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huge quantities.
In Utah, orchards along the Wasatch Front, the raising of sheep
and cattle and sugar beet growing and its processing in sugar factories
were major parts of the economy. Coal mining in Carbon County was
important.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (hereafter I will
refer to it as the LDS Church or The Church) had been the cause of the
settlement of the entire area. LDS Church members comprised about 45
percent of the population of Salt Lake City; statewide the LDS popula-
tion was about 60 percent. The Church clearly set the moral tone of the
state of Utah at that time.
The 1920s were prosperous economically, though there was
a glaring gap in the economy of Utah insofar as manufacturing was
concerned. The metal ore smelted in Utah was shipped elsewhere for
manufacturing into consumer products. Sugar beets, tree fruit, and to-
matoes were grown and processed in local factories. While the Church
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for the area to be self-sustaining economically, the population in the
West was too small to provide a market to support mass manufacturing
locally. In addition, distances were so great to major centers of popula-
tion in the United States – and railroad freight rates were so high – that
mass manufacturing was simply uneconomic in comparison to cost of
production in the Eastern part of the United States. Incidentally, when
I was a kid, the story was circulated by non-Mormons that Henry Ford
had wanted to build an automobile assembly plant in Salt Lake, but had
been dissuaded due to opposition to the idea by leaders of the Church.
By the time I was in college I had realized that it would have been idi-
otic to build a Salt Lake automobile assembly plant hundreds of miles
from markets. The automobile factory story was a sheer fabrication.
Another factor – a constant problem continuing to this day – is
that much of the inter-mountain West is semi-arid. From the beginning
of white settlements, The Church had sponsored irrigation to produce
crops. But irrigation at that time required careful leveling of the land and
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our day we see irrigation with water pumped through sprinkler systems,

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