Toward Economic Understanding by Joseph A. Geddes;

              TOWARD ECONOMIC UNDERSTANDING
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By Dr. Joseph^A. Geddes - C^f^1'
Almost desperately, because he had avoided facing the issue so long,
Brigham Young tried very hard to correct a misconception his people had
fallen into.  The misconception was agrarianism (agriculture by hand
labor) as the Lord's plan and rising industrialization is of the
gentiles and not of the Lord.   How to go about the correction was his
problem.  Brigham Young had been so right in resurrecting ancient
irrigation and tying it to community planned village settlement.  Could
he now serve his people and the Church but by turning them toward
(1)  cooperation and (2)  the United Order?  Would the joint stewardship
and the co-op tied together hasten industrialization as fast or even
faster than the private profit system?  Some things about the co-ops he
was not too clear about but experience is a good teacher.  The way
certainly lay ahead so he turned his people toward the co-ops and the
United Order.  Now one hundred years later, the L.D.S. Church is tied
very closely to private enterprise and has abandonded all direct effort
toward both the co-ops and the United Order, but cling to the
principles of both for future inspiration.  The century of experience
has undoubtedly shown brotherhood and spiritual progress but no one
can estimate how much.  It is the writer's belief that in the plan he
desired may be found one of the best evidences of his stature as a
statesman as well as a prophet.
The Plan
School the people in collective effort by bringing about a union
of cooperation with the United Order.  If they can make a success of
cooperatives as the Rochdale pioneers have done, he reasoned, they
can make a success of the United Order and while they are doing this they
will be creating superior (Zion) communities and our chief mission will