--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Young, Levi Edgar collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 13 number: 11 published: 1910-09 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Young, Levi Edgar, “The Colonizers of Utah,” *Improvement Era* 13, no. 11 (September 1910): 963–973." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13011unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera13011unse start_page: 963 end_page: 973 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1910-09) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13011unse publication_year: 1910 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1910, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Colonizers of Utah IMPROVEMENT ERA. Vol. XIII. SEPTEMBER, 1910. No. 11 The Colonizers of Utah. BY LEVI EDGAR YOUNG, B. S., OF THE UNIVERSITY OP UTAH. [The author has kindly permitted the Era to print this introductory chapter of his forthcoming History of Education in Utah, a work of exceptional merit, the manuscript of which is completed, and will soon be issued in book form. — Editors.] Come, my tan-faced children, Follow well in order, get your weapons ready; Have you your pistols? have you your sharp-edged axes? Pioneers! 0 pioneers! For we cannot tarry here, We must march, my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger, We, the youthful, sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! 0 you youths, western youths! So impatient, full of action, full of manly pride and friendship, Plain I see you, western youths, see you tramping with the foremost, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! All the past we leave behind; We debauch upon a newer, mightier world, varied world: Fresh and strong the world we seize, world of labor and the march, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! 964 IMPROVEMENT ERA. We detatchments steady throwing, Down the edges, through the passes, up the mountain steep, Conquering, holding, daring, venturing, as we go the unknown ways, Pioneers! 0 Pioneers! 0 you daughters of the West! 0 you young and elder daughters! 0 you mothers and you wives! Never must you be divided, in your ranks you move united, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! Has the night descended? Was the road of late so toilsome? Did we stop discouraged, nodding on our way? Yet a passing hour I yield you, in your tracks to pause oblivious, Pioneers! 0 pioneers! Till with sound of trumpet, Far, far off the day-break call. Hark! How loud and clear I hear it wind; Swift, to the head of the army! Swift, spring to your places! Pioneers! 0 pioneers! — Walt Whitman. The colonizers of Utah were sturdy frontiersmen, born and bred in the school of experience. Wilderness breakers of a high type, they built their homes on the frontier, where a wild sur- rounding country forced them to a primitive type of living. Til- lers of the soil, they had learned the law of adaptability, enabling them in time to turn the gray sage-brush desert into private gar- dens. Descendants of the Puritans and Quakers, their forefathers had helped Oliver Cromwell establish law and liberty in England. They had inherited the honest and God-fearing characteristics of the Teuton, and to these traits were added still stronger race con- stituents, because of their long life in the world of mental and muscular activity. Their fathers had fought and suffered in those wars that had firmly established our independence, and true to their instincts, they lost their feelings of sectionalism and isola- tion, and gave their allegiance first and always to the government of the United States. Their nationalistic spirit is shown in the words of Brigham Young, delivered to the people at the celebra- tion held in Salt Lake City, July 4, 1856, in honor of Independence THE COLONIZERS OF UTAH. 965 Day. After the reading of the Constitution of the United States, Governor Young said: Eighty years ago, on the day we now celebrate, our forefathers, few in numbers, but strong in their united love of right, declared to the mother country and to the world that they were, "and of a right ought to be free and independent." The oppression which hastened this declara- tion, the long struggle, the sacrifices and hardships that followed, and the glorious results are so well known, that I need not ask your patience by rehearsing them upon this occasion. . . . Glancing at the past, perhaps we as a people have more reason to respect, honor, love and cher- ish the government of the United States, her Constitution and her free institutions, than any other people on the face of the earth. We are occupying a region well known as being peculiarly desirable, and one hitherto unsettled by the whites. We are almost a thousand miles from the nearest seaport. We are hemmed in by lofty mountains on every side, while numerous isolated ranges, and barren, arid plains so crowd our surface, that but a small portion of it is suited to the purposes of settlement. In even those narrow localities, ditches and canals have to be made by much labor, in order to irrigate soil whereon rain seldom falls from early in spring to late in autumn. And when all has been done that could be, towards supplying the thirsty crops, the husbandman is oft compelled to witness the products of his toil droop and die ere maturity, through the failure of the few small streams, so laboriously brought under control. . . . But amid all these disadvantages we are trying to extend the area of freedom, and to gladden the most unin- viting domain of a great nation with the blessings and privileges of her free institutions. . . . The true principles of a republican form of government can be based only in a high tone and sense of honor; liberal, enlightened, and intelligent and extended views of human existence and progress and a faithful, unyielding, rigid and patriotic adherence to the Constitution and laws of the country. The pioneers of Utah were a community of fixed purpose. Their remoteness from civilization, and their intense love for and devotion to religion, their identity of tasks and dangers, and the primitive life imposed upon them, developed a society of brother- hood and equality. Always optimistic, they had those verile qual- ities which made them win "in the stern strife of actual life." Devout students of the Bible, they took for their guide in all their actions and social life a splendid system of Christian ethics, 966 IMPROVEMENT ERA. it was their deep religious feelings, together with their thriftiness, that made them a strong and fearless people. When the little band of weary pilgrims halted in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, July 24, 1847, the leader, Brigham Young, saw for the first time the difficult problem before them. The land was bleak and sterile, without grace and softness. Bathed always by the sun's hottest rays, the rainfall was limited, making the country an ardent and inanimate picture. Men in search of wealth would never have set- tled upon the shores of the Great Salt Lake. Pioneers go, as a rule, where wealth and plenty hold out an inviting hand, where nature appears to be friendly, and where the earth and sky co-operate for man's advantage. A land of solitude, it was the home of the rattlesnake and the wolf. Wild grass, sage-brush and grease wood covered the valleys and foot hills. Few trees there were, yet the red anemone and violet grew along the streams. The mountains were misty and gloomy, and were cracked by the heat. A few miles to the west, lay the gleaming waters of America's Dead Sea, a mysterious sheet of water, leaden, heavy and almost motionless, but now and then throwing upon its shores driftwood, stripped of all bark, and whitened like bones in a desert waste. But those pioneers of '47 had faith in the soil. Explorers and trappers had passed through the Valley of Great Salt Lake. They saw, however, only a desert. Brigham Young and his people saw the possibilities of the desert. All that was needed was water, and then would the sage-brush land prove of inestimable worth for agriculture. From time immemorial have arid regions been productive of high civilizations. The valleys of Mesopotamia and the Nile have fairly teemed with luxuriant fields of grain, as a result of their wonderful irrigation systems. And in modern times Brigham Young fathered irrigation for the redemption of the arid West. On the morning of the arrival of the "Mormon" party into the Valley of the Great Salt Lake, they planted potatoes, after which they turned the water upon the ground and gave the seed "quite a good soaking." On July 26, the brethren were quite busily employed in wooding their plows, harrows, etc., and in ploughing and planting and doing work in various branches preparatory to farm- ing. The "Mormons" made quick work of the redemption of the soil, THE COLONIZERS OF UTAH. 967 and in a few years thriving settlements were found in all the sur- rounding valleys near Salt Lake City. The people were compelled to turn to the material pursuits of life, and never have a people made greater economic and intellectual strides in so short a time. Said Theodore Roosevelt in the "Mormon" Tabernacle at Salt Lake City, May, 1903: Here in this state the pioneers, and those who came after them, took the land that would not ordinarily be chosen as a land that would yield returns for little effort. You took a territory which at the outset was called after the desert, and you literally — not figuratively— you lit- erally made the wilderness blossom as the rose. The fundamental ele- ment in building up Utah has been the work of the citizens of Utah. And you did it because your people entered in to possess the land, and to leave it after them to their children and to their children's children. You here, whom I am addressing, and your predecessors, did not come here to exploit the land and then go somewhere else. You came in, as the governor of the state has said, as home makers, to make homes for your- selves and for those who should come after you. And this is the only way in which a state can be built up. And I say to all of you, and all of your people, from one ocean to another, especially the people of the arid and semi-arid regions, the people of the great plains, the people of the mountains, approach the problem of taking care of the physical resources of the country in the spirit that has made Utah what it is. By 1850, some fifteen thousand souls had made their way across the plains and had settled in the valleys of Utah. The peo- ple had been steadily working, and from the epistles issued from time to time by the presidency of the "Mormon" Church, we glean the following statements, that show what the people were doing. In the fourth general epistle, issued at the close of the year 1850, we read: On the twelfth day of May, peach trees of two years' growth were in bloom; and several trees of the same age in different parts of the valley alternately bloomed until the 29th, when currants, beans, peas, etc., put forth their blossoms, and nature smiled with prospects of early fruits. But on the 7th of June, the snow fell freely in the surrounding mountains, followed by a severe frost on the 18th, and a slight one on the 19th, which injured the vines and tender plants. Yet we feel con fident that this valley will yet produce the choicest fruits, as it does 968 IMPROVEMENT ERA. now the richest vegetables. . . . The weather has been more cloudy, the nightslwarmer, and the showers more frequent in the heat of summer, and vegetation more rapid this season than hitherto, conse- quently artificial irrigation has been less needed, which has been a great blessing; for during the irrigating season there were not men enough in the valley to water the immense fields of grain, had it been as dry as some previous seasons. The crops have been abundant in all the settlements of Deseret this season. Many of the inhabitants of the city are leaving their good homes this fall, and taking up land in the country, preparatory for extensive farming operations, and many who are now arriving in their midst are gathering in companies of tens, twenties and fifties to act in concert in preparing to feed the friends we are calling home. Our state house is enclosed; the walls are nearly ready for plaster- ing, and we have no doubt that the several departments will be ready for their several uses — the sitting of the General Assembly; the High School rooms; the printing office, and tithing, post and recording office — the coming winter. There are several extensive store houses completed, and near com- pletion, in our city, and goods sufficient in quality and variety, with the exception of groceries, for the necessities of the people for another season. We anticipate some relief in the sugar market next season, from the culture of sugar beets and its manufacture, but this can make but little impression the first year, as we are not informed of more than one or two bushels of the genuine sugar beet seed in the valley; though we know of no country where a greater quantity of saccharine matter is pro- duced in vegetation than this. Many scores of emigrants are arriving in the valley, and have wit- nessed our location, peace, union and prosperity, and though not profess- ing to believe the doctrines of Christ, are making their way home as fast as possible, to bring their families hither where they can enjoy health in a land of civil and religious liberty, and where they find themselves free to do right. Preparations are made for the establishment of a Parent School for qualifying teachers for primary and infant schools throughout the state; for enclosing the university lands, a plot of about six hundred acres, directly east of the city; and for everything else which may tend to fa- cilitate the improvement of the old and the young alike, in the knowledge of the arts and sciences, and general intelligence. One can see that the Utah pioneers were a thrifty people. THE COLONIZERS OF UTAH. 969 They put every effort forward to establish homes and cities, schools and public institutions, that would equal the best in the land. They built roads and bridges, they established stage lines and mail routes from city to city, and town to town. They planted gardens and fields of wheat, and carried with them where- ever they went the Anglo-Saxon love for law and order. In fifty years the wilderness had been reduced, and Utah was one of the foremost states of the Union, economically and intellectually. Machinery, steam and electricity, together with the directing force of a thrifty people have made Utah what it is today. The industrial history of Utah alone is one of the most phe- nomenal in history. It was here in the mountain fastnesses where men were taught to hew out their own careers, and to develop inventiveness and resourcefulness. "The restraints of custom were broken, and new lines of growth and new institu- tions were produced." The people became western, and it is the West that has emphasized the worth and power of the common man. It took man and made him over. It created new ideals. It gave him new and weighty problems to solve, and it taught him the fundamental law of democracy. He became nationalistic and democratic to the core. "The West admired a self-made man, and was ready to follow its hero with the enthusiasm of a section more responsive to personality than to the program of trained states- men. The West was a self-confident section, believing in its rights to share in government, and troubled by no doubts of its capacity to rule/' — Frederick J. Turner. The soil was looked to first, and Utah prides herself that from the beginning her chief industry has been agriculture. The tilling of the soil is the highest safe-guard to all government and civil- ization, and unlike the miners of Nevada and California, the set- tlers of Utah turned to the raising of wheat and potatoes, and the conquering of the soil and the elements. Their religion was expressed in the hardest kind of toil, for the rainfall of the Great Desert was only about ten inches a year, and the sage-brush waste was indeed discouraging. But their hope was in keeping with their dreams, and they were a thrifty people. The "Mormon" pioneer understood better than any one else that the secret of all life in its best is to lay a secure and solid foundation. Brigham 970 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Young directed the settling not only of the city of Salt Lake but of all the cities and towns of the State, and as a consequence there was set up the typical Teutonic township form of government throughout the state, that form of government which the Puri- tans brought to the shores of America and made it at the begin- ning the unit of government in the United States. Wherever one finds the Teutonic township developed one will always find the highest and most democratic form of government on the face of the globe. Brigham Young was a typical New Englander, and he naturally had a knowledge of Puritan institutions. His village system was a type of the best in America. Every town was systematically laid out, with broad streets and walks, and on each side a stream of water and an avenue of trees. They were very picturesque, these Utah villages, in time. The houses of the peo- ple stood back from the street some few rods, and the people lived side by side in the pure democratic way of olden times. This system, as Mr. John Fiske pointed out, implies an abundance of land, and the head of each family owns a home. There was no social nor political distinction. In the house there was no domestic service that was not performed by the mother and daughters, and on the outside, the owner had workmen, but they were in no sense looked upon as an unprivileged class. There was a universality of manual labor. The people were all poor, it is true, but as they acquired worldly goods, they acquired cul- ture. In the centre of the town was built the meetinghouse, which was used for Sunday school and meetings on the Sabbath day, and for the day school during the next five days of the week. Here all the people met in town meetings to discuss questions pertaining to the town — the moral, the agricultural, the political, the social conditions, all were talked over freely, and those laws and systems adopted that would be for the best good of all con- cerned. These villages have grown into the cities of Utah. In the "Mormon" families the old system remains. The mother and daughters work in the house. There is no privileged class. The father takes part in the affairs of the outside world. His children read and write, there is a piano in the parlor, the Atlantic Monthly on the table, and the girl who bakes bread in the morning, sings Schubert or plays Beethoven in the afternoon. In the days when LEVI EDGAR YOUNG. Levi Edgar Young was chosen one of the First Council of Seventy to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Elder George Reynolds. Elder Young was educated at the University of Utah, and at Harvard and Columbia universities, and has spent three years in Eurooe, where he presided over the Swiss and Austrian Mission. 972 IMPROVEMENT ERA. the pioneers settled the State, everyone was urged to live his best self. The Bible was found in every home, and a deep religious sense, combined with freedom of thought, was developed. The pioneers of Utah had high ideals. They did not attempt a small task. They plunged boldly into a great work, keeping thought with England's poet: Oh, if we drew a circle premature, Heedless of far gain, Greedy for quick returns of profit, sure Bad is our bargain! Was it not great? did not he throw on God (He loves the brethren) — God's task to make the heavenly period Perfect the earthen ? Did not he magnify the mind, show clear Just what it all meant? He would not discount life, as fools do here, Paid by instalment. He ventured neck or nothing — heaven's success Found, or earth's failure: "Wilt thou trust death or not?" He answered, "Yes! Hence with life's pale lure!" That low man seeks a little thing to do, Sees it and does it: This high man, with a great thing to pursue, Dies ere he knows it. That low man goes on adding one to one His hundred's soon hit: The high man, aiming at a million, Misses an unit. The ' 'Mormons" settled in a land where the materials had to be loved, "but while loving the material, they conquered it, mas- tered it, made it of worth to the higher self." In Maeterlink's Kingdom of Matter he tells us that man will rise from a knowledge of matter to the life of spirit, the life of highest love. The foundation of Utah's development is laid deep and secure. It began with the kingdom of matter in all its grandeur, it will end in "the highest of love." Utah was settled by the kind of people that make history. THE COLONIZERS OF UTAH. 973 They were of the kind that Emerson designates as real characters, men of real worth. Theirs was the faith, Taught by no priest, but by their beating hearts: Faith to each other: the fidelity Of fellow-wanderers in a desert place, Who share the same dire thirst, and therefore share The scanty water: the fidelity Of men whose pulses leap with kindred fire, Who in the flash of eyes, the clasp of hands, The speech that even in lying tells the truth Of heritage inevitable as past deeds. May, in the silent, bodily presence feel The mystic stirring of a common life Which makes the many one. Honesty at a Premium. Each of us should examine himself carefully and make sure that he is following a course in life that will withstand the most severe investigation. Just as few mistakes as possible, on our part, should be permitted that would tend to weaken the con- fidence of our fellows. Let it be kept in mind that the commercial manager of today is diligently seeking for the man in whom he can have the greatest trust and confidence. The average business man of today is perfectly willing to reward honesty and integrity, which in results are synonymous. So, if a young man wishes to command a good salary, it will be neccessary for him to look carefully after his character, making sure that he is honest, not only with him- self, but with his associates. The principle of honesty is of greater importance than is often surmised, insuring, as it does, our own best good, and the results that go to make us men of worth. To practice dishonesty brings into our lives trouble, doubt and discontent. A clear conscience, void of offense, is one of the greatest blessings that can be enjoyed by man. So, boys, let us remember this, "Be honest, and so be happy." P. M. Shafer. Moab, Utah.