PROTESTANTISM, PROGRESS, AND PROSPERITY: JOHN P. CLUM AND "CIVILIZING" THE U. S. SOUTHWEST, 1871-1886

DOUGLAS FIRTH ANDERSON

John P. Clum sought to "civilize" the various societies he encountered in the U. S. Southwest in the 1870s-1880s. The pulpit, the press, and the stage were three "civilizers" that Clum himself fostered. They expressed a civilizing ideology that, in Clum's case, was informed by persistent religious sensibilities and affiliations.

NO TOMBSTONE IS COMPLETE without the epitaph," quipped John P. Clum (1851-1932) in the 1880 inaugural editorial for his newspaper, the Tombstone Epitaph. 1 At the time, he was a recent arrival in Arizona's booming silver town. He was not new to the Southwest, however. In the previous nine years, the twenty-something Clum had already served as a sergeant in the U. S. Signal Service in Santa Fe (1871-1874), as an Indian agent at San Carlos Apache Agency (1874-1877), and as the editor of the Arizona Citizen (1877-1880). During his years in Tombstone, he was not only a newspaper editor (1880-1882), but also the postmaster (1880-1882, 1885-1886) and the mayor (1881).	1
"Booms and boom towns always have intrigued me," Clum wrote later, after years of living in the West as well as promoting it. It was the Southwest, though, that remained the most alluring western region for him. Its "open spaces" and "desert mountains" infused "romance" into his participation "in this sort of progress," namely joining Tombstone's boom. In turn, Clum linked booms not only to progress, but to "that greatest of magicians: prosperity." 2	2
Clum was one of a host of Anglo-Americans who came to the West after the Civil War in pursuit of worldly happiness. Yet, it would be a mistake to reduce his life and thought to unadorned materialism. Clum, in fact, represented a civilizing ideology that was as religiously-rooted as it was this-worldly oriented. He exemplified a commitment to Protestantism, progress, and prosperity-a sacred-secular accommodation that undoubtedly drove more individuals than just himself but has yet to be critically examined in a sustained way in western historiography. For Clum, the magician of prosperity was a necessary, but not sufficient, element for civilization. In 1881, in the course of defending stage plays from the attack of a Tombstone clergyman, editor Clum offered a dictum that would have served for his own epitaph: "When the three great human civilizers-the pulpit, press, and stage-cannot work harmoniously together it bodes ill for the morals of a community." 3	. . .