|
|
|
REVIEWS
RELIGION, POLITICS, AND SUGAR: THE MORMON CHURCH, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, AND THE UTAH-IDAHO SUGAR COMPANY, 1907–1921
|
by Matthew C. Godfrey
|
| Utah State University Press, Logan, 2007. Illustrations, photographs, maps, tables, notes, bibliography, index. 232 pages. $34.95 cloth. |
| In 1890, the federal government forced Utah to abandon polygamy as a precondition for statehood, an event it achieved in 1896. As historian Matthew Godfrey contends, "this event precipitated a transformation in Utah's economy, where it became not only more commercialized than in the past, but also more national in scope and in market," as the Mormon church began gradually to loosen its iron-clad grip on the regional inter-mountain economy (p. 4). That is, however, loosening its grip on most everything but the burgeoning and lucrative sugar industry. Sugar became the bellwether industry to lead this transformation as a third of all of Utah's farmers were raising sugar beets by 1920. And the Church remained an integral force in the development of the goliath Utah-Idaho Sugar Company (in addition to the Amalgamated Sugar Company). This study, thus, charts the confluence of power — both provincial and national — money, politics, and the hegemony of the Mormon church in this critical transformative period in Utah's, and the inter-mountain West's, early twentieth-century agricultural history. Agriculture across America was becoming big business by the early twentieth century and this is a case study, of sorts, of how a single industry — as much as copper mining in Montana or timber-cutting in the Pacific Northwest — came to dominate the economy, the politics, and the culture of a vast region of the country. |
1
|
|
Throughout this period, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS) church proved that it could, and would, stoop to the lowest and most nefarious business practices in order to achieve the bottom-line: near monopolistic control of the inter-mountain sugar industry. Ultimately, church officials over time looked little like the saints they publicly fashioned themselves as; unadulterated greed primarily motivated them, justified by "divine" personal blessing and the motivation to increase the church's already considerable financial clout. Church leaders who had substantial personal and financial stake in the corporation also pressured the rank and file to patronize Utah-Idaho instead of smaller, local companies, despite more competitive prices. Their unraveling (and public embarrassment) would come with several high profile and damaging federal investigations into the business practices of Utah-Idaho Sugar in the 1920s. As Godfrey writes, "a look into the early history of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, then, indicates that, for Mormons in the early 1900s, business and religion were not a good mix, a lesson that the church would not really grasp until the latter part of the twentieth century when it began to require its high-ranking officials to divest themselves of active business connections" (p. 207). The Utah-Idaho sugar scandals would be a painful early twentieth-century test run. |
2
|
|
This is a well-research monograph, buttressed by a wealth of government investigative reports, financial and legal records, personal correspondence, and newspapers, among others. It demonstrates the clout — on a variety of levels — a single agricultural commodity can produce. For more contemporary examples one need look no further than the power that corn holds over the American agricultural economy currently (including, ironically, the conversion of corn to sugar by-products). This book should be of interest to historians and scholars of the early twentieth-century West, particularly the inter-mountain region, and especially to those interested in the historic roots of economic power wielded by the LDS church. |
3
|
|
|
| Keith Edgerton
|
| Montana State University-Billings |
|
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|