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The Mormon Tithing House: A Frontier Business Institution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Leonard J. Arrington
Leonard J. Arrington
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics at Utah State Agricultural College
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Abstract

A heal tithing office or bishop's storehouse was found in every Mormon settlement of the Mountain West during the nineteenth century. Besides functioning as collector of revenue for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the tithing house played a major role in the economic life of the community. It served as communal receiving and disbursing agency, warehouse, weighing station, livestock corral, general store, telegraph office, employment exchange and social security bureau. These functions carried it into banking, the fixing of official prices, and bulk selling. Thus the history of this institution shows, in a much different setting, counterparts of many procedures and problems open regarded as distinctly modern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , March 1954 , pp. 24 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1954

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References

1 Arrington, Leonard J., “Early Mormon Communitarianism: The Law of Consecration and Stewardship,” Western Humanities Review, VII (1953), 341–69.Google Scholar

2 The Mormon Church is governed by a president and two “counsellors,” who comprise a “First Presidency.” The president of the church is also “trustee-in-trust” of the properties of the church. The Presiding Bishop is appointed by the president to oversee the receipt and disbursement of tithes by the local bishop, and to supervise church land projects.

3 The two exceptions are the statements made in 1852 and 1880, respectively, that tithing receipts had been some $250,000 for the period November, 1848, to March, 1852; and approximately $460,000 for the year 1879 (Millennial Star, XIV [1852], 323; Salt Lake Tribune, 7 April 1880).

4 This paper is based largely on local materials which were found while the writer and others were doing research on the history of Cache County, Utah. The records of individual tithing contributions are strictly personal, and therefore are not available to the historian. The present paper has used only those records relating to the general business operations of the tithing office.

5 It is probable that the Wellsville tithing office served the valley until 1860. Wellsville was the location of the first permanent settlement in Cache Valley. The records of the office from 1860 to 1863 are available but are not systematic enough to include in the present study.

6 In 1884 all of that part of Cache Valley located in Idaho was organized into the Oneida Stake, leaving the Utah settlements in Cache Stake.

7 “Measures of Economic Changes in Utah, 1847–1947,” Utah Economic and Business Review, VII (Dec, 1947), 11.

8 It is of some interest that the highest proportion of nontithepayers (12 per cent in 1879) was followed in 1880 by the lowest proportion of nontithepayers (3 per cent). Evidently there was a rather remarkable “get out the tithe” campaign in 1880.

9 In the year 1895, out of a population of 17,276 persons and 3,057 families, there were 3,283 tithepayers, 1,071 poor who were excused, and 381 nontithepayers (Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, Clerk, Cache Valley Tithing Office, p. 281, Cache Stakehouse vault, Logan, Utah).

10 During most of the period 1863–1900 tithing offices were located in the following Cache Valley settlements: Avon, Benson, Clarkston, Hyde Park, Hyrum, Lewiston, Logan, Mendon, Millville, Newton, Paradise, Providence, Richmond, Smithfield, Trenton, and Wellsville.

11 “Tithing Square” was located in the center of the town, immediately north of “Tabernacle Square,” and occupied more than two acres. The tithing yard was 18 by 27 rods, and ran from the corner of Main Street and First North Street east to Church Avenue, north to Federal Street, and west to Main Street. The tithing office also had haystacks north of Federal Street in the approximate present location of the Logan U. S. Post Office. Tithing Square was surrounded by a thick rock wall, approximately six feet in height, built in the early 1860's of cobblestone, and faced with cement. On the south side of the lot, on the site of the present Cache Stakehouse, was the tithing office and store — a low adobe building with several compartments. Back of it were the various facilities for handling tithing — grain bins, a barn and stock shed, a corral and feed lot, hay stacks, root cellars, tool shed, and workshop.

12 The clerks of the Cache Valley tithing office, from 1863 to 1900, included George L. Farrell, James A. Leishman, L. R. Martineau, Isaac Smith, and Joseph E. Wilson. The activities of the office were under the general supervision of William B. Preston, the Presiding Bishop of Cache Valley until 1886, when he was appointed Presiding Bishop of the Church. After 1886 the work was under the direction of the Cache Stake President.

13 Hyrum Tithing Day Book, 1872, p. 143, Cache Stakehouse vault.

14 From the tithing record of Ira Allen published in Ira Allen: Founder of Hyrum, compiled by his grandson, Alvin Allen [Logan, Utah, 1941?], 33.

15 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, 1789–1945 (Washington, 1949)Google Scholar, Series L 15–25, p. 234. See also Martin, Robert F., National Income in the United States 1799–1938: National Industrial Conference Board Studies Number 241 (New York, 1939)Google Scholar, and Shannon, F. A., The Farmers' Last Frontier: Agriculture, 1860–1897 (New York, 1945).Google Scholar It is to be noted that tithing values were higher in periods of scarcity and lower in periods of abundance. Thus, the amount of tithing reported for each year underestimates production declines in poor years and production increases in good years. In 18?7, for example, despite the grasshopper destruction of grain crops, tithing wheat contributions appear to be almost normal because of the high price.

16 One such program of paramount importance was the institution, in every community, of a “United Order,” which provided for the mobilization of Mormon labor and capital, under ecclesiastical direction, for the stimulation of investment and the diminution of “imports.”

17 Cash tithing averaged 3 per cent of total tithing receipts in the 1860's, 4 per cent in the 1870's, 14 per cent in the 1880's, and 21 per cent in the 1890's.

18 22 Stat. L. 30 (1882). The Edmunds Act legislated against plural marriage, declared “cohabitation” with a plural wife a misdemeanor, disqualified professing Mormons from jury service, disfranchised a large proportion of the Latter-day Saints, and set up an administrative commission to supervise elections. Most Mormon polygamists (and this included nearly all leaders) reacted to the law by going into hiding.

19 Labor tithing averaged 27 per cent of all tithing receipts in the 1860's, 22 per cent in the 1870's, 16 per cent in the 1880's, and 4 per cent in the 1890's.

20 In August, 1874, George A. Smith, a member of the church First Presidency, visited Logan to supervise the harvest of some 7,000 tons of hay on Brigham Young's farm seven miles west of Logan. The hay was put up by tithing labor and used to feed tithing cattle (Journal History of the Church, 21 Aug. 1874, Church Historian's Office, Salt Lake City).

21 The larger amounts in the 1890's are due to the inclusion of vegetable tithing.

22 If the records of the Presiding Bishop's office were made available, an interesting study could be made of the interrelationships between tithing office prices and market prices during the pioneer period. Such a study might furnish information as to the probable effects of certain types of government price-fixing.

23 Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, p. 482 (paragraphing supplied).

24 Bancroft, H. H., History of Utah, 1540–1886 (San Francisco, 1889), 350 n. 15.Google Scholar

25 From the minutes of a meeting of the Salt Lake bishops, Journal History, 27 Dec. 1877. This reference does not specifically give the shortage as the reason for raising the tithing price, but such may be fairly assumed.

26 Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, p. 142; see also pp. 107, 306, 346, 440.

27 Ibid., p. 222.

28 Brigham Young's successor, John Taylor, told a meeting of bishops in 1878 that the Council of the Twelve Apostles “hoped to raise the standing of tithing institutions to one of strict reliability,” by reducing the price of flour to $3.00 per hundred, by reducing tithing office prices of coal and cloth to the market level, and by other procedures (Minutes of the bishop's meeting, Journal History, March 7, 8, 1878). In August, 1895, the Cache Valley tithing office clerk wrote the Presiding Bishop for instructions with regard to the price at which wheat tithing should be received. He stated that the Logan office had always allowed “5 to 10¢ pr. bus. more than the Store-market price” (Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, p. 306). Cattle were credited at from $1.00 to $2.00 per 100 pounds more than the market price (ibid., p. 346).

29 The disbursements of the General Tithing Office, of course, may have been consciously countercyclical, but the detailed year-by-year records of that office are not available.

30 “Eleventh Epistle of the First Presidency,” Journal History, 10 April 1854.

31 “Fourteenth Epistle of the First Presidency,” Journal History, 10 Dec. 1856.

32 This is based upon the assumption that local disbursements to the Indians were $1,000 per year during the years 1869–74, and $500 per year during the years 1875–81.

33 Disbursements to the poor in Cache Valley were $6,402 in 1891, $6,144 in 1892, $6,272 in 1893, $6,151 in 1894, and $4,590 in 1895 (Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, pp. 260, 280).

34 Hyrum Tithing Day Book, July 15, 1868–1871, pp. 343–6, Cache Stakehouse vault. The present writer has deleted the names of the recipients and inserted the descriptions of them given in the table.

35 Cache Valley Ward Tithing Ledger, 1860–1886, pp. 20–21.

36 Logan General Tithing Office Account Book B, 1864–65, pp. 12–13, Cache Stakehouse vault. This account was called to the writer's attention by Mr. Willis A. Dial, Logan, Utah.

37 Cache Valley Ward Ledger, 1860–1886, p. 145.

38 Tithing Office Day Book, 1874, p. 47, Cache Stakehouse vault. Farrell was the Cache Valley tithing clerk from 1860 to 1880, with the exception of two years, 1874–76, when he was a missionary in England. He was also County Recorder, 1860–74, and postmaster, 1867–74.

39 In 1879, the people of St. George, in southern Utah, experienced a bad crop year, and a large number of the people were given partial relief out of the stores in the Southern Utah Tithing Office. Other stakes in southern Utah were asked to deliver their excess tithing and donations for the poor to the St. George office (Journal History, 27 Oct. 1879).

40 Account of Charles C. Rich, Logan General Tithing Office Book B, 1864–65, Cache Stakehouse vault.

41 A. N. Sorenson, “Biography of Hezekiah Eastman Hatch,” p. 31, type written manuscript in the hands of Mr. Adrian W. Hatch, Logan, Utah.

42 Letter Book of L. R. Martineau, pp. 61, 64.

43 Ibid., pp. 144, 147, 150–4.

44 Logan Tithing Account Book, 1863–68, p. 5, Cache Stakehouse vault.

45 This pencilled order, on notebook paper, was pasted on the inside of the cover of the Smithfield Ward Day Book G. 1882, Cache Stakehouse vault.

46 “Diary of Orson W. Huntsman,” Vol. I, p. 52, typescript, Historical Records Survey, Works Progress Administration, Library of Congress.

47 Jones, Marcus E., Utah (Washington, 1890), 861.Google Scholar

48 Jones, Utah, 861.

49 Ibid.

50 24 Stat. L. 635. The Edmunds-Tucker Act dissolved the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and required that all real and personal property — chapels and burial grounds excepted — of that corporation be escheated to the United States government. More than two million dollars' worth of church property was confiscated under the law, but was finally returned after Utah became a state in 1896.

51 Journal History, 31 Jan. 1898.

52 At a bishop's meeting in 1878, the Presiding Bishop, Edward Hunter, publicly deplored the practice of selling tithing orders for half their value. “Those persons who would buy them at such price and pay their tithing with them,” he asserted, “were too mean for good brethren” (Journal History, 7 Feb. 1878, also Jan. 28, March 8, 29, 1878).

53 Ibid., 31 Oct. 1878.

54 From the Salt Lake Tribune as noted in the Journal History, 29 Jan. 1900.

55 Journal History, 29 Jan. 1900.

56 Deseret News (Salt Lake City), 31 Jan. 1900.

57 Ibid., 2 Feb. 1900.

58 Wells to Joseph Fielding Smith, in “Daughters of Utah Pioneers,” Heart Throbs of the West, 12 vols. (Salt Lake City, 1936–1951), I, 231.Google Scholar

59 Journal History, 7 April 1880. The conference minutes have been summarized rather than quoted verbatim.

60 Arlington, L. J., “The Deseret Telegraph System: A Church-owned Public Utility,” Journal of Economic History, XI (1951), 117–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

61 See the List of Property Paid for Working Potatoes into Starch, 1870, in Smithfield Tithing Day Book C, 1868–1871, Cache Stakehouse vault.