Tithing: A Young Man’s Experience

TITHING-A YOUNG MAN'S EXPERIENCE. BY ELDER DANIEL CONNELLY. I am a Scotchman by birth. I left Glasgow in the spring of 1893, and desire to tell, through the columns of our splendid Era, a little of my experience for the benefit of the young men. My young wife, one baby and I came to Salt Lake City with two hundred and seventy-five dollars, to begin life in Zion's capital. Renting a two-roomed house in the city, we furnished it very plainly. I set about to hunt work. It took me four weeks to find a job in a small foundry, where I worked for ten days at $1.75 per day. Then I was again on a hunt for work, which lasted five days. I obtained a job with Silver Bros., which lasted twelve days. Then began a weary, almost daily, dispiriting trudge for over three months of trying earnestly to find employment. Neither my wife nor I had a single relative in America to whom we could appeal for help over our difficulties. We had duly presented our certificates of membership to the Nineteenth Ward, and had attended meetings several times; but with the pride characteristic of the Scotch people, we never let our circumstances be known, content rather to bear and suffer, if necessary, in grim silence. Through the good offices of a friend, I was employed for over four months at the usual laborer's wages in a small foundry; but the ensuing winter, with the exception of three weeks' work with Summerhays, I had to pass in idleness. When Spring came, I got seven days work with the Salt Lake Gas Co. After a month's weary seeking, I obtained the unloading of several cars of coal, and with the few dollars thus earned, we stood off the gaunt wolf of hunger a little longer. It would be a task beyond my powers

TITHING— A YOUNG MANS EXPERIENCE. 773 of description to adequately tell you of my feelings at this time. I am only a poor working man of limited education, and am only telling you a very simple, unpolished, yet truthful, story, I had now been in the country fourteen months, had worn out four or five pairs of shoes, looking for something to do, which something had brought me the sum of $125. With the little we had left after furnishing the rooms we had rented, this was all we had to exist on since our arrival. Was Zion a land of Zion to me? Nay, but the very reverse. "Sweet are the uses of adversity," and the consideration I was giving our condition was helping me to realize the truth of this, as I began seriously to think wherein I had been remiss in thus having to go through the deep and troubled waters of adversity. I remember resting under the shade of some trees, one hot summer day, after a walk of several miles along hot, dusty roads in a fruitless search after work, when with many a gloomy recollection and a sobbing, choking sensation in my throat, I began to mentally pray to my Heavenly Father for help, and that he would open my way so that I might get employment, that my family might no longer feel the keen and bitter sting of poverty. I there and then promised that should he bring me into the "quiet waters" of prosperity, I would assuredly give him back a tenth of all he blessed me with. I arose with a new-born consciousness that God had heard my brokenhearted prayer, and I waited, nothing doubting, for the answer. About a week after this, I divided the last five dollars we had with my wife, and leaving her still on a sick bed, for our second child was only seven days old, I again sought work. Imagine my feelings in these circumstances. My wife had left home and kindred far away in bonnie Scotland. She came out to Zion with me out of her love for the Gospel, and had uncomplainingly endured with me the biting pinch of poverty, and had felt that sense of utter woe and loneliness that is the invariable accompaniment of an empty purse in a strange land. Here I was deliberately leaving her, sick as she was, and with only two dollars and forty cents between her and actual want. Well, I can't begin to tell you all I felt, but I do hope, my young brethren, that the tender cords of your being may never be wrung as mine were, at that time.

774 IMPROVEMENT ERA. But, painful or not, I had to get out, and so taking three dollars and fifty cents to pay my railroad fare, I went to one of the mining camps of Tintic. The day after reaching there, I found work in one of the famous mines of Eureka. From my first pay of seventeen shifts, I paid my tithing. I think I had only worked seven weeks, when, owing to the slump in silver, the mine shut down, and again I was on the hunt for a job, which was rather a damper to my tithe-paying determination. I kept my promise, however, and duly paid my tenth. Six weeks after, the mine started up and I received my job again. From that day to this, over seven years since, I have never been without work a single day. I got into the blacksmith shop as helper, with a raise of wages to $2.50; after about eighteen months' service as a helper, I got to the tool fire, with a wage of $2.90; and some time after was promoted to the head fire, with a wage of $3.50. I bought a little home in Pleasant Grove, to which I moved my family. One year more, and I bought twenty acres of land, near this place. Some time after, I purchased a home in Eureka, to which I moved my family. Since then we have bought and paid for other two houses, which we rent, and find profitable; and, best of all, we owe not any man one cent. Think you I could, in the face of these most abundant and manifest blessings, deny the truth and power of the principle of tithing? Think you I could have anything but the most grateful sense of my Father's goodness to those who obey his laws? Or think you I could be so derelict in my duty, as not to tell you of these facts, for your encouragement? Now, when our beloved President has declared again to us the word of the Lord on this matter, I desire to add my humble testimony to his. I fancy some of my young friends say, "Well, now, I must admit that this is all very good. You certainly have prospered, for a common working man, so far as the temporalities of this life are concerned; but what about the more important matters pertaining to your spiritual welfare and progress? You know that the servants of the Lord, right in this day, claim that an observance of this law is the key to spiritual advancement and progress, as well as to temporal prosperity, and here you have been enthusing us on how good and kind Providence has been to you in

TITHING— A YOUNG MANS EXPERIENCE. 775 the temporalities — 'what ye shall eat and the wherewithal ye shall be clothed and sheltered, and forgetting the more weighty and worthy things of the Kingdom,' " Well, not so fast, my young friends. It would take a great deal more space to tell you of the rich abundance of spiritual "meats," the growth of the feast of wisdom and joy of the soul which I have enjoyed, than this meagre account I have given you of my temporal progress. I know our editors will not allow that, but I will tell you, in a few sentences, of two facts that have occurred in the time covered by this narrative, and then leave you to fill in, out of the knowledge you have of conditions as they exist in most of the wards in the stakes of Zion, the events that mark our spiritual progress and advancement. I will leave out of the count the eighteen months of our connection with the Nineteenth Ward in Salt Lake City, as I paid no tithing during that time, was taken but little notice of, and made no progress. But I joined the Eureka ward, as plain Elder Daniel Connelly, under which title I begun this article, unknown and with no influence, subdued and poverty-stricken, having to win my way into the hearts, esteem, affection and love of the people. I say again, my young brethren, consider all the progress that is implied and gained, when I now conclude this simple, plain narration of experience as a tithing payer, and sign myself. Your brother in the Kingdom, Bishop Daniel Connelly.