(5 of 6)
Soda Water. George Albert Smith saw the end of the old era and grew up with the new one. He was born in 1870, the son of a polygamous father. He is a distant relative of the prophet (his grandfather was Joseph Smith's cousin), but his family was not otherwise distinguished, and George Smith himself was neither handsome, aggressive, nor brilliant.
But he was proud. And he worked. The Smith family home had no front lawn. He put one in, though it meant dipping water from an irrigation ditch every evening to keep the lawn green. He got a job at Z.C.M.I, when he was a 13-year-old schoolboy and went to work making overalls. His salary: $2 a week.
He was also a religious boy. As a youth he once went into a saloon on an impulse and bought some soda water. He suffered immediately from remorse, thought: "What if somebody had seen you coming out of that place?" He was wary of the world, but he got along in it well enough.
"I Knew I Was Safe." He was proud of a wide-brimmed frontier hat and a suit with checks. He worked for a while on a Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad surveying party; dust and desert sun damaged his left eye and he quit. On a mission in the Alabama back country, he was surrounded by an anti-Mormon mob while he slept in a cabin. Bullets tore into the roof and broke the windows. Smith stayed in bed and called out to his cabin mates: "The Lord will take care of us." Afterwards he said: "I knew I was safe as long as I was preaching the word of God."
He married Lucy Woodruff, daughter of the church's fourth leader. He became a salesman, finally a director of Z.C.M.I. Then, when he was 33, he heard news which kept him sleepless for nights. He had been named a member of the Council of the Twelve Apostles. Since he was young and healthy he felt that it was almost a certainty that one day he would become president. Forty-two years later he did.
Last week most Mormons—and Utah's non-Mormons—agreed that he had done very well at it. As leader of a once militant church, he had never felt the need of weapons more lethal than his collection of old canes. He had no talent for hellfire-&-brimstone oratory. He was a polite, lively, deeply religious old man with an awareness of history and a consummate faith in the truth and power of platitudes. Samples: "Giving up cigarets will make you a far better man. . . . Recreation is a wonderful thing but it should not be spelled wreckreation."
Somehow, in sum, he is impressive. In his quiet and earnest way Smith is a great salesman and public-relations man and one who serves the needs of the church well in 1947. People who watch him in his office—slyly popping bonbons into his mouth while he works—know that they are dealing with a force.
The church is still the greatest single power in Utah and in the lives of its members. Its hierarchy is conservative, and has not lost the feeling that life in the church is still life in a fortress. Last week, the hierarchy was concentrating hard on a welfare plan as a bulwark against depression. Its bishops' storehouses bulged with goods.