Brigham Young and the United Order

Brigham Young and the United Order By Susa Young Gates

Saints of mature age are fairly familiar with the inspired efforts put forth by President Brigham Young in the late "60's" and early "70's" to establish cooperative enterprises, looking to the final achievement of the "United Order," or the "Order of Enoch." No doubt he hoped to rally the people around the standard of unselfish devotion to a cause, so that the common problems of daily life might be met in a common council and solved practically, as a whole, rather than by each individual member alone and ungiiided. Up and down the territory he went preaching the "United Order," urging the people to form close-knit community enterprises, and in some places, such as Orderville, near Kanab, and Brigham City, great success attended this movement. But little was known, however, of the details in management, and there was considerable confusion as a result because of that lack of experience. We read now-a-days of the efforts being put forth to establish what are called "community kitchens and centers;" not alone those teaching "centers" now starting up all over this country, but the recent definite food control in England, now placed under the auspices of the government itself are also reminders of the many truths revealed by the Prophet Joseph Smith, which have been only partially accepted by this people; these same truths seem to have passed out into the world by a natural psychic process and are being adopted by the children of the world who are always "wiser in their generation than the children of light." Then after it all, these truths return to us and are accepted as remarkable, up-to-date and newly discovered facts and ideas. Sir C. F. Spencer has been appointed by the British government to establish communal cooking on a gigantic scale. We are told that, "Public baths and park buildings will be turned into kitchens, and town halls into dining halls; street cars and omnibuses will carry the finished product to thousands of small distributing stations. Varied meals will be provided for everybody at the lowest possible price, and there will even be special meals at invalid kitchens for those who need them. "We shall, for one thing, place within the reach of the working classes wholesome food instead of makeshift meals. We shall eliminate or minimize their difficulties in buying, and shall release many women from the arduousness of domestic life to

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do work of national importance. We expect that the scheme will be a means of allaying, at least partially, some of the prevalent discomforts and discontent. "Individual cooking at individual homes is waste of labor, health and material. When you take a thousand homes with a thousand fires and consider the waste of fuel, the multiplicity of operations, and the enormous waste, you must agree that if this could be concentrated in one huge kitchen, and a few stoves and some electric apparatus could do the whole, it would be a saving. "The national kitchens will be worked by the local authorities and an order giving a formal start to the scheme will be issued at once. The government will provide 25 per cent of the initial outlay free, and 25 per cent more in the form of a loan; the remaining 50 per cent will be raised by the local authorities. "The basic scheme which we are suggesting is that of a central station with distributing depots. Food will be passed out to consumers only on tickets, so that their portions may be properly checked up against their regular food cards. Supplies will thus be strictly rationed." This talk is so strongly reminiscent of President Young that one would think the eminent Englishman had been studying his suggestions. We who knew President Young received these same thoughts and even words from his lips, times without number. Our present beloved leader, President Joseph F. Smith, was appointed by President Young to organize the united order in Davis county in those early days. Coming down to the President's office for detailed instruction the young apostle spent a long afternoon in conversation with his pioneer leader. President Young told him that it would be impossible, under the existing laws of the United States government and with the persistent selfishness of men, to establish the Order of Enoch fully at that time. Rather should his attention be turned to grouping into one central organization various small enterprises. Where a county had four grist mills, each struggling with small patronage and fighting others for a chance to exist, all should be united under a joint board, and thus combine resources and machinery into one profitable, wisely-conducted enterprise. The same applies to machinery, so said President Young, which is used for farms; if farmers would unite in purchasing necessary machinery, and cooperate in the use thereof, there would be a great saving of time and means in that way. Domes- tic labors could be regulated in the same efficient manner, and thus relieve the people from debt, unnecessary labor, and the strain of keen rivalry and business opposition.

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President Smith's own comments on this order are illumin- ating. He said recently: "The Order of Enoch is not a com- munistic order after the manner of men, but a united order in which each man will be his own free agent. God will hold each man accountable for the use he makes of his stewarship and he will be rewarded according to the account which he renders. The Lord's plan is a righteous plan, yet the wise steward who is willing and industrious should not be made to sacrifice his time and substance to support the idle and shiftless." President Young, upon this last point, said in the St. George temple, in one of his discourses at the spring dedication of that temple, April, 1877, that the order did not contemplate turning all the means gathered by the prudent into a common fund for equal division. Said he: "If we were to divide our substance now equally amongst this people, we would have to do it all over again in a year from now, for the thrifty and careful would have a surplus, while the extravagant and shiftless would be without hope and in debt. For," he added half jocularly, "you know there are the Lord's poor, and the devil's poor, and the poor devils, and we have a few of all three in this Church." President Brigham Young was a great and inspired leader. In no one particular did he manifest his leadership more admirably than in the foundation which he laid in his own family, in the State, and in the Church, for the establishment of unselfishness in the daily adjustment of man's relation with man, and, therefore, with his God.

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