hen a man like Chas. A. Smurthwaite could not
remonstrate against the individual offenses of Joseph F. Smith, without
being overwhelmed by financial disaster, and social ostracism, and
personal slander, it must be evident how impossible is such single
revolt to the average Mormon. Nothing can be accomplished by individual
protest except the ruin of the protestant and his family.

In the case of my own excommunication, the issues were perhaps less
clearly defined than in Smurthwaite's. I had not been for many years a
formal member of the Church; and yet in the sense that Mormonism is a
community system (as much as a religion) I had been an active and loyal
member of it. In my childhood--when I was seven or eight years of age--I
began to doubt the faith of my people; and I used to go into the orchard
alone and thrust sticks lightly into the soft mould and pray that God
would let them fall over if the Prophets had not been appointed by Him
to do His work. And sometimes they fell and sometimes they stood! Later,
when I was appalled by some of the things that had occurred in the early
history of the Church, I silenced myself with the argument that one
should not judge any religion by the crudities and intolerance's of its
past. I felt that if I were not hypocritical--if I were myself guided by
the truth as I saw it myself--and if I aided to the utmost of my power
in advancing the community out of its errors, I should be doing all that
could be asked of me. In the days of Mormon misery and proscription,
I chose to stand with my own people, suffering in their sufferings
and rejoicing with them in their triumphs. Their tendency was plainly
upward; and I felt that no matter what had been the origin of the
Church--whether in the egotism of a man or in an alleged revelation from
God--if the tendencies were toward higher things, toward a more even
justice among men, toward a more zealous patriotism for the country, no
man of the community could do better than abide with the community.

The Church authorities accepted my aid with that understanding of my
position toward the Mormon religion; and, though Joseph F. Smith, in
1892, for his own political purposes, circulated a procured statement
that I was "a Mormon in good standing," later, when he was on the
witness stand in the Smoot investigation, he testified concerning me:
"He is not and never has been an official member of the Church, in any
sense or form." I made no pretenses and