Utah in the Twentieth Century

Brian Q. Cannon, Jessie L. Embry, Brian Q. Cannon, Jessie L. Embry

• Publisher: Utah State University Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781646427871, 9780874217445
• eBook ISBN: 9780874217452
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The twentieth century could easily be Utah's most interesting and complex. Utah in the Twentieth Century chronicles the social and cultural transitions of the time, offering a well-rounded perspective on the development and change the Beehive State went through during this period.

It was an era complicated by the push of economic development and pull of traditional culture, demand for natural resources from a fragile and scenic environment, questions of who governs and how, who gets a vote, and who controls what on contested public lands, during which outside trade and a tourist economy increasingly challenged and fed an insular society. Activists left and right declaimed constitutional liberties while Utah's Native Americans become the last enfranchised in the nation. Proud contributions to national wars contrasted with denial of deep dependence on federal money; the skepticism of provocative writers, boosters eager for growth; and reflexive patriotism somehow bonded to ingrained distrust of federal government.

A valuable resource for students and teachers, this work is also fruitful reading for anyone who desires to know more about key themes of Utah's history in the twentieth century.

III

Voicing Government
Politics and Participation

When members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints arrived in the Great Basin, their leaders formed a theocracy called the State of Deseret, whose proposed boundaries included all of Nevada and extended to the Pacific Coast. Those ambitious arrangements did not last. Instead, Congress took control, made Utah a territory, and progressively trimmed its size. Countering Congress’s assumption of sovereignty, Mormons in Utah Territory asserted their right to control the moral climate and discourse of their communities; in the process, they violated the constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property of some outsiders and apostates whom they regarded as their enemies. In turn federal officials, Congress, and the U.S. Supreme Court whittled away at some Latter-day Saints’ rights to practice their religion, vote, and serve in public office. Distrust ran rampant. Utah did not become a state until 1896—only after the Mormons had agreed to a constitution that prohibited polygamy and strongly separated church and state.

With statehood Utahns acquired full representation in Congress and the right to elect their own state officials. They shared equally with the citizens of other states the guarantees vouchsafed under the Bill of Rights. Utah’s Constitution reiterated these rights, including “the right to enjoy and defend their lives and liberties; to acquire, possess and protect property; [and] to worship according to the dictates of their consciences.” It further enumerated their right “to assemble peaceably, protest against wrongs, and petition for redress of grievances; [and] to communicate openly their thoughts and opinions, being responsible for the abuse of that right.” Citizens were also guaranteed the right to vote and bear arms, the right to trial by jury, and protection from unreasonable searches and seizures.¹

The chapters in this section examine Utahns’ participation in politics and government, their quest for legal equality, and their campaign for constitutional rights. Like other Americans, most Utahns supported the mainline Republican and Democratic Parties, but others backed Socialists and independents. Local elections—supposedly nonpartisan—were often hotly contested. Utah women were among the first to receive the right to vote, although they continued to face obstacles to economic parity and social equality, issues that were discussed and debated in the landmark Utah International Women’s Year meeting of 1977. Utahns were slow to grant voting rights to Native Americans. Many citizens—including radicals, racial minorities, women, immigrants, polygamists, union members, and gays and lesbians—fought for recognition of their constitutional rights over the course of the twentieth century. Utah citizens also sought to make state government more democratic through a host of reforms. In sync with national trends, they also experimented with various forms of local government—mayor, commission, or city manager. In addition to changing their organization, local governments also increased their responsibilities. Some changes resulted from new federal regulations. Others were ways to make government more efficient and responsive to citizens’ needs.

PARTISAN POLITICS

While Utah was a territory, federal appointees and Mormon Church leaders often clashed. Neither group completely trusted the other. Most non-Mormon residents sided with the federal officials, as did some Mormons who had become alienated from church leaders through political and economic disagreements. The territory’s two political parties reflected these divisions. The People’s Party represented faithful Mormons, while the Liberal Party encompassed nearly everyone else. In 1891, in a pragmatic gesture of reconciliation and compromise, Mormons disbanded the People’s Party. Church leaders instructed members to “divide about equally on national party lines” so they could “receive favors from whichever party was in power.” According to some accounts, local church leaders assigned everyone seated on one side of the chapel to become Republicans and everyone on the other side to vote for the Democrats. As Mormons gravitated toward the national parties, members of the Liberal Party did, too.²

A classic election that showed Utahns’ embrace of the national political system occurred in 1896. Ten candidates ran at large for five seats in the state senate: Martha Hughes Cannon, a plural wife, ran as a Democrat. Her husband, Angus Cannon, ran as a Republican. On the coat tails of Democrat William Jenning Bryan, the Democrats swept the election. Martha Hughes Cannon was elected and became the first woman state senator. Her husband was defeated.³

Mormons embraced their new parties ardently, often disagreeing with fellow church members. Emmeline B. Wells, for example, edited the Woman’s Exponent, a Mormon independent women’s journal that supported women’s rights. She was a strong Republican and a leader in the Utah women’s suffrage movement who ran unsuccessfully for political office but maintained a strong editorial voice in the community. Emily S. Richards, the wife of Mormon Church attorney Franklin S. Richards, was a Democrat. She turned down invitations to run for office but spoke out strongly against the Republicans. Wells and Richards argued vigorously over politics, but they tried to confine that disagreement to the political level. They supported each other in national and international women’s organizations and the Mormon Church’s women’s organization, the Relief Society.⁴

While most Utahns embraced the Republican and Democratic Parties, others joined alternative political parties, including, in the early twentieth century, the Socialists. Organized in the United States in 1901, the Socialist Party eventually enrolled 120,000 members. Five-time Socialist presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs polled nearly one million votes in 1912, including about 10 percent of the Utah vote. He polled almost as many in 1920, when he ran for president from a federal prison cell. Socialists also ran in state and local elections. The labor and union movement in the state intermittently supported the Socialist Party, and in turn the Socialists supported labor. Utahns elected a hundred members of the Socialist Party to offices in nineteen communities between 1901 and 1923. Eureka, a mining town in central Utah, elected a Socialist mayor four times and a complete Socialist administration twice in the early twentieth century.⁵

Utahns who joined the Socialist Party came from many religious traditions, including Mormonism. At a time when more than six in ten Utahns were Mormons, 40 percent of the Socialists were Latter-day Saints. In Eureka Mormons made up only 25 percent of the population, but 40 percent of the Socialists were Mormons. Historian John S. McCormick suggests that some Utahns who had been Populists turned to Socialism. Members of the Socialist Party were “radicals in theory” and “gas and water” party members in practice. In other words, they supported radical reforms in theory but then proposed more practical measures related to local government once they were in office. Historian John R. Sillito explains that the Socialists were successful among Mormons because of the church’s communal tradition. The party lost favor as the church moved to a more capitalist system. The Socialists also struggled in Utah because of religious divisions.⁶

Tens of thousands of Utahns also voted for other third parties and their candidates. In 1912, after Theodore Roosevelt bolted from the Republican Party and became the newly christened Progressive Party’s nominee for president, nearly one-fourth of Utah’s voters opted for him. In 1920 colorful Salt Lake lawyer Parley P. Christensen, who ran for president on the Farmer-Labor ticket, outpolled Debs in the Beehive State. In 1924, when Wisconsin Senator Robert Lafollette ran for President on the Progressive ticket, more than one in five voters in the state chose him.⁷

Independent candidates also attracted significant attention and support. After losing the Republican nomination to George Dewey Clyde, Utah Governor J. Bracken Lee ran for reelection as an independent in 1956 and secured more than 28 percent of the vote. Two years later, Lee again ran as an independent candidate, this time for Senator Arthur V. Watkins’s seat. Lee won 26 percent of the vote, splitting the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Utah in the Twentieth Century
• I Getting to Know the Place Image and Experience
• II Connecting to the Nation Utah and the U.S.A.
• III Voicing Government Politics and Participation
• IV Growing Challenges People and Resources
• Contributors
• Index