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Show OGDEN UNION STATION COLLECTION FALL 2013 UHQ pp 304-385_UHQ Stories/pp.4-68 9/16/13 1:25 PM Page 304 William Glasmann: Ogden’s Progressive Newspaperman and Politician By MIChAEL S. ELDrEDGE n Friday, July 10, 1891, liberals from all over the Territory of Utah gathered at the Reed Hotel and the Opera House in Ogden to launch a two-day convention that culminated with the organization of the official Utah Republican Party.1 Fred J. Kiesel, the first non-Mormon to ascend to the office of Ogden’s mayor on the Liberal Party ticket—thus confirming Ogden as the first “Americanized” city in Utah—was just completing his term.2 The Mormon editor of the Ogden Standard, Frank J. Cannon, organized the convention and served as its chairman. Cannon later recalled that he, his good friend Ben E. Rich, and another friend, Joseph Belknap, were the only Mormons who joined the party. “Outside of us three, I did not know of another Mormon Republican in the whole territory,” he later wrote.3 Additional Mormons came later, including Apostle John Henry Smith and President Joseph F. Smith. Mormons were at first reluctant, however, to join the political party that had been William Glasmann, at work in the responsible for so much relentless persecution Ogden Standard office. O Michael S. Eldredge is a lawyer practicing in Salt Lake City. A political and legal historian who concentrates on the Progressive Era, Eldredge has taught history and political science at the University of Phoenix for the past fourteen years. 1 “Republicans!” Ogden Standard, July 11, 1891. Richard C. Roberts and Richard W. Sadler, A History of Weber County (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Weber County Commission, 1997), 139. 3 Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O’Higgins, Under the Prophet in Utah: The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft (Boston: C. M. Clark, 1911), 117. 2 304 |
