{"collection":"mor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/mor/tfd/chap05.htm","path":"mor/tfd/chap05.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/mor/tfd/chap05.htm","text":"\"How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower\"\nWatts\nVERY suggestive of the Mormon view of industry and business are the two symbols \nchosen to represent the co-operation of the people in making the desert into a garden, \nand that garden to bloom like a rose. I use that term as it was a favorite expression \nin those formative days by all the Mormon settlers with whom I talked about their \nbusiness lives.\nFor these people were a very practical people. They were enthusiasts in their religion, \nbut never dreamers, monks, nuns, and transcendentalists like so many of the earliest \nenthusiasts of religious history.\nThese symbols were two: a hive and an eye. The hive was a bee-hive of platted straw \nwith conical top; and the eye was a single eye within a circular ring, wide open \nand viewing you as you regarded it. What did these symbols mean? The first meant \nthe industry of the busy bee- making sweets out of the wild flowers and desert plants \nso that they became of commercial value.\nSo the Saints were makers of values, through their industry, as they toiled on the \nland allotted to them, and watering it by furrows so that the desert should bring \nforth and bear a hundred fold.\nThe second symbol meant that the eye of the Lord, which seeth single and true, was \non them always as they worked; and they must deal fairly one with the other, neither \ncheating nor defrauding their fellow man. This was where their religion stepped \nin to keep straight their industry. For want of it now-a-days, business is much \nlike the shark's life, existing to bite one another.\nYou can imagine the effect of these ideas, voiced by the symbols on the front of \nevery store in Mormondom. These suggestions of industry and probity are excellent \nand sufficient. Absorbed as they were in time by the subconscious mind of a generation \nof a people, the effect was a toiling busy crowd at work on the land, the foundation \nof any and every commerce. Every man, woman and child was a worker, with no drones \nor bums allowed.\nOf course they raised produce, of course they needed warehouses, stores, and selling \nmarkets; and so arose the Institution which made business a unit, and was the first \nTrust formed in the Territories-Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution.\nThe institution was Zion's and thus the probity suggested by the watchful eye of \nGod was over all its transactions. In fact, we find these Latter Day Saints actually \nfulfilling, to their ability, the old-time cry of the Jewish prophet Micah-\"Do justly, \nlove mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.\"\nThey made some bad breaks in this good order of life at times, as all do who are \neven of the best people, and we would be sour curmudgeons, indeed, if we allowed \na dislike for some of their teachings and some of their practices to blind us to \nthe hearty effort, on their part, to be just in their business relations as well \nas good in their religious life.\nIt certainly was a stroke of genius, when the idea of God being a witness to every \nbusiness dealing was suggested by the \"Onlooking Eye\"; associated with the \"Honeykeeping \nHive,\" on the front of their places of business in city, town and hamlet, and even \nin the outlying country store.\nOf course being simply humans, they slipped a cog in this wheel of commerce. This \ngreat cooperative store, handling the business of all workers, tended to become \na trust; to object to competition; to make arbitrary rules and penalties for those \nobnoxious to the managers and leaders.\nWhere will you find men, who are fit for leaders, who do not soon boss, instead \nof simply directing, their employees and their customers?\nI knew many cases where men who were lax in their religion were punished by these \nbusiness stores, in being \"boycotted,\" so they could not sell their goods or buy \nthe commodities they required.\nWith all its faults this co-operation was a living business spine to carry business \nnerve and force to every section of the territory, and build up both its products \nand its trade.\nThe main plant of this great business house was in Salt Lake City, but each town \nhad its store, and at the stores everything could be sold that was produced in the \ncountry and was in a saleable condition, and everything from a needle to a steam \nengine could be bought if wanted. It could be paid for in money or in kind.\nAt first it was all trade, like that of the early settler in the East and west of \nthe Mississippi.\nBut industry breeds wealth and so it was not long before the sod houses gave way \nto clapboarded structures in the city, and to adobe houses-sunbaked brick-in the \ntowns and countryside.\nIt was a day of one price, and since there was but one business house, there was \nno opposition. That house representing the interests of the people and only charging \na fair profit on the time and capital invested, was popular to the last degree. \nThere was no effort nor desire to build up a millionaire institution or make a great \nfortune for any individual.\nOf course since there were some very shrewd Yankees among the leaders of the church, \nit follows that they made the best of their opportunities when trading through this \nmercantile house, and put things so that they personally profited by their inside \nknowledge of market prices.\nStill there was lacking the graft of modern business and the insane desire, bred \nby such men as Gould and his confreres of that day in the East, through their speculations, \nto smash financially every competitor in their own line of operations. It was before \nthe days of millionaires and trusts but, even then, the shadows of these business \nevils were overhanging the land.\nThis co-operative business house gave the church a chance to execute a little side \nbusiness of its own.\nSince it handled nearly all the products raised by the people, and since these people \nhad obligated themselves to pay a tithe or tenth to the church, here was the chance \nto collect these dues in regular Old Testament fashion.\nNow the church of the Latter Day Saints is nothing if it is not obedient to the \nOld Testament. This we shall presently see when we consider its teachings and its \ntheology. While a modern expression of religion, yet that religion is stamped with \nthe old patterns of Jewish days, and so the tithe or tenth part of one's income \nbecame the scale of giving, and so through these produce stores the church collected \nits tithes and filled its ecclesiastical coffers.\nReligion is nothing if it does not take up a collection. The old story is in point, \nthat tells of a shipwrecked crew, afloat in the south seas, in the ship's long-boat. \nA pitiless sun and but few showers, with scant rations saved from the wreck, soon \nbrought the hardened crew to a religious mellowness; and some one urged a religious \nservice to propitiate the Power of Heaven in their distress. As none could pray, \nand there was no preacher aboard the boat, and moreover their singing powers were \nlimited to sailor shanties, for none remembered their childhood hymns; this religious \nservice consisted in taking up a collection by passing the hat. No sailor failed \nto remember that function of a religious service, and since it was all they could \ndo, they did that one thing. They felt better after this collection since they thought \nthe Lord would look after-\"Poor Jack,\" since he had looked after the interests of \nthe Lord's church.\nI do not mean to say that this ideal church finance was always carried out. There \nare too many kickers in every kind of thing of human management. But a lot of tithing \ncame to hand by way of the Co-op, as it was called for short, and many were the \nsneers of outsiders as they spoke of this \"cinch\" the church had on the industry \nof the land.\n\"Who wouldn't be a leader, and even a Mormon, with such fat pickings coming in from \nthe fields?\"\nSuch resources were stable, and unlike the voluntary offerings, which support the \nusual ecclesiastical efforts of the denominations. So Zion could build stores, schools, \nward houses and meeting places, until finally a temple was built that took forty \nyears to finish.","title":"Chapter V: The Co-Operative Industry of Utah","type":"page"}