nconspicuous. The Mormon
system of religious communism has long been known as one of the most
interesting social experiments of modern civilization; here is an
intimate study of it, not only in its success but in the failure that
has come upon it from the selfish ambitions of its leaders. The power of
the Mormon hierarchy has been the theme of much imaginative fiction; but
here is a story of church tyranny and misgovernment in the name of God,
that outrages the credibilities of art. That such a story could come
out of modern America--that such conditions could be possible in the
democracy today--is an amazement that staggers belief.

II

Hon. Frank J. Cannon is the son of George Q. Cannon of Utah, who was
First Councillor of the Mormon Church from 1880 to 1901. After the
death of Brigham Young, George Q. Cannon's diplomacy saved the Mormon
communism from destruction by the United States government. It was his
influence that lifted the curse of polygamy from the Mormon faith. Under
his leadership Utah obtained the right of statehood; and his financial
policies were establishing the Mormon people in industrial prosperity
when he died.

In all these achievements the son shared with his father, and in some of
them--notably in the obtaining of Utah's statehood--he had even a larger
part than George Q. Cannon himself. When the Mormon communities, in
1888, were being crushed by proscription and confiscation and the
righteous bigotries of Federal officials, Frank J. Cannon went to
Washington, alone--almost from the doors of a Federal prison--and,
by the eloquence of his plea for his people, obtained from President
Cleveland a mercy for the Mormons that all the diplomacies of the
Church's politicians had been unable to procure. Again, in 1890, when
the Mormons were threatened with a general disfranchisement by means of
a test oath, he returned to Washington and saved them, with the aid
of James G. Blame, on the promise that the doctrine and practice of
polygamy were to be abandoned by the Mormon Church; and he assisted in
the promulgation and acceptance of the famous "manifesto" of 1890,
by which the Mormon Prophet, as the result of a "divine revelation,"
withdrew the doctrine of polygamy from the practice of the faith.

He organized the Republican party in Utah, and led it in the first
campaigns that divided the people of the territory on the lines of
national issues and freed them from the factions of a religious dis