Religion, Politics, and Sugar: The Mormon Church, the Federal Government, and the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, 1907-1921 Rating :
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the Mormon Church and business growth in Western states
By Henry Berry
The U. S. government's differences, including investigations and Congressional hearings, with the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company in the early part of the 1900s brought together a long-standing guardedness toward Mormonism with antimonopoly efforts of the era. The company was founded by the leading Mormon Wilford Woodruff in 1890 who later related, "The inspiration of the Lord to me is to build this factory." The company based on growing, processing, and distributing sugar beets throughout the states of the Intermountain West was virtually a department of the Mormon Church, the Church of Latter-Day Saints.
While the survival--not to mention prosperity--of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, originally the Utah Sugar Company, was touch-and-go in its early years, eventually it thrived, and came to be seen as a monopoly by antitrust legislators. Because of the importance of sugar beets in the Western economy and as food staple, which increased in importance during scarcities in World War I, the Mormon company inevitably attracted a high-level of Federal government attention and concern.
Godfrey is an associate historian with a Montana historical research group. A shorter version of the material of "Religion, Politics, and Sugar" won an award from the Mormon History Association. The company's rise to success from its precarious beginnings while struggling against concerted government efforts to change it is followed with a judicious selection of factual material, including parts of transcripts and other documents, and concise narrative.
In 1923, the Federal Trade Commission issued its findings against the company. These were overturned by the Eighth Circuit Court in 1927. The Mormon owners and operators of the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company saw their position as one of the members of the board of directors put it, "We were put to endless trouble and expense...for simply doing that which practically everybody else in the sugar business was doing." Despite its supposed monopolistic position in this industry, the company was able to survive from crashes in sugar prices coming in the 1920s and other economic troubles preceding the Depression only with financial aid from the U. S. government and the Church of Latter-Day Saints. The story of the sugar company during the years covers is of interest as well because of light it sheds on fundamental social, political, and economic changes in Utah and among the Mormons during this period. Godfrey focuses on how the actions of Mormon leaders of the company enabled it to succeed while at the same time become the target of Federal investigations.
Product Description
Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the
early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2419626 in Books
- Published on: 2007-03-30
- Original language:English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.66" h x5.71" w x.87" l,.95 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 232 pages
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