The massive movement of pioneer migrants into the Great American West has long captured the attention of writers. As with immigration to America generally, the prime motive for trans-Atlantic uprooting and settlement was economic. Yet there are major exceptions, such as John Winthrop's Puritans, whose city-on-a-hill motives were largely other-worldly. So it was with the great Mormon migration that resulted in the unlikely confluence of desert and Saints in the Great Basin. These members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, imbued with the religious zeal needed to reenact the Hebrew exodus on an American stage, had been the victims of intolerance and bigotry. Their momentous spiritual odyssey in the West required economic diligence to achieve. Their economy was in many ways typical of that of other areas; cash was used, but commodities were also a major means of exchange. Yet there was a major difference, a practice seen nowhere else in America on the scale to which it emerged in Utah. For numerous Latter-day Saints, the first and foremost religious duty, and economic priority, was to give away one-tenth of their increase to the Church. Payment of the religious tithe became both common and extensive, so much so that the management of commodities became a major concern. This area of public resource management not only had religious implications, but also economic and social welfare consequences. As settlements expanded, tithing donations likewise grew, and an accompanying network of bishops proliferated to manage the tithing resources at the local, regional, and central levels. It is on these leaders, these ecclesiastical managers of donated resources that could melt, rot, make noise, and even run away, that this book focuses.

Commodities, Cash, and Clerics

Economic Priorities and Administrative Strategies in Nineteenth Century UtahBy Donald Gene Pace

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2009 Donald Gene Pace
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4490-1771-2

Contents

INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................................ixCHAPTER ONE OVERVIEW OF PRE-UTAH PERIOD........................................................................................................1CHAPTER TWO TRAVELING AGENTS: 1851-1888........................................................................................................9CHAPTER THREE REGIONAL PRESIDING BISHOPS: 1851-1877............................................................................................19CHAPTER FOUR BISHOP'S AGENTS: 1877-1888........................................................................................................25CHAPTER FIVE THE TRUSTEE-IN-TRUST, THE PRESIDING BISHOP, AND THE MANAGEMENT OF RESOURCES IN THE GREAT BASIN....................................35CHAPTER SIX CHANGING PATTERNS OF MORMON FINANCIAL ADMINISTRATION: TRAVELING BISHOPS, REGIONAL BISHOPS, AND BISHOP'S AGENTS.....................45A. CATEGORIES OF NINETEENTH CENTURY BISHOPS.....................................................................................................75B. THE PRESIDING BISHOPRIC......................................................................................................................77C. TRAVELING BISHOPS............................................................................................................................79D. REGIONAL PRESIDING BISHOPS...................................................................................................................81E. BISHOP'S AGENTS..............................................................................................................................85F. TRUSTEE-IN-TRUST AND ASSISTANT TRUSTEES-IN-TRUST SUSTAINED AT GENERAL CONFERENCES: 7 APRIL 1851-8 APRIL 1887.................................89G. ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURE USED BY PRESIDING BISHOP IN CACHE COUNTY: 1859-1871.................................................................91

Chapter One

OVERVIEW OF PRE-UTAH PERIOD

Even a decade before the arrival of the Mormon settlers in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake in 1847, United States governmental officials (and certainly not their Mexican counterparts) could scarcely have imagined the far-reaching impact that the organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - on 6 April 1830 in Fayette, New York - would have on the history and economy of the Great Basin region and beyond. During most of the decade following the organization, church members resided primarily in two locations: Kirtland, Ohio and northern Missouri. Seeking to escape persecution, the main body of the "Saints" moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, which served as the Church's headquarters from 1839 to 1846. Early in 1846, they were again plagued by persecution, which culminated in the famous trek of the Mormon Pioneers across the plains to present-day Utah. By July 1847, new headquarters were established in Salt Lake City, Utah. Church government, which influenced all areas of life, was based upon divine authority, referred to in official terminology as priesthood. By the 1840s, Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of Mormonism, was already becoming renowned for his translation of the Book of Mormon, which repeatedly urged the importance of caring for the poor and building harmonious communities, as in this passage: "if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need ... your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith."

The Mormon prophet explained that "there are two Priesthoods spoken of in the Scriptures, viz. [i.e.], the Melchizedek and the Aaronic or Levitical. Although there are two Priesthoods, yet the Melchizedek Priesthood comprehends the Aaronic or Levitical Priesthood, and is the grand head, and holds the highest authority which pertains to the priesthood." This priesthood authority, coupled with the doctrine-based imperative to care for each other (especially the poor), would be of great important vis--vis economic management in the Great Basin West. In the words of an 1835 revelation to President Joseph Smith that had a profound influence on economic development in the Mormon West, "the office of a bishop is in the administering all temporal, financial and economic things. To care for the extensive commodities that were donated for the good of the larger community, a network of bishops was assigned to managed economic matters for the Church. This network would eventually spread throughout a quickly expanding settlements that would reach as far south as present-day Mexico. The "President of the High Priesthood" and his counselors (generally a body of three) constituted the First Presidency. Under their direction came a Quorum of Twelve Apostles, and the Church's leading "bishopric" (also a three-man body): the Presiding Bishopric. These leadership bodies would exert a profound impact on economic matters among the settlers in the Intermountain West.

The Trustee-in-Trust

The individual holding the title "trustee-in-trust" had supreme financial authority over the Church's resources. Because the President of the Church generally served as the trustee-in-trust, the same man was usually the highest financial leader in the Church from both legal and ecclesiastical viewpoints. The Presiding Bishopric served under the trustee-in-trust, both legally and in religious matters. The economic historian Leonard J. Arrington explained that "the term 'trustee-in-trust,' which seems to have currency only among the Latter-day Saints, may have been a corruption of the common legal phrase, 'trustee, in trust for....' This phrase, in Mormon literature, would become 'trustee-in-trust, in trust for.'" The first trustee-in-trust was the first President of the Church: President Joseph Smith, who was sustained to that position at a General Conference held 30 January 1841 at Nauvoo, Illinois. The Saints gave their trustee-in-trust "plenary powers ... to receive, acquire, manage or convey property, real, personal, or mixed, for the sole use and benefit of the church." On 9 August 1844, only weeks after the martyrdom of Joseph Smith at Carthage, Illinois, bishops Newel K. Whitney and George Miller were appointed as the trustees-in-trust for the Church. The next trustee-in-trust was the Church's second President, Brigham Young, who was appointed by a General Conference in 1848. In 1851, the territorial legislature, in what was then the provisional State of Deseret, adopted a measure which allowed the new trustee-in-trust to have up to twelve assistant trustees. The legislature also empowered the trustee-in-trust "'to receive, hold, buy, sell, manage, use and control the real and personal property of [the] church.'"

General Authorities

By the late 1840s, five distinct groups of general (officer who could officiate anywhere in the world) Church leaders had been established: the First Presidency, the Council of Twelve Apostles, the First Quorum of the Seventy, the Presiding Bishopric, and a Church Patriarch, as well as assistants called to serve with any of these groups. On the local level, two important units of Church government were established in the pre-Utah...