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UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION During the two decades Goodwin served as editor, he became the newspaper's most famous personality. His editorial dueling with Charles W. Penrose, perhaps the most brilliant, provocative and widely quoted editor produced by the Deseret News, attracted national attention. In 1894, when members of the Constitutional Convention were elected, a new personality who was to play an important role in the future of The Tribune appeared on the Utah political scene. His name was Thomas Kearns. Tom Kearns, the son of immigrant Irish parents, a Nebraska farm boy, came to Park City in 1883. In 1889 at age 27 he discovered the immensely rich Silver King Mine. In 1893 he was elected to the Park City City Council and in 1901 was appointed by the Utah State Legislature to the United States Senate. That same year Kearns and Keith acquired The Tribune. During Kearns1 incumbency in the Senate the newspaper feuding continued in Utah but with subdued vehemence. This was, however, a lull before a reinvigorated storm. The death of President Lorenzo Snow in 1901 deprived Kearns of his most influential supporter in the Church and Snow's successor, Joseph F. Smith, had other ideas as to suitable representation for the state in Washington. This fact became known to Kearns before his four-year term ended and he prudently decided not to seek reelection. Instead, near the close of his term on February 28, 1905, Senator Kearns delivered a scathing attack in Washington on the Mormon Church which B. H. Roberts, an eminent Church historian, wrote was "constructed by a devilish cunning, and made up of polished sentences and moving tropes." Anti-Mormon editors greeted the speech as a masterful indictment of the Church and pro-Mormons greeted it as a scurrilous and mostly false attack. Because of its polished style, and Kearns' reputation for unpolished sentences, historian Roberts attributed authorship to Frank J. Cannon, son of the great George Q. Cannon, who had been employed by 152 |
