Religion, Politics, and Sugar: the Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907 to 1921

Religion, Politics, and Sugar: the Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907 to 1921

Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2007 Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907 to 1921 Matthew C. Godfrey Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the American Politics Commons, and the History of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Godfrey, M. C. (2007). Religion, politics, and sugar: The Mormon Church, the federal government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Religion, Politics, and Sugar The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907–1921 Matthew C. Godfrey Religion, Politics, and Sugar The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company 1907–1921 Religion, Politics, and Sugar The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company 1907–1921 Matthew C. Godfrey Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright © 2007 Utah State University Press All rights reserved. An earlier version of chapter 5 was fi rst published as “The Utah-Idaho Sugar Company: Political and Legal Troubles in the Aftermath of the First World War,” Agricultural History 75 (Spring 2001). Portions of chapter 6 were fi rst published as “The Shadow of Mormon Cooperation, The Businesss Policies of Charles Nibley, Western Sugar Magnate in the Early 1900s,” Pacifi c Northwest Quarterly 94 (Summer 2003). Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7800 www.usu.edu/usupress/ Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free, recycled paper ISBN-13: 978-0-87421-658-5 ISBN: 978-0-87421-548-9 (e-book) ISBN-10: 0-87421-658-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Godfrey, Matthew C. Religion, politics, and sugar : the Mormon Church, the federal gov- ernment, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921 / Matthew C. Godfrey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-87421-658-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. 2. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints--Finance. 3. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints- -Political activity. 4. Beet sugar industry--United States--History. 5. Sugar trade--Government policy--United States. I. Title. HD9109.U7G63 2007 338.7’6641230973--dc22 2006036737 Contents Illustrations vi 1 Introduction 1 2 The Establishment of the Sugar Industry in Utah and Idaho, 1851–1907 16 3 Before the Hardwick Committee of the House of Representatives 51 4 National Sugar Policies and the First World War 93 5 Political and Legal Troubles in the Aftermath of the First World War 127 6 Restraint of Trade: Federal Trade Commission v. Utah-Idaho Sugar 158 7 Conclusion 198 Bibliography 209 Index 222 Illustrations Map of cities containing Utah-Idaho Sugar Company factories 3 Vacuum strike pan, used in the making of beet sugar 23 E. H. Dyer, one of the pioneers of the beet sugar industry 25 Wilford Woodruff 29 The Utah Sugar Company factory in Lehi 32 Thomas R. Cutler 34 Joseph F. Smith, president of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company 61 The sugar beet plant 72 Bags of Utah-Idaho Sugar Company sugar 80 Cultivating sugar beets 102 Senator Reed Smoot 114 Topping sugar beets, a laborious process 120 Production record of Utah-Idaho Sugar Company 135 Beets loaded on a train 139 Charles W. Nibley with his three wives 143 Anthony W. Ivins, Heber J. Grant, and Charles W. Nibley 149 The Gunnison Valley Sugar Company factory 176 Charles W. Nibley with his sons 181 A fi eld of sugar beets in Oregon 186 Utah-Idaho Sugar Company net profi t 205 Chapter One Introduction n 1890, Wilford Woodruff, president, prophet, seer, and Irevelator of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), also known as the Mormons, gathered members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles around him. Along with the First Presidency, consisting of Woodruff and his two coun- selors, the apostles constituted the governing body of the church, responsible for the spiritual welfare of its members. Yet on this day, Woodruff had temporal matters on his mind. He had called the apostles together to send some of them on missions to raise money for the Utah Sugar Company, a fl edg- ling enterprise that had approached the church for fi nancial help. LDS authorities, including Heber J. Grant and Joseph F. Smith, accepted Woodruff’s call and spent the next sev- eral weeks approaching Utah businessmen for money, rais- ing a considerable sum. In addition to these funds, Woodruff pledged LDS resources to the company. Why was the prophet so intent on involving the church in this business? As he later related, “The inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this fac- tory. Every time I think of abandoning it, there is darkness; and every time I think of building it, there is light.”1 Although some might question the veracity of a claim to divine revelation on behalf of sugar beets, Woodruff’s actions 1. As cited by Heber J. Grant in Eighty-Ninth Annual Conference of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City, Utah, 1919), 8–9. 1 2 Religion, Politics, and Sugar were not surprising. Since the early 1850s, Latter-day Saints, including Brigham Young and John Taylor, Woodruff’s pre- decessors as presidents of the church, had attempted to manufacture sugar, albeit unsuccessfully. Neither Young nor Taylor had ever evidenced a divine commission to establish the sugar industry, however, which perhaps was the reason for their failure. Now that Woodruff insisted that the Lord had revealed his will in the matter, success was all but assured. With the help of God and the fi nancial backing of the church, Woodruff would triumph where Young and Taylor had not. Nearly twenty years later, church-supported sugar com- panies dotted Utah and Idaho. In 1907, three of the larg- est—the Western, the Idaho, and the Utah sugar compa- nies—merged to form a $13 million corporation known as the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. For the next seven decades, this corporation, together with the Amalgamated Sugar Com- pany, another church-supported fi rm, dominated the sugar industry in the Intermountain West. So engrained did beets become in Utah that high schools even used names such as “Beetdiggers” for their mascots. The production of beet sugar was a large-scale enterprise in twentieth-century Utah, gener- ating millions of dollars for investors and providing high cash returns for farmers, who, for many years, generally drew their main source of cash income from sugar beets. In the second decade of the twentieth century, nearly one-third of Utah farmers grew sugar beets. By 1920, 93,603 acres of sugar beets were growing in the state and factories there produced $28 million worth of beet sugar, making the crop “the secur- est portion of the agricultural picture” for Utah’s farmers.2 During those years, the LDS church retained a fi rm interest in the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company. Church presidents served simultaneously as presidents of Utah-Idaho Sugar, and mem- bers of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, 2. Quotation in Thomas G. Alexander, “The Burgeoning of Utah’s Economy: 1910–18,” in A Dependent Commonwealth: Utah’s Economy from Statehood to the Great Depression, Dean L. May, ed., Charles Redd Monographs in Western History No. 4 (Provo, Utah, 1974), 37–39; see also Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West: A History of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1891–1966 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966), 201. 3 Introduction Map of cities containing Utah-Idaho Sugar Company factories in the fi rst half of the twentieth century. Adapted from Leonard J. Arrington, Beet Sugar in the West, 181. and Presiding Bishopric (the leadership entity responsible for the church’s temporal affairs) sat on the corporation’s board of directors. Apparently, God, in his determination to see the beet sugar industry succeed, wanted his spiritual lead- ers to oversee the business. But in 1890, few could have foreseen the economic impact that beet sugar would have on the Intermountain West. Indeed, for the fi rst thirty years of its existence, the Utah Sugar Company and its offspring, Utah-Idaho, faced a rocky path to success. These years—roughly 1890 to 1920—cor- responded to a social, political, and economic transitional period in Utah history. Because of increased pressure from 4 Religion, Politics, and Sugar the federal government, and in an effort to gain statehood for Utah Territory, Latter-day Saints were forced to abandon polygamy, a main tenet of their religion, in 1890. At the same time, church leaders asked them to split their allegiance between the Republican and Democratic parties instead of voting as a religious bloc. Having met these conditions, Congress granted Utah state- hood in 1896. This event precipitated a transformation of Utah’s economy, where it became not only more commercial- ized than in the past, but also more national in scope and in market. This occurred not just because of statehood, but also because of a growing migration to Utah of non-Mormons and an increasing urbanization of northern Utah settlements.3 Facing these realities, and understanding that the United States at large did not regard church infl uence in economic affairs as conducive to democracy and freedom, LDS leaders sought, at least in some ways, to reduce the religion’s role in economic activities in order to ensure that all Utahns, Mor- mon or non-Mormon, had the same economic opportunities.

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