Mormons, Money, Missions

To the (Mormon) Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pioneer virtues are thrift, diligence, discipline. Last year a "security program" was launched to take 85,000 Mormons off Federal relief, to Mormon leaders a distasteful institution (TIME, June 8, 1936). Since then, jobs have been found for some 23,000 Mormons, the Church has taken over the support of 30,000. Most of the idle were given agricultural work and 24 big regional warehouses have been built to store produce which is the result of redoubled Mormon husbandry. In and around Salt Lake City, 125,000 Mormons were urged last fortnight to observe a special fast, abstaining from two meals and donating the money toward construction of more warehouses for current bumper crops.

For the continued success of their security program, Mormons were at the same time asked to pray and work. Pithy, ominous Mormon advice went out to all Church members from the First Counselor in the potent, three-man First Presidency--plump J. (for Joshua) Reuben Clark Jr., able lawyer, able onetime colleague and successor of Dwight Whitney Morrow as U. S. Ambassador to Mexico. Counselor Clark warned Mormons of the next depression, "more serious, affecting intimately far greater numbers of people than the one we are now finishing. To prepare for this coming disaster we must avoid debt as we would avoid a plague. Let us live within our incomes and save a little money. Do not speculate."

Meanwhile last week Mormonism, which unlike Episcopalianism is always an unobtrusively but persistently missionizing faith (see col. 1), set up camp for the first time in a long-neglected corner of the vineyard, New England. In Boston last week arrived Dr. Carl Ferdinand Eyring, onetime physics professor at Brigham Young University, to be first president of the New England Mormon Mission. He found that some 3,000 New Englanders were already Latter-day Saints. President Eyring set up headquarters in a house in Cambridge, hired the old, staid Cantabrigia Club (women) for Sunday meetings. With him he brought 20 young missionaries to begin the work of evangelizing the new territory.

To be "called" by the Church as a missionary for two years' service is an honor which pious Mormons hardly ever refuse. Such saints as Reed Smoot and Marriner Stoddard Eccles are proud to have done missionary work without pay. There are today some 2,000 picked Mormon missionaries working in 23 countries, always traveling in pairs of which the more experienced is the "Senior Companion." A Mormon salestalk emphasizes the practicality of Mormonism, its orthodox belief in God and Jesus Christ, its healthiness with its teachings against alcohol, tobacco, tea & coffee, "refined foods." Once convinced by a missionary that "silly tales" about Mormons have been "fully disproved," a prospect is likely to be impressed by Mormon statistics--literacy among saints in the U. S. 99.7%, births 30 per 1,000 as compared with 22 per 1,000 in 25 non-Mormon nations, a death rate of 7.5 compared with the international average of 14.

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