government’s coercive power. 

During the thirty years in which Senator Smoot served, he was called upon to consider a great many pieces of each type of legislation.[6] Of the thirteen pieces of regulatory legislation which passed and upon which he voted or for which he announced a vote, he voted in favor of four, announced himself in favor of one other, and voted against four. On three of the pieces of legislation no individual vote was taken on final passage, and on one he failed to vote. On the fifteen major pieces of subsidy legislation which passed in his thirty years of service, he voted in favor of seven, including four tariff bills, and against five. In one case, the Underwood Tariff in 1913, he voted against the bill partly because it reduced subsidies. He announced himself in favor of one other piece of subsidy legislation, and on two of the bills no roll call vote was taken. Of the nine pieces of social legislation which Congress passed during his term in office, he voted in favor of four, against two, and failed to vote on one. Two of them passed without a roll call vote. 

Of the twenty-seven major pieces of progressive legislation which passed Congress during Senator Smoot’s term of office upon which the Senator’s vote was recorded, he voted in the affirmative sixteen times or about fifty-nine per cent of the time. And, as pointed out earlier, he voted for some pieces of progressive legislation which did not pass. 

What was the nature of the measures which Senator Smoot supported? In 1906, he voted for the Hepburn Act, which brought about closer regulation of railroads and other interstate carriers by the Interstate Commerce Commission. The Commission was empowered to fix rates and the act placed the burden of proof upon the carriers to show that the rates were unreasonable. He later voted for the Esch-Cummins Act of 1920 which further strengthened the power of the Commission over railroads. 

In 1917, Senator Smoot voted for the Lever Food and Fuel Control Act which gave the President authority to fix prices and control the distribution of food and fuel. He voted for the Federal Farm Loan Act of 1916 which helped farmers, at federal expense, to receive long-term credit at rates lower than those prevailing in private commercial banks. Later, he voted for the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1929 which set up a program of government ally sponsored low interest loans to agricultural cooperatives in an attempt to support the prices of farm commodities. He also favored the establishment of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in 1932 which allowed direct federal loans to businesses to help them in a time of distress. 

In addition, the Apostle-Senator voted for four tariff acts, one of which bears his name as co-author. In each case, the acts were designed, by the use of graduated scales, to give protection to certain segments of American business and to provide a subsidy to them in the form of a market protected, to one degree or another, from foreign competition. 

In the area of social legislation, Smoot voted in favor of several laws which were designed to help consumers and the underprivileged. He voted for the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 which prohibited the sale of adulterated and mislabeled food. He supported the Postal Savings System, established in 1910, which allowed the federal government, in competition with private business, to pay depositors interest on money left at the Post Office for safe keeping. He voted in favor of the Federal Child Labor Act of 1916 which was designed to end child labor by excluding goods produced by children from interstate commerce. He also supported the Federal Prohibition Amendment in 1918 which forbade the shipment and sale of liquor in the United States. In addition, he voted for the Income Tax Amendment to the Constitution. 

Some of these pieces of legislation evoked positive responses from the Deseret News, which from its inception has been owned and operated by the Church. An editorial on the Postal Savings Act said that “it will bring some money into circulation which is now hoarded by people too timid to trust banks.” The newspaper said that the Mann-Elkins Act of 1910 which extended the power of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate common carriers “should be satisfactory to all.” In an editorial in 1912, the Deseret News called for the enactment of legislation to regulate the sale of stocks and bonds because, it said, there was too much selling of worthless stocks and cheating of poor people. In 1916, even though Senator Smoot had voted in opposition to the Adamson Act which established an eight hour day for railroad workers, the Deseret News was basically favorable to the act, though it hoped that a similarly just settlement could be found for the railroads’ problems.[7]

It is interesting to note the attitudes of many Gentile opponents of these laws for which Smoot voted. Some condemned the Income Tax as “violating the sacred precepts of the Founding Fathers and spread[ing] false ideas about the equality of man.” Others denounced the Hepburn Act as contrary to the spirit of the Constitution and revolutionary in character. The United States Supreme Court struck down the Child Labor Act as an illegitimate use of the Interstate Commerce Power of the Federal Government. Projects such as the Postal Savings System were condemned because they competed with private enterprise and allegedly constituted an illegitimate use of federal authority.[8]

What was Apostle Smoot’s view of the legislation which he supported? He was perhaps most outspoken on the question of railroad regulation, and he made his opinions on that subject clear on a number of occasions during consideration of the Mann-Elkins Act (1910) and the Esch-Cummins Act (1920). He complained that railroad companies discriminated against the Intermountain Region which he represented, and he wanted fair treatment from the carriers for local citizens. He found, for instance, that it was actually cheaper to ship goods from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles and then from Los Angeles to Boston than to ship them directly from Salt Lake City to Boston. As a result, he supported an amendment to the Mann-Elkins Act proposed by Senator Joseph M. Dixon of Montana which would have required the railroads to justify any discrimination by proving to the Interstate Commerce Commission, before they could charge more per ton mile for the short haul which it included, that the long haul was unprofitable.[9]

In justification of his position, Smoot said: “This is not a political question, and it should not be a sectional question. It is a moral question, one of right and justice, and upon that ground I ask the vote of the Senate of the United States in support of the amendment offered by the Senator from Montana.”[10]

By 1920, however, the discrimination had still not been corrected, partly because the Senate-House Conference Committee had eliminated the Dixon amendment from the Mann-Elkins Act. Smoot was still angry at the abuse to Utah businessmen, and in support of a similar amendment to the Esch-Cummins Act he said that there was nothing “more detrimental to different sections of the country, than the practice of such discriminations. . . .”[11]

Smoot’s views on railroad regulation were much in advance of the general opinion of the people of Utah, if the votes of their representatives in the legislature are any indication. On December 3, 1910, the Senator had lunch in Washington, D.C. with Utah Governor William Spry and Senator George Sutherland. They discussed the Utah political situation and considered legislative proposals. After the discussion, he wrote in his diary that the problem of high freight rates on coal made it “almost imperative that a Public Utilities Commission should be created [in Utah]. The railroads must reduce the price or a commission must be appointed. It has gone so far I believe we will have to create a Commission and I think it will be a good thing.” Not until 1917, however, did the legislature pass a public utilities commission bill.[12]

In 1916, while the Senate considered the proposed Child Labor Act, Smoot spoke out against the abuse of young children through long hours of work. Though he believed that a father might call upon boys in their early teens to assist for several days in gathering a crop, he thought that states which allowed children six years old to work for long hours in the fields “are very derelict toward their citizens, and their laws ought to be amended.”[13]

Throughout his career, Smoot was a constant supporter of business subsidy through the protective tariff, and late in his career he called for direct action to promote employment. He discarded the argument that the tariff should only apply to infant industries, and said that government should subsidize any American industry which labored at a cost disadvantage with foreign competitors: “If the foreign competitor has the same advantage in machinery and in other things as does the United States producer and pays only one-third as much wages, the American cannot continue to compete without protection, be they infant or old-established industries.” This idea of subsidizing industry through the protective tariff, he said on one occasion, was the keystone principle of the Republican Party. In 1931 as the United States slipped deeper into depression, Senator Smoot called upon President Herbert Hoover to create highway construction projects to relieve unemployment.[14]

This is not to say that Smoot was uniformly in favor of every piece of progressive legislation. He voted against both the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Clayton Anti-trust Act. He wrote in his diary that he opposed them because he did not “believe in class legislation.” Even there, however, after hearing President Woodrow Wilson’s speech on the Clayton Act, he thought that the “business interests of the Country can approve most of what he recommends.”[15]

Smoot’s views on progressive legislation are in sharp contrast to the views of some present-day Church members. In recent years it has become fashionable to construe Church doctrine, especially the doctrine of free agency, as a sanction against progressive legislation. Ordinarily, proponents of this view use the proof-text method to support their convictions. That is, they present scriptures or quotations from selected General Authorities or others with whom they agree, to support their views.[16] They apparently believe that by stacking up enough evidence, they can demonstrate that their way is God’s way and the way of those who oppose them is the way of Satan. 

This point of view and these techniques can be demonstrated by reference to three books written by four men who are currently faculty members at Brigham Young University. One of the books is used as a text for a number of sections of the College of Religious Instruction’s survey course in the Book of Mormon. In it, the authors use a discussion and question technique to present their point of view. They imply that any programs sponsored by government are “plans of the devil,” and that government has no proper function except “national defense and police protection.”[17] Another author, a member of the accounting faculty and a state legislator, insists that state welfare legislation exercises “unrighteous dominion” over the lives of individuals and that public welfare, economic regulation, and similar programs are “Satan’s plan.”[18]

One religion professor uses a conservative interpretation of the Constitution as evidence that such measures should be rejected. After a disquisition in which he gives his views of the Constitution, he concludes: “It follows that govern mental measures that foster social programs for the people are basically incompatible with the Constitution/’ and are thus unacceptable to Latter-day Saints because the Constitution is an inspired document. On occasion, the argument is used that social programs are acceptable if no coercion is used in their implementation—that is, if they are voluntary—but that they are wrong if instituted by government.[19] In summary, the arguments used in these books imply that people who believe that some problems can best be solved by the use of the power of the state rather than by voluntary methods are disloyal to the Church, disbelievers in the doctrines of Jesus Christ, and promoters of the work of Satan.[20]

The support of progressive legislation by the Church leaders in the Territorial Legislature, the Constitutional Convention, and on the floor of the United States Senate, suggests that progressive legislation is not necessarily contrary to the principles of the gospel. In light of the evidence presented in this paper the critics of progressive legislation ought to make their position clear: either the Church leaders such as Smoot who supported such legislation are inspired or they are not. If they are, the legislation which they support cannot be said to be ipso facto incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 

One critic of progressive legislation, to whom the above evidence was cited, argued that Smoot voted the way he did, that the territorial legislature passed the type of laws it did, and that the state constitution included progressive measures because of outside pressure to conform to national standards in order to achieve statehood and national approbation. Beyond the fact that the substance of such a charge is that the Church was hypocritical in these matters, there is no evidence that such national pressure was actually applied. In the case of Utah territory, for instance, the nation only insisted that the Church cease to dominate politics and the economy and give up the practice of polygamy.[21] The progressive measures cited above bear no relationship to these matters. 

Another possibility, of course, is that Reed Smoot was out of harmony with his colleagues on these issues. This position hardly seems tenable. The diaries of Senator Smoot show no indication that he was in disagreement with President Joseph F. Smith. He did, however, disagree with Heber J. Grant on Prohibition— a position which he later altered—and on the League of Nations. Smoot was subjected to party pressure to vote for measures sponsored by the Republican party, but by the time of the Taft administration he had become a party leader and a formulator of party programs himself.[22]

It is clear, also, that President Joseph F. Smith favored the use of government power to affect social legislation. President Smith’s support of William Howard Taft in the 1912 election campaign has often been used as evidence of his right wing proclivities. If one reads his message from The Improvement Era, however, it is clear that his support of Taft had another basis. He said in part that: 

the only charge of any consequence that the opponents of President Taft bring against him is that he has been and is a tool of the “Interests,” which means, doubtless, that he unduly favors “big business,” or trusts. His administration has proved the contrary, and the careful student will find that he has done as much to regulate the trusts as was ever done by any other incumbent of the presidential chair, and he has done it legally. He believes strictly in the judicial application of the law in these cases, and as firmly as any one in the need of just and fair laws to deal with the important question. It is a perplexing problem which not even the experts know just how to handle, and which can not be solved by a mere change of presidents.[23]

President Smith also believed the power of the state ought to be used to solve moral questions. On the issue of prohibition, he made it clear that: 

even some moral questions, such as the question of prohibition is, can only be solved by the state which is the actual controlling power of all other organizations. Moral questions that must be sustained by law must be solved by the political power. The Church cannot say thus and so it must be; it can only express its wants. The power lies with the individual man and woman who must work to the end desired through the machinery of the state.[24]

Beyond the question of Joseph F. Smith’s views on the use of the state power, President Smith, Reed Smoot, and some of Smoot’s colleagues in the Council of Twelve considered Smoot’s election sanctioned by God. During the 1908 election campaign, President Smith tried to stop opposition to Smoot’s candidacy. Apostle Rudger Clawson wrote that he was for Smoot because the Lord was with him, and “furthermore your presence and retention in Congress is due in my opinion to the special interposition of Providence.” In 1914, President Smith considered Smoot’s retention in the Senate the “will of the Lord.” Smoot considered his role to be that of “a Mormon Apostle whose mission to the Gentiles was divinely inspired and directed.”[25]

The argument of this paper should not be interpreted as a revisionist study meant to create an advanced-progressive out of either Reed Smoot or Joseph F. Smith. Although some progressives in Utah like William Glasmann, publisher of the Ogden Standard—the only major paper in Utah to support Theodore Roosevelt in 1912—thought Smoot ought to have been the Progressive Party candidate for the Senate in 1914, most of Smoot’s contemporaries thought both he and President Smith were conservatives. The analysis of his voting record presented here, however, demonstrates that he was, in fact, a moderate. His voting record appears to have been based more upon a personal assessment of whether a particular measure would help or hurt the nation than upon some abstract concept of the proper role of the state. Though Smoot made it clear that he wanted to leave each individual as free as possible, it is just as apparent that he thought it right and proper for the state to regulate railroads, prohibit the abuse of children, and subsidize business.[26]

In view of the serious problems which face our society today, perhaps we can profit by a current application of Apostle Smoot’s principles. Conservative Church members have nothing to gain from abuse and ad hominem argument through calling supporters of progressive measures “Tools of the Devil,” or “Apostates.” Loyal Church members may well disagree on what measures the government should properly inaugurate to deal with problems in American society. To argue that the state should simply ignore all problems, however, or that difficulties should be solved only by voluntary measures is as absurd and impractical today as it was in the first three decades of this century. The guide for the support or rejection of a measure of public policy ought to be its need, not some abstract idea which negates legal courses of action.

Some members in the Church are fond of saying that the Church offers the only hope for solving the world’s ills. If that is so they ought to be willing, because Church members constitute such a small percentage of the world’s population, to enlist the aid of every person and organization—including government—in helping to deal with difficult problems. If we place our minds in intellectual straightjackets and ignore some possible solutions because someone has picked and chosen scriptures which seem to deny the validity of state action, we may work ourselves into a position where we allow problems to go unsolved. The wiser course, it would seem, would be to do as Paul directs and “prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” 

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[1] The best summary of Smoot’s career to date is Milton R. Merrill, “Reed Smoot, Apostle in Politics” (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1950). I wish to express appreciation to the College of Social Science Faculty Forum Committee and the B.Y.U. Research Division for research support relating to this article. 

[2] For various examples, the reader is referred to: Territory of Utah, The Compiled Laws of Utah (2 vols.; Salt Lake City: Herbert Pembroke, 1888), I, 299, 303, 304, 330-657, 658-662, 663-667, 668, 677-690, 691-692, 693-713, 753-761, 764-766. Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891-1966 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), pp. 8-9. 

[3] Constitution of the State of Utah, Article X, Sec. 2; Article XII, Sees. 12, 15, and 19; Article XVI, Sees. 3 and 4. B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Century I (6 vols; Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), VI, 323-330. For the debates on the various programs see State of Utah, Official Proceedings and Debates of the Convention (2 vols.; Salt Lake City: Star Printing Company, 1898), II, 1032- 1068, 1163-1176, 1218-1232, 1236-1312, 1330-1374, 1413-1476, 1524-1584, 1588-1603, 1654-1683. 

[4] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Report of the Ninety-Third Semi-Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, 1922), p. 5. Bruce T. Dyer, “A Study of the Forces Leading to the Adoption of Prohibition in Utah in 1917” (Unpublished Master’s Thesis, Brigham Young University, 1958).

[5] In an earlier version of this paper, the term “welfare state” legislation was used here, but in view of the association of that term with the system developed in Great Britain, it was thought more appropriate to use a term which had been applied to legislation in the United States during the period under consideration. Ordinarily, the term “progressive” was applied to legislation which was designed to redress grievances in society. In view of the extreme anti- progressive and laissez fairist views of the writers cited below, it was thought necessary to broaden the definition to allow the consideration of legislation like tariff acts which some Progressives would have opposed. This application of the term can be justified by reference to some contemporary advocates of the protective tariff who insisted that such acts helped American workingmen and farmers. This argument was particularly powerful in Utah with reliance upon mining, wool growing, and sugar beet raising. 

[6] The following is based upon Smoot’s voting record as found in the Congressional Record, 59th through 72nd congresses (1906-1932). 

[7] Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City), 20 and 27 June 1910, 6 February 1912, and 2 September 1916. 

[8] George E. Mowry, The Era of Theodore Roosevelt ana tne Birth of Modern America, 1900- 1912 (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 205; Robert H. Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform: A Study of the Progressive Movement (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), pp. 97-98 and 196; Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918). 

[9] U.S., Congressional Record, 61st Cong., 2nd Sess., (1910), pp. 6127, 2132-33, 6135, 5490, 5721, 5722, and 5725. 

[10] Ibid.,p. 6141. 

[11] Ibid., 66th Cong., 2nd Sess. (1919), p. 647. 

[12] Smoot, Reed, The Diaries of Reed Smoot, MSS, Special Collections, Brigham Young University Library. 

[13] Op. cit., 64th Cong., 1st Sess. (1916), p. 12137. 

[14] Ibid., 61st Cong., 3rd Sess. (1911), pp. 1340 and 1342; 63rd Cong., 1st Sess (1913), pp. 2576-80; Reed Smoot to Herbert Hoover (telegram) 1 June 1931, Frank J. Cannon Papers, State Historical Society of Colorado, Denver. 

[15] Smoot, Diaries, January 20 and September 2, 1914. 

[16] See for instance Jerrald L. Newquist, Prophets, Principles, and National Survival (Salt Lake City: Publisher’s Press, 1964) which uses the same method and a critique by Thomas G. Alexander, “An Ambiguous Heritage,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 2 (Autumn, 1967), 127-134.

[17] Glenn L. Pearson and Reid E. Bankhead, A Doctrinal Approach to the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, Inc., 1962), pp. 38, 58, and 63. 

[18] H. Verlan Andersen, Many Are Called But Few Are Chosen (Provo: The Press Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 39 and 41-45. 

[19] Hyrum L. Andrus, Liberalism, Conservatism, Mormonism (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1965), pp. 19, 22-23. 

[20] Andrus, p. 90; Pearson and Bankhead, p. 38; Andersen, p. 45. 

[21] Leonard J. Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 353-380; Gustave O. Larson, The Americanization of Utah for Statehood (San Marino: Huntington Library Press, 1971).

[22] Smoot, Diaries, 11 December 1909 and 14 May 1910. Smoot was particularly active in the development of legislation for conservation. Thomas G. Alexander, “Reed Smoot and the Development of Western Land Policy, 1905-1920,” Arizona and the West, XIII (Autumn, 1971), 245-64. 

[23] Joseph F. Smith, “The Presidential Election,” Improvement Era, 15 (October, 1912), 1121.

[24] “Editorial Note on The Church Stands for Prohibition,'” Ibid. 19 (June, 1916), 738.

[25] Merrill, “Reed Smoot,” pp. 146 and 159; idem., “Reed Smoot, Apostle-Senator,” Utah Historical Quarterly, XXVIII (October, 1960), 345. 

[26] Merrill, Utah Historical Quarterly, XXVIII, passim; The Progressive (Salt Lake City), 7 March 1914; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Proceedings of the Ninety-Fourth Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, 1924), p. 36.