The Culture of the Mormon Pioneers

My brethren and sisters: I have been very greatly impressed with what has been said from this stand during the sessions of this conference, and I believe, with all my heart, that you and I will go to our homes with a resolution in our hearts to live nearer to God than we have ever done before. This is the desire of my heart, and I trust that we will be able to retain, to a very marked extent, the great spiritual feast that we have enjoyed during the last three or four days. ¶

Yesterday afternoon when some of the brethren were speaking of the pioneers to this state, certain thoughts came to me, and I too ¶

was impressed with a greater realization of the fact that the Latter-day Saints have always placed their faith in God and in his Son Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of the world. With the faith in God, in Christ Jesus and in the Holy Ghost, they have approached their daily lives, and their lives through all the years, and they have retained that implicit faith to this day. If there is anything in the world that is needed at this hour the world over, it is the simple faith in God and in his Son Jesus Christ. ¶

Not long ago I walked into a school room in southern Utah, and while sitting listening to a recitation in western history, the school teacher of that grade made this remark to the boys and girls of the sixth grade: "The 'Mormon' pioneers who came to these valleys before the railroad were a good people, but they were uncultured and unprogressive; we are thankful that the generation of today is becoming cultured and realizing the day of progress." ¶

"The 'Mormon' pioneers were a good people but uncultured and unprogressive" -- that to come from a person who posed before those children as one who knew something about the history of America and the western part of this continent. I want to go on record here, holding, as I do, the Chair of Western History, at the University of Utah, and say that a finer type of people never lived than the "Mormon" pioneers who settled these valleys of Utah, and they were a cultured and progressive people; I sometimes think they were more cultured and progressive than we are today, but this is not true, if the generation of today is realizing the great power and light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. ' ¶

The "Mormon" people were brought from different nations of the earth. They became convinced in those very early days of the truthfulness of the gospel by the revelation of God to them individually. They became an inspired people. God never called upon cowards to do work for him, but he has given the work invariably to high types of people, high minded people, a highly spiritual people. You Scandinavians that have come from the Scandinavian countries, you English, you Germans, and all who have come from the different nations of Europe, did not accept the gospel of Jesus Christ because of your ignorance. You accepted the gospel of Jesus Christ because of your intelligence, your high mindedness; and though you were poor in worldly goods in your native lands, you were rich in spiritual endowments. The peoples of the world that have been gathered to these valleys from the nations of Europe are the highest types of those nations, because of the fact it takes a high type of man or woman to understand this gospel of Jesus Christ and to obtain a testimony of its truth. ¶

The Latter-day Saints came to these valleys but a few years after the organization of the Church by a few men who were not educated in the sense that they had been to the great schools of America, but they were educated in the greater laws of righteousness, men who ¶

had communed with God, men who had opened their souls to the light of heaven. Those men assembled, and by the gift and the power of God, organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Then began their historic march from the Atlantic seaboard to the far West, to these mountains, and wherever they went, the Latter-day Saints were first imbued with the wonderful testimony that they had to bear to the world, namely, that God had spoken from the heavens. Could there be any greater ideal for which to work? With that ideal they came into the far west, they developed the lands; they were a progressive people. In 1840, at the time of the invention of the modern farming implements, the modern plow, the modern threshing machine, mowing machine and sewing machine, they took those machines, and adapted them to their work, to their daily lives; they brought those inventions to the valleys of Utah, and used them in developing the soil. But not only were they progressive from an economic viewpoint, but those "Mormon" pioneers thought first and foremost of the intellectual and spiritual development. In a study of seventy-two towns in the history of the Great Basin, we have found that invariably the "Mormon" pioneers, wherever they went, not only built their cabins but they built their school and meeting houses; they had their teachers, and the first school in Utah was opened less than three months after the advent of the pioneers to this valley. In 1850, by an act of the first legislative assembly of the State of Deseret, the first university west of the Missouri river was inaugurated; the faculty in the year 1850 was organized, and that university still lives on the hill that in 1850 was picked out by Governor Brigham Young and the legislature for a higher institution of learning. I know the criticism has been given that it was not a real university. It was a real university for that day, for we recall the fact that in 1845 to 1850. Harvard, Columbia and Yale universities were only high schools; in fact their curricula would not equal the curricula of the high schools of America today. The ideal of university training was indelibly stamped on the hearts of those pioneers. They developed the schools. They had their different educational organizations, their philosophical societies -- Wilford Woodruff was the president of the Scientific Society, here in Salt Lake City. They held meetings, and had their various meetings of the priesthood for intellectual training. Finally the different auxiliary organizations were formed, and the youth of the Latter-day Saints invited to attend the meetings of those organizations. ¶

When you come to study this great educational movement in the Great Basin, you will find that the "Mormon" people fostered every factor possible for the development of the youth. They built a theatre in the wilderness, and the sole purpose was that the people might have amusements of the proper kind. After they built this theatre in the wilderness, the master of the English language, Shakespeare, was studied, his plays were produced, and I remember not long ago of ¶

having the opportunity of taking Sir Johnston Forbes Robertson into the old Social Hall here, now called the "Little Theatre;" we walked in there three or four years ago during a very stormy day, and as we went down the aisle, that greatest actor of all English speaking people looked above the stage and saw the bust of Shakespeare. He took off his hat and said, "That tells the story as to whether or not your pioneers appreciated art and the finer things of life." ¶

True, those pioneers did not have what we have today, and I know that Professor Holden, when he stood on this stand yesterday and spoke to us, realized the fact they were essentially agriculturists. They had to get down to the soil and conquer it to lay the foundation for the institutions of today; but in conquering the soil, they loved it and realized more than any other people that agriculture is the basis of our whole civilized life. Many were the times when the farmer plowed, planted his seed, and went forth to water the dry land, some weeks later, but there was no water. Many were the times that the pioneer farmer saw his wheat field dry up. Many were the times he went forth to harvest but there was no harvest. And yet he did not move to another clime. His prophet had said, "This is the place," and in those words he had faith and his faith sustained him. There was an altruism developed among those pioneers that we do not find today -- a right altruism, a real spirit of co-operation. The altruism, the love of neighbor, which is fundamental to the love of God, has never been surpassed since that day, if it has been equaled. ¶

Each town of early-day Utah was an ecclesiastical unit, with social and political tendencies. The ecclesiastical unit was based on the idea, of individual power and self-development through religious principles. Each individual was responsible in this religious scheme to his God; each was independent to grow intellectually and morally in the sense that man is in the image of God. It is necessary to say this in order that we may understand the democracy of the town government of early-day Utah. Politically and socially, all rights were inherent in the people. ¶

The power that held the people together was the religious feeling; and with this the economic interests common to all. In these social groups, the desire was to live and let live. The people were intensely practical; the physical conditions of the country made them so. They were compelled to apply their religious idealism to the immediate problems in hand. ¶

The two ideals fundamental in traditional American thought are the ideal of individual freedom to compete unrestrictedly for the resources of the country, and the ideal of democracy, where the government is for all the people and by all the people. American democracy has always been based on free lands. Such ideals were always present in the colonizing of the valleys of Utah. But we must not ¶

forget that the "Mormon" colonists were always religious in their organization in form as well as in purpose. ¶

I am glad to say that Dr. Turner of Harvard University has recently said in a lecture before the students there: "The 'Mormon' people, in the far west, developed the finest type of New England town government that was ever developed outside of New England." That alone stamps the "Mormon" people as fine types of Americans, and when they came here they plunged into the wilderness with the Constitution of the United States as their fundamental organic law. ¶

Were they cultured? Yes; because they were men and women of ideals, because they had implicit faith in God; the faith that is needed in the world today. Were they cultured? Yes; because those "Mormon" pioneers planted here, I believe as no other people planted in the history of America, the five great institutions of all civilization; namely, agriculture, the home, the church, the state, and the school; and in a study of these five institutions of civilization will you find the splendid history of the "Mormon" pioneers who settled here in those early days. The teacher who spoke as she did, spoke in ignorance. ¶

I pray God that we may retain that old-fashioned, implicit faith in God that our fathers and mothers had. ¶

This is what has been written about those pioneers and has gone from this state to some of the universities, not only of America but the world, and it was the paragraph that closed a recent lecture at the University of California: ¶

"Side by side with the development of the natural resources of Utah," [our temporal history] "Utah has constantly cultivated those things that make for culture. The growth of the Church has been brought about by the virility and vision of its leaders, and it has been able to solve the new problems of civilization. In the process of expansion the 'Mormon' people have won distinction not alone in industrial enterprise, but in the fine arts as well; in fact, more than in the fine arts, more than in industry, the 'Mormon' people have won distinction as the finest type of religionists living today. The bond of sympathy between the practical and the esthetic, between reality and vision, between the temporal and the spiritual, the Latter-day Saints from the beginning have ever regarded as the secret of present strength and the measure of enduring achievement." ¶

The late Judge C. C. Goodwin once paid the following tribute to the "Mormon" pioneers in the columns of the Salt Lake Tribune: ¶

"It is good to see the Saints bring their children in to conference. We wonder if many of them stop to tell their children the beautiful story of the evolution that, the full history pictures, since the day that the first weary company came down the eastern mountains and halted there. ¶

"That was Salt Lake's first moving picture; there has been none like it since. Contemplating it, the temple, the hotels, theaters, churches, hospitals, great business houses and stately homes, the temples to religion, to learning, to industry, to justice and mercy, all vanish away; the roar of business becomes still; the silence which the desert broods comes back; gardens vanish, the flowers all fade; there is nothing as now seen save the surrounding mountains, the lake shimmering in the distance, the sun shining from above and the desolation that wrapped all this region round like a burial robe. Even the branches on the few stunted trees hung drooping like funeral plumes, while the sough of the breeze coming down from the hills, or up from the lake, was as mournful as is the requiem chanted on the shores of the Styx. ¶

"The way a state is carved out of a wilderness and rounded into form is always an interesting theme. The way the first stakes of civilization were driven in Utah was dramatic enough to be set to words for the stage. In their penury and distress the first act of the Utah pioneers was to sink upon the earth; not in prayer for help, not in lamentation and despair, but in glad praise service in thanks to the power that had led them through the wastes and over the transfixed billions of the everlasting hills to a place of rest. ¶

"Then their work began. They were not dreaming of fortunes. ¶

"The struggle before them was to live and that struggle continued almost without abatement to the end. Often only the barest necessities were vouchsafed; few comforts, no luxuries. In that rough friction their youth was worn away; the men surrendered their ambitions, the women folded fond dreams and a thousand innocent longings in their hearts and drew the silence of self-sacrifice over them forever. ¶

"But then the miracle commenced. The desert began to transfer the wrinkles and sadness from its somber face to theirs, while in turn it began to absorb the splendor of their youth, and to cause it to be reflected in flowers and fruits and golden grain and vines in which the birds made their nests and filled all the soft air with their songs. ¶

"Later still, as though touched with pity, the irresponsive mountains began to swing back their adamantine doors, revealing the treasures within, where they had remained secreted, waiting until the time should be ripe for the coming of progress and enlightenment. The overwearied eyes of those pioneers have mostly all closed: their hands, gnarled by labor, are nearly all folded, but the miracle is still being performed. More and more fields are annually rescued from the desert; more and more flowers are blooming; more and more birds are singing; wider and wider fields grow golden under the harvest sun, recalling the old legend, that artist angels, in the long ago, came here from Summerland and with divine pencils, dipped in the dyes where light is brewed, left it all as a frame for a city beautiful which man was to build; we may believe that the building of that city has been begun and is progressing toward perfection. ¶

"This is the story that should be told the children when they are brought in to conference, and then they should be told to listen and note if they cannot still hear the echoes of that first praise service, with which the fathers dedicated this soil to the enlightenment which comes through devotion to duty, through the omnipotence of patient labor, and through faith in God." ¶

God grant that we may see these great things in our history, and that the truth of the faith and the development of the Latter-day Saints and their great message may yet become known to the honest in heart and to all the world. I ask it in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶