Chapter XXXV: Salt Lake City

"I have described in my time many cities, both of the east and west;
but the City of the Saints puzzles me. It is the young rival of Mecca,
the Zion of the Mormons, the Latter-day Jerusalem. It is also the City
of the Honey Bee, 'Deseret,' and the City of the Sunflower--an
encampment as of pastoral tribes, the tented capital of some Hyksos,
'Shepherd Kings'--the rural seat of a modern patriarchal democracy;
the place of the tabernacle of an ancient prophet-ruled Theocracy."
--PHIL ROBINSON.

It was on a Saturday night that we returned to Salt Lake City. It followed, therefore, as a matter of course, that the ensuing morning was Sunday. Had the calender not been our authority we might have known it from the solemn stillness that prevailed--a contrast very vivid and suggestive after our experience of the Holy Day in the mountain mining towns.

Everybody was eager of course to go to the Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle stands inside the big wall surrounding the "Temple block," and could have been found by simply falling in with any one of the currents of Sunday-dressed people which set toward it from every direction. We went early so as to look about us at leisure.

This square of ten acres was set apart for temple purposes at the founding of the city, and there the pioneers held their first worship. There was built the building known as the Endowment House, and there, thirty years ago, were laid the foundations of the temple, wherein (it is promised) Jesus Christ shall appear bodily to the faithful as soon as it is completed. Reared to a height of eighty feet above the ground, but not yet ready for the roof, its snowy walls gleam in the sun, hot and dazzling.

There is a little time before the services in the Tabernacle and we go over to the new building, picking our way among redoubts of the sparkling blocks of granite. A picture of the building as it will appear when the work is finished, hung under glass, at the closed door of the superintendent's office, and enabled us to get a very good idea of how the great structure would look. The Madame joined the rest of us in admiration for the massive character of every part of the work.

We found that above the enormous foundations the wall had a thickness of nine feet, which decreases to seven at the height of the roof. Nor was this wall hollow, or filled or backed with brick or anything else, but was made solid throughout of hewn granite. Even the pillars, the partitions, the stairways, the floors and ceilings in many apartments, were of solid matched stone. The beveled window openings through these thick walls are like embrasures of a fort; and the many small rooms in which it is to be divided, will cause the structure to seem more like a prison than a religious temple. In fact it is not designed as a house of worship,--the Tabernacle remains for that--but is intended as a sacred edifice within which various ordinances of the Church, closely allied to those of Masonry, now performed in the Endowment House, shall be celebrated.

The external ornamentation of the great building is original and symbolical in its plan. The wall is pierced with four tiers of large windows, the second and fourth tiers being circular. The keystone of each of the arches over these windows, as well as over the various doors, bears a star in high relief; and between the windows room is found for three tiers of circular bosses, eight on each side, upon which symbols will be carved in high relief. The lowermost of these rows will bear maps of various parts of the world; the second tier, eight phases of the moon; and the topmost tier eight blazing suns. The suns, moons and stars are already cut, but the maps of the earth remain to be carved.

The cost of the temple has been the subject of much public questioning and careless slander. A man assured us that it had cost sixteen millions of dollars. This is certainly an exaggeration. I have the word of President Taylor that the total cost up to the present time has been about two millions of dollars, derived from the church tithings. The same work could be duplicated now for a far less sum; but a large part of this was done before the railway was built, when the stone had to be hauled from the distant quarries by ox-teams. It is supposed that another million dollars and two years more time, will complete and furnish the building. That will be a great day for Salt Lake.

By the time we had finished our inspection of the temple, the Tabernacle had been pretty well filled by the crowds of people who poured into its many doors. One of these streams we followed.

The Tabernacle has been so often described and figured that I need spend little time over it. Imagine an elliptical dome, shingled, set upon a circle of stone piers about twenty feet in height, and you will have an image of this extraordinary building. Were it set upon an eminence it would be as grand in its place (perfectly fitting Utah scenery in its severely simple outlines) as the Acropolis at Athens.

Service in the Tabernacle is held on Sundays at two o'clock in the afternoon. The people assemble not only from the city but from all the country around. Women and children are in great force. The great amphitheatre supplies seats for thirteen thousand people, and it is nearly filled every Sunday. A broad gallery closes around at the front end where the choir sit in two wings, facing each other--the men on one side and the young women on the other. The space between is filled by the splendid organ (back high up against the wall) and by three long, crimson-cushioned pulpit-desks, in each of which twenty speakers or so can sit at once, each rank overlooking the heads of the one beneath. The highest of these belongs to the president and his two counselors; the second to the twelve apostles, and the lowest to the bishops. The acoustic properties of the building are wonderful; a person standing in a certain space near one end, can hear the gentlest whisper, or, that universal test, a pinfall, from quite the other end. A former deficiency of light, has been overcome by the use of gas and electricity; and the chilling barrenness of the vast whitewashed and unbroken vault is relieved by a liberal hanging of evergreen festoons, and trailing wreaths of flowers made of colored tissue paper. These trimmings are far enough away from the eye, and in masses of sufficient size to make their effect very satisfactory.

Every Sunday the sacrament is administered, the tables loaded with the baskets of bread and silver tankards of water (never wine) occupying a dais at the foot of the pulpits, upon which several bishops take their places, and break the bread into fragments. Precisely at two o'clock the great organ sends forth its melodious invocation, and the subdued noise of neighborly gossip, which, as the Madame said, "seemed the veritable humming of the honey bees of Deseret in their house hive," is wholly hushed. The music at the Tabernacle is far-famed in the west, and gives constant delight to all the people. The singing is followed by a long prayer by some one of the dignitaries in or about the pulpits, during which the time is utilized to prepare the bread and water; and as soon as the prayer has ceased a large number of brethren begin to pass the sacred food and drink. Everybody, old and young, partakes, and it is an hour and a half before the communion is completed. Meanwhile some one of the highest officers of the church, or perhaps two or three of them in succession, has been preaching; so that two long hours are exhausted before dismissal. Such was the experience of our visit, and it was an average occasion.

The history of Salt Lake City is the history of the "Mormons,"--of the Church of the Latter-Day Saints in Utah. It begins on the 24th of July, 1847, when Brigham Young, leading the people, who likened their pilgrimage to a second exodus of Israel, emerged from the long cañon that had let them through the westernmost range of the Rockies. As the head of the weary train passed the last barrier they saw spread before their eager vision a huge basin--miles of sage-green, velvety slopes, sweeping down on every side from the bristling mountain-rim to the azure surface of the Salt sea set in the center.

Here, their leader told them, the Lord commanded a halt; here his tabernacle should be raised. It was done, and to-day a populous city stands on the site of the first camp of the religious host,--a city as baffling to describe in its appearance, in its social aspects, in its pervading sentiment as any which can be found in Christendom. It was with an intense sympathy for Mr. Robinson, that I listened to the Madame reading the opening paragraph of the fifth chapter of his "Sinners and Saints," a part of which I have selected as the motto of the present chapter.

Yes, like Mr. Robinson, I would have liked "to shirk this part of my experiences altogether," but the reader would never have pardoned me. "What? Leave out Salt Lake City!" I hear you exclaim. "What's the good of mentioning Utah at all, if you do that?"

Well, to begin with, the city is not on the lake nor within a score of miles of it. When the pioneers came they descended to the foot of the last "bench" in which the foothills yield their rights to the plain, and there made their camp. In the same spot was founded the city. It was quite as good a locality as any other, no doubt they thought, considering that the whole region alike was nothing but a plain of sagebrush. Indeed, you cannot see the lake at all from the city, except by going up upon the "bench" of higher ground to the northward and eastward, whence it appears only as a line of distinct color between the dusty olive of the wide foreground, and the vague blue of the distant hills.

The habitations of the pioneers were not built hastily and at random. Brigham Young caused a town-site to be carefully surveyed and accurately laid out, and it was done on a generous scale. The streets were made one hundred and thirty feet wide, placed true to the points of the compass and crossing one another at right angles. Each square contains ten acres, so that when the Madame and I merely walked "around the block" while I smoked a post-prandial cigarette, we tramped precisely half a mile. A square of nine blocks was made to constitute a "ward"--now the city has twenty-four-presided over by a bishop of the church. Despite his title, he was more a temporal than a spiritual head, deciding all small matters in dispute in those simple first days when there was no appeal, nor desire for one, from ecclesiastical decisions to civil judgment. Even yet, this ward classification enters largely into the social constitution of the city.

When the streets and wards had been determined each pioneer was given an acre and a quarter as a town lot, and as much outside land as he could occupy. This accounts in a great measure for the ample space and farm-like appearance of the grounds around most of the houses in this widely dispersed city.

To make this real estate of value, however, water for irrigation must be brought to it. This was supplied by the "City" creek flowing down from Emigration cañon, whose current was led into ditches all over the new colony, and still fills the roadside gutters with sparkling streams, nourishing many gardens, and the roots of the long lines of varied shade trees, whose boughs almost reach over the thoroughfares. All the brethren worked in common at this ditching, and it was done so soon that within a few days after their arrival seeds had been put in the ground for the first crop.

"Yes," says the Madame, as I relate this history, "and they say that old Jim Bridger watched them cynically and said they were a pack of--well, no matter what kind of fools, and that he would give a thousand dollars for the first ear of corn raised there."

"That's said to be true," I assent.

"But he had to acknowledge the corn," Chum puts in--and flees!

Formerly this water alone was available for domestic purposes and drinking, as well as for irrigation, and even yet the poorer part of the population dip it up at the curbstone for daily service. But the introduction of pipes and hydrants has now superseded this old way, though the water is no better; for table use, therefore, the sweet pure beverage drawn from very deep wells is preferred. Experiments are making in this respect to artesian wells also.

The houses built by the first settlers were mainly log cabins, and some relics are still to be found hidden away in blossoming orchards. The Spanish-American _adobe_ house was also a favorite, and has continued so to the present, though instead of almost shapeless chunks of mud, plastered in Mexican fashion, regular unburnt bricks are made by machinery. These _adobes_ are twice the size of ordinary bricks, and the wall into which they are formed is made twice as thick as one of burned bricks would be. Of course this material lends itself to any style of architecture, and many of the elaborate buildings, as well as cheap cottages, are made of it, the soft gray tint of the natural _adobe_, or the gentle tone of some overlying stucco harmonizing most tastefully with the crowding greenery. Low houses, with abundant piazzas and many nondescript additions, are the most common type in the older part of the town; and over these so many vines are trained, and so much foliage clusters, that one can hardly say of what material the structure itself is formed. The residences recently built have a more eastern and conventional aspect, and some are very imposing; but, big or little, old or new, it is rare to find a house not ensconced in trees and shrubs and climbing plants, while, smooth, rich, well-shaven lawns greet the eye everywhere in town, in brilliant contrast to the bleak hills towering overhead just without the city. As for flowers, no town east or west cultivates them more universally and assiduously.

"There are no florists here," says the Madame.

"And no need for any--each man has his own plants if not the luxury of a greenhouse."

Salt Lake City, then, is beautiful--a paradise in comparison with the buffalo plains or the stony gulches in which the majority of Rocky Mountain towns must needs be set. Nor is there any question as to the fact that this is wholly to the credit of the Mormons--not because they were Mormons, but because they were diligent and foresighted, and came hither not to make a fortune and escape, but to stay and build up pleasant homes and a prosperous commonwealth. Any other set of men might have done the same; but certainly no other set of men _did_, for to no others was presented the same compelling motive.

The suburbs--except toward the rocky uplands northward--grade off quite imperceptibly, the streets continuing straight out into country roads between dense jungles of sunflowers,--glorious walls of gold, and green; and in these suburbs you may find some of the queerest, most idyllic cottages.

The two broad distinctions of "Mormon" and "Gentile," are not enough to represent the elements of Salt Lake society. At least three divisions ought to be counted. First, the Latter-day Saints; second, the seceders from the Mormon Church; third, the Gentiles--respectable people, mostly attendants at Christian churches.

"Such a classification must make queer comrades," remarks Chum, as we sit talking over these matters.

"I should say so," I reply, "the Jew becomes a Gentile, and the Roman Catholic becomes a Protestant, making common cause with Calvinism against the hierarchy of the Temple."

"I do not suppose," the Madame observes, "that they can sink their own little differences, although allied in one fight; so that society must necessarily be divided into a lot of little groups, and thus lose a great deal."

"Yes, the people who profess no religious adherence have rather the easiest time of it in Salt Lake, I believe."

The non-Mormon part of the citizens probably enjoy themselves more than they would if the isolation of the locality did not compel them to be self-centered and contrive their own amusements to a great extent. It is a society made up of the families of successful merchants and mining men, of clergymen and teachers, of the officers of the army stationed at Camp Douglass, and the representatives of the government in the judicial and other territorial offices. This composition, it will be seen, presupposes considerable intelligence and cultivation. It was not until Gentile gold came in to break up the old custom of barter, that the resources of the Mormon community became really available either to themselves or to others.

Utah has always been pre-eminently an agricultural district. Out of her one hundred and fifty thousand people probably one hundred and twenty thousand are now farming or stock-raising in some capacity or other. When you look down the valley from the city, your eye takes in a wide view of fields, orchards and meadows, green with the most luxuriant growth, and marked off by rows of stately trees or patches of young woodland. All these farms are small holdings, and though cultivated by no means scientifically, have long produced well up to their several capacities.

The exports of all sorts of grain, produce and fruit are large, and increasing, thanks to this new railway of ours and its encouraging rates of freight.

The Mormon leaders, and particularly Brigham Young, at first opposed any attempt at a development of the mineral resources of the territory, though the latter is said to have been well informed of their character and value. He forbade all mining to his people, and would have closed the mountains to Gentile prospectors if he had been able. So far as a desire existed to avoid the evils of a placer-working excitement, drawing hither a horde of gold-seekers, this course was a wise one; but as years went on, it was seen by the shrewder heads among the Mormons themselves that this abstinence from mining was harmful. There was no cash in the treasury, and none to be got (I am speaking of early days). If a surplus of grain was raised, or more of any sort of goods manufactured than could be used at home, there was no sale for them, since at that time, the market was so far away that the profits would all be lost in the expense of transportation.

It is funny to hear the tales of those days. Business was almost wholly by barter, and payments for everything had to be made by exchange. A man who took his family to the theatre wheeled his admission fee with him in the shape of a barrel or two of potatoes, and a young man would go to a dance with his girl on one arm and a bunch of turnips on the other with which to buy his ticket. Gentile emigrants and settlers soon began to bring in coin, but the relief was gradual and inadequate.

Finally, about fifteen years ago, it was publicly argued by more liberal minds that the only things Utah had which she could send out against competition were gold and silver. When, from preaching they began to practice, and enterprising men encouraged outside capital to join them in developing silver ledges in the Wasatch and Oquirrh ranges, then Salt Lake City began to rouse herself. Potatoes and carrots and adobes disappeared as currency, and coin and greenbacks enlivened trade which more and more conformed to the ordinary methods of American commerce.

One quite legitimate means taken for centralizing of trade was the establishment, twenty-five years ago, of Zion's Coöperative Mercantile Institution. In the early days it was extremely difficult for country shopkeepers to maintain supplies when everything had to be hauled by teams from the Missouri river, and the most extortionate prices would be demanded for staples, whenever, as frequently happened, a petty dealer would get a "corner" on some article. A few great fortunes were quickly made, but a stop was put to this by setting on foot the coöperative establishment, which was imitated in a small way in many rural settlements.

The design of this institution was to furnish goods of every sort known to merchants out of one central depot in Salt Lake City under control of the Church and partly owned by it. This was a joint-stock "coöperative" affair, however, and the capital was nearly a million dollars. The people were advised from the pulpit to trade there, but they would have done so anyhow, for the "Coöp," as they called it, was able to reduce and equalize prices very greatly. Branches were established in Ogden, Logan, Soda Springs, and lately a warehouse built in Provo. These and other additions were rapid. The central salesrooms in this city now occupy a four-story brick building, three hundred and eighteen feet long by ninety-seven wide, where every species of merchandise is to be found. In other quarters are a drugstore, a shoe factory (supplied by its own tanneries and running one hundred and twenty-five machines propelled by steam), and a factory for making canvas "overall" clothing. Altogether about two hundred and fifty persons are employed, working reasonable hours and for reasonable wages. The stock, which originally was widely scattered, has been concentrated for the most part in the hands of a few astute men, who are credited with large profits. There is an air of great prosperity about the institution, whose business is stated to reach five million dollars annually, derived almost wholly from Utah.

Though this concern had a practical monopoly at first, as soon as the railways came to Salt Lake, individual merchants could sell goods about as cheap, and opposition to it arose.

Religious competition has arisen. Among the first of these local Protestants was a mission of the Roman Catholics. Now they have a considerable colony here and in Ogden. The St. Mary's Academy, in charge of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, has a large building, beautiful grounds, and the reputation of being a first-class higher school for girls. There is a school for little boys in the same enclosure. The boarders at the Academy amount to about one hundred annually, and the day scholars to one hundred and fifty. The Sisters of the Holy Cross also have charge of a large and finely-conducted hospital in the eastern part of the city.

Another hospital is the St. Marks, supported partly by monthly dues from miners, and otherwise by special contributions. This is in charge of the Episcopal Church, which has been active in Utah for many years under the guidance of Bishop Tuttle. St. Mark's School, belonging to the local church organization, had three hundred and thirty pupils during its last term. The Methodist Episcopal denomination, also, has churches scattered about the territory and schools in Salt Lake City, among the rest night schools for Chinamen, who are an important element of the population. The Presbyterian Church has set up here a Collegiate Institute, owning property worth about seventy-five thousand dollars and giving instruction to about two hundred pupils, from the primary to a high-school grade. This is unsectarian, as, I suppose, are all the rest so far as any active religious pressure is brought to bear. The most exclusive school, probably, is that sustained by the Hebrew Society. As in other western towns the Jews are in large force in Salt Lake City, their characteristic names occurring on many a signboard.

The Mormons themselves sustain a system of public schools, in which, in addition to the usual branches, the tenets of their faith are taught. These schools are well conducted and will compare favorably with those in any city the same size.

Salt Lake City is a great center of wholesale trade in provisions and textile fabrics not only, but in machinery and mining supplies. She has smelters; a lead-paint factory; foundries and boiler works; sampling-mills handling two hundred tons of ore a day, brought from far and near; breweries, carriage and furniture shops; and all sorts of small factories. Traction engines and locomotives, if not wholly built there, are reconstructed; and complicated machinery of other sorts is manufactured. Her salt business, now that a liberal minded railway has come to her relief, is likely to become of the greatest importance, which will be a benefit to her, not only, but to all the smelters and chlorodization works in the Rocky Mountain region.

The city grows rapidly and becomes daily more cultivated and beautiful, and less _outre_. Every appliance of civilization is utilized, and she has the best hotels by far between Denver and San Francisco--some think even better than either, but that is an extravagant estimate. Statistics show that six hundred new houses were built, five hundred and seventy-four of them dwellings, at a cost of $1,636,500. By the time the next census is taken, in 1890, she may contain fifty thousand inhabitants. The Madame and I thought we would rather make our home in Salt Lake than in any town west of the Plains; but Chum cast his vote in favor of Denver.