indisputable sway. It is considered an evidence of deference to him, and
good standing in the church, for his hundreds of thousands of followers
to patronize exclusively the institutions which he controls.

And this fact alone, without any business ability on his part, but with
capable subordinate guidance for his enterprises, insures their success,
and danger and possible ruin for every competitive enterprise.
Independent of these business concerns, he is in receipt of an income
like unto that which a royal family derives from a national treasury.
One-tenth of all the annual earnings of all the Mormons in all the world
flows to him. These funds amount to the sum of $1,000,000 annually, or 5
per cent upon $32,000,000, which is one-quarter of the entire taxable
wealth of the State of Utah. It is the same as if he owned,
individually, in addition to all his visible enterprises, one-quarter of
all the wealth of the State and derived from it 5 per cent of income
without taxation and without discount. The hopelessness of contending in
a business way with this autocrat must be perfectly apparent to your
minds. The original purpose of this vast tithe, as often stated by
speakers for the church, was the maintenance of the poor, the building
of meetinghouses, etc. To-day the tithes are transmuted, in the
localities where they are paid, into cash, and they flow into the
treasury of the head of the church. No account is made, or ever has been
made, of these tithes. The president expends them according to his own
will and pleasure, and with no examination of his accounts, except by
those few men whom he selects for that purpose and whom he rewards for
their zeal and secrecy. Shortly after the settlement of the Mormon
Church property question with the United States the church issued a
series of bonds, amounting approximately to $1,000,000, which were taken
by financial institutions. This was probably to wipe out a debt which
had accumulated during a long period of controversy with the nation. But