THE MORMON COMMONWEALTH 



products, not infrequently in labor. Of one thing there 

 has never been a scarcity in Utah this is the chance to 

 work. And labor has always been exchangeable there 

 for other commodities, including bank and mercantile 

 stock. Otherwise it would not have been possible to 

 have secured anything like the wide distribution of these 

 stocks which now prevails.' 



In the early years the industries were of a crude sort. 

 Everything had to be hauled in ox-teams over a thousand 

 miles of deserts, plains, and mountains. The people 

 used almost no money in their daily transactions. As a 

 medium of exchange they had printed slips of paper 

 known as " tithing-house scrip." This answered every 

 purpose of exchange money, while the prices of com- 

 modities were regulated by the standard of values which 

 prevailed elsewhere. But while the local scrip did very 

 well for all home purposes, it did not enable the people 

 to purchase the supplies of machinery which they need- 

 ed from abroad. The process of equipping their factories 

 was, therefore, necessarily slow, but they rapidly devel- 

 oped an army of skilled artisans, which was constantly 

 augmented by immigration. But even without assis- 

 tance from the great world which lay so far beyond the 

 borders of their own valleys marvellous progress was 

 achieved in the arts and industries. 



Brigham Young was strenuously opposed to the de- 

 velopment of the mines by his people, believing that 

 what they might gain in wealth from that source would 

 be much more than offset by the demoralization which 

 would come to his industrial forces with the rise of the 

 speculative spirit. Above all other virtues he placed 

 that of sober industry, earning its bread in the sweat of 



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