eloping their
activities and industries, and--as another traveller has said--having
no aim save that of turning their arid and uncultivated "Promised Land"
into a fertile Judea--an aim in which they have marvellously succeeded.

III

Mormonism owes its success chiefly to its practical interpretation of
the Communistic ideals, and to its determination to encourage labour by
means of religion and patriotism, setting before it as object the
satisfaction of each individual's social needs, under the direction of
those who have proved themselves capable and vigilant and worthy of
confidence. It is a republic from which are banished the two most
usual causes of social collapse--idleness and egotism; a hive,
according to its founder, in which each bee, having his particular
function, is always under the eye of those who direct individual
activities in the interests of collective welfare. The President of
the Mormon Church is its moving spirit. He surveys it as a whole,
encourages or moderates its energies, according to circumstances,
preserves order and regularity, and exercises his paternal influence
over every cell of the hive, giving counsel when needed, redressing
grievances, preventing false moves, yet leaving to every corporation
not only its administrative freedom but its own powers for industrial
extension.

Under these conditions the Church of the Latter-Day Saints unites the
social and economic advantages of individual and collective labour.
The corporations are like stitches that form a net, holding together
through community of interests and a general desire for prosperity, yet
each having its own separate formation and the power to enlarge itself
and increase its activities without compromising the others or
lessening their respective importance. One of the most remarkable is
the "Mercantile Co-operative Society of Sion," the central department
of wholesale and retail trade. It was founded in 1863 by Brigham
Young, who was its first president, and is in direct relationship with
the Mormon colonies all over the world, having a capital fund of more
than a million dollars which belongs exclusively to the Mormons. Its
organisation, like that of all Mormon institutions, is based upon the
deduction of a tithe of all profits, which practically represents
income tax. The "Sugar Corporation" has an even larger capital, and
was founded directly by the church through the advice of Brigham Young,
who recommended t