Rooti-ti-toot for Senator Smoot
by Davis Bitton

Just a hundred years ago.  Practically yesterday.  Yet 1904 seems like another world.

If you were a theater-goer or a music lover, you would have enjoyed 1904.   Puccini’s Madame Butterfly was produced in Milan, Italy.  On Broadway, George M. Cohan’s Little Johnny Jones was packing them in.  And from that musical came a song we all are familiar with I Am a Yankee Doodle Dandy.  Still in its very early stages was the practice of making recordings and selling the records.  Someone who made his first American recording in 1904 was the Italian opera tenor Enrico Caruso.

George Bernard Shaw was the celebrated playwright of the day.  A greater writer, Anton Chekhov, wrote a play that opened in Moscow–The Cherry Orchard.  Of special interest to American audiences was a new play on Broadway called Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Would Not Grow Up by James Barrie. 

If you enjoyed reading fiction, new books you might have read that year are Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo; Henry James, The Golden Bowl; and W.H. Hudson’s Green Mansions.  More to the taste of many readers would have been The Sea Wolf by Jack London or Gene Stratton Porter’s Freckles.

For readers of non-fiction several important books were published in 1904.  Thorsten Veblen published a landmark analysis in The Theory of Business Enterprise.  Ida Tarbell and Lincoln Steffens published “muckraking” books exposing the fraud and corruption of businesses.

And 1904 began the publication  of Max Weber’s Die protestantische Ethik and die Geist des Kapitalismus (later translated as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism).     Demonstrably wrong on most of its claims and demolished as a simple cause-effect argument, Weber’s book nevertheless  posed a significant question and contains an important kernel of truth.  In this age of globalism we continue to discover that, in addition to institutional foundations like private property, economic development requires certain habits and character traits in the population.  Standing Marx on his head, Weber was perceptive enough to discern this core truth.

If your family was anxious to take a vacation trip, one of the destinations you might consider would be St. Louis.  The great exposition there had officially opened the previous year, but did not really get going until 1904.  After such a trip, you might come back to your home to report having tasted a wonderful new product–ice cream.  At least it would have tasted wonderful if you went during the summer.

Automobiles were still few in number, and the roads were so bad that a long trip would be uninviting.  Shopping malls were far in the future.    The newest innovation in retail merchandising was the mail-order catalogue.  Sears Roebuck mailed out a million copies of its spring catalogue.  Its new rival, Montgomery Ward, responded by sending out three million catalogues.  If you have ever ordered anything from a catalogue, you know from your mail box that this idea is still with us.

On the international scene the Japanese attacked a Russian fleet in Port Arthur.  The two countries were vying for hegemony in the area.   Then the two countries fought a series of land battles.  In one two-day battle at Nan Shan hill, Russian casualties were 830, while the victorious Japanese lost  744 killed, and 3,573 wounded.  U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt, elected to a second term after assuming the presidency when William McKinley was assassinated, flexed the muscles of the United States and the following year helped mediate the Russian-Japanese differences.

The United States Navy passed France and joined Great Britain and Japan as one of the top three naval powers.  Some deplored this burgeoning of a new power, while others, including many who opposed British domination, rejoiced to see America take its “rightful place.”

In Morocco an American citizen named Ian Perdicaris and his step-son were seized by brigands, taken to the mountains, and held for ransom.  The term “terrorist” was not employed at the time, but we recognize the syndrome. President Theodore Roosevelt ordered a squadron of the U.S. Navy to Tangier.  I don’t here discuss the complexity of U.S. activity in the world, much less  its ultimate rightness or wrongness.   But it is hard to avoid comparing casualty rates and noticing interesting similarities with today’s news.

The Wilford Woodruff Manifesto had been issued in 1890, and Utah’s statehood arrived in January 1896.  But in 1904 the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not basking in the sunshine of positive public opinion.  Quite the contrary.

Anti-Mormon books and pamphlets were published.  Anti-Mormon organizations were formed.   And year was filled with hearings to decide whether Reed Smoot, an apostle, was eligible to serve as U.S. Senator from Utah.  Witnesses were summoned and interrogated.  Some of these had nothing good to say about Mormons-- those chosen by the plaintiffs working to bar Smoot from the Senate.   Newspaper headlines were filled with the scary allegations about the church and its leaders.

The best study of the whole affair is now Kathleen Flake’s The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, published this year by the University of North Carolina Press.  In a book of less than two hundred pages the author doesn’t pretend to capture all the colorful detail, for which one must still read the four published volumes of the hearings. But there is much to praise in Flake’s book.  A well written, intelligent analysis of the issues and their long-range implications, it will predictably remain the work one must read on this important subject.

For those who may not know, Reed Smoot, who had been sworn in, retained his seat and served as U.S. Senator until 1932.  When Senator Smoot denounced pornographic literature and sought to tighten restrictions against its publication and sale, the irrepressible Ogden Nash penned the following:

                        Oh rooti-ti-toot for Smoot of Ut.
                        And his reverent occiput.
                        Smite, Smoot, smite for Ut.,
                        Grit your molars and hold your dut.,
                        Gird up your l–ns,
                        Smite h-p and th-gh,
                        We’ll all be Kansas
                        By and by.

Good fun, but no one doubted the Senator’s influence within his party and in shaping  important tariff legislation.  Less known were the ways Smoot used his influence in many specific situations in favor of the church’s missionaries and members.

 The unfavorable national press in 1904 was not the whole story.  I think we can say that the latter-day work stayed on track  Apostle Heber J. Grant, having returned from presiding in Japan, began his service as president of the European Mission.  In New York City an interesting baptism took place in 1904–John W. Rigdon, the son of Sidney Rigdon.  On Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where a mission had been distributing pamphlets for two years, a new Bureau of Information building was officially dedicated.

The enormous Salt Lake Stake was divided so that there were now four stakes in the city.  In southeastern Idaho the sprawling Bingham Stake was divided, and the Blackfoot Stake was created. 

Total church membership was nearly 325,000, about the same number of Latter-day Saints now living in Argentina.

We smile at personalities and events in the ongoing human parade, enjoying the ice cream and the George M. Cohan songs.  But what rallies the enthusiasm and commitment of Latter-day Saints is not any individual politician but the work that continues to roll forth.  The leaders who have carried its standard may not fill headlines and news broadcasts, but it is they who are engaged in acts of eternal import.  It seems appropriate this season of pioneer celebration to salute our devoted leaders, on all levels and throughout the world, with a Rooti-ti-toot, Hip-hip-hooray, and Hurrah for Zion!