OCR Text |
Show Page 60 long winter hours with his copy of "Day's Algebra" and his astronomy readings, "without a teacher," he notes proudly. The Kirtland High School, which functioned only a few months that winter, offered a few lectures in Latin. Spurred by his mathematical exercises and his former acquaintance with surveying, he became interested in astronomy, musing on the stars with the new measuring tools made available to him in "Day's Algebra." As usual, however, his attention was forced earthward by misfortune - this time, disaster creeping up on Mormon Kirtland. With the cold weather came the shadow of economic collapse. Overheated business activity and an optimistic society dealing almost exclusively on credit began to threaten the temporal foundations of the Mormon kingdom. An attempt was made as the year closed to shore up the precarious economy of Kirtland by establishing a bank. This cooperative venture was designed to increase the availability of cash and, consequently, to facilitate the liquidation of land, the principal asset upon which the credit structure was built. The bank never fulfilled its purpose, partially because the anti-bank legislature of Ohio refused to sanction it, and, as it attempted to operate in the form of a joint-stock firm, it soon became a drain on the resources of leading Kirtland citizens who tried to save it. Orson Pratt, among others, was afraid of losing everything and plunging into debt - as a member of the Kirtland Safety Society Anti- 25 Banking Company, he soon became disenchanted with Joseph Smith's management of the company, and, concomitantly, with his leadership of the Church. With Sarah expecting a child, and the unfamiliar necessity on him to provide for someone other than himself, he turned panicky. Mercantile failure afflicted even two of the Quorum of Apostles - |