t the assault of Gentile opposition, and he compels the Gentile to
pay tribute as the Mormon does.

He backs his financial power with his control of legislation. He can not
only prevent the passage of any laws against his favored monopolies,
but (as in the case of the smelters) he can reduce independents to
submission by threatening them with procured laws to penalize them. He
largely controls the "labor troubles" of the State by controlling the
obedience of the Mormon laboring men. He can influence judges, officers
of the law and all the agents of local government by his power
as political "Boss," and the same influence extends, through his
representatives at Washington, to the local activities of Federal
authority. He can check and govern public opinion among his subjects by
announcing "the will of God" to them through the officers of the Church
in every department of religious administration. He is, therefore, at
once the modern "money king," the absolute political Czar the social
despot and the infallible Pope of his "Kingdom!"

Just as men fight for the retention of a throne and the maintenance of
a dynasty, so he and his courtiers defend his rule and maintain his
autocracy with every weapon of absolutism. And just as royalty, while
possessed of unlimited wealth, has never lacked mercenaries, press
bureaus, and all the sycophantic defenders of a crown, so Smith is
able to command an array of service as great as any ever brought to
the defense of a social system. This singular and enormous power stands
solidly against any movement of domestic reform; and, by its alliance
with the national rulers in finance and politics, it is saved from the
danger of "foreign" intervention. Like every other such absolutism, it
is crushing out the life of its subjects; for, in spite of the industry,
the thrift, and the abstemiousness of the Mormon people, they are
sinking under the burden of imposed exaction's. Although Utah became a
territory in 1853, and had its well-settled towns at that time, and was
organized in a compact social body for the upbuilding of its material
prosperity before any of the surrounding states had received an organic
act as a territory, Utah has now lost its leadership, and the individual
initiative and enterprise of the typical Western community have been
relatively lost.

In this process of degeneration, one of the most promising modern
experiments in communism has been frustrated and brought to ruin. I