Religion, Politics, and Sugar

by Godfrey, Matthew C.

• ISBN13: 9780874216585
• ISBN10: 0874216583
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-03-30
• Publisher: Utah State Univ Pr

Summary

One famous target of Progressive Era attempts to rein in monopolistic big business was the eastern Sugar Trust. Less known is how federal regulators also tried to break monopoly control over beet sugar in the West by going after the Utah-Idaho Sugar Company, a business supported and controlled by the Latter-day Saints church and run by Mormon authorities. As sugar beet agriculture boomed, the Mormon churchrs"s involvement led directly to monopolistic practices by Utah-Idaho Sugar and to federal investigations. Church leaders encouraged members, a majority population in much of the intermountain West, to patronize the company exclusively, as suppliers and consumers. As early as 1890, Mormon church president Wilford Woodruff had called missionaries to raise money for the fledgling company and asserted divine inspiration for church support. Utah-Idaho bridged the cooperative, theocratic, self-sufficient economic model of nineteenth-century Mormonism and the integration of the Mormon West into the national market economy. Religion, Politics, and Sugar shows, through the example of an important western business, how national commercial, political, and legal forces in the early twentieth century came west and, more specifically, how they affected the important role the Mormon church played in economic affairs in the region.

Author Biography

Matthew C. Godfrey is an associate historian with Historical Research Associates in Missoula, Montana.

Table of Contents

Illustrations	p. vi
Introduction	p. 1
The Establishment of the Sugar Industry in Utah and Idaho, 1851-1907	p. 16
Before the Hardwick Committee of the House of Representatives	p. 51
National Sugar Policies and the First World War	p. 93
Political and Legal Troubles in the Aftermath of the First World War	p. 127
Restraint of Trade: Federal Trade Commission v. Utah-Idaho Sugar	p. 158
Conclusion	p. 198
Bibliography	p. 209
Index	p. 222
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