Remarks

My heart is full of gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the privilege that I have enjoyed at being present at this conference, and I am grateful indeed for the teachings which have been given to us. I do pray with all the earnestness of my heart that every soul that has listened to the advice and counsel which have been given during this conference may seek to God for the aid and assistance of His Holy Spirit, that they may be enabled to carry out in their lives the words of God that have been delivered to us here today. I confess to you, my friends and fellow laborers in the cause of God, that I have been humiliated beyond expression to go to one of the Stakes of Zion, to stand up and preach to the people and call upon them to obey the Word of Wisdom, and then to sit down to the table of a President of a Stake, after having preached with all the zeal, energy and power that I possessed, calling upon the people to keep the commandments of God, and to have his wife ask me if I would like a cup of tea or a cup of coffee. I have felt in my heart that it was an insult, considering the words that I had spoken, and I have felt humiliated to think that I had not sufficient power, and enough of the Spirit of God to enable me to utter words that would penetrate the heart of a President of a Stake, that he at least would be willing to carry out the advice which I had given. I remember going to a Stake of Zion but a short time ago and preaching with all the energy I possessed and with all the Spirit that God would give me upon the necessity of retraining from the drinking of tea and coffee, and I heard also at that conference a very eloquent appeal to the Latter-day Saints by a man who, I understood, was a president of a quorum of Seventy. But when we came to take our meal, he jokingly said that he could not do without his tea and coffee, and he proposed to have it and suffer the consequences. I remember going to another Stake of Zion and preaching to the people on the necessity of refraining from tea and coffee and giving some figures upon the wasting of the people’s means; and the president of the Stake remarked, after I got through, that he thought the Lord would forgive them if they did drink their coffee, because the water in that Stake of Zion was very bad. I did not say anything, but I thought a good deal, and I had to pray to the Lord and to bite my tongue to keep from getting up and doing something that I never have done in my life, and that is, to pick out a man and thrash him from the public stand. I felt that God owed me a blessing for not publicly reproving that man, because I wanted to do it so badly. ¶

Now, I had made up my mind before I came to this conference that I would not open my mouth upon the Word of Wisdom. I have become so discouraged, so disheartened, so humiliated in my feelings, after preaching year after year both by precept and example, to realize that there are Bishops, Bishops’ Counselors, President of Stakes, and Patriarchs among the Church of God whose hearts I have not been able to touch, that I had about made up my mind that I would never again say Word of Wisdom to the Latter-day Saints. I felt that it was like pouring water on a ducks back. It had seemed to me as if I could not get sufficient of the Spirit of God to penetrate the hearts of the Latter-day Saints. But after listening to the remarks that have been made here, I feel to rejoice and thank God for what has been said; and I feel that my labors are approved of God among the people, whether they listen to what I say or not. We seem to get into ruts as a people, and we justify ourselves in doing that which is not pleasing in the sight of God. A man who does not pay his tithing makes excuses for not doing it. A man who does not keep the Word of Wisdom makes excuses for not doing that. I want to say that there is not a man or a woman among all the Latter-day Saints but who could keep the Word of Wisdom if they got down on their knees, as Brother Teasdale has advised, and pray to God for help. The Lord has said that these words of wisdom are adapted to the weakest of the weak among the Latter-day Saints, and I have not only felt but said within the last week or two, to the Presidency of the Church, that I was on hand to make the motion to call upon certain individuals holding high and responsible positions it this church to resign their offices or keep the commandments of God. I endorse with all my heart a remark made here yesterday by President Joseph F. Smith that if a man is standing in the doorway that leads to life eternal and by his pernicious habits he is blocking up that doorway and crowding others out, let him stand aside or let him reform his life. Now, I want to make all mistakes on the side of mercy; but once in a great while I want to see justice get just a little bit of a chance among the people. If a man thinks more of a cup of tea or coffee, or a cigarette, or a chew of tobacco, than he does of his Priesthood, let him resign his Priesthood. That is the way that I have been feeling lately. I want to say that if I hold the Apostleship with the spirit of an Apostle, I feel as though I am almost justified if after preaching to the people a president of a Stake gets up and casts doubt upon what I have said, in saying something from the stand against that man, whether he likes it or not. I am naturally earnest in my makeup, and I realize that I make greater mistakes than drinking a cup of tea or coffee; but I do try for the Spirit of the Lord, to know these mistakes and to endeavor to overcome them; and I want my brethren who preside over me in the Presidency and in the Apostleship to tell me of my mistakes. I also pray God to help me to overcome them. Those of us who know our mistakes and our errors, if we will seek for the light and the inspiration of the Spirit of God to overcome them, we can do so. ¶

We hear a great deal about hard times. The Latter-day Saints last year expended in breaking a commandment of God by disobeying the Word of Wisdom, over a million dollars. In other words, the Latter-day Saints expended more cash in breaking a commandment of God than they paid tithing. I have faith in the integrity and honesty and in the testimony existing in the hearts of the Latter-day Saints. I know that the Latter-day Saints desire the onward advancement of God’s kingdom. I know that the mistakes they make as a rule are mistakes of the head and not of the heart. But when we stop to reflect that a great deal more is expended by the people in breaking a commandment of God than they pay in tithing, do you not think that some of the mistakes of the head ought to be remedied? I do. The average price paid today for wheat in this Territory is about forty cents, and yet I am told that there comes into Utah Territory every year over one hundred thousand pounds of one brand of smoking tobacco called the Duke of Durham, and as I understand it retails at 80 cents a pound, it takes one hundred and sixty thousand bushels of wheat to pay for that one brand of smoking tobacco! And we have had preached to us for the past fifty or sixty years that tobacco is only fit for sick cattle! The agent of this tobacco gives us the proud distinction, if you consider it so, that Utah Territory leads every other State and Territory west of the Mississippi river, in proportion to its population, in buying Duke of Durham smoking tobacco. Do you know that it is humiliating to me to realize that a man can make such a statement? There must be more or less truth in it, or I do not think he would say it. We raise in this territory some four or five millions of bushels of wheat a year, and at forty cents a bushel it would take 2,500,000 bushels of that wheat to pay for all we consume in breaking the Word of Wisdom. A pound of coffee amounts to thirty cents and a bushel of wheat only amounts to forty cents, and there are sixty pounds in it. I went out to Wasatch Stake not long ago, and took dinner with Brother Hatch, the President of the Stake. He gave me a cup of coffee, and it was very good indeed, and it only cost three fourths of a cent a pound, because it was made of wheat. I am acknowledged to be a crank on home productions and home manufactures, and when I get first class coffee for three fourths of a cent a pound, I ought not to be such a fool as to pay thirty cents for it. If a man pays one cent a pound for wheat, and makes coffee of it, he is making twenty nine cents profit by not drinking the other article. Brother Hatch told me that by browning it good and steeping it a long while, it was not necessary to grind it up and that it made first class chicken feed after you had had it for coffee. Then, if it is worth one-third the original price for chicken feed, that would make the coffee only half a cent a pound, and the actual profit made by drinking home-made coffee would be 6000 per cent. Now, if we could only make 6000 per cent in investing in some business, how soon we would all get wealthy. And every one of you coffee drinkers can make 6000 per cent on your coffee if you do not on your other investments—that is, Brother Cannon says, if you keep chickens. (Laughter.) ¶

I will not say anything about the greater blessings that you will receive by keeping the commandments of God; that when you have any sick you are entitled to call down the healing influences of the Spirit of God into your homes; that you are to have health and strength and power given unto you, and hidden treasures of knowledge. All these things you will find recorded in the Word of God revealed to us and known as the Word of Wisdom. But I have been requested by President Smith to give a few figures, and that is why I am talking on this side of the question. We have it given as a fact that in the business that is transacted only about five per cent of it is actually in money; the balance is in exchange of values. Money represents to the business world what the blood represents to the body of man. The heart takes that blood every few hours and it goes through the body over and over again. Tons and tons are pumped by the little heart within us in a day or two. Yet it is the same blood going over and over again. It is the same with money. It goes over and over again. Brother Brigham Young stated to us here yesterday that twenty years ago the Prophet of God laid it down to this people that the Word of Wisdom was no longer given merely by way of constraint, but that it was from that time a commandment of God that we keep it. Now, if we have expended from half a million to a million dollars a year for twenty years in breaking this commandment, the total amount would be at least fifteen millions of dollars of money during that time, and with compound interest semi-annually at 10 per cent for the term of twenty years it would amount in round numbers from thirty five to forty millions of dollars, or enough to build Salt Lake City. As I have said, it takes two and a half million bushels of wheat, at the present price, to pay for breaking the Word of Wisdom. Where are there any Latter-day Saints who would contribute a bushel of wheat to have a match set to it? Where are there any Latter-day Saints who would gather together 2,500,000 bushels of wheat and burn it up? Yet I say that it would not be half the crime in the sight of God to burn that quantity of wheat as it is to spend its equivalent in breaking a commandment of the Almighty God. I am informed that there is in the neighborhood of $250,000 worth of tobacco consumed in this territory by the Latter-day Saints alone. Figuring on the basis of $5 of actual circulation of money to every $100 of business that is done, if we could save in this Territory a million dollars a year of hard cash that goes out for these articles, that amount of money, circulating around during the year, would cancel twenty million dollars of the bondage of indebtedness which today rests upon the people. I remember hearing Brother George L. Farrell in the Assembly Hall six months ago make a statement with reference to home made goods, and I have quoted it at every conference I have been at since, and I expect to go on quoting it. He stated that he bought some home made shoes, and he met at the depot the man he owed for making these shoes. He went up to him and gave the $5. This man turned around, saw another person that he owed, and handed him the $5. He saw another and gave it to him; and he saw another and gave it to him; and he saw another and gave it to him, and the fourth man walked up to Brother Farrell and said, “Brother Farrell, I owe you $6; here is $5 of it, I will give you the other dollar the next time we meet.” The $5 cancelled, in about the same length of time it takes to tell it, $25 of debts. And debt is bondage; therefore, it lifted $25 of bondage from the shoulders of those people. Now, if this $5 cancelled $25 in ten minutes, to make a mathematical calculation, how much will it cancel in the remaining 364 days and twenty three hours and fifty minutes of the year? Figuring on what a million dollars would do to the Latter-day Saints if they were to obey the Word of Wisdom, I say to you that it would make the Latter-day Saints in twenty years from today, the wealthiest rural and laboring people in these United States, in pro portion to their population, if they would save this money that is now worse than burned up. In speaking in this way I do not wish to rail at anybody, because I want to say that some of the sweetest spirited men whom I have ever known, and men as true to the Gospel as I ever could be, have disobeyed the Word of Wisdom. But I endorse with all my heart and in all humility President Smith’s remark that if any are standing in the door of salvation and their example is injuring other people, let them step aside. ¶

I want to make a few remarks on another subject. A statue of President Young and the Pioneers has been executed and a great many thousands of dollars are due on it. It has been decided by the Presidency of the Church to call upon the Latter-day Saints to pay something towards that statue, and I hope that every man woman and child will pay from five cents up, so that every one of us can say, when the monument is erected on the corner of this block, “I contributed something toward erecting that.” I take pleasure in being able to say when I enter the Temple at Logan that I gave some means towards erecting that monument to the name of God. When I went to the St. George Temple to be married I felt to thank God that I did something towards erecting that house, where I was to receive that great blessing from God—a wife. I feel to thank God that I did something towards erecting the Manti Temple and the Salt Lake Temple. And there is not a child but who will rejoice in after years, in seeing the statue of the Prophet of God upon this block, to know that he cast in his mite towards erecting it. President Cannon told us last night that the Senator from Wyoming recently stated at a public gathering in Denver that President Young was one of the greatest men America had ever produced. He was to us the Prophet of God, the mouthpiece of God. In this Tabernacle, in the Temples, in Z. C. M. I. store, and in the theater, we see the monuments of his greatness. In the settlements, from the north to the south, we find the labors that he did for us. Many an Elder in Israel today owns 160 acres of beautiful land that he owes to the foresight, inspiration and determination of President Young. Why? Because they themselves lacked faith to settle the very places they now occupy. I understand that in all the beautiful valley of Cache the finest agricultural spot is the town of Lewiston. I am told that when the Bishop was sent there under the direction and inspiration of the Spirit of God to Brigham Young, he felt as though he was called upon to sacrifice almost everything and to live in poverty all the days of his life and he wanted to go back to Richmond, have his twenty acres of land and live and die there. Yet I do not think today that that man would give twenty acres of land in Lewiston for about forty acres in Richmond. It was the carrying out of the inspiration of God that located Lewiston, and scores of other places in this Territory. I feel in my heart a debt of gratitude for the material wealth that Brigham Young has given to this people, and I want to be one of those who shall erect that statue to his memory. I have had influential men from the east and the west say to me times without number, “Why, Mr. Grant, I am surprised in travelling around this beautiful city and seeing the evidences of the ability and statesmanship of Brigham Young, to find no monument to his name.” He has monuments that he left to his own name, as in the case of this Tabernacle; but we have erected no monument to show our appreciation of his life and labors for us. Let us all do something, and have our children do something, and the burden will be very light. I have contributed my mite, and I want to make another contribution, and I propose that every one of my children shall save their nickels and dimes until they get a dollar, and let them remember by the sacrifice they made in saving these nickels that they did something to erect the statue to our beloved prophet. May God bless you is my prayer in the name of Jesus. Amen. ¶