Reed Owen Smoot was an American businessman, churchman, and Senator from Utah.
Background
He was born on January 10, 1862 in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States, into a leading Mormon family. His father, Abraham Owen Smoot, of Scottish and English ancestry, had become a convert to Mormonism in his native Kentucky in 1835 and had led a division of settlers to Utah in the exodus of 1847. He served as mayor of Salt Lake City (1856 - 66) and later of Provo, Utah (1868 - 80). Reed's mother, Anne Kirstine Morrison (originally Mauritzen), a Mormon convert from Norway, was one of Abraham Smoot's several wives by plural marriage; of her seven children, Reed was the third.
Education
Reed attended church schools and entered Brigham Young Academy (later University) in the first class in 1877.
Career
After his graduation in 1879, Smoot joined his father in the extensive business enterprises the latter had begun after moving to Provo. Reed was manager of the Provo Co-op Institution, a general store, at eighteen, and of the Provo Woolen Mills, an important local industry founded by his father, at twenty-three. He established a drug firm, bought and sold livestock, organized a coal and lumber company, built a business block, and was a founder and the first president of the Provo Commercial and Savings Bank. He also invested in mining, railroads, insurance, agriculture, and electric power enterprises, and by thirty-five had amassed a considerable fortune.
Smoot was not especially religious in his youth, but in 1895, having progressed through all the formal ranks of the Mormon priesthood, he was named a counselor in the presidency of the Utah stake, a geographical subdivision of the church. In 1900 he was ordained as one of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a position second only to the presidency of the church. As an apostle until his death, eventually as the senior member of the quorum, he gave absolute loyalty to the two presidents under whom he served, Joseph F. Smith and Heber J. Grant.
Smoot had, however, held no significant political office when, in 1902, he was nominated by his party for the United States Senate; his election to that office by the Utah legislature followed in January 1903. Because of his high position in the church, he faced strong non-Mormon opposition in this first campaign and again in 1908 and 1914, but he was consistently reelected, serving in Washington until 1933.
Anti-Mormon hostility shadowed Smoot's first Senate term. His right to a seat was challenged on the ground that he was a leader in a church which still harbored polygamists and which disregarded the Constitutional separation between church and state. Personal innuendo figured in the anti-Smoot campaign as well, and for more than two years (January 1904 to June 1906) the Senate's Committee on Privileges and Elections considered his case in an atmosphere often charged with intolerance. The committee issued an adverse report, but this was overruled in February 1907 by the Senate, voting strictly along party lines, with pressure by President Theodore Roosevelt contributing to the outcome. This vindication strengthened Smoot's already great devotion to the Republican party.
Senator Nelson W. Aldrich in 1909 gave him a place on the Senate Finance Committee. With this new status and the departure of Roosevelt, Smoot's conservatism blossomed, and he became a leading member of the standpat Republicans, exerting wide influence through numerous committee positions both in the Senate and in the national party organization.
Smoot had a passion for economy which membership on the Finance Committee and, after 1911, the Appropriations Committee provided ample opportunity to gratify. Smoot vigorously opposed the effort of some Senators, in 1929-30, to limit the censorship power of federal customs officials over the importation of books.
When the Democratic landslide of 1932 at last brought political defeat, he returned to Utah and gave his full time to church affairs. His final years were also darkened by a serious decline in his personal fortune caused by the depression. He died in 1941, of heart and kidney disease, while vacationing in St. Petersburg, Florida, and was buried in Provo Burial Park, Provo, Utah.
Achievements
Reed Smoot as the United States Senator, who consistently fought for lower taxes and governmental efficiency, remembered as the co-sponsor of the 1930 Smoot–Hawley Tariff Act, which increased almost 900 American import duties. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act is widely regarded as one of the catalysts for the Great Depression. Smoot was also a prominent leader of the LDS Church, chosen to serve as an apostle in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles.
Politics
Smoot, as an ardent believer in the high protective tariff, was one of the earliest in Utah to become a Republican. In his early years in politics he supported such Roosevelt reforms as conservation and the national parks movement, but his fundamental conservatism was recognized by Senator Nelson W. Aldrich.
A strong nationalist, he was suspicious of the League of Nations, and although not considered an "Irreconcilable" in the Senate fight over America's entry into the League, he was a prominent member of the "Reservationists" led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge; he also worked energetically to secure repayment of America's war debt.
He regarded the New Deal with something akin to horror and regretted that he was not in a position to oppose it in the Senate.
Views
Although himself the son of a polygamous marriage, he accepted as a direct revelation of God the church's manifesto of 1890 (issued as part of Utah's efforts to achieve statehood) which called for an end to polygamy, and was a powerful force in assuring its acceptance.
Personality
Brusque and sometimes abrasive in manner, Smoot was an indefatigable worker.
Connections
Smoot had married Alpha Mae Eldredge of Salt Lake City on September 17, 1884. They had six children: Harold Reed, Chloe, Harlow Eldredge, Anna Kirstine, Zella Esther, and Ernest Winder. Mrs. Smoot died in 1928 after a long illness, and on July 2, 1930, Smoot married Mrs. Alice (Taylor) Sheets, the widowed daughter of a Yorkshire banker.
