Elder Heber J. Grant

Observance of Word of Wisdom would vastly increase community wealth--Man's efficiency destroyed by intoxicating liquors--Each dollar retained in circulation, in Utah, increases citizens' average wealth--Deadly character of the cigarette--The cigarette cigarette smoker always a failure.

I rejoice, beyond the ability with which God has given me the power to express my feelings, in having a testimony of the divinity of the work in which we are engaged. I rejoice in being able to bear witness to you here today that the Lord has blessed me with a knowledge that He lives, that He hears, and that He answers our prayers. I rejoice in knowing that Jesus is the Redeemer of the world, our elder brother, and that His name and His name alone, is the only one under heaven whereby we can gain salvation and come back and dwell with our Heavenly Father and our Savior, and our loved ones who have gone before. I rejoice in the knowledge that Joseph Smith was the prophet of the true and the living God, and the revelations that have come to us from him, which are recorded in the D&C, are in very deed the commandments of the Lord and of His Son our Redeemer, and that it is our duty and an obligation resting upon us to obey those commandments. Every word that I have heard, the testimonies and the ex-pounding of the doctrines of Christ, since this conference has opened, have found an echo in my heart and I have thanked God for the testimonies which have been borne to us, thus far in this conference.

I acknowledge the hand of God in the preservation of our people in Mexico. It is a miracle, and there should be a feeling of gratitude in our hearts to our Heavenly Father for the preservation of those of our brethren and sisters who have been located in that land. I confess that their faith has been superior to mine. I am afraid that if I had been located in Mexico, I would have left that country long ago.

I was particularly impressed yesterday with the remarks made here by the President of the Council to which I have the honor to belong, and I desire during the time that I occupy, if the Lord will only bless me with His Spirit, to make some remarks along the same line upon which President Lyman spoke yesterday.

I remember years ago, one of the most sarcastic and splendid letters that I ever read, being handed to me by Brother Junius F. Wells, written by his father while presiding over the European mission, and it showed up the hypocrisy of those at that time who were pretending to stand for the purity of the American home. Brother Junius published the letter in the Contributor, not signing his father's name to it but signing "Forty-niner," and when the Contributor arrived in Liverpool, Brother Wells wrote back and wanted to know who that old man was that signed himself "Forty-niner." He said, "Darn his buttons, he is stealing my thunder."

I had it in my heart yesterday, as I sat upon this stand, to talk upon the temporal salvation of this people, which is sure to come if we only obey the commandments of the Lord which He has given for our temporal salvation; and lo and behold, Brother Lyman stole nearly all of my thunder. He quoted the identical part of the Word of Wisdom that I had intended to quote, but, like the frequent singing of our songs--"O, ye mountains high," and "We thank thee, O God, for a prophet," we can never repeat too often the commandments of the Lord to this people, and urge upon the Saints to live up to them. I have said from this stand time and time again, I believe that if we as a people had only obeyed the Word of Wisdom, temporal salvation would have come to us, and we would have become the wealthiest state west of the Mississippi River; that while we were driven from Nauvoo and came here to what was then considered a barren and worthless country; that, had we obeyed this one simple law of God, the wealth of this community would have been so great that no other section of the country between here and Illinois would have had anywhere near the wealth which we would have possessed.

There is being consumed today in the United States twenty-one dollars per capita by the users of intoxicating liquors. I am sure the good people of Utah are not consuming their pro rata of this amount. If we were as progressive and as prosperous as the average of the United States, according to the ideas of some people who call themselves financiers we would be spending the same as others and thus be worse than wasting today, because we have about four hundred thousand people, eight million dollars a year, and all we would have to show for this prosperity(?) would be empty bottles and empty barrels.

I believe in home manufacture. I believe in wearing home-made clothes. I believe in patronizing our different factories which are built here. And from my early childhood, in the days when I listened to President Brigham Young and others, it was burned into my very vitals that financial success would come to this community by building up our industries. But how under the heavens any man with the ordinary intelligence with which God has endowed him believes and can believe that empty barrels and empty bottles will bring wealth to this community, when the contents have first destroyed the manhood and the intellectuality and the efficiency of the people who have emptied the bottles and barrels, is one of the untold mysteries to me. Success in life comes with the efficiency of the individual; and what applies to the individual applies to the city, applies to the county, applies to the state. Anything under the heavens that destroys the individual efficiency of a man destroys the individual efficiency of all the community in proportion as they are destroyed as individuals.

There is in the last Collier's Weekly an article entitled,' "The ruin prohibition brought to Kansas," and I would like to read just a little of the ruin that has come to Kansas from prohibition.

"While the people of Kansas talk very little about this, being a reticent folk, it is generally realized that prohibition has killed in this state about every industry except the raising of wheat and corn and alfalfa and fruit and live stock; potatoes and peas and cabbages and garden sass; chickens and ducks and geese and horses and mules. Almost immediately prohibition ruined our most prominent gamblers, blighted our beer gardens, and killed the bartenders' union.

"Prohibition has left very little of Kansas except the growing crops in her field, the stock in her stock pens, the dreary round of work, work, work in her factories and stores and other industries. It has left us little to do in hours of leisure except just to fall in love, get married, send our children to school, go abroad occasionally, join the church when we feel like it, run into each other with expensive automobiles, and store our money away in dusty bank vaults instead of giving it to cheerful gentlemen with white aprons who used to stand in front of cut-glass bars and say occasionally, (And I might say mighty occasionally): 'This one is on the house.'

"Where once the thriving business of tire saloon sent the clamorous odor of its prosperity out upon the sidewalk and clear across the street, (generally the product was kicked out upon the street, and not able to get a quarter way across), we find nothing but shoe stores, clothing stores, dry-goods stores, meat markets, grocery stores, and other sordid activities of an unhappy people.* * * * *

"There hasn't even been a case of delirium tremens in the state since 1896, and at the time that was thought by inexperienced surgeons to be due to the free-silver campaign. * * *

"Then, too, we have driven out of Kansas a class that was very useful to us, that relieved us entirely of the responsibility of local government. In the day before the state went dry no one ever worried about who was to be alderman or chief of police or mayor. We knew that the saloon men would look after that--it was part of their business. They wielded the balance of power and the political bickerings which sometimes now enter into the selection of our local officers in Kansas were wholly unnecessary in that old day. The saloon men got together and made up the ticket and got it elected. All we had to do was to pay the bills.

"Now heaven alone knows when a campaign opens who is going to be elected, and when he is elected he spends so much of his time worrying about the recall provisions of the charter that it spoils much of the pleasure and all of the profit which his old-time predecessors used to get out of the job.

"With the example of Kansas being constantly pointed out by the liquor men, why will state after state rise up and kick these benefactors in the face in the ungrateful way they are now doing?"

Brother Edward H. Anderson has written to Collier's for permission to publish the whole article in the Era, so I shall not read any more of it.

In the American Patriot we find an article on the worms that are destroying the harvest in the United States. It goes on to tell of the terrible ravages, but science has brought remedies whereby these can be obliterated and all this trouble of the worms has no effect. It tells that in one of the old readers there was an article that gave an account of a deadly worm that preyed upon men, which was found in every section of the country. The article in the old reader pointed out that this worm was one of the most destructive agencies to the life of man known in the history of the world, in a way that the young readers could understand, and gave a graphic picture of this strange worm, together with an unmistakable account of its fearful effects upon humanity. "By this means many young people learned of the most venomous thing in existence, and learned by this plain warning to avoid it. Many names had been given it, but, in this account, the real name of the creature was given. It was called the worm of the Still."

"The worm of the still," when men use it destroys them so that they are not capable of having temporal salvation, because it destroys their intellect, it destroys their physical as well as their mental power. It is estimated, by students of finance, that every dollar of circulating medium goes over and over, in a community and does in a year from twenty-five to one hundred dollars' worth of work. In the United States there is seven hundred and fifty million dollars a year expended in tobacco alone, and two billion and one hundred million dollars expended on liquor. Nearly every dollar which we spend on liquor and tobacco is sent away from the state--and say that we only spend a quarter of what other people do--it would amount to at least two millions and a half dollars a year, which is drained from our fair state--thus adding to our prosperity according to the whisky men's arguments. Multiply these two millions and a half by twenty-five or one hundred and you will then see what a capacity the good people of Utah would have to support our industries because of the immense amount of circulating medium which the people would possess. Truly our capacity because of the possession of this vast sum added to our circulating medium annually would indeed be marvelous. The Lord knew exactly what He was saying when He told us that if we would obey His law--the Word of Wisdom--it would bring us temporal salvation. That is exactly what it will do for us from the day we obey it. It is not what a man makes that gives him strength and power financially in the community, but it is what he saves. This sure rule applies to all the people as well as the individual. If we had kept the money here which has been worse than wasted by sending it abroad for tobacco and liquor, we would have had power, as money is power, we would have secured temporal salvation. Men who have acquired the appetite will have tobacco and liquor, even if they have to sacrifice the ordinary wants of their families to secure these things.

I hold in my hand a little pamphlet of which I have given away hundreds of copies. It is entitled, "The case against the little white slaver." It is a book against the cigarette published in pamphlet form, by Henry Ford, the manufacturer of the Ford automobile. Some years ago we had on our Mutual Improvement course of reading a book entitled, "The strength of being clean," by David Starr Jordan; and President Joseph F. Smith remarked that it was one of the finest vindications, by a great educator, of the inspiration of God to Joseph Smith in giving us the Word of Wisdom, that had ever been published by a non-"Mormon." David Starr Jordan is not only a national but an international character. I have written in the front of Mr. Ford's pamphlet a remark of Mr. Jordan's: "The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future. He has none." I would like that to "soak in." Just think it over: "The boy who smokes cigarettes need not be anxious about his future. He has none." Recently the Bureau of Information received a letter making some inquiry about certain doctrines of the Church. I have here one or two quotations from what was printed on the back of the letter and these I have also written in this pamphlet of Mr. Ford's.

"A prominent banker--'I have never yet employed a young man who said he used tobacco or liquor.'"

Fathers and mothers, do you want bankers to employ your boys? Remember the day is coming when they will not do it if they use tobacco or liquor.

"Fidelity Insurance Company--'We will not bond a man who uses cigarettes, for such men are not safe physically nor morally.'"

Think of it! Cigarette users can't even pay money enough to get this company to insure their honesty.

"Charles W. Murphy--'All the 'Cub' baseball players must leave liquor alone at all times, must abstain from the use of cigarettes.'"

No wonder they are one of the greatest clubs in the world.

"Conclusion--My son, as long as thou hast in thy skull the sense of a jay-bird, break away from the cigarette, for lo, it causeth thy breath to stink like a glue factory; it rendereth thy mind less intelligent than that of a cigar store dummy, yea thou art a cipher with the rim--knocked off Bob Burdette."

Thomas A. Edison--one of the greatest minds the world has ever produced--writes to Mr. to Mr. Ford:

"The injurious agent in cigarettes comes principally from the burning paper wrapper. The substance thereby formed is called 'acrolein.' It has a violent action on the nerve centers, producing degeneration of the cells of the brain, which is quite rapid among boys. Unlike most narcotics this degeneration is permanent and uncontrollable. I employ no person who smokes cigarettes."

Think of it! Degeneration of the brains of our children comes from using cigarettes, and this degeneration becomes permanent and uncontrollable and yet people go on saying that we can drink and smoke and chew and we injure nobody but ourselves. It is false! If we degenerate our brain power we injure our posterity after us.

John Wannamaker, Henry Ford, Marshall Field & Company, the Cadillac Motor Company, some of the great railroads with hundreds of millions of capital invested, refuse to employ cigarette smokers.

"A new arithmetic. 'I am not much of a mathematician,' said the cigarette, 'but I can add nervous troubles to a boy, I can subtract from his physical energy, I can multiply his aches and pains, I can divide his mental powers, I can take interest from his work and discount his chances for success.'"

I would like the last part of the sentence to soak in--"and discount his chances for success."

The head of the tobacco trust writes a long letter to Mr. Ford and demands that he apologize for his attack on the cigarette, claiming it is not injurious, and tells of the wonderful increase in the use of cigarettes and says that this is an argument in favor of it. He says that in 1900 there were two billion, six hundred million Cigarettes used. In 1913 there were fifteen billion, eight hundred million cigarettes used--(nails in the coffins of those that used them and a partial destruction of their intellectuality)--an increase of seven hundred per cent. Mr. Henry Ford's secretary answers and calls this tobacco man's attention to the fact that one of the magistrates in New York City announces that "ninety-nine per cent of all the boys between the ages of ten and seventeen who come before him charged with crime have their fingers disfigured with cigarette stains." Dr. T. D. Crothers says that, "In young persons who begin on cigarettes there are always pronounced symptoms of poisoning, such as pallor and dullness of activity," and the brain fails to act. We find that Dr. Fred J. Pack of our own University of Utah made an investigation which was published in one of the eastern magazines, The Temperance Journal.

"Two hundred ten men held a contest for positions on the athletic team. Of the non-smokers, sixty-five per cent were successful; of the smokers only thirty-three per cent were successful. This was not only true in the six institutions which furnished the data about the try-outs when taken as a total, but in each of the six the non-smokers far outstripped the smokers. In one institution not a single smoker obtained a place on the team."

I called up Doctor Pack this morning and got some additional information. Dr. Pack is the head of the Geological Department in the University of Utah, and during the summer vacations he goes out with the boys and they climb mountains and they take hikes and they have long trials of endurance. They climb many a mountain which takes more than one day to get to the summit; and Dr. Pack notifies the boys, puts them on their mettle, before they start announcing that "No cigarette smokers will arrive at the top of the mountain with the boys that do not smoke;" and his promise of failure for the smokers has always been fulfilled. You can pick the smokers out down the hill by the number of the nails, figuratively speaking, that they have been putting in their coffins by using cigarettes.

Speaking of the failure of men reminds me of an article that I borrowed this morning from Brother Joseph W. McMurrin. I see my time is running on and I must not attempt to read it. (President Smith: "Go on.") This article, published in August, 1914, in The Literary Digest, tells that in fifty long years no single solitary boy that used tobacco has graduated at the head of his class in Harvard University. How I do thank the Lord that all over the world the doctrines of the Lord Jesus Christ which have come to us through the Prophet Joseph Smith are being vindicated. Fifty long years and no smoker at the head of his class in Harvard! And yet there were five smokers out of every six students, so we are entitled to multiply the fifty years by five and announce that in two hundred and fifty years, man to man, the smoker has failed. What a wonderful record! what a marvelous vindication of the inspiration of Almighty God to that young man, Joseph Smith. It is not only in the Word of Wisdom, but it is in every doctrine that God has revealed to us that this vindication is coming, day after day and year after year. Dr. Kress says, that the cigarette injures young men morally. Mike Donovan, the head of the great New York Athletic Club, says:

"Any boy who smokes can never hope to succeed in any line of endeavor, as smoking weakens the heart and lungs and ruins the stomach and affects the entire nervous system. If a boy or young man expects to amount to anything in athletics, he must let smoking and all kinds of liquor alone. They are rank poison to his athletic ambitions."

Mrs. Paterson, president of the Georgia Woman's Christian Temperance Union, says:

"Several years ago I stepped into a grocery store and asked to buy a package of cigarette papers, such as were given away at that time with Durham smoking tobacco. I took two small bottles, each holding about three tablespoonfuls of water. In one I placed fifteen of these cigarette papers, and in the other an equal thickness of leaves of tissue paper from between visiting cards, for the tissue papers were much thinner and it took a larger number of leaves.

"I found that a few drops of the water from the bottle containing the cigarette paper would kill a mouse quicker than you could say 'Jack Robinson,' and a teaspoonful of the water from the other papers seemed to cause a mouse to suffer no inconvenience.

"I have killed dozens of mice with this water and there are others who have tried the experiment with the same success. Will Mr. Hill please tell me what made the difference in the same water, in the same kind of bottles, except the papers that were placed in the bottle?" (Mr. Hill is the president of the tobacco company who wrote Mr. Ford for an apology because he claimed cigarettes were not injurious.)

Here is the one thing above all others in Mr. Ford's pamphlet which has impressed me:

"Several of my young acquaintances are in their graves who gave promise of making happy and useful citizens," declares Luther Burbank, the wizard of the plant and vegetable kingdom whose experiments have caused the civilized world to wonder, and whose experiments have benefited the civilized world by millions upon millions, in increase of prosperity, by the increase in the various things that he has done in improvement in flowers and in seeds and in fruits and in the redemption of the cactus in Arizona, taking the thorns out; he is in very deed the wizard of the agricultural world and one of the benefactors of mankind. He says: "And there is no question whatever that cigarettes alone were the cause of their destruction. No boy living would commence the use of cigarettes if he knew what a useless, soulless, worthless thing they would make of him."

May the Lord help us in keeping our sons from becoming "useless, soulless, worthless things," is my prayer, and I ask it in the name of Jesus. Amen.