shore line is adaptable for salt gardens. The president of the
church is interested in a large salt monopoly which has gathered in the
various smaller enterprises. He is president of a railroad which runs
from the salt gardens to Salt Lake City, connecting there with trunk
lines. It costs to manufacture the salt and place it on board the cars
75 cents per ton. He receives for it $5 and $6 per ton. His company and
its subsidiary corporation are probably capitalized at three-quarters of
a million dollars, and upon this large sum he is able to pay dividends
of 8 or 10 per cent.

Not long since two men, who for many years had been tithe payers and
loyal members of the church, undertook to establish a salt garden along
the line of a trunk railway. One of them was a large dealer in salt, and
proposed to extend his trade by making the salt and reaching territory
prohibited to him by the church price of salt; the other was the owner
of the land upon which it was proposed to establish the salt garden.
These men formed a corporation, put in pumping stations and flumes, and
the corporation became indebted to one of the financial institutions
over which the church exercised considerable influence. Then the
president of the church sent for them. There is scarcely an instance on
record where a message of this kind failed of its purpose. These men
went to meet the prophet, seer, and revelator of God, as they supposed,
but he had laid aside his robes of sanctity for the moment and he was a
plain, unadorned, aggressive, if not an able, business man. He first
denounced them for interfering with a business which he had made
peculiarly his own; and, when they protested that they had no intention
to interfere with his trade, but were seeking new markets, he declared
in a voice of thunderous passion that if they did not cease with their
projected enterprise, he would crush them. They escaped from his
presence feeling like courtiers repulsed from the foot of a king's
throne, and then surveyed their enterprise. If they stopped, they would
lose all the money invested and their enterprise would possibly be sold
out to their creditors; if they went on and invested more money, the
president had the power, as he had threatened, to crush them. Not only
could he ruin their enterprise, but he could ostracise them socially and
could make of them marked and shunned men in the community where they
had always been respected.

Is there menace in this syst