by either fear or venality, and makes of
him a part of its power to play the autocrat in Utah and to deceive the
country as to its purposes and its operations. Every Gentile who
refuses to testify at its request and in its behalf becomes a marked and
endangered man. It rewards and it punishes according to its will; and
those Gentiles who have gone to Washington to testify for Smoot are well
aware of this fact. Unless the Gentiles of Utah shall soon be protected
by the power of the United States they will suffer either ruin or exile
at the hands of the hierarchy."

When this declaration had been accepted, by all present, as truly
expressing their views of the situation, it was decided that they should
confer with other leading Gentiles, hold a mass meeting, adopt a set of
resolutions embodying the declaration on which they had agreed, and then
dispatch the resolutions to the Senate committee, as a protest against
the testimony of some of the Gentiles in the Smoot case, and as an
appeal to the nation for help.

But although all approved of the declaration and all approved of the
method by which it was to be sent to the nation, no man there dared
to stand out publicly in support of such a protest, to offer the
resolutions, or to speak for them. The merchant knew that his trade
would vanish in a night, leaving him unable to meet his obligations
and certain of financial destruction. The lawyer knew not only that the
hierarchy would deprive him of all his Mormon clients, but that it would
make him so unpopular with courts and juries that no Gentile litigant
would dare employ him. The mining man knew that the hierarchy could
direct legislation against him, might possibly influence courts and
could assuredly influence jurors to destroy him. And so with all the
others at the conference.

They were not cowards. They had shown themselves, in the past, of more
than average human courage, loyalty and ability. All recognized that if
the power of the hierarchy were not soon met and broken it would grow
too great to be resisted--that another generation would find itself
hopelessly enslaved. Every father felt that the liberties of his
children were at stake; that they would be bond or free by the issue
of the conflict then in course at Washington. And yet not one dared to
throw down the gauntlet to tyranny--to devote himself to certain ruin.
They had to prefer simple slavery to beggary and slavery combined. They
had to hope silently