The Long Look Ahead

THE LONG LOOK AHEAD A Significant Episode in Early Utah History By Ira N. Hayward "One of the things at which I marvel most is; the seership, the long look ahead, of the makers of Utah." The speaker, Dr. E. C. Branson, Professor of Rural Economics at the University of North Carolina, was lecturing to his class at the U. A. C. National Summer school in 1923. He was discussing the foundations of a sound rural economic system, which, he said, depends primarily upon the character of the people; upon their possessing the basic cooperative virtues, chief of which is the quality of sagacity. "I have just been reading Bancroft's account! of the 'gold fever' days in the early history of your state," he continued, "and I stand amazed at the far-seeing vision that enabled Brigham Young to weather that crisis. It was a significant example of the basic quality of sagacity: sense — plus the long look ahead." This statement calls to mind an incident that should be written on the heart of every school child in the state of Utah; an example of that quality of statesmanship which is compelling the admiration of impartial historians everywhere for the great pioneer leader of the 'Mormon' commonwealth. The Winter of 1848-9 was a veritable "starving time" for the little band of Saints. The previous Summer they had harvested barely half a crop of grain because of the ravages of the cricket plague. All through the winter the scanty store of flour was rationed to the people. Wild roots and herbs were drawn upon to supplement the scanty larder, and many a child, now grown to manhood or womanhood, recalls with pain the long weary months when no one really knew what it was to feel completely free from the pangs of hunger. It was just at this crisis that word came of the fabulous El Dorado to the west. The "Argonauts of '49" were on the trek. All Summer long their great caravans came streaming into the valley, and in their eagerness to reach the "diggings," men offered their outfits to the Saints at fabulously low prices in exchange for lighter equipment that would impede them less in their rush. I9 it to be wondered at that in this situation some of the Saints, too, should have become afflicted with "gold fever?" Here were people from the richest part of the country, from far-away New England, and even from Europe, who had staked everything on the prospect of striking it rich over night on the gravel bars of California rivers. With no more equipment than a pick, a shovel, and a washing pan, they heard that men were washing out fortunes in a few weeks of labor. And all this wealth lay almost at their doors. Inured as they were to hardship, the journey to the gold-fields would have held few terrors for them.

THE LONG LOOK AHEAD 853 Around them stretched the harsh forbidding hills of the "Great American Desert," sere and fallow from the withering drought of centuries. Even to wring a bare sustenance from them meant years of back-breaking toil. And just beyond the western hills was gold, the magic wand that would transform the future into a rosy dream! What wonder that many looked with longing upon such a venture? But just at this moment of uncertainty came the voice of their leader, calling them back to the grim, hard path of duty; rebuking them for their disposition to look back, having once set hand to the plow. Said President Young: "I hope that the gold mines will be no nearer than eight hundred miles. * * * There is more delusion, and the people are more perfectly crazy on this continent than ever before. * * * I advise the corrupt, and all who want, to go to California, and not come back, for I will not fellowship them." In a general epistle, dated October 12, 1849, the Quorum of Twelve counseled as follows: "When the Saints shall have preached the gospel, raised grain and built up cities enough, the Lord will open a way for a supply of gold to the perfect satisfaction of his people. Until then, let them not be over- anxious, for the treasures of the earth are in the Lord's storehouse and he will open the doors thereof when and where he pleases." It was a clarion call; unmistakably the voice of "one having authority." It left no room for doubt as to the earnestness of purpose thai had dominated the hearts of the leaders when they set their faces westward after their exodus from Nauvoo. Moreover it served definite notice upon the faint-hearted that there was yet time for them to turn back if they felt themselves unequal to the tasks before them. One wonders just what was the vision that passed before the eyes of the seer as he uttered the above words. Perhaps he saw the ghost cities that were to line the gulches of California a few years hence; perhaps he saw the sordid scramble in which hundreds lost their lives and thousands their souls, for a few handfuls of yellow metal; perhaps be saw how very few would gain hoped- for wealth and how very many would doom themselves to wander on to their deaths following the lurid will o' wisp of sudden fortune into the gold fields of Idaho, Oregon and Nevada. One thing, we may be sure, he saw with unmistakable clearness, and that was the fact that the noble superstructure of Zion could never be erected upon the shifting sands. It was indeed a "time to try men's souls," and Brigham Young saw that those who resisted the lure would be those to whom he could safely entrust a share in the great project which he foresaw as the building up of a mighty religious commonwealth.

854 IMPROVEMENT ERA For vindication of that judgment and of the superlative wisdom of the leaders who dared to take a fearless stand for sanity in a time of madness, one- needs only to compare today the achievements of those who ignored the warning with the deathless glory of the monument to intelligent industry which those who heeded it have left behind them. "We need intelligent discipleship quite as much as we need efficient leadership," says Branson, and the truth of his statement is borne out fully by this incident. Bancroft records that of the more than twenty-five thousand Saints who were in the Great Basin by 1852, probably not more than six hundred succumbed completely to the gold fever and left fori California — a striking tribute to the regard in which the great majority held their standing in the Church and the judgment of their leaders. It has often been remarked that there is little attraction for the romanticist in the career of the "shoemaker who sticks to his last." Hundreds of books and thousands of feet of film have been devoted to the glorification of the "Argonauts of '49," but it is only in retrospect that we see the heroic glamor of the band whom they left behind them in the drab wastes of the Great Basin. In due time the Lord did "open the way for a supply of gold to the complete satisfaction of his people," but the greatest glory of all is to be seen in the civilization which they built (up. Today, sociologists and economists everywhere are pointing to the "Mormon" communities as the best examples of how the rural problem may be solved. Typical of these is Dr. E. C. Branson, quoted above. Dr. Branson has gained nation-wide recognition for his work as a student of rural problems, both in America and abroad. In the Summer of 1923, he came to the U. A. C. National Summer school and conducted courses in rural sociology and economics, devoting all of his spare time to the study of rural community life in Cache Valley and the surrounding "Mormon" settlements. What he saw filled him with unending delight, and his lectures were interspersed with numerous very earnest tributes to the wisdom that has made these achievements possible. So keen was his interest in Utah and her community life that he accepted a reappointment to the A. C. faculty for the fall quarter of 1925, in order to have an opportunity for further study at first hand. Thus the world is again being forced to pay a tribute to the "way of life" set forth in the once-despised religion of the Latter-day Saints. Numerous biographers are paying their tribute to the "com- mon sense" and "statesmanship" of Brigham Young. What these writers fail to see is the quality of seership by divine inspiration that transformed these characteristics into something never contemplated by the ordinary definitions of the terms. Truly may we say with him of old, "Where there is no vision, the people perish!" Logan, Utah.