countability to anyone--and the wealth of opportunity offered by the
men who wished his aid in exploiting his people, made it unnecessary
that he should have any creative financial vision. He needed only to
move, with his opportunity, along the line of least resistance which was
also, with him, the line of choice.

He had, through all his years, shown an obvious envy of any member of
the Church whose circumstances were better than his own. It was apparent
in his manner that he regarded such success in the community as an
encroachment upon the Smith prerogatives. As soon as he came to power,
he accepted every opportunity of self-aggrandizement as a new Smith
prerogative. And the system of modern capitalism appealed at once to
his ambition. By the older method of tithes and conscription's, he could
collect only from the devotees of the Church; by the larger exploitation
he could levy tribute upon the Gentiles too.

And he was aided by the Mormons themselves. They had been brought
together, in obedience to "a command of God," in order that the
community, by avoiding the sins of the world, might be saved from the
plagues that were to descend upon the world because of its injustice.
They were a credulous people, ignorant of the sins of modern finance,
and prepared by industry and isolation to be exploited. Their previous
leaders had observed, as a warning only, the modern aspiration for
vast wealth obtained by economic injustice; but that aspiration made an
instant appeal to Smith's ambition; and it is the peculiar iniquity of
conditions in Utah today that his ambition has betrayed his people to
the very evils which they were originally organized to escape.

In an earlier time it was the pride of the leader that the community in
the large was advancing and the average of conditions improving. Today
the leader assumes that as he grows richer the people are prospering and
"the revelations of God" being vindicated in practice. He speaks with
pride of "our" growth and wealth under "the benign authority of the
Almighty" and His "temporal revelations"--because he himself has been
enriched by the perversion of these same laws--very much as the "captain
of industry" elsewhere boasts of the "prosperity" of the country,
because the few are growing so rich at the expense of the many.

Along with this strain of commercial greed in Smith, there is an equally
strong strain of religious fanaticism that justifies the greed and
sanctifies