I have no objections to the tenor of the remarks we have just heard
pertaining to our temporal affairs, though they are rather more
appropriate, according to custom, in such a meeting as we had last
evening with the Bishops, High Priests, &c. I wish to say a few words
on the subject last spoken of by brother Kimball. I think he will be
very successful in obtaining oil from flax or linseed. For a
beginning, and for persons that never saw oil made before, which is
the case with the workmen who are making it—they knew nothing about
making oil—I think they have done extraordinary well. If I remember
correctly, in the States five quarts of oil from a bushel of seed was
considered a good yield. There I was some little acquainted with
making oil, and very much acquainted with using it.
Brother Kimball spoke of the oil that is imported to this country. I
am doubtful whether there has ever been a gallon of pure linseed oil
imported into this Territory; and the person that told brother Kimball
that he could reduce his oil so that the adulteration could not be
detected, is mistaken, for I could detect it by rubbing it between my
fingers. Before I knew anything of "Mormonism," I knew how to
adulterate oil. Brother Kimball says that alkali is often mixed with
linseed oil. In my young days I had to quit the business of painting
purely because I had either to be dishonest or quit; and I quit. I
will venture to say that, let me have the oil that is made at brother
Kimball's mill, and have pure white lead of our own manufacture, and I
will put a coat of paint on to the outside woodwork of buildings that
will last twenty years, better than the materials we import and now
use for painting will last two years. When you buy the oil that is
imported and make putty with it and what is commonly called Spanish
white—if you set glass in windows with that putty, in a year or two
the glass will be falling out; but when you use the pure oil, in two
years you could scarcely get the glass out without the use of a knife
or chisel to first cut out the putty. Let it stand ten years, and
probably you would have to cut the sash to pieces to let the glass
out. The oil we get from the East is worth but little, only for
present show. That which we make here will last in this climate.
Our painters tell us that it is the climate that destroys the paint.
I do not think there is a painter in this Territory that knows what
pure linseed oil is. They tell us that the climate destroys the paint.
That is a mistake; the paint is not good. Can you tell whether there
is alkali mixed with the linseed oil? I can. I can also tell whether
there is Spanish white in the paint. Plaster of Paris (by some
called Paris white) is also mixed with white lead, and our houses are
painted with it. Other paints are adulterated. I pay from thirty to
fifty dollars to have a carriage painted, and in three months it needs
painting again. Let it stand six months, and you would hardly suppose
that it had been painted in sixteen years.
We ought to have spoken last night in regard to raising flax in this
Territory, and I will now say to the brethren that we wish them to
return the flax seed they have borrowed at the Tithing Office. We also
wish you to raise flax and make linen cloth. We have as good workmen
at this business as there are in the world. The American brethren do
not generally know how to raise flax for making fine linen, but they
can easily learn. Instead of sowing five pecks to the acre, sow five
or more bushels, and you will raise flax as soft as silk; from such
flax fibers can be hatcheled as fine as spinster's webs. Most of the
linen we import is more than half cotton. The flax is put into
machines and cut and torn to pieces; it then goes through another
rotting process, is then mixed with cotton, carded, spun, and called
linen. I once in a while see a genuine piece of linen, which will as
well last six years as the most we buy will last six months, if it is
not washed to death. This you know, if you have been accustomed to
using tow cloth. In clearing out brush, cutting down trees, logging, and
all kinds of rough work, the one or two pairs of genuine tow trousers
and a couple of tow frocks will last through a summer; but put on that
heavy so-called linen you buy in the stores, and do nothing but come
into a pulpit, and before you have had it three months it is cut to
pieces and en tirely done. But I will not detain you longer upon this
point.
Brother Kimball mentioned about some of the brethren's sending to the
States for nails. Send to the States, go to the stores, buy where you
please, and do you think that you can get better nails than you can
get at our nail factory? I know what nails are; I have driven a great
many. There is not a better nail made at Boston or in Germany than
there is at this factory. I never saw a better nail, nor better nail
machinery than that which we have running.
We should now make our own iron. We have already spent about one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars to make iron here, but we have
failed, not for want of ore or for want of skill. Where is the
difficulty? There has not been union enough in the men who engaged in
that work. After we had spent about one hundred thousand dollars, an
ingenious man, named Peter Shirts, would have brought out the iron
as good as ever was made, and that, too, by means of a small furnace
of trifling cost; but they ran him out of the county. The citizens
pronounced him a nuisance, confiscated his property, and drove him
out. Every man said—"I will have the name and honor of making the
first iron made in this Territory, or I will destroy the work." That
is the difficulty. We have the best of iron ore, and we have coal
close by it; and some man will go to work, by-and-by, who is not
worth fifty dollars, and make iron. Go into Vermont and you will
there see a farmer, when he has a little leisure, take his wagon, get
the ore, smelt it, hammer it out, and make two or three hundred pounds
of iron in a day. He takes care of it, and by-and-by someone comes
along and buys it of him. Travel through that country, and you will
find hundreds of such little iron forges. Men who do not
pretend even to be blacksmiths get some person to teach them how to
use a trip hammer to draw out the iron after they have put on their
blast and run out some two or three hundred pounds. On a rainy day a
farmer has his ore ready and makes iron when he cannot work in the
field. We have shown you that we can make nails. I cannot do
everything. Who has brought carding machines and other machinery here?
Who has entered into every kind of mechanism that has been started in
this Territory? Twelve thousand dollars we have spent to get the
manufacture of pottery under way. By-and-by some man will come
along, not worth fifty dollars, and take the feldspar, which enters so
largely into our granite rock, and make the best of chinaware.
We want glass. Some man will come along, by-and-by, and take the
quartz rock, rig up a little furnace, and make glass.