But it was the last time that the Church authorities were to be balked. Since that day, they have dictated the nominations and carried the elections of the United States Senators from Utah as if these were candidates for a church office. The present Senator, Reed Smoot, is an apostle of the Church; he obtained the Mormon President's "permission" to become a candidate, as he admitted to an investigating committee of the Senate; and when the recent tariff bill was being attacked by insurgent Republicans and carried by Senator Aldrich, Senator Smoot acted as Aldrich's lieutenant in debate, and remained to watch the defense of the "interests" when his chief was absent from the Senate chamber. (Not because Smoot was such an able defender of those "interests"! Not because his constituents would uphold his course! But because he has no constituents, and is responsible to no one but the hierarchical partners of those "interests.") Every pledge of the Mormon leaders that the Church would not interfere in politics has been broken at every election in Utah since President Snow that night pleaded to me that he had had many business anxieties for the Church and that if we elected the Church candidate "aid" would come to him. The covenants by which Utah obtained its statehood have been violated again and again. The provisions of the state constitution have been nullified. The trust of the Mormon people has been abused; their political liberties have been denied them; their Gentile brethren have been betrayed. And all this has been done not for the protection of the people, who were threatened with no proscription--and not for the advancement of the faith, which has been free to work out its own future. It has been done as a part of the alliance between the "financial" prophets of the Church and the financial "interests" of the country--which have been exploiting the people of Utah as they have exploited the whole nation with the aid of the ecclesiastical authorities in Utah. Chapter XI. The Will of the Lord The Mormon leaders were now hurried down their chosen path of dishonor with a fateful rapidity. A reform movement was demanding of Washington the adoption of a constitutional amendment that should give Congress power to regulate the marriage and divorce laws of all the states in the Union. And this proposed amendment--partly inspired by a growing doubt of the good faith of the Mormon leaders--gave the politicians in Washington something to trade for Mormon votes, in the presidential campaign of 1900. The Republicans had lost the electoral votes of Utah and the surrounding states, in 1896.