To Make True Latter-day Saints : Mormon Recreation in the Progressive Era A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Richard Ian Kimball
This volume inaugurates the series Dissertations in Latter-day Saint History Produced by the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History and BYU Studies Also in the Series: A Call to Arms: The 1838 Mormon Defense of Northern Missouri A History of the Latter-day Saints in Northern Missouri from 1836 to 1839 A Study of the Origins of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the States of New York and Pennsylvania 2000 Richard Ian Kimball. All rights reserved. This dissertation was approved in August 1999. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the author. To contact the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History, write to: 127 KMB, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602. To contact BYU Studies, write to 403 CB, Brigham Young University, PO Box 24098, Provo, Utah 84602. ISBN 0-8425-2471-1 Printed in the United States of America 1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dissertations in LDS History Over the years, graduate students have written many important dissertations on LDS topics. Unfortunately, they have typically been unavailable or unknown to lay readers. All too often, good copies of dissertations reside only at the institution at which they were written or on a few researchers book shelves. BYU Studies and the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Latter-day Saint History hope to fill this gap by producing and distributing selected dissertations of interest to Latter-day Saints, making them available to a larger audience. The works in this series have been reformatted from the originals. Nevertheless, these dissertations have undergone only minimal editing. For example, some typographical errors have been corrected. Original page numbers are referenced by superscripted italicized numerals in brackets (e.g., [3] ). Occasionally, the author has included additional information in the endnotes to update old material. Those additions have been placed in brackets and italicized to distinguish them from the original text. Otherwise, the text is identical to the work accepted by the dissertation committee.
For Bird
Contents List of Tables Acknowledgments ix xi Chapter 1. Introduction: Religion, Reform, and Recreation 1 Religion, Recreation, and Reform in the Nineteenth Century 3 Progressive Salt Lake City 6 Mormon Society at the Crossroads 11 2. Not Playing Without a Purpose : The Construction of a Mormon Recreation Ideology 17 Rise of Rational Recreation 19 Siren Songs of Salt Lake City 21 Melange of Early Ideas 24 Inching toward Organization 25 Satisfying the Seven Urges 33 3. A Strong Arm to the Church : Recreation Building Room 39 Early Organization of Recreation Space 39 The Temple of Health 45 Gender Roles and the Deseret Gym 49 4. For the Uplifting and the Betterment of the Youth of Israel : Athletics, Socialization, and the Selling of the Word of Wisdom 59 Not to Make Records, But to Make Men 62 Field Days 67 Athletics and the Selling of the Word of Wisdom 71 5. A Means of Preserving the Memory of the Mormon Pioneers : LDS Recreation in the Great Outdoors 81 Soft in the City 82 Recapitulating the Pioneer Past 85 Summer Camps and Working Women 94 A Natural Bridge across the Generation Gap 97 vii
viii 6. To Make the Most of Leisure : Recreation Responds in a Depression Decade 103 Controlling Leisure Time 104 Recreation Responds in a Depression Decade 104 Recreation in Combating Social Evils 105 Recreation and Internal Cohesiveness 108 Learning from the Experts 110 7. Conclusion: Recreation Recedes 117 List of References 121 Abstract 133
Tables 1. Population of Selected Cities and Decade Growth 8 2. Rural and Urban Populations in Utah 8 3. Country of Birth of Selected Immigrant Population in Utah, 1890 1920 10 4. Country of Birth of Selected Immigrant Populations in Salt Lake City, 1910 10 5. Industrial Workers, Utah, 1904 1919 10 ix