General Authorities Sustained and Closing Remarks

Presented the General Authorities and the General Officers of the Church as follows, being sustained in their offices and callings by the unanimous vote of the conference: ¶

General Authorities of the Church

First Presidency

Heber J. Grant, Prophet, Seer and Revelator and President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ¶

Anthony W. Ivins, First Counselor in the First Presidency. Charles W. Nibley, Second Counselor in the First Presidency. ¶

President of the Council of the Twelve Apostles

Rudger Clawson ¶

Council of the Twelve Apostles

Rudger Clawson Joseph Fielding Smith ¶

Reed Smoot James E. Talmage ¶

George Albert Smith Stephen L. Richards ¶

George F. Richards Richard R. Lyman ¶

Orson F. Whitney Melvin J. Ballard ¶

David O. McKay John A. Widtsoe ¶

Presiding Patriarch

Hyrum G. Smith ¶

The Counselors in the First Presidency, the Twelve Apostles, and the Presiding Patriarch as Prophets, Seers and Revelators. ¶

First Council of the Seventy

Brigham H. Roberts Jonathan G. Kimball Charles H. Hart ¶

Rulon S. Wells Levi Edgar Young ¶

Joseph W. McMurrin Rey L. Pratt ¶

Presiding Bishopric

Sylvester Q. Cannon, Presiding Bishop David A. Smith, First Counselor John Wells, Second Counselor ¶

General Officers of the Church

Church Historian and Recorder

Joseph Fielding Smith, with the following assistants: Andrew Jenson, Brigham H. Roberts, A. William Lund, Junius F. Wells. ¶

Church Board of Education

Heber J. Grant Joseph Fielding Smith ¶

Anthony W. Ivins David O. McKay ¶

Charles W. Nibley Stephen L. Richards ¶

Willard Young Richard R. Lyman ¶

Rudger Clawson John A. Widtsoe ¶

Orson F. Whitney Adam S. Bennion ¶

Arthur Winter, Secretary and Treasurer ¶

Superintendent of Church Schools

Adam S. Bennion ¶

Auditing Committee

Henry H. Rolapp John C. Cutler ¶

Peter G. Johnston ¶

Tabernacle Choir

Anthony C. Lund, Conductor B. Cecil Gates, Asst. Conductor ¶

Organists

Edward P. Kimball Alexander Schreiner ¶

Tracy Y. Cannon Frank W. Asper ¶

George C. Smith, Secretary ¶

Clerk of General Conference

Edward H. Anderson ¶

General Auxiliary Officers of the Church

National Woman's Relief Society

Clarissa S. Williams, President Jennie B. Knight, First Counselor Louise Y. Robison, Second Counselor ¶

with all the members of the Board as at present constituted. ¶

Deseret Sunday School Union

David O. McKay, General Superintendent Stephen L. Richards, 1st Asst. Gen'l Supt. George D. Pyper, 2nd Asst. Gen'l Supt. with all the members of the Board as at present constituted. ¶

Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association

George Albert Smith, General Superintendent Richard R. Lyman, 1st Asst. Supt. Melvin J. Ballard, 2nd Asst. Supt. with all the members of the Board as at present constituted. ¶

Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association

Martha H. Tingey, President Ruth May Fox, First Counselor Lucy Grant Cannon, Second Counselor with all the members of the Board as at present constituted. ¶

Primary Association

May Anderson, President Sadie G. Pack, First Counselor Isabelle S. Ross, Second Counselor with all the members of the Board as at present constituted. ¶

Brother Junius F. Wells has handed to me the following memorandum that I feel sure will be of interest: ¶

Presiding Authorities

"There have been sustained since the Church was organized, seven presidents, 19 counselors in the First Presidency, 54 apostles, 5 presiding patriarchs, 34 of the First Council of Seventy, and 14 of the Presiding Bishopric. A total of 133 besides the three witnesses to the Book of Mormon." ¶

A Few Words on Debt

Apropos of my remarks to the effect that we should not run in debt or mortgage our future, I will read a poem that has been handed to me, written by Stoddard King: ¶

Said the Pieman

A study of pie salesmanship will be made by the National Pie Bakers Association. -- News item. ¶

"The story of Simon called Simple
Is one everybody has read;
It is sweet, it is sad, and it tells of a lad
Who wasn't quite right in the head.
When he sought to buy pie of the pieman,
Poor Simon was hopeful but rash,
For he childishly thought that a pie could be bought
Without any transfer of cash. ¶

"But we mustn't speak harshly of Simon,
Who was simply ahead of his time --
Today he could buy a whole carload of pie
By merely investing a dime.
The up-to-date salesman would land him --
Or, rather more likely, his wife --
By letting him pay a few cents right away
And installments the rest of his life. ¶

"It's the way they sell pins and pianos,
And paintings, potatoes and pants --
For a few dollars down you can buy the whole town --
As a prospect you haven't a chance.
The fact that you're broke doesn't matter,
Your only escape is to die --
And as long as they take all the money you make,
You might as well spend it for pie!" ¶

U. S. Commissioner of Education

I am pleased to state that sitting on the stand Sunday, at the opening session of our conference, was the Commissioner of Education of the United States of America, Honorable John J. Tigert, and he expressed himself as very well pleased with our wonderful gathering. ¶

Passing of President Thomas P. Cottam

Since our last conference one of the most faithful and diligent of all workers in the Church, for many years a counselor in the presidency of the St. George stake, and subsequently the president of the St. George temple, Brother Thomas P. Cottam, has passed away. He was one of the noblemen of the earth, one of the most faithful, loyal, true, upright Latter-day Saints that it has ever fallen to my lot to know. ¶

Evangeline Booth on Prohibition

I had intended to read something here from Evangeline Booth, Commander of the Salvation Army in this country, but, like the congressmen, I will beg leave to have it put in my speech when it is printed in the Conference Pamphlet, or when it appears in the Deseret News. It was published in the Literary Digest of March 20, 1926: ¶

"Park benches are emptied of their drunken derelicts, and the men who used to make their wives and children the victims of their thirst and besotted rage have sobered up and returned to work to feed their families. And that one fact, believes Evangeline Booth, Commander of the Salvation Army in the United States, is the most convincing argument in favor of prohibition and against the return of the saloon. She is sure, however, that the Eighteenth Amendment is so firmly entrenched in public favor that it will never be repealed, and equally sure that it can be enforced. Such drinking as is indulged in now, she asserts, is a fad of the idle rich which will die out, or else society -- society, that is, with the big 'S'-- will be turned upside down and furnish rum wastrels for the Salvation Army to salvage. Miss Booth's utterance is no careless statement of fact and possibility, for there is no more seasoned worker among the submerged tenth than she, none among the world's greatest moral clean-up organizations more familiar with the sodden aspects of drunkenness and debauchery and their devastating influence on the home. It was while convalescing from an attack of appendicitis that she issued her statement on prohibition, which is quoted in part by the New York Times as follows: ¶

"After all these years of hard fighting to protect the home, emancipate the neglected children and wipe from our national escutcheon the disgrace of the evils arising from drink, it is good to find that the people of America have come to a correct judgment concerning the drink evil. It is unthinkable that the country will ever return to the deadly saloon system and a resumption of liquor vending. ¶

"'Surely it will be conceded that the Salvation Army knows something about the evils of strong drink. From the day my father founded the organization in England to combat the degradation and vice that are inevitable consequences of liquor drinking, the Salvation Army has held rigidly to its purpose, and feels that it had a great deal to do with the enactment of prohibition in America. ¶

"'It is an illogical thing to say that because a new law has not worked like magic it is best to cast it aside and return to the original state of vice which, because of its awfulness, prompted the enactment of that law. Such a thing would make civilization march backward. It is rather the duty of the citizen, the State and the Government to find ways and means to make the law work out its unquestioned benefits to humanity. It can be done. It is being done. ¶

"'Enemies of the Volstead Law waste their time when they try to tell organizations like the Salvation Army that national prohibition will not work. Vast changes have come about, and to undo them would be to strike a blow at every fireside and every industry in this country. ¶

"'Why try to tell the Salvation Army that the park benches are crowded with drunken men, as they were before prohibition when we used to gather them in on Thanksgiving Day, for example, and fight to salvage them? They are gone. The benches still remain, but the occupants are not drunk any more; they are climbing upward to better things while the public rushes by all unheeding. Why try to tell us that workingmen spend their wages before their families can get the money for food, and that men beat their wives and children as in the old days? It simply is not the case. ¶

"'If the idle rich persist in making a sport of the prohibition law, the day may come when the boulevardiers, vastly in the minority, will have to be salvaged out of their attractive places for secret drinking and rescued, if possible, by the Salvation Army, just as the poor saloon victim used to be. In that event the sober and progressive working classes will automatically become the aristocrats, and society, so-called, will be turned upside down in its system of organization. ¶

"'In other words, drinking and flouting the prohibition law are a fad and will die out' " ¶

In testimony of Miss Booth's experience and of her fitness to pass judgment on prohibition, Arthur J. Davis, State Superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League of New York, says, as he is quoted in the same paper: ¶

"She led her band of Salvationists against the drink evil in the United States and consistently opposed the saloon while she salvaged its wrecks and bound up the wounds of its victims. Evangeline Booth has been knocked down by drunkards and so badly injured that she spent months in hospitals. In the early days of her work in New York slums Salvationists were murdered by drunkards. She, therefore, knows what she is talking about when she attacks the illegal liquor traffic and upholds prohibition. For seventy years her organization has fought the saloon and she knows the advantages of its banishment." ¶

A study was made in Munich by a professor in which it was discovered that in that great beer-drinking city seventy-two out of every one hundred babies that were born there were unsound. The same professor visited prohibition Maine and found that 71.5 per cent of the babies there were born sound. There have been born to me twelve babies and forty-four grandchildren, all of whom were sound, and I am convinced that among the Latter-day Saints who are observing the Word of Wisdom not more than one to two per cent of the babies are born unsound. And yet, I quoted from an article published in one of our local newspapers that if any woman believed that tobacco would injure her child she would not be guilty of using it. ¶

On Moving from Place to Place

I would like to appeal to the Latter-day Saints who are thinking of moving from one place to another, from Canada on the north to Mexico on the south (I believe that four hundred miles north of Lethbridge is the farthest north, or the closest to the north pole, any Latter-day Saint has gone), that before moving they do some consulting with or writing to the presidents of stakes and others in the section where they contemplate going, and ascertain if they can identify themselves with some of the regular organizations of the Church; instead of going beyond the bounds of the Church, and then writing and asking us to please send some missionaries to hunt them up; that they really do belong to the Church, but that they have gotten so far away everybody seems to have forgotten them. Move where you cannot be forgotten and where there is an organized stake or ward of the Church. There is plenty of opportunity in the organized stakes of Zion for those who want to change their location here in Utah and in Idaho and in Canada. ¶

On Smoking Cigarettes

There are two items which I had intended to quote here this afternoon, but I shall not do so; instead, as before stated, I will adopt the system of the congressmen, and beg leave to print. ¶

I quote a statement which profoundly impressed me, from Mr. Henry Ford's pamphlet: ¶

"'Several of my young acquaintances are in their graves who gave promise of making happy and useful citizens,' declares Luther Burbank, the wizard of the plant and vegetable kingdom whose experiments have caused the civilized world to wonder, and whose experiments have benefited the civilized world by millions upon millions, in increase of prosperity, by the increase in the various things that he has done in improvement in flowers and in seeds and in fruits and in the redemption of the cactus in Arizona, taking the thorns; he is in very deed the wizard of the agricultural world and one of the benefactors of mankind. He says: 'And there is no question whatever that cigarettes alone were the cause of their destruction.' No boy living would commence the use of cigarettes if he knew what a useless, soulless, worthless thing they would make of him." ¶

I quote from David Starr Jordan, President Emeritus of the Stanford University: ¶

"The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future. He has none." ¶

Benediction

I rejoice beyond measure in the rich outpouring of the Spirit of the Lord during our conference, from the first session until the present time; and, insofar as God has endowed me with ability and power and his Priesthood, I bless the people. I bless each and every soul who has taken part in this conference, in singing, in praying and in speaking, and I bear witness to you that they have spoken under the inspiration of the living God, and that they are entitled to the blessings of God. I bless the people of the Latter-day Saints who have come here and listened so patiently and in such great numbers to the testimonies which have been borne. May God's choicest blessings attend all Israel, and the honest the world over, and I ask it in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶