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Show -71- outside world. As a safeguard agui nst th em~ the scheme of cooperation was undoubtedly adopted. Of its suocess we have no other means of judging than that afforded by tho fact that the Gentile merohants are sufferinG much, and that the Mormon leaders and people are oonfident and exultant at what they considor the suocess of the undertaking. • • • • It is a good thing for the people at large however. Light goods are sold under this system is Salt Lake cheaper to&aythan they are in the city of New York.~47 This ~~ique plan of Unmon oopperatlve merohandising was evidently accomplishing what Bri ghan Young had intended it to. While the cOlmection betweon tho local cooperatl ve rotai 1 .tores and the parent institution was not a finanoial one. it worked ,just as satisfactorily because of the solidarity of ~he Latter-day Saints- as a whole in following the counsel of the Mormon leaders. The non-Hormon r.lerchant • •~re shut off from Mormon trade and forced to rely almost entirely upon the C--entilos for support. 48 The times wera indeed trying for those who had not joined the Churoh and those such as Walker Brothers who had left it. The cooperatl ve stores allover the Terri tory were labeled ...11 th the menningful signa "Holiness to the Lord." over an all-seeing eye. end "Zionts Co-operative Uercantile Institution" underneath. For the time being, the tatter-day Saints had met and oonquered thei r problen with the vast system 01' oooperati ve stores reaching over an area three hundred miles in length and. serving practically every settlement in the utah Territory ~ While this ,vas not the first attempt at cooperation in the United states it, at least we,s the matt gi g;antic undertaking ever attempted by the American poople , and it was proving suooessful. 48. With the exoeption of the year 1880. when the non-~ormons oomprised 16.44 par cent of the total population of Utah. it is i mpossi bla to obtain the division of the liormons and non- Mormons in the Utah territory. |
