{"collection":"mor","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/mor/tfd/chap13.htm","path":"mor/tfd/chap13.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/mor/tfd/chap13.htm","text":"\"The Many-headed Multitude.\"\nShakespeare\nIT was to avoid the so-called mixed multitude that the Latter Day Saints sought \nan isolation for themselves, and their posterity from the every-day world.\nIn this they were the followers of the ancient people of Israel, when they left \nthe flesh-pots of Egypt, by a most memorable desert march, and sought the promised \nland. Canaan was, indeed, such a land. Flowing with milk and honey-supplied with \ncattle and bees-it was a land of olive orchards and vineyards, watered by the early \nand later rains, and well fitted to be a sample to these modern wanderers, in their \nsearch for a desired habitation.\nI have shown how they found their heart's desire in the secluded mountain valleys \nof Utah, how also they sought to keep off intrusion, and to protect themselves from \nschism and apostasy. I have shown the logical outgrowth of their creed. It was pride \nin their peculiar customs and confidence in their religion, which nerved them for \nall this strenuous endeavor through forty years of patient, persevering, and conquering \nindustry.\nNow they deserve their meed of praise for this activity of mind and body, for changing \na waste into a garden, and in place of Indian tribes, peopling the land with a civilized \npopulation. They have done a good turn for the United States, for while their religious \npolicies have made them often disloyal and antagonistic to Federal Law; they have \nopened to commerce an immensely rich region of soil and minerals, which would have \nremained quiescent for fifty years longer.\nI have tried to be fair and just to these people, and while noting their errors \nof reason and action, I have also noted their good intentions and their hardihood, \nin all their history, as far as I have had occasion to touch upon it.\nFor long years none but the wandering, curious hunters and trappers travelled these \nUtah valleys, save the Indian tribes native to the region. The Mormon Church had \nno fear of friction with such elements.\nIt was the \"mixed multitude\" they feared, and for as long as possible they kept \nit at a distance.\nAt last there filtered out of these mountains, carried by Dame Rumor, stories of \nmineral wealth, of gold and silver deposits in the hills; stories like those coming \nfrom California in the '50's, which set on fire such a tremendous enthusiasm for \nthe Pacific Slope.\nMen stubbing their toes in climbing the foothills after straying stock, had cast \nup nuggets from the very \"grass roots.\" Others, bending over purling streams to \nquench their desert thirst, had found \"color\" in their drinking cups. They had stooped \nover to wash their clothes in mountain creeks and remained to wash for gold in the \nsame vessels in which they rinsed their dirty garments.\nOf course the usual exaggeration of these acts gave a sort of Arabian Nights\nversion to these things, and they came to the eastern world with all the charm \nof an Aladdin's Lamp. Then the multitude stirred, and woke up. It cast covetous \neyes toward the hills which hid the Mormon people from the world. Wealthy men \"grubstaked\" \nhard up adventurers, and sent them out as spies of wealth. They came, saw, and reported \nthat \"the half had not been told.\"\nThis started a rush of capital and labor, through the canyons by wagon road, and \nafterwards by the Union Pacific Railroad. Miners, laborers, gamblers, storekeepers, \ncowboys, foreigners, Jews and Gentiles, one and all hastened into these mountain \nsolitudes which existed through the policy of the Mormon Church untouched by the \nhand of Commerce.\nMen of wealth, as usual, engineered the mass. The era of the millionaire was at \nhand, but these millions that came were from abroad at first, for the United States \nwas still over taxed, and staggering commercially from the effect of four years \nof war. British, French, and Italian money was flung recklessly into the hills, \nto be sunk in ambitious mining camps, and stamp mills, under the superintendence \nof men who had no interest in the capital but their salary.\nYou can imagine the change from the quiet, pastoral, and religious color of the \npast days to the hurry, hustle, and vociferous business of a new frontier life.\nThe Jew came in, as he always does, on the crest of this wave of commerce. He seems \nbuilt for trade, and being both a genius at opening trade centers, and a daring \ncommercial gambler, he was in Salt Lake City, and in every new camp of this \"mixed \nmultitude\" with his wares and ways. He was too shrewd to enter purely Mormon towns \nand so confront the great \"Co-op.\" He wasted no time on such ventures, but industriously \nsold his goods at three hundred percent profit to the reckless crowd, whose taste \nfor gold was ready to pay any price for tools, goods, and food.\nOne son of Israel, I knew, a good kind fellow he was too, who came into this business \nboiling pot, with just a pack, and before I left the Territory, he was living in \na palace in the city of the Saints. From \"Pack to Palace,\" in five years, was \"goin' \nsome,\" as the miners say.\nNow everybody could not do that, but everybody thought he could. So you see the \nvim introduced by the \"mixed multitude,\" and the utter impossibility of stemming \nsuch a tide. The Mormon authorities simply gasped at the crowd, made one futile \neffort to offset it with defunct laws of the defunct state of Deseret. But they \ngave it up, and grimly accepted the influx of new people, with their new ideas.\nAt first this new tide of human life and industry ran along by itself, very much \nas the muddy Missouri does where its waters first enter the clearer stream of the \nMississippi. But you know the universal rule. A little mud can cloud a whole body \nof water, and while the Missouri loses itself in the waters of the greater river, \nyet it is the hue of the Missouri that gives color to the Mississippi at New Orleans.\nSo with the \"mixed multitude\" and the Mormons. Soon these newcomers inoculated the \nTerritory with their more modern notions of life, and the two adverse streams, religious \nfanaticism on the one hand, and the commercial greed for gold on the other, ran \na race side by side for a decade; and then intermingled as one life in camp, civic \ncenters, and throughout the countryside; and thus the isolation of the Latter Day \nSaint was over.\nSo Utah, when I first saw it in 1875, was undergoing this change. The Missouri current \nof the \"mixed multitude\" was giving quite a decided color to the Mormonism of the \npast.\nI saw a few signs of the old heroic days, but wherever I went the stamp of the coming \nage was evident, in the looser, freer speech, the less respect, if not ridicule, \ngiven religion, and the atmosphere of hard materialism common to the American frontier \nlife.\nThe watchword in these regions, for a long time, had been \"Duty;\" now it was to \nbe \"Dollars.\" Loss and gain set over against one another, as in most of the circles \nof this riddle we call life.\nThe old settler, with his strong faith, gazed sourly at this condition of things, \nand as sourly proclaimed the coming wrath of God; but the newcomer of the \"mixed \nmultitude\" smoked his black cigar, stuck in the corner of his mouth, and answered \nwith a grin of derision, and a drive of energy, that made the new order hum with \nthe engines of machinery.\nBingham Canyon sprang into life. It was a great gash in the Oquirreh Mountains, \nfacing the salt sea on the one side, and the Utah Valley on the other. It was a \nmineral fissure that drew the crowd of \"those who knew.\" It was not a high grade \ncamp, as those days valued mining camps, where no ore was worked that did not yield \nforty dollars to the ton; but it was a big camp, in that there was no end to the \nveins, and the pockets that were beneath its apparent sterile surface.\nIt was small then, with a population of four thousand people, when I first put foot \nin the camp one cold November day. It is now a mining city that issues every year \nmany millions in dividends to its lucky stockholders.\nAlta City, in the Little Cottonwood Canyon, on the opposite side of the valley, \nin the Wah-satch range, and still higher up in the air than Bingham, with its altitude \nof ten thousand feet, was a richer camp, and the site of the celebrated Emma mine. \nThis mine was sold for three million dollars to British capitalists, but was found \nafterwards to be a fraud, it having been \"salted\" with \"color\" by the promoters \nto deceive the purchasers.\nAn amphitheater of hills, gave Alta City a notable site. Dumps and tunnel exits \ncould be seen all around, and out of this circle of industry, wealth poured and \nwas carried down to market by a miniature railway, with an average grade of three \nhundred feet to the mile.\nNothing was withheld in the lavish outlay of foreign money, that was making this \na lively camp. While it is true many became rich, it is equally true that great \nhosts were made poor. This is about the outcome of all mining and fulfills the words \nof Mark Twain, who was himself an old -miner as well as an author-\"As much goes \ninto the hole as comes out of it.\"\nPark City was another outcome of this mining fever. Situated in Big Cottonwood Canyon, \nand nearer Salt Lake City, it was conducted by a set of level-headed men who prevented \nany collapse to the camp, as finally overtook Alta City. The result was that while \nno furor was made over its location, yet it always produced stable wealth. Here \nit was that George Hearst, then a miner of experience in California, bought out \na claim from a few discouraged tenderfoot adventurers. They had come within a few \nfeet of great wealth, when they threw down their picks and said, \"we quit.\" George \nHearst began the next day, and a few hours later was confronted with a vision of \nfuture wealth.\nHe began his spectacular career, as a son of fortune, at this time, and began building \nup his remarkable success at the spot where others, more faint hearted than he, \ngave up the fight.\nOut of this mine came the means by which he became Senator of the United States, \nas no man at that time could become a Senator unless he had a long, a very long \npocket book. The state university at Berkeley, California, and all the interests \nof the Hearst's Syndicate of American Newspapers, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, \nare under obligation to this mine in the Big Cottonwood Canyon.\nOf course there were flat failures in some of the camps. One such was at Tintic, \nwhere, at first, great surface showings drew the rush, but it was a case of \"pinch \nout\" for the camp, as it so often is with a promising vein of ore in a shaft, or \na tunnel. It ends in a pocket, and a pocket holds just so much, and no more. So \nTintic, as a camp, lies idle, dormant, dead.","title":"Chapter XIII: The Mixed Multitude","type":"page"}