From the Millennial Star, May 1944 —

Future Security: The Mormon Plan

By Edith Russell

After the war. will the bogey of unemployment once again raise its head? The politicians say no. They have made plans. The Mormons have a plan too – and what is more, it works.

The Mormon “Security Programme” was undertaken to save men from whom the dole was sapping character. The Elders of the Church launched the Plan as a moral’ measure, so that “independence, industry, thrift and self-respect should be once more established among our people.”

In the old pioneer days, the Mormons set up “bishops’ storehouses,” and paid tithes in butter, eggs, potatoes, grain, honey or whatever their holdings produced. These tithes in kind were assembled in warehouses and were then dispensed to those in need. With prosperity the tithes were paid wholly in money.

Then in 1937, during that period of depression, unemployment and dole, it was once again established.

When the harvest was over that autumn, the storehouses had received 400,000 cans of food – most of it put up in make-work canneries the Church started, flour, meat, articles of clothing, wheat, shelled corn, apples, honey, fodder, poultry and livestock, in enormous quantities. On 363 work projects, 19,000 people were employed. Nobody was paid money for work; the worker was given a receipt for so many hours of labour. This he presented at a bishop’s storehouse and received according to his needs. The married man with children got more supplies in return for his labour than the single man.

Within the year every one of the 84,460 Mormons were removed from the Government relief rolls. Members who had grown lax about tithing were again faithful in this. Those who had neglected, during the fat years, the good Mormon custom of fasting two meals on the first Sunday of each month and contributing the price of the meals to the poor fund, assumed again their obligations.

The organising capacity of the Latter-day Saints is recognised the world over. Of this Dr. Richard T. Ely, well-known professor of sociology, wrote some time ago in Harper’s Monthly, “the organisation of the Mormons is the most nearly perfect piece of social mechanism with which I have ever, in any way. come in contact, excepting alone the German Army.”

And in view of the complexion the years have bestowed upon the German Army, it certainly leaves the Mormons in possession of the field.

-oOo-

Child Delinquency Grows

By Edith Russell

There is a growing anxiety prevalent at the present time regarding the number of child offenders brought before the magistrates. Questions have been asked and theories expounded. Many heads have ached trying to solve this grave social problem, but child delinquents continue to appear in juvenile courts.

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, child delinquency is practically unheard of The Mormons have evolved a method by which their children are educated to develop spiritually, mentally and physically.

At three years of age, boys and girls enter a Primary class. There they are taught the first law of Christianity, which is obedience. Virgin minds are ready to be sown with the first principles of what constitutes both good Christianity and social equity, namely the recognition of authority, spiritual and secular.

When they are nine years old, that is, approximately one year after their baptism by immersion, they begin a new course, involving an early training in responsibility to God, to themselves and to other people. The boys make enthusiastic Scouts. They have their own companies, and because their Mormon heritage is rich in pioneering, all about Scouting appeals strongly to their natures.

The girls find their equivalent in the Bee-hive groups, whose objective is to promote creative activity for them until they reach the age of eighteen. Then they become Gleaners, that is, engaged in gleaning knowledge from every possible source. The young men have a similar organisation.

The Mormons have proved that active children, efficiently supervised, are not delinquent. It is a principle of the Church that everyone must be active, progressing mentally, spiritually and physically along the road to perfection.

All the years of childhood and adolescence are taken care of in the programme of the Church. Literacy is 99.7 per cent. Of the Church membership. 60 out of every 1,000 attend high schools. The educational system of the Church includes universities, colleges, seminaries, Bee-hives and Primaries, all manned by Mormon teachers engaged in educating 750,000 of the 1,000,000 members of the Church.

The child delinquent is a tragedy. The Mormons are concerned to make each of their children a splendid contribution to world citizenship as well as to the Kingdom of God.