on
Privileges and Elections for a hearing (January 27, 1904); and a contest
began that lasted from January, 1904, to February, 1907. During those
years was completed the business and political conspiracy between
financial "privilege" and religious absolutism, of which conspiracy this
narrative has described the beginning and the growth.

It is almost impossible to expose the progression of incident by which
the end of that conspiracy was approached--since it was necessarily
approached in the darkest secrecy. But several indications of the method
and the progress did show, here and there, on the surface of events; and
these indications are powerfully significant.

As early as 1901 it had become known that Apostle Smoot was negotiating
a sale, to the sugar trust, of the Church's sugar holdings. On May
13, 1902, the president of the trust reported to the trust's executive
committee--

[FOOTNOTE: See a synopsis of the minutes of the trust's executive
committee, published in Hampton's Magazine, in January, 1910.]

that he had agreed to buy a one-half interest in the consolidation of
the Mormon factories of La Grande, Logan and Ogden. (The following day,
May 14, 1902, is given by Apostle Smoot as the day on which he obtained
President Joseph F. Smith's permission to become a candidate for the
Senatorship.) On June 24, 1902 the sugar trust's executive committee
was informed of the trust's purchase of one-half of the capital stock
of these three Church-owned sugar companies. On July 5, 1902 the three
companies were consolidated under the name of the Amalgamated Sugar
Company, with David Eccles, polygamist, trustee of Church bonds, and
protege of Joseph F. Smith, as President; and the sugar trust took half
the stock, in exchange for its holdings in the three original companies.

Similarly, in this same year, the old Church-owned Utah Sugar Company
increased its stock in order to buy the Garland sugar factory, and the
sugar trust, it is understood, was concerned in the purchase In 1903,
1904 and 1905, the Idaho Sugar Company, the Freemont Sugar Company,
and West Idaho Sugar Company were incorporated; and in 1906 all these
companies were amalgamated in the present Utah-Idaho Sugar Company,
of which Joseph F. Smith is president, T. R. Cutler, a Mormon, is
vice-president, Horace G. Whitney, the general manager of the Church's
Deseret News, is secretary and treasurer, and other Church officials are
directors. Of the stock of th