It is my play, in my leisure hours,
That I burst my bands and divert my powers;
It is there that I enter false or true,
To match my good or my bad with you;
It is there that I score for pride or shame,
As I tally square or foul the game,
My best, my worst is released and free,
And I play debased or gloriously!
—Bertha A. Kleinman (“In My Play,” 1927)1
In the hardscrabble early years of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, an interest in recreation, merry-making and amusements might seem completely out of place. Compared with the organization’s need to find new members, forge a hierarchical structure, and create settlements in the frontier west, the desire to have fun and relax pales in necessity and importance. Or so it would seem. Mormon leaders, however, beginning with Joseph Smith, recognized that recreation and wholesome amusements were not only necessary but beneficial. To create communities, whether religious bodies or frontier settlements, Mormon leaders stressed the positive aspects of uplifting diversions. By encompassing all aspects of life—including body, mind and [44] spirit—Mormonism represented a “new religious movement” that evinced a new religious attitude toward recreation.2
With the publication of the Book of Mormon in 1830, Joseph Smith announced to the world a bold departure from traditional Christianity. Relating the story of a group of Old World Jews that settled in the New World around 600 B.C.E., the book of scripture contains revelations, divine directives, and historical narrative. The highlight occurs near the book’s conclusion when a resurrected Jesus Christ visits the American continent and preaches many of the messages found in the Bible. This new scripture was the foundation on which Smith declared his prophetic calling and represented the earliest theological statements of the emerging religion. Not only did the book attempt to reorient the historical traditions of Christianity, it also pronounced the attitude of the new religion toward pleasure. In fact, Smith placed man’s happiness at the center of human existence. In a central passage near the beginning of the book, the ancient prophet Lehi (the man in charge of the original group of immigrants in 600 B.C.E.) succinctly states the purpose of life: “Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.”3 The kernel of life, the very [45] crux of creation, was man’s happiness. Religion, which provided for the ritual worship of God, was the critical element in the Mormon quest for “joy”; recreation, though secondary, would help church members find religious joy. Religious recreation, even in the nineteenth century, played an integral role in the formation of the LDS church and in the personalities of its early leaders.
The Prophet Joseph Smith fits more comfortably in the tradition of the rugged outdoorsman of the frontier than the retiring religious cleric of Puritan fame. Fond of jokes and quick with a laugh, the jocular Prophet’s muscular physique seemed more suited to frontier fields than to urbane divinity schools. His religion suited his personality. Convinced, as an 1832 revelation detailed, that “the spirit and the body are the soul of man,” Joseph set out to nourish both halves of his eternal soul.4 So much for the Western religious supposition pitting spirit against body; in fact, to find redemption for the soul, the spirit and body had to work together. It followed that what was good for the body was good for the soul.
In many cases, Joseph’s penchant for the physical marked him as a new breed of religious leader. Wilford Woodruff’s first contact with the Prophet demonstrated Joseph’s unique approach to religion. Woodruff, who would later become the fourth president of the LDS church, wrote in his journal of that initial meeting:
Here for the first time in my life I met and had an interview with our beloved Prophet Joseph Smith. . . . My first introduction was not of a kind to satisfy the [46] preconceived notions of the sectarian mind as to what a prophet ought to be, and how he should appear. It might have shocked the faith of some men. I found him and his brother Hyrum out shooting at a mark with a brace of pistols.5
Perhaps even Woodruff himself was a little “shocked” at the Prophet’s behavior. Such behavior was not unusual for the Prophet, however. Stories about the Prophet pulling sticks, wrestling, reading, and riding are legion both in the lore and the history of the church. One account from Joseph’s history evinces the array of activities that filled a typical day. On 8 February 1843, the Prophet recorded:
This morning, I read German, and visited with a brother and sister from Michigan, who thought that ‘a prophet is always a prophet’; but I told them that a prophet was a prophet only when he was acting as such. After dinner Brother Parley P. Pratt came in: we had conversations on various subjects. At four in the afternoon, I went out with my little Frederick, to exercise myself by sliding on the ice.6
Like the intellectual, spiritual, [47] and physical exercise that filled the prophet’s day, such activities comprised the major elements of Mormon cultural and spiritual life. As Joseph’s journal describes, there were no clear-cut boundaries drawn among spiritual, mental, and physical health. Mormonism combined all of the elements of life—just as the soul combined the spirit and the body.
Joseph Smith’s belief in the positive power of play continued to inform the church after his death in June 1844. Brigham Young, who assumed authority as the head of the church following Joseph’s assassination, followed in the Prophet’s footsteps by extolling the virtue of wholesome recreation. Not athletic like his predecessor, Brigham pursued pleasure through drama and dance. Although amusements were curtailed for a time after the Prophet’s death (Young counseled the Saints in October 1844 that “it is not now a time for dancing or frolics but a time of mourning and of humiliation and prayer”), it did not take long for dancing and merry-making to be renewed.7 All too familiar with the effects of proscribing recreational activities, Brigham made sure that church members were allowed to enjoy themselves. As a child, religious strictures regarding recreation had not inured young Brigham to pleasure-seeking; rather, they had increased his desire to join in appropriate activities as he matured. Looking back on his youth, Young recognized that forbidding fun was anathema to a religion that required both body and spirit:
When I was young, I was kept within very strict bounds, and was not allowed to walk more than half-an-hour on Sunday for exercise. The proper and necessary gambols of youth having been denied me, makes me want active exercise and amusement now. I had not a chance to dance when I was young, and never heard the enchanting tones of the violin, until I was eleven years of age; and then I thought I was on the high way to hell, if I suffered myself to linger and listen to [48] it. I shall not subject my little children to such a course of unnatural training, but they shall go to the dance, study music, read novels, and do anything else that will tend to expand their frames, add fire to their spirits, improve their minds, and make them feel free and untrammeled in body and mind. Let everything come in its season, place everything in the place designed for it, and do everything in its right time.8
Young feared that children who were not allowed to indulge in play were “more fit for companions to devils” because without the diversion offered by recreation, their “duty becomes loathsome to them.”9 For Young, everything, including uplifting and wholesome recreation, had a proper time and place. Susa Young Gates recorded that her father’s motto was “Eight hours work, eight hours sleep, eight hours recreation.”10
Brigham’s first revelation to the church, given at Winter Quarters in January 1847, instructed the Saints not to forget the important role of recreation. Despite the poverty and deprivation that overflowed the streets and shacks of their winter resting place on the central plains, the new prophet reminded the migrating Mormons: “If thou art merry, praise the Lord with singing, with music, with dancing, and with a prayer of [49] praise and thanksgiving.”11 The ability to pray and to play helped the Saints cope with the treacherous conditions on the American plains.12
To Brigham Young, the key to recreation was found in the word itself—diversionary pleasures actually re-created individuals making them more fit for their daily labors. When asked why fiddling and dancing were permitted, Young replied,
[T]hat my body may keep pace with my mind. My mind labors like a man logging, all the time; and this is the reason why I am fond of these pastimes—they give me a privilege to throw every thing off, and shake myself, that my body may exercise, and my mind rest. What for? To get strength, and be renewed and quickened, and enlivened, and animated, so that my mind may not wear out.13
On another occasion, Young advised, “Recreation and diversion are as necessary to our well being as the more serious pursuits of life. There is not a man in the world but what, if kept at any one branch of business or study, will become like a machine. Our pursuits should be so diversified as to develop every trait of character and diversity of [50] talent.”14 Ironically, men and women needed recreation so that they might concentrate more effectively on the “more serious pursuits of life.”
Not all recreational activities were equal, however. Music, dancing, holiday affairs, swimming, and picnicking among the Saints all received Brigham’s approbation. Nonetheless, on many occasions, Brigham warned church members against allowing innocent amusements to become illicit. Brigham knew from personal experience that merry-making could quickly get out of hand. After asking “Is there anything immoral in recreation,” Brigham turned to his own family for a prescriptive example. “If I see my sons and daughters enjoying themselves, chatting, visiting, riding, going to a party or dance, is there anything immoral in that? I watch very closely, and if I hear a word, see a look, or a sneer at divine things or anything derogatory to a good moral character, I feel it in a moment, and I say, ‘If you follow that it will not lead to good, it is evil.’”15 Guarded carefully by the righteous, recreation could have a positive impact on the individual and society. Let loose among the wicked, however, and recreation had the potential to destroy character as well. Young seemed especially concerned that Mormons seek pleasure within the fold whenever possible. To those who had to travel [51] away from Zion, however, he gave the sternest warning regarding the use of leisure time, “Never suffer yourselves to mingle in any of these recreations that tend to sin and iniquity, while you are away from the body of the Church, where you cannot so fully control yourselves.”16 In Brigham’s mind, the license to recreate was restricted by the requirement that appropriate pleasure-seeking was best maintained within the church.
A belief in restricted recreation—conducted within church parameters—prevailed throughout the nineteenth century among Mormon leaders. Ad hoc pronouncements by church authorities delineated the Mormon approach to play. As the twentieth century dawned, however, and secular and religious authorities began to perceive a need for rationalized recreation, leaders of the LDS church pursued a recognizable, comprehensive philosophy about the proper use of leisure time. From 1900 to 1930, they made a conscientious effort to elucidate a recreational ideology and to disseminate it throughout the church through workshops, pamphlets, and educational opportunities.
Rise of Rational Recreation
As the nineteenth century waned, the proper use of leisure time became a major concern not just for Mormons but for many Americans. Beset by the social problems caused by urbanization and industrialization, progressive-era Americans looked to [52] rationalized recreation to counteract the destructive tendencies toward idleness, delinquency, and exploitation that seemed to be at the center of the rising city.
According to observers, an expansion of free time lay at the root of many urban problems. While it seemed that there was never enough time for farmers and their families to finish their myriad tasks, city dwellers were confronted with the exact opposite problem—they found themselves with too much time on their hands. A combination of industrial and social factors had freed many urban workers from the twelve- and fourteen-hour days that had been commonplace just a generation earlier. Labor organizations including the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor emphasized the shortening of the workday and in the first decade of the twentieth century, state governments began to cooperate with labor groups in limiting the number of hours that women and children were allowed to work. The Supreme Court, in Mueller v. Oregon (1908), validated this type of governmental regulation by upholding an Oregon law limiting maximum working hours for women. Due to this combination of factors, the average work week in the United States decreased from 60 hours in 1890 to 51 hours in 1920.17
In addition to the increasing availability of time away from work, the quest for rational recreation was advanced by the rise of sociology as a respectable and “scientific” field of study. Early sociologists and social workers recognized the impact of social [53] relationships and the influence of peers upon growing children. And it was in the burgeoning cities where sociologists found their laboratories. Particularly attuned to the importance of environment, urban social scientists took recreation seriously and accorded it major prominence in their schemes to make urban spaces more livable. Whether it was Jacob Riis’s muckraking photographs and commentary or Jane Addams’s Hull House, turn-of-the-century sociologists brought attention to the shame of the cities and saw in wholesome, directed recreation a savior for urban dwellers, especially children.
Like other social reforms in the progressive city, settlement houses quickly perceived the popularity of recreation programs and used them to interest neighborhood children. Hull House in Chicago offered calisthenics, gymnastics, boys’ clubs, and billiard tournaments. The central attraction was the Hull House gymnasium, which housed a popular women’s basketball team in addition to many other programs. Jane Addams articulated the centrality of recreational programs in the settlement house movement but realized that volunteer reform efforts could not reach all of the needy: “The young people in our clubs are comparatively safe, but many instances come to the knowledge of Hull-House residents which make us long for the time when the city, through more small parks, municipal gymnasiums, and schoolrooms open for recreation, can guard from disaster these young people who walk so carelessly on the edge of the [54] pit.”18 Supervised athletics even proved a recuperative salve to settlement house subjects who may have already fallen into the proletarian pit of industrial America. “Young people who work long hours at sedentary occupations, factories, and offices,” wrote Addams, “need perhaps more than anything else the freedom and ease to be acquired from a symmetrical muscular development and are quick to respond to that fellowship which athletics apparently afford more easily than anything else.”19 Parks, playgrounds, school sports, church recreational programs, and settlement house activities combined to form a web of protection around inner-city immigrant groups.
Building on developments in sociological theory, urban social reformers constructed a “scientific” play philosophy to guide their efforts in the parks and playgrounds of American cities. Dominick Cavallo, the foremost historian of the urban play movement, writes that play organizers, the reformers in charge of rationalizing urban recreation schemes, “did not want children to relax, or nonchalantly pass the time of day on playgrounds. Organized play was a means of shaping mental and moral faculties: it had little in common with the escapism of either sport or casual recreation. Organized play, as play advocates were fond of pointing out, was educational, not recreational: it was related to physical and psychological development as well as to [55] political socialization.”20 Organized play was serious business to social reformers who oversaw the formation of a comprehensive play ideology stemming from their study of adolescent psychology and sociology.
The centerpiece of the ideology of organized play was psychologist G. Stanley Hall’s concept of recapitulation. Hall argued that each stage in an adolescent’s social, psychological, and physical development “recapitulated” experiences of the child’s ancient forebears. For example, the restless energy of ten- and eleven-year-olds corresponded to the nomadic era of human history; likewise, the adolescent’s attachment to peer-group re-created the tribal experience of the distant past. Because ancient men and women relied on their muscles and instincts for moral direction, thought Hall, the best way to inculcate morality was through muscle development. Marching, physical drills, and supervised play habituated children in the ways of proper social behavior. Although the scientific basis of Hall’s conclusions met consistent challenge, his core concept of instilling morality through muscles found widespread acceptance. Other play theorists like psychologist James Mark Baldwin and John Dewey built on Hall’s conception of play as the mediator between child and society. Baldwin maintained that play should be designed to take advantage of the child’s innate desire to imitate. Ripe with the potential for social control, play (and especially team games) taught children their social roles and the need to subsume personal desires to the [56] expectations of the social group. Dewey’s instrumental theory of knowledge held that play situations permitted children to “act out” social roles until they became habitual.
Though the theories of organized play operated on different principles, most play organizers agreed that “mind, body, and emotions were not distinct, separate ‘faculties’ but existed on a fluid continuum, interpenetrating each other.” The belief that “external conditioning could change the child’s inner world” challenged the nineteenth century separation of mind and body and the assumption that the mind was superior. Taken together, these psychological theories provided the ideological basis undergirding the call for rationalized recreation.21
In their quest to modify the urban movement, sociologists and reformers converged on the need to create green urban space where children could play, far away (in attitude if not geography) from alleys and street corners. Sensing that a “back-to-the-farm” movement would impact at best a small percentage of the swelling urban masses, reformers decided to bring the farm to the city. Urban green spaces—often directed by trained social workers—became the linchpin of what was termed the Playground movement. While experts created a space for children to amuse themselves, they likewise created a space for themselves in new professional organizations. In 1906, the Playground Association of America (later the National Recreation Association) was [57] founded to advocate supervised children’s play in municipal playgrounds across the United States.22
Siren Songs of Salt Lake City
Similar problems beset the Mormon community, which was concentrated in the Mountain West states primarily along the Wasatch mountains in Northern Utah. As the twentieth century dawned, Salt Lake City (the headquarters of the church since its arrival in Utah) was experiencing the pains of urban growth. As elsewhere, growth in population meant an increase in social problems and adolescent delinquency. Moreover, expanding city boundaries fostered opportunities to perpetrate sins of commission by participating in urban evils and sins of omission by remaining idle and lazy. City street corners seemed to sing a two-edged siren song that lured youngsters toward illicit activities and idleness.
Though not quite Gomorrah, Salt Lake’s urban attractions included myriad opportunities for lounging and other more lascivious behavior. Daily attendance at the city’s eighteen movie houses ran as high as 15,000, with as many as 35 percent of attendees under the age of eighteen. Though not considered a health hazard to the children, one sociological survey of Salt Lake in the 1920s worried that “many of the pictures offered . . . are unwholesome to a dangerous degree, by reason of their [58] emphasis upon and vivid portrayal of sex indulgence, drunkenness, burglary, robbery, suicide, murder, and other forms of vice and lawlessness.” If the moving pictures failed to attract young men and women in Salt Lake, they could find other entertainment at five public dance halls or a variety of smaller road-houses. After a night of drinking and “dating up” at a road house, couples commonly drove off “into some lonely or poorly-lighted part of town and indulge[d] themselves sexually.” In some places, prostitutes, pimps, and bootleggers openly sold their services. Additionally, many adolescents sought refuge in the sixty pool halls around the city. Particularly popular with teenage boys, the halls provided a less than wholesome venue for “hanging out.”23 With population growth came the urban problem of commercialized recreation—and the Mormon capital was no exception.
Though similar to social reformers in other urban areas, Mormons in Salt Lake City had some unique concerns about the rise of urban life. First, some Mormons feared that the ease of urban life had destroyed the physical and spiritual vitality of the rising generation. Like the Puritan divines more than two centuries earlier, Mormon spiritual leaders wondered how they would be able to hold onto third-generation members of the church. The first generation of church members that had not known the Prophet Joseph Smith, adolescents around the turn of the century were less likely to respond to the “bloody shirt” of the martyrdom. Rather, new methods of attraction [59] and retention were necessary to lure young people into meetinghouses and off the streets. Cataloging the urban vices that were attracting young Mormons, Apostle Joseph F. Smith (nephew of the Prophet Joseph) firmly focused on the errant generation:
I hope . . . that we will, above all other things, look after the welfare and salvation of the souls of our young men who are wandering in darkness, being left by their parents to grow up like weeds. We have more work to do right here in Zion, in the way of instructing the youth of Zion, and in preaching the gospel to our own children, than out in the world. . . . Right here at home, under the very droppings of the sanctuary, where we ought to see eye to eye, and where our children ought to be growing up true to the covenants of the gospel and interested with the people of God, we find them by the hundreds in the different stakes of Zion associated with the elements that are of the world. We see them smoking their cigars, their pipes, their cigarettes, and chewing their tobacco; we see them loitering around the whiskey saloons and places of amusement.
As if to affirm the declension that separated the mischief makers from their pious parents, Elder Smith pointed his finger at the unconverted generation. “Inquire who they are,” the Apostle intoned, “and you will find that they are the children of parents who have joined The Church [sic] in the old world, perhaps, or in different parts of the United States, and have gathered to Zion for the love of the gospel, and yet their children are growing up in this way. . . . What a field there is for us right here at home, and how necessary it is for us to do something to reclaim these young men, and bring [60] them to a realization of their condition.”24 Several years earlier, Elder Smith spoke in similar terms in denouncing “a class of young men growing up in the cities”:
They have broken loose from all healthy restraint; they do as they please; they incline to deviltry and rowdyism; love fast living; visit the restaurants for their meals; rent quarters in the business part of the city, so that they can come and go at all hours of the day and night without being disturbed or questioned, and have abandoned home living and influence because it abridges them in their revelries. No common pleasures satisfy them; each day must see new sensations to thrill the passions and appetites. To mention the society of the Saints, Sunday schools, meetings, improvement associations, as places where the happiness may be enjoyed, is to them like bidding a king to feed on husks. They despise these institutions and the society therein as simple, fit for children, old folks and fools, not for “bloods” and their style of citizen.
Smith, though, was quick to remind the young men that rural areas also contained trouble spots—restaurants, corner grocery, post office, and the town loafing place were specifically indicted. The rural sins, however, were not cast in the same light as their urban counterparts; the “light-mindedness and indifference” of country boys did not exact the same stinging rebuke given to city dwellers.25 Examples abound that LDS adults questioned the dedication and the hardiness of adolescents in the century’s first decade.26 [61]
A fictionalized account, edited by Brigham Young’s daughter Susa Young Gates, captures the perceived problem of indolence and ease caused by urban living. Writing a letter to a son traveling to a distant mission field, the fictional mother chastises the boy for grumbling about not being able to take a sleeper car on the train ride east. The mother writes
You are city-bred, my son, and have been reared in a comfortable home; and this fact may often be a setback to you. Your father has spent so many nights on the far off hills, alone, but with the bark of the coyotes for company and his saddle for a pillow, that he thought your velvet-cushioned seat was a splendid place for a night’s rest. I, too, have lain many nights on the ground, in the early days of Utah, as we traveled to and fro; and I am glad, now, that I have had all such experiences. Never complain at circumstances; first, because it is useless; and, second, because they are provided especially for your trial and, therefore, for your development.27
Unlike the pastoral scenes of nineteenth-century Utah, where coyotes sung ranchers to sleep and stiff saddles forged strong character, Mormons in twentieth-century cities too often fell victim to urban predators that preyed on adolescents and devoured physical [62] and spiritual strength. Twentieth-century Mormons, however, had no half-way covenant solution to insure that a wayward generation would remain in the fold. Rather, inventive methods of inviting youngsters to church were the order of the day. Church-sponsored recreation, rationalized by academic study and sociological principles, became a potent weapon in the war against youthful “declension.”
But, as Joseph F. Smith indicated, the sole blame for wayward children could not be placed on the broad-shouldered city. Parents in urban Zion had been shirking their responsibility to raise righteous offspring. After a litany of youthful offenses including smoking “miserable cigarettes,” loafing, creating trouble, and acting “smart,” the editor of the Improvement Era asked “why should such characters grow up in the midst of the Saints?” Answering his own question, he pinned the problem on parents:
I say it is due to the infidelity, indifference and neglect of parents. They certainly do not live in conformity with the Gospel which we have embraced, for in that case the result with their children would be widely different. Or, if they believe the precepts of the Gospel, they certainly have neglected to practice and teach the young people these things, which is a proof in itself that they have miserably failed in obeying one of its vital teachings.28
Children were not the only ones going astray on the streets of Salt Lake City. For parents, however, the perceived problem was not that they were loafing on street corners but that too many fathers were spending too much time on the job and not paying enough attention to their children. In the 1920s, several articles in the Improvement Era [63] bemoaned the inattention of parents. One poignant poem captured the impact that a father might have had:
What’s that you say: “The same old tale,
Father a stranger to his boy.”
“Joe’s idle, leisure time sent him to jail,
And wrecked his father’s pride and joy.”
Oh, men, when will you ever see
That minutes make the hour—the day.
That what your boys will finally be
Is what they think and act and play.
He was a boy, a wee small lad,
With smiling eyes and ruddy face.
A stranger to his busy day,
Allowed to run most any place.29
Along the same lines, a “college senior” wrote about memories that he wished he had—memories of a caring, involved father. Striking a sad chord, the young man wished he could remember “just one talk in which we had discussed together the problems and facts that trouble every growing boy, on which his clear and vigorous viewpoint might have shed such light and comfort, instead of leaving me to pick up the facts haphazardly as I might, and to solve the problems as best I could.”30 Absent and uninvolved parents provided another problem which pushed Mormon leaders toward an increased emphasis on church-sponsored recreation. [64]
Of particular concern to observers in the Mormon community was an increasing laxity toward Sabbath observance. The effects of the city and the pervasive fear of declension in the rank and file appear in the struggles of church leaders to mold Sunday behavior. One Improvement Era editorial spelled out some of the reasons that young (as well as middle-aged) Mormons gave for missing their meetings. To explain the “apathetic feeling about attending meetings,” the editor argued that the primary cause was a “breakdown of the traditional obligations to attend [Sunday worship services], which earlier in the Church was rightly set down and considered as a duty.” The fact that Mormons now suffered no social penalty for Sabbath breaking was a far cry from the days when “a member who failed to attend his meetings was often severely criticised [sic] by his teachers and bishop, and even considered to be a backslider.” Clearly, at least in the eyes of the editor, the LDS social structure had devolved away from its responsibility to apply social pressure to keep members on the straight and narrow. The second cause of Sabbath breaking, closely related to the first, was a noted increase in the “number and variety of Sunday amusements.” Such Sabbath diversions included trips to the lakes and canyons, music halls, buggy or carriage rides into the country, parties, socials, and other entertainments. “You have noticed how time for diversion and amusement can always be found by people who can find no time for religious worship,” wrote Joseph F. Smith in one particularly sharp condemnation.31 Sabbath [65] breakers seemed to be winning the spiritual war for control of the Lord’s day and the control over wholesome recreation was at the heart of the battle.
Though Mormons recognized honoring the Sabbath day as one of the cardinal commandments of Christianity, LDS leaders were aware that inappropriate Sunday activities were not only spiritual sins but caused social problems as well. First, Sabbath breaking often was the first step toward other illicit activities. In one stern warning to parents that “sons and daughters have been led astray through their being turned loose at night, going to miserable shows, dance halls, resorts, and cheap penny entertainments,” church President Joseph F. Smith argued that the road to such immoral activities often began with the breaking of the fourth commandment. “Many of these abominable habits,” the church leader claimed, “are started by failure to properly observe the Sabbath day.”32 The path to salvation led to the chapel door on Sunday morning; the primrose path of destruction started when one walked away from Sabbath observance. Furthermore, Sabbath breakers not only stunted their own spiritual growth, they also provided a bad example that might lead others into improper activities. When asked by a young brother what harm there is in breaking the Sabbath, Dr. James X. Allen replied that such behavior placed a “stumbling-block in the path of those who are jealous of the Lord’s day.”33 Breaking the Sabbath was a social activity. [66] The greatest impact might be felt in the inner life of the sinner, but the community also paid a price for desecrating the holy day.
Most histories of progressive era recreation place industrialization and urbanization at the center of calls to make recreation more wholesome and socially beneficent. Viewed from the widest perspective, these social processes also played an important role in motivating Mormons to take recreation more seriously. Other local factors, however, including declension from pioneer fortitude, parental neglect, and laxity in keeping the Sabbath prompted LDS leaders to consider the need to place recreational pursuits under the agency of the church. Although efforts to rationalize Mormon recreation proceeded haltingly at first, the first quarter of the twentieth century witnessed the development and dissemination of a comprehensive leisure-time philosophy based on the seven theoretical “urges” of humankind.
Melange of Early Ideas
Although a singular ideology would come to dominate Mormon recreation, a variety of ideas continued to persist as the LDS play philosophy developed. Around the turn of the century, many commentators feared the potential of leisure time to lead to physical and spiritual decay. Believing that work was the best palliative to leisure time problems, they thought it was better to avoid leisure time than to manage it to good ends. One article in the Improvement Era claimed:
It is the man of voluntary or compelled leisure who mopes, and pines, and thinks himself either into the mad house or the grave. Motion is all nature’s law. Action is man’s salvation, both physical and mental. And yet nine out of ten are [67] wistfully looking forward to the coveted hour when they shall have leisure to do nothing, or something only if they “feel like it”—the very siren which has lured to death many a successful man. He only is truly wise who lays himself out to work till life’s latest hour; and he is the man who will live the longest, and will live to the most purpose.34
A stark contrast was drawn between work and leisure. Work produced the mental and physical health of a fulfilling life while leisure often lured the successful man toward death. This perspective, however, was just one of many philosophies about work and leisure that made up the melange of Mormon recreational beliefs.
Just three months later, in September 1898, another statement in the same church magazine presented an altogether different leisure-time ideology. Rather than avoid free time, recreation was to be taken in moderation in order to refresh the mind and reinvigorate the body. While this statement similarly contended that the “idler is never happy,” persons filling their free time with wholesome recreational activities were not considered idle. Work was no longer the only productive pursuit. In fact, work that was not leavened with wholesome diversion was harmful. Moderation—the key word in Mormon recreation in the early part of this century—constituted the central element of a full life. The article advised, [68]
To take no amusement is bad, for it deprives the mind of needful rest and recreation; so likewise is it bad to be altogether given up to amusement, for then all serious objects are lost sight of. The true plan is to take amusement in moderation. To be very much in society is sure to cause the human character to deteriorate, making it frivolous, and incapacitating it for taking abstract and elevated views; on the other hand, a perfect solitary life weakens the mind, lays it open to odd fancies and eccentricities, if not to hypochondria, and ends in some instances by altogether throwing it from its balance. The medium here is alone found salutary. Even in the simplest points of behavior an extreme is to be condemned. To be excessively gay, in a world where so many onerous things call for our attention, is wrong; so is it to be always serious, seeing that the world also contains material for much happiness, and that gaiety to a certain extent is positively salutary.35
The call here is for all things in moderation. If too much work makes for dull boys, in other words, then so might too much play. Neither work nor play is privileged to stand alone; they must work in tandem. The article concludes that those who take pleasure in both occupation and recreation are less likely to submit to temptation.
The relationship between occupation and recreation reflects the preeminence of the call to work in early twentieth-century Mormon thought. This concept was given apt phrase by LDS educator George H. Brimhall in an October 1899 statement, “Leisure is purchased by labor, and the person who endeavors to possess the former before the latter lives the life of a down-going debtor from start to finish.”36 Work and play were again connected but it was made perfectly clear which was master and which was servant. Work was particularly championed because it helped youngsters ward off [69] the evils of idleness. “Aside from financial considerations,” wrote Lewis A. Merrill, professor of Agriculture at the Utah State Agricultural College, “every young man in Zion should have an occupation, because of the security it furnishes against all those evils which result from idleness and a luxurious mode of life; or, in other words, because of its influence on the moral and social natures.” Work not only produced in the economic sense, it helped boys to stay out of trouble. “[T]he young man who finds regular employment is not found around street corners, indulging habits which tend to his moral degradation,” promised the professor.37 Though productive employment may have qualified as the superior virtue, not all jobs were created equal. Some jobs were not to be regarded as desirable, according to Edwin F. Parry, especially those involving sports and recreation. “While such occupations [in sports and amusements] are all right for the sake of recreation or entertainment, they are not the most preferable callings for our young people to follow as business. . . . With many an aspiring youth there seems to be a desire to acquire talents that can be displayed before the public in preference to others of more real value.” As evidence of his assertion, Parry argued, “Some men display wonderful skill in marksmanship with a gun, or in performing upon a trapeze or a tight rope, and yet the only use to which they apply this ability is that of giving public exhibitions with perhaps less practice and perseverance, they might have learned to run a locomotive or to even engineer the construction of a railway.” Leisure [70] was integrally connected to work, but young men should not let their leisure become their work—work’s “real value” should not be tinged by too close an association with play.38
To Mormons living at the turn of the twentieth century, the sometimes complementary relationship between work and leisure assumed a lower priority than the often antagonistic connection between leisure and salvation. As Apostle Francis M. Lyman described in 1899, “We do not live simply for enjoyment or to occupy our time in some certain direction to amuse or be pleasant to us in this life, but for the salvation and redemption of the children of God.”39 Spiritual exigencies superceded physical and social desires. Mormons have never questioned the priority of the spiritual. In the two decades after Elder Lyman segregated the spiritual and the social, Mormon leaders created a philosophy that fully integrated leisure time pursuits into the community’s spiritually based worldview. By the mid-1920s, recreation was accepted not only as socially redemptive but as spiritually salvific as well.
Inching toward Organization
The movement toward a “Mormon” philosophy on recreation and the creation of an organizational approach to providing leisure-time activities proceeded in fits and [71] starts after 1900. Certainly, Mormons have always sought recreation and from time to time LDS leaders had made pronouncements concerning the appropriateness of certain leisure-time pursuits. At the close of the nineteenth century, however, the church lacked a coherent, recognizable ideology concerning the human need for recreation. Moreover, little had been done within the organization to foster a permanent role for the church in providing wholesome recreation for church members. From 1900 to 1930, the church underwent a sea change as a recreation philosophy developed and church-sponsored recreational activities were organized and flourished as never before.
The first offensive maneuver in the Mormon battle against illicit recreation was announced at the MIA’s June Conference in 1906 when the officers of the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations were instructed to cooperate with ward amusement committees to oversee the leisure-time activities of each local unit of the church. The announcement offered an appropriate mix acclaiming the importance of recreation and denouncing the pastiche of improper activities that beset too many young members of the church. The amusement committees provided an organizational base within the church where recreation could be brought under control. Outlining “pernicious habits” that had infected the church’s young people, the announcement lamented, “We learn with much regret that from various causes some of our young men have fallen into evil habits, such as profanity, using tobacco, and liquor, frequenting saloons and pool rooms, and spending considerable time loafing on street corners, all of which is demoralizing.” Card playing, buggy riding, and playing baseball on the Sabbath [72] rounded out the list of undesirable activities. Near the beginning of the statement, it was made clear that misguided recreation was more than a social problem; spiritual values were also at stake. Young men were “to assist in eradicating these evils, and we urge them not to countenance unprofitable, nay sinful recreation on the Sabbath day” [emphasis in original]. Recreation itself was not sinful, but improper activities at inappropriate times could not be countenanced. Local amusement committees could help counterbalance the tendency toward such “sinful recreation.”40
The rationale for the formation of ward amusement committees bespoke the growing importance accorded recreational activities. In language that would become the cornerstone of the movement toward church-sponsored recreation, it was announced: “Recreation and amusement are indispensable to our social and moral development, but should be under the same vigilance and control as our religious training.” The time had come to pull in the reins on recreation and the “best method for this control is to co-operate with the ward amusement committee for each ward, under whose direction excursions, picnics, dances, etc., should be given.” Again playing on the ability of leisure time to uplift or to destroy, the announcement prescribed, “Excursions to canyon and other resorts, should always be conducted by proper chaperones. Dancing parties, beginning and ending at reasonable hours, are proper enough, if not indulged in to excess; but we regard the public dancehall [sic], with its promiscuous and unselected [73] patrons as a menace to the morals of any community. Too much dancing is not commendable. It encourages late hours, mental lethargy, and intellectual laziness.” To reorient recreational behavior, the new ward committees were to stress more music (both vocal and instrumental), drama, and uplifting literary works. Leaders hoped that “all our members can engage in these better recreations and thereby gather more zeal for the more serious spiritual work.”41 The road toward rational religious recreation had begun.
Wards and stakes quickly began organizing activities, programs, and institutes that were designed to increase church control over leisure time. Church officials from northern Utah’s Weber Stake prepared a course of study for the summer of 1907. It was feared that during the summer months—when the Mutual Improvement Associations traditionally took a hiatus—young men and women encountered more opportunities for illicit pleasure seeking. Following closely the injunction given to amusement committees, the Weber Stake created a program of a “literary and musical rather than a theological character, even though there is a religious element about it.”42 Summer evenings were spent singing, encouraging the young people in their church work, and reading good literature. Local association officials reported beneficial returns particularly when young men and women worked together. [74]
As the demand for local church-sponsored recreation grew, so did the call for church members with the knowledge to run programs effectively. Accordingly, the general boards of the YMMIA and YLMIA began to offer training courses in athletics, field sports, and Boy Scout work. It appears that at least three separate courses were held in 1912 alone. A circular letter sent in November 1912 to the superintendents of Stakes and to bishops outlined “the immediate need in all the wards of the Church for leaders and trained men in athletics, field sports and boy scout work” and announced a four-week training program. The costs, paid by each course participant, for tuition, books, and board were expected not to exceed thirty-five dollars.43 A course for leaders of the young women was held at the same time. Under the direction of Anne Nebeker, seven women attended the conference held at the Deseret Gymnasium in Salt Lake City.44
Because the training institutes required a significant commitment from participants, organizers worried that young men who possessed “sufficient education and ability to become leaders” would be unable to attend because they were “so engaged in business and professional duties” that they could not afford the time away from the office. Rather than forego the opportunities for recreational training, church leaders used the training courses to pique the interest of young men who were not involved [75] with either business or church activities. “Young men who may not be identified with Mutual work, and who many now be spending their time to very little purpose at home,” they thought, could benefit by this course and “develop into successful leaders and trainers.” To young men seemingly uninterested in worldly or spiritual affairs, “the nature of the work [in recreation] is such that it becomes fascinating to boys who ofttimes find little or no interest in other activities.” To underscore the importance of training young men to serve their wards as recreation experts, the MIA Normal Training Course in Athletics received favorable comparison to the most important Mormon rite of passage—missionary service for the church. “Many young men are neither able nor qualified to go on foreign missions,” read an announcement of the training session, “but could and would, if they were called, take this course, and we are safe in saying that no other brief mission would be of greater benefit to them.” Every ward was requested to send at least one young man to receive intense instruction in track and field events, Scout work, swimming, games, and dancing.45
Mormon leaders undertook to make church recreation a high priority. B. H. Roberts, one of the Seven Presidents of Seventy, made clear the important place of recreation in the church in an address entitled “Physical Development” given in 1912. As one of the initial efforts to create a viable ideology of leisure time, Elder Roberts [76] borrowed from the old philosophy that linked a sound mind with a sound body. From his address:
I would urge upon the officers of the association to regard this work of physical development as a very essential part of our labors, and just as sacred as when our efforts are devoted to the spiritual and the moral. Of course it is a commonplace that a “sound mind in a sound body” is the acme of human desire; and the thought is growing, that you cannot have a completely sound mind, nor can that mind attain to its best functions and highest development, without the accompaniment also of a sound body. And that, parents of the youth of Israel, is what we are working at in our play. We are not playing without a purpose. We are not seeking to take the youth of Zion and direct their physical activities in their amusements, we are not working at that, without a purpose, and that purpose is the development of the spirit of manliness in your sons and the spirit of womanliness in your daughters.46
Recreation in the church, according to Roberts, was not just about keeping young men and women out of trouble. Instead, church leaders and youth organizations should harness the positive power of recreation to foster spiritual growth in young Mormons. Indeed, there was a purpose to church-organized play. Although by 1912, the LDS church was sponsoring recreation events and training local recreation leaders, there had yet to develop any coherent leisure-time ideology. There may have been a purpose in play, but only in embryonic form. Following Roberts’s path, the church entered a phase in which the purpose of play was intensively investigated, a philosophy of recreation was pronounced, and recreation training opportunities flowered. From 1912 to 1929, concerns about recreation took center stage for Mormon adolescents and adults. [77]
The next step to place recreation more securely under the control of church leaders was the appointment of traveling secretaries in the YMMIA to oversee the recreational activities of young men throughout the church. An athletic director, Dr. John Harris Taylor, was installed in September 1911 to administer the sports and amusement program in the church youth organization. In June 1913, Oscar A. Kirkham was named as the first traveling secretary for the organization. As the “mental and spiritual director” of the boys, Kirkham had the responsibility to “inspire and guide the higher activities of our young men . . . [and to] direct the reading, debating, the class work, and very much of the convention work of the organization.”47
In framing a leisure-time philosophy, church leaders looked beyond their local borders. Although there were some recreation guidelines delineated in LDS scripture, they were for the most part too vague to use as the foundation for a comprehensive recreational program. With little to draw from in the LDS canon, Mormon leaders turned to outside “experts” for advice, authority, and recreational dogma. The first attempt to cull methodically from knowledgeable sources outside the church was the publication of Parents’ Bulletin No. 1: “Recreation and Play” in 1914.
Published by the Deseret Sunday School Union (control of church recreation would not come under the control of the MIA and Primary until 1923), the bulletin was designed for use in the Parents’ classes of the Sunday School. Compiled by Dr. [78] E. G. Gowans, the superintendent of the State Industrial School and a member of the Parents’ Class Committee of the General Board, the pamphlet contained excerpts about play written by nationally prominent sociologists, social workers, and play theorists. Recognizing that much of the Mormon situation would differ from the problems reported by many of the experts, the preface insisted: “[W]e can find in their discussions many things of worth to us and to our children. . . . [T]heir thoughts will stimulate our discussions, and make us better able to solve our particular problems.” The professional advice was not meant to be applied directly to Mormon needs, but modified to fit LDS society. Necessary modifications were to be made by individual readers. “Read it thoughtfully and with discrimination,” the preface advised, “and extract from it those things which are in keeping with our Gospel and apply in your daily lives the good things you find therein.”48
The motivation propelling the publication of Parents’ Bulletin No. 1 echoed the fears professed by turn-of-the-century Mormon leaders—commercialized recreation in the cities and a lack of parental recreational involvement at home. In both respects, the Sunday School Union believed that church members were “paying very dearly today for our pleasures.” First, the bulletin questioned whether the amount of money expended on commercial forms of recreation was well spent. Was it, the pamphlet wondered, “bringing us health and true happiness?” Not enough had been done—in the church [79] and in the community—to ward off the problems caused by misguided recreation. In a sweeping statement pregnant with the power of recreation, Dr. Gowans focused on the social and spiritual impact of recreation when he asked, “Are not most of the evils that trouble us today an outgrowth of improper play?” Play and recreation, once occupying the margins of Mormon society, were now considered a primary cause of society’s ills. Such a potent power could not be left unchecked. According to Gowans, recreation should be managed by a new effort to create institutions to guide children’s play and direct the rising generation toward wholesome play. Arguing that schools had been created to train the minds of children and churches had been established to take care of their souls, it was now time to focus on controlling the recreation of children—the “most important phase of life.” Rather than relinquish recreational control to the money mongers of commercialized play, it was time to place Mormon recreation within the confines of the church. Dr. Gowans could not have been more emphatic: “The time is on us when we must take this phase of life into our own hands and provide wholesome pastimes for our children just as systematically, just as religiously, as we provide for their educational instruction and their religious training.”49 Parents’ Bulletin No. 1 enlisted expert help from outside the church to bring recreation back inside the fold. [80]
Parents likewise received some chastisement in Bulletin No. 1. After all, the pamphlet was designed to help them do a better job of raising their children. Mothers and fathers—consumed by home duties, work, and religious responsibilities—had allowed other attractions to lure their attention from their children. In the bulletin, parents were reminded of the importance of play for both children and adults. Wholesome leisure within the family played a critical role for child development, functional families, and spiritual direction. Parents neglected play at their peril. “Play is just as natural as work,” the pamphlet advised. “Parents who lose the play spirit are likely to lose their children’s souls. Our parents must get out of the bad habit of growing old; they must learn how to keep the spirit of youth; they must play with their children.” Maintaining the spirit of play prepared a child to receive the Spirit of God. Recreation had become a religious endeavor. Gowans made the connection explicit:
Our homes will be happier and more spiritual just in proportion to the spirit of play that is kept within them. . . . The father who plays with his boy, or mother who plays with her girl, are far more likely to save their souls than those who merely clothe and feed and school. . . . [I]f [parents] apply the suggestions that come from the study, our homes will reflect the spirit of good cheer, true companionship, and holiness.50
Whereas most recreation proponents sought to save the city, Mormon recreational leaders wanted to save souls.
The experts quoted in “Recreation and Play” comprise a who’s who list of important play theorists in the early twentieth century. Recreation advocates including [81] Joseph Lee (then Vice President of Massachusetts Civic League), Jane Addams (founder of Hull House settlement in Chicago), William Byron Forbush (child expert), and Dr. Luther H. Gulick (the President of the Playground Association of America) appear on the pages of the bulletin. Topics covered included the eroticism of popular songs;51 the evil side of the dance halls of Chicago; the relationship between the movies and juvenile crime; sex education through dance; and the moral value of play. Of particular interest to LDS leaders may have been the discussion of recreation’s ability to integrate individuals within larger groups. As part of a continuing effort to encourage individuals to identify with and be loyal to the church organization, leaders sensed the possibilities that play might provide. In an article describing “Play and Democracy,” Dr. Gullick spoke in terms that youth leaders could have easily applied to the church,
The older children learn lessons in the mutual relationships by sharing the use of swings, by having to play by the rules of the game. Later on, as they form into teams, they learn that self-sacrifice which is involved in the team game. They learn that the social unit is larger than the individual unit, that individual victory is not as sweet as the victory of the team, and that the most perfect self-realization is won by the most perfect sinking of one’s self in the welfare of the larger unit—the team. Thus the child learns to control himself because he is not externally controlled.52 [82]
What worked for the “team” would surely succeed in the church as well. Expert advice modified to fit local situations formed the backbone of the emerging LDS leisure-time philosophy. Mormon parents found further opportunities to learn from recreational experts in a list of reference books provided at the back of the pamphlet. Works ranged from Edward Alsworth Ross’ Sin and Society and Edwin Asbury Kirkpatrick’s Fundamentals of Child Study to William Arch McKeever’s Farm Boys and Girls. Parents were even directed to study Hans Brinker.53 No stone was left unturned in the Mormon quest for expert advice that would promote wholesome recreation.
The Sunday School did not stand alone in its concern for the social behavior of Latter-day Saints. Church President Joseph F. Smith in a January 1917 Improvement Era article proclaimed, “Direction in social conduct and proper control of amusements are really among our most pressing problems at this time.” Mostly concerned with proper dress standards and conduct at social gatherings and dances, the President called for “[d]eportment that will lead to clean, innocent, genuine pleasure, and steer far away from the kind that in the end leaves a sting of sin, sorrow and regret—deportment that will herald the making of true men and women of character.”54 For years, President Smith and other church leaders had called for such reforms. At the conference of the MIAs held in June 1915, the subject of dress and dancing was discussed in the meetings [83] of both young men and young women. A joint meeting comprising young men and young women agreed to a series of regulations that would govern their social gatherings. By December 1916, however, it was noted that “little improvement in this line” had occurred. Outraged that, even after the MIA guidelines had been created, LDS daughters continued to go “half-naked before the public,” Smith and the First Presidency created a joint committee to direct the church on matters of social policy. Led by the Relief Society, the Social Advisory Committee—with members from the Primary and YLMIA—created “unified plans and a systematic course of actions” to reform both individual and church activities.55
The project was placed under the leadership of the Relief Society, a female organization. In this assignment, the First Presidency followed the long-standing gender ideology that placed women in the home where their virtue would train the next generation while men worked to support the family. The “Mothers in Israel” were the “exemplars” in regard to dress standards because it was the “home influences that, above all others, should direct in moral, social and dress reforms.”56 The Social Advisory Committee would assist the home because some mothers were allowing their girls to go about immodestly, even indecently. It followed then that a reform movement designed [84] to influence young women was best placed under the direction of mothers and wives—pure vessels seemingly untouched by the world outside of the home.57
As a major thrust of their reform efforts, the Social Advisory Committee turned to the recreational behavior of the Saints. In the summer of 1920, the committee sponsored a month-long course on “Social and Recreational Leadership” during the summer session at Brigham Young University. A letter from the First Presidency advised each stake president to assign one person to enroll in the course.58 According to a synopsis of the course later published, participants at the seminar focused on finding ways to promote church activity among the young. “The available facts indicate clearly that increasingly large numbers of our children, particularly adolescents, are becoming inactive in all forms of church activities,” warned the course synopsis. If the church could not retain young Mormons, future membership growth was impossible. Rather than trying to convert the world, the committee suggested, it might be time to proselyte among Mormons through recreation and social activity. “According to present indications,” the synopsis provided, “the future growth and membership of the Church depends upon the conversion of ‘Mormon’ children, rather than upon [85] proselytes from outside: hence the welfare of the rising generation in the Church is paramount, and therefore second to no other consideration.”59
Although not a great deal is known about the training that occurred during the recreation institute, it is clear that top echelon church officials took the seminar seriously. The authors and titles of the daily “Special Lectures” reveal the intense interest of church officials. Talks ranged from church President Heber J. Grant’s message on “The Gospel and Social Work” to Salt Lake recreation manager Charlotte Stewart’s “Leisure Time Needs of the Adolescent Girl.”60 Other prominent Mormon speakers included Apostle Stephen L Richards (“The Social and Recreational Program of the Church”), Adam S. Bennion (“Recreation and the Religious Life”), Milton Bennion (“Moral Development Through Recreation”) and Earl J. Glade (“Selling Mormonism to the Young Man”).61 In attracting the attention of leading church figures, the recreation institute rivaled the semi-annual general conferences of the church. Apostle David O. McKay’s lecture on “Religious Instruction in Relation to Recreation” offered church members a glowing recommendation of the positive power [86] of recreation but also cautioned that unchecked leisure activities could lead to vice and immorality. Citing statistics that one-third of church members had no interest in standard church work, Apostle McKay noted that even those who would not consider attending a worship service would “either directly or indirectly participate in the various forms of recreation and in social functions.” Therefore, the Apostle concluded, “In as much . . . as this one third will not come out of the recreation field to receive religion, religion must be taken into the recreation field.” Leisure-time activities had a great power to impart religious sensibilities and sensitivities. Courage, reputation, willpower, health, self-control, self-reliance, kindness, friendship and devotion were all products of proper play. When left unsupervised, however, positive play could degenerate. “The great duty of the social worker,” McKay advised the gathered recreation leaders, “is to convince wayward boys and girls that there is in many forms of amusement and recreation a definite line beyond which they cannot go with impunity. In other words, some things are virtuous up to a certain point, beyond which they become vices.” The wisdom of trained recreation leaders was necessary to decide which activities promoted virtues and which promulgated vices. It was hoped that the recreation seminar would foster that necessary discernment among the local recreational officers of the church.62
To create a program that would be effective on the local level, the attendees regularly split into smaller groups to do “intensive work on specific problems.” Each [87] group then made recommendations to the Social Advisory Committee. Many of these ideas and initiatives were collected in a newsletter published after the institute closed in July 1920. The recommendations from the small group that studied the adolescent girl (age 14 to 21) were typical. First the group noted a number of social and psychological tendencies that defined the behavior of young Mormon women. They concluded that the cohort possessed a “desire to indulge in reverie and day dreams, self-consciousness, tendency to incorrigibility, affectations and mannerisms.” “Freakishness,” pranks, desire to show off and awkwardness also loomed large in the social lives of adolescent women. On the positive side, girls were thought to be susceptible to religious influences, love reading and have a taste for adventure. Armed with this knowledge of social and psychological tendencies, the group set out to create a program that would channel adolescent tendencies toward positive outcomes. First, group activities should fulfill the love of adventure and foster cooperation among the girls. Music, story telling, sewing, hiking, tobogganing, and horseback riding were mentioned as appropriate. Second, the leisure-time program needed to provide an example of high ideals by choosing the right kind of teachers and leaders, companions, and books. Finally, church-sponsored recreational activities must “appeal to the heart as well as to the intellect.” Moreover, the study group recommended that girls be given a supervised recreational period each week.63 The group studying adolescent boys came [88] to similar conclusions but recommended that a church-controlled social center be placed in every ward. Open and supervised during all leisure hours, the centers would resemble city-run playgrounds.64 Each of the small groups at the summer recreation institute followed the same pattern: determine the tendencies of the age group under question and then create a program to direct those tendencies toward wholesome outcomes. The committee newsletter helped spread the recommendations throughout the church.
Following the success of the SAC recreational conference in 1920, opportunities for instruction in recreational theory and technique abounded in Mormon Utah. Both Brigham Young University and the Utah Agricultural College (later Utah State University) offered summer courses in leisure-time leadership; annual summer conferences of the YLMIA and YMMIA often focused on recreational issues; and recreational institutes led by trained Mormon experts were conducted in local clinics throughout the intermountain West. During “Leadership Week” at BYU in 1923, 3500 persons from 50 Stakes learned about recreational theory from national and local experts. At one session, L. H. Weir, field representative of the Playground and Recreation Association of America, expounded on the place of recreation in the life of a people. Following Weir, Dr. George H. Brimhall and BYU President Franklin S. Harris [89] spoke on the importance of leisure and the demands of leisure-time leadership.65 That same year, BYU announced that Knute K. Rockne, director of athletics at Notre Dame University, would be among the guest faculty members during the summer session.66 Other well-known figures in athletics and recreational leadership spent their summers teaching at the U.A.C. in Logan. For the summer session in 1924, college president Elmer G. Peterson invited “church recreational leaders, Boy Scout leaders, teachers and physical education directors” to enroll in a summer recreational leadership course offered by Dr. Emmett D. Angell of the University of Wisconsin. Angell—called the “most eminent leader in America in recreation and play”—was a distinguished coach in track, basketball, and football as well as the author of several high school- and college-level texts on sports.67 In 1927, the U.A.C. summer course included instruction in coaching techniques from Rockne and Forest C. (“Phog”) Allen of Kansas University. Charlotte Perkins Gilman was also on the faculty that summer.68 The following [90] summer, young coaches could be taught by the father of modern football, “Pop” Warner.
Learning at the feet of the recognized masters not only provided expert training for Mormon recreation leaders but also legitimized the pursuit of wholesome leisure-time activities. The Mormon quest to control leisure must have been propped up when renowned sociologist (and member of the summer faculty at U.A.C. in 1926) Edward A. Ross complimented: “I don’t know any other place where the young people are so well provided for as here in [Utah]. I don’t understand how the ‘Mormon’ Church got the idea of providing so well for the recreational and social needs of people so much earlier than we sociologists got the idea. The Church was way ahead of us in making this discovery.”69 Learning from “experts” and modifying their teachings to fit local situations certainly helped Mormons meet the social and recreational needs of church members.
The universities were not alone in supporting recreational leadership training programs. Stake officials from the Salt Lake area, for example, participated in a recreational leadership course that met once a week from 31 October to 19 December 1923. The course (attended by ward and stake recreation leaders and committees as well as executive officers of wards) promoted the improved organization of recreational work, trained ward leisure-time leaders, and gave “those directing this work a clearer [91] vision of the entire movement.” The aim of the course captures the essence of Mormon recreation as it evolved in the early twentieth century—“not more recreation, but better recreation” [emphasis in original]. Expert lectures were given in the fundamental principles of recreation work and more specific instruction was available in drama, dancing, music, and special programs. Similar courses were held in the four stakes of Weber (Utah) county and at Brigham Young University. An abbreviated version of the course appeared in twenty other stakes.70 In 1925, a group of Mormon recreation experts traveled throughout Utah instructing local recreational leaders from Logan to Payson. Under the direction of YMMIA executive director Oscar A. Kirkham, the groups received general advice in recreational supervision and were offered specific guidance in meeting the recreational interests of children, adolescents, adults, and communities.71
The knowledge gained in these courses was subsequently transmitted to others on the local level. In Granite Stake (Salt Lake City), where eighty delegates had attended the Deseret Gym course, the newly trained recreational leaders “returned to their Stake ready to pass on to the home folks the lesson learned at headquarters.” A series of local institutes taught music, special activity work, and dance to members from [92] each ward in the stake. More than five hundred persons attended the conferences.72 The need for recreation—and how leisure-time activities were to be organized—was quickly becoming institutionalized within the church.
The annual June conferences sponsored by the YMMIA and YLMIA also provided a site for instruction in leisure-time leadership and the further institutionalization of recreation. At June conference in 1923, coming just months after the assignment of LDS recreational leadership to the MIA, clean recreation received great emphasis. In the report of the conference, one can detect a developing dichotomy concerning the role of religious recreation. As the editor of the Improvement Era reported, on one hand, church-sponsored leisure activities were dedicated to “the preservation of health, clean amusement, proper employment of leisure hours and social cooperation.” On the other hand, Mormon recreation needed to “encourage reverence for and faith in our religious obligations.”73 The primacy of these two objectives was not always clear; as the June 1923 conference indicates, a wide divide on this question developed between church recreational authorities and LDS ecclesiastical officials. [93]
YMMIA superintendent and Apostle Melvin J. Ballard made it clear in his address to the June conference that the spiritual took precedence over the social in church-sponsored recreational programs:
The men and women who are chosen to head this recreational work must not only be interested in recreational work; they must be spiritual minded individuals as well, seeing the point of view that the ultimate purpose of our being interested in this recreational work is to keep our young people safe, pure, and under the influence of the Church, and keep them in such environment that they ultimately will find their way into some one or other of the Church organizations, Priesthood quorums, Sunday schools and other organizations—the end being to establish in their hearts faith in God, love for his work, desire to serve and keep themselves during their leisure period free from the vices and sins and contaminating influences of the world.74
To Ballard, the primary purpose of church recreation was to build the church; ancillary benefits might accrue, but the focus of Mormon recreation was spiritual, not social, indoctrination. Other church officials, not ecclesiastical leaders but general church committee members, seemed to privilege personal and social benefits over the opportunity for spiritual growth through recreation. In his June speech, Recreation Committee Chairman Ephraim E. Erickson, who was also a sociology professor at the University of Utah, sought to better society through religious recreation. “Our great purpose,” Erickson informed the conference
is to use the recreational facilities and these activities to promote higher ideals, character and better social relationship. We believe that while we come together in a great many ways in a business way, in a political way, in social ways and religiously, perhaps we can increase our sympathy if we meet in places for mere [94] enjoyment, where we can live our natural selves, that is, where we can laugh and sing and play. . . . I believe we will think more of one another, love one another more, if we get together and laugh and sing and play together.75
Spiritual enhancement through recreation was not completely absent from Erickson’s perspective, but it paled compared to the lessons of social cooperation that recreation allowed. Charlotte Stewart of the YLMIA General Board similarly situated recreation within the physical and social realm, not necessarily the spiritual:
Recreation is not an antidote for evil; it is not a substitute for vice; it is not a passively good thing to keep people out of mischief; it is the warp and woof out of which a well rounded life can be woven, the material for giving benefit, life, experience, a vital, fundamental means to growth and power, not only as a substitute but it is valuable in itself. If recreation is to fill up a vacancy, just a vacuum, it is not worth while; if it is vibrant with meaningful life value, then it is one of the greatest of national activities.76
John T. Wahlquist, an education professor at the University of Utah, likewise weighed in on the social ramifications of LDS recreation. “Recreation of whatever nature or form, under the direction of the Church,” Wahlquist argued, “should make true Latter-day Saints. It should increase the spirit of brotherly love and sympathy, break down undesirable class distinction, develop leadership, promote health, direct and develop the power of self expression, direct the emotional expression and develop culture and [95] refinement.”77 But questions remained about what it meant to be a “true Latter-day Saint.” Was the guiding principle in constructing Mormons merely social cooperation or were Mormons made primarily by spiritual conversion? At least at the June 1923 conference, there was some discord between the pronouncements of the ecclesiastical leader and the recreation experts. While Ballard’s gaze riveted firmly on building the kingdom of God, sociologist Erickson and playground manager Stewart seemed to focus on the personal and the social, largely overlooking the needs of the institutional church. Such diverging viewpoints—ideological competition between Mormon recreation authorities and LDS general authorities—may have led to the eventual dissolution of the Social Advisory Committee in 1922.
Satisfying the Seven Urges
The 1920s also saw the rise of the most comprehensive ideological statement about leisure time and how Mormon recreational programs could be used to direct church members toward wholesome activities. Based on a belief in seven fundamental urges that affect human behavior, church recreation proponents outlined the urges and then created a program designed to satisfy each urge for a variety of age groups from childhood through adolescence and adulthood. This program represents the ideological apex of Mormon religious recreation. Far from the ad hoc approach used by church [96] leaders into the twentieth century, LDS officials in the 1920s had a “scientific” foundation underlying their leisure-time efforts.
As the philosophy reached its ultimate form in the late 1920s, human tendencies were divided into seven fundamental urges: physical, rhythmic, constructive, environmental, dramatic, linguistic, and social. It was likewise understood that all age groups did not relate to the seven urges in the same way. Therefore, different activities were designed to satisfy the seven urges in five age groups: childhood/pre-adolescence; youth/early adolescence (age 12–15); middle adolescence (15–17); late adolescence (17–24); and adult. These ideas were first published by the MIA in Recreation Bulletin No. 5 in 1925.78 By 1928, a slightly modified treatment of the seven urges appeared in the MIA handbook that guided recreational activities throughout the church.
Outlined carefully, each urge helped recreation workers not only understand the rationale behind the leisure-time program sponsored by the Mutual Improvement Associations but also explained why children and adults behaved in peculiar or destructive ways.
Under the heading “Social Urge,” the 1928 MIA Handbook suggested that “comradeship is a fundamental human need” and that the church had “gone far in bringing our people together in the spirit of fellowship, in helping us to understand, appreciate and enjoy each other.” However, like other human interests and desires, the [97] social urge was double-edged—left unchecked, the desire to associate with others could destroy any sense of social cooperation. The manual warned, “The modern tendency of society . . . is toward a breaking up into specialized cliques, groups and cults, which could easily disintegrate ‘the common feeling of social relationships,’ without which democracy itself cannot exist, because upon it rests the development of that self-control which is related to an appreciation of the needs of the rest of the group.” Controlled social interaction was important; democracy could not thrive without it and neither, though it goes unspoken, could a social organization like the church. Proper social behavior—the avoidance of cliques and cults—hinged on individual self-control. If the church, or society, was to succeed, individuals must harness the social urge and remember that they were “bound up with the rest of the community” to such a degree that “we stand or fall together.”79 Proper activities for fulfilling the social urge included picnics, parties, socials, dancing, and reunions. For pre-adolescents, holiday socials were stressed because “every holiday should be a memorable day to children.” Older boys and girls should be initiated into social groups like the Boy Scouts, Bee-Hives, or radio clubs. Educational, literary, and scientific societies offered social opportunities appropriate for middle and late adolescence while adults might productively sponsor or attend family and community reunions.80 [98]
The philosophical basis for a “rhythmic urge” was straight forward: “We all have, to a greater or less degree, an ‘ache’ to respond with voice, feet, or body, to an urge or rhythm; to live, create, invigorate, in free, happy spontaneous dance, song and kindred expression.” Though not recognized by that appellation, the “rhythmic urge” had been at the center of Mormon social life for nearly a century. Dancing was perhaps the most ubiquitous recreational activity of nineteenth-century Mormons.81 The dance never lost its attraction as a gathering place for the Saints. But dancing was not without its faults. Just as earlier church leaders had denounced the sensuality of the waltz, not all twentieth-century dance styles were to be encouraged among the Mormons. After extolling the wholesome virtues of the aesthetic element in many dances, the MIA Handbook warned: “[W]hen the emotional appeal becomes so intense as to stimulate those emotions which are fundamentally related to the sex-instinct social dancing is no longer wholesome. It is therefore recommended that all those factors in dancing which in any way overstimulate the emotions be eliminated, as far as possible.” Unless dancing was properly supervised, it was the “most dangerous and most easily perverted social pastime.” Dancing, if allowed to flourish unhampered, would lead young Saints away from fulfilling the rhythmic urge to satisfying the sex instinct. [99] Though dancing was generally considered the most popular leisure-time activity, LDS recreational workers were prompted not to offer dances only for amusement but as functions “through which proper social conduct may be taught and fostered.” The rhythmic urge was properly satiated with a combination of music instruction and activity (both vocal and instrumental) and a variety of dancing techniques including folk, social, interpretive, and clog. To insure the wholesome nature of the dance, a dance director—“a competent man, who is tactful, and has influence among the young people”—was to be appointed in each ward. The dance director received very specific instructions on how to prepare for an event, choose appropriate music, and set a proper dance atmosphere. Above all else, the director was reminded that he was not only directing a dance, he was “training men and women.”82
The dramatic urge extended from the “universal” instinct for self-expression. As a means of escaping from one’s everyday surroundings, “playing a part”—whether as an actor in a professional drama or playing dress-up with friends in the basement—offered a healthy respite from daily rigors.83 The dramatic urge could be met not just by performing but by writing plays and pageants as well. It was advised that children should act out stories and imitate the activities of daily life. Adolescent and adult activities centered on drama and vaudeville as well as writing plays. [100]
The “linguistic urge” had been at the center of decades-long effort to get young Mormons interested in good literature. As early as 1907, the MIA published a yearly reading list for members. Equipping local meetinghouse libraries had also been popular since the turn of the century. Though reading enjoyed the “enviable distinction of being the medium of recreation of the greatest number of people in all the world,” reading alone did not satisfy the linguistic urge.84 Debating, oratory, and writing plays and stories likewise quenched linguistic desires. Wards encouraged linguistic skill by offering prizes in debate and creative writing.
Meeting the “physical urge” involved a myriad of athletic competitions. Stressing that primary importance of sportsmanship and fair play, athletic events were designed to teach young Mormons the value not only of physical excellence but of keeping the rules as well. “Thus and thus only,” the manual provided, “will a youth make himself what we all admire and what we class as a thoroughbred, and started right, he will always be a thoroughbred.” Athletic events were tailored to the physiological and sociological development of each age group. The youngest groups could safely play tag games or go swimming while older groups participated in a variety of more strenuous team and individual sports. At all times, leaders were to be aware that if [101] “boys and girls with weak hearts or some physical defect are allowed to enter too strenuous competition, very serious injury may result.”85
A set of more rigid guidelines governed the participation of young women. Whether in team sports like basketball and baseball or in running games and relays, recreation leaders feared that girls were particularly susceptible to serious injuries through over-taxation. Officials warned local leaders of the effects of menstruation on physical performance: “To promote a reasonable and sane attitude toward certain physiological conditions which may occasion temporary unfitness for vigorous athletics, in order that effective safeguards shall be maintained is one of the duties of the director of girls’ athletics.”86 The baneful psychological and sociological effects of sports also concerned athletic leaders. Competitions which emphasized individual accomplishment and winning at the expense of enjoyment and sportsmanship were to be discouraged. Girls should participate in a wide variety of sports—often alongside boys—but they required special attention to meet their unique feminine needs.
The “environmental urge” induced people to go outside “to see new sights, to travel, to walk in the woods, to hear the birds sing, to hear the babbling of the water, to fish and hunt.” Urged on by this spirit of adventure, adolescents and adults restored much of the energy lost to the “grind of daily routine.” Outside activities provided [102] recreation in the truest sense—they re-created the individual by removing her or him from the workaday world. The church placed major emphasis on getting men and women outdoors. Boy Scouting, Fathers and Sons’ Outings, and Mothers and Daughters’ Days all encouraged the Saints to refresh themselves in the great outdoors. Children’s groups that were too young to camp or travel were encouraged to spend time going to zoos, parks, and museums or camping out in the back yard.87
At the base of the “constructive urge” was the “desire of ownership, a pride in manual activity.” From planting gardens to raising pets to needle work, making something by hand registered as a fundamental urge of humankind. Satisfying the urge to construct acquired special importance in an age where many workers no longer toiled in the soil or built handcrafted items. Office workers and factory workers required a recreation program that met their need to create. The LDS program kept young and old hands busy building handicrafts, raising flowers, making radios, and building homes. The workshop was truly the death knell of idle hands.
The definition of the fundamental urges of humankind and the creation of a recreational program to satisfy them represented a Mormon foray into the world beyond their borders. The urges were not based on scripture or prophetic pronouncement but relied on knowledge gleaned from the emerging social sciences of sociology and human development. Religious recreation remained a spiritual pursuit [103] but it now had a “scientific” foundation. The knowledge came from well beyond Zion but the applications were strictly LDS. Mormons in the early twentieth century were not afraid, or even hesitant, to see what gentile America had to offer; the purpose of gaining such knowledge, however, was to strengthen Mormon institutions and maintain organizational integrity while increasing personal morality. By the 1920s, recreation was at the center of the church’s efforts.
From the days of Joseph Smith, leisure-time activities have always been an integral component of Mormon society. Nonetheless, it was not until the progressive era that an LDS ideology of recreation emerged. Far removed from the days when Brothers Joseph and Brigham made occasional announcements regarding recreation philosophy and policy, the church in the 1920s developed a comprehensive leisure-time ideology based on satisfying the seven fundamental urges of human beings. Great effort was spent not only to create the philosophy but to insure that local leaders were properly trained in the theories and techniques of recreational leadership. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, hundreds of institutes and training sessions helped turn local lay leaders into recreational experts. [104]
1. Bertha A. Kleinman, “In My Play,” Improvement Era 30 (April 1927): 531.
2. For a discussion of Mormonism as a new religious movement, see Jan Shipps, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985).
3. 2 Nephi 2:25. This quote is taken from a longer monologue that relates the story of the creation of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and the eventual coming of the “Messiah . . . in the fulness of time, that he may redeem the children of men from the fall.” See 2 Nephi 2.
4. Doctrine and Covenants, 88:15.
5. Quoted in Rex A. Skidmore, “Mormon Recreation in Theory and Practice: A Study of Social Change” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1941), 13. Another contemporary of Joseph Smith told a similar story: “I have been with him at times when approached by a long-faced religious stranger, who seemed to think that it was almost a sin to smile, and that the Prophet should be sedate and as cheerless as himself. The Prophet would challenge someone present for a wrestle—to the utter astonishment of the religious stranger, who would be almost shocked at the mention of a wrestle, but would extol Jacob, who seemed to be an accomplished wrestler and also a great favorite with God.” See Hyrum L. Andrus and Helen Mae Andrus, They Knew the Prophet (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1974), 117–118.
6. Skidmore, “Mormon Recreation,” 14.
7. Times and Seasons, Vol. 5 (1 October 1844): 668–670.
8. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool, England: Latter-day Saints Book Depot, 1854–86), 2:94.
9. Ibid., 94.
10. Susa Young Gates, Life Story of Brigham Young (New York: Macmillan, 1930), 251. This phrase bears a striking resemblance to the most popular labor song of the late nineteenth century, “Eight Hours.” See Philip S. Foner, American Labor Songs of the Nineteenth Century (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 222–224.
11. Doctrine and Covenants 136:28.
12. For a description of some Mormon recreational activities at Winter Quarters, see Richard E. Bennett, Mormons at the Missouri, 1846–1852: “And Should We Die . . .” (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987), 168–172; see also Richard Ian Kimball, “‘Somethin’ To Do: Mormon Recreation in Kanesville, 1849–1852,” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 15 (1995): 35–49.
13. Young, Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, 29–30.
14. Quoted in G. Newton DeShazo, “A Review of Statements Made by Certain Leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Which Refer to Various Objectives, Activities, and Desirable Experiences Inherent in Well-Organized and Properly Conducted Physical Education and Recreation Programs,” Master’s Thesis, Brigham Young University, 1971, 44.
15. John A. Widtsoe, ed., Discourses of Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1925), 365–366.
16. Journal of Discourses, Vol. 1, 48.
17. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970, pt. 1 (Washington, D.C.: US Bureau of Census, 1975), Series D 765–778, 168.
18. Addams, Twenty Years At Hull House (New York: Penguin, 1961), 244.
19. Quoted in Steven A. Reiss, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 165.
20. Dominick Cavallo, Muscles and Morals: Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880–1920 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 22.
21. Ibid., 51, 49–70.
22. On the Playground Association of America, see Richard F. Knapp and Charles E. Hartsoe, Play for America: The National Recreation Association, 1906–1965 (Arlington, VA: National Recreation and Parks Association, 1979).
23. Arthur L. Beeley, Boys and Girls in Salt Lake City (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1929), 13–17.
24. “Our Work—The Annual Conference of the Mutual Improvement Associations,” Improvement Era 4 (Aug. 1901): 790–791.
25. Senior Editor, “Talks to the Young Men—The Tendency to Deify Evil,” Improvement Era 2 (Oct. 1899): 944–946.
26. See “Our Work—Obstacles,” Improvement Era 9 (Nov. 1905): 72–73. During the annual YMMIA conference in June 1905, Elder George Albert Smith enumerated a number of obstacles for adolescent males living in urban areas. “In the city wards,” spoke Elder Smith, “first, many young men are engaged in business which ties them up until late in the evening; second, school work—many of our young men being students; third, the constant round of amusements which attracts so many; fourth, the great amount of light and trashy literature; fifth, lack of interest on account of the multitude of meetings.”
27. Susa Young Gates, ed., “A Mother’s Letters to Her Missionary Son: II.—Letter Posted to Chicago,” Improvement Era 8 (March 1905): 352–357. The selfishness of city-born youth was likewise discussed by ranking Apostle Francis M. Lyman: “In our cities especially, false standards are creeping into the lives of many young men. In their homes, possibly, they have tasted luxury, or they see others about them enjoying the good things of life. Foolishly, they begin to spend everything available, in their effort to live on a higher plane than they belong.” See “Manhood,” Improvement Era 7 (Jan. 1904): 175–178.
28. “Editor’s Table—Worship in the Home,” Improvement Era 7 (Dec. 1903): no page number.
29. O. E. Howell, “Play With Them,” Improvement Era 28 (May 1925): 668.
30. “A College Senior,” “Five Memories I’d Like to Have,” Improvement Era 30 (Dec. 1926): 145.
31. “Editor’s Table—The Spirit of Religion,” Improvement Era 6 (Oct. 1903): 945.
32. Joseph F. Smith, “Editor’s Table—True Love,” Improvement Era 14 (July 1911): 829.
33. James X. Allen, M.D., “Consistency,” Improvement Era 10 (July 1907): 747.
34. “Encouragement for ‘Busy’ Men,” Improvement Era 1 (June 1898): 621. Additional encouragement for boys and girls to stay busy was given by Elder Douglas M. Todd. He wrote, “ One of the great purposes we have in view is to keep our young people busy, avoiding the danger that exists when young men and women are not fully and capably employed in some good work.” See the report of the address in “Our Work—The Annual Conference of the Mutual Improvement Associations,” Improvement Era 3 (August 1900): 714.
35. “Notes,” Improvement Era 1 (Sept. 1898): 853.
36. Dr. George H. Brimhall, “Continuity in Character,” Improvement Era 2 (Oct. 1899): 929.
37. Lewis A. Merrill, “Choosing An Occupation,” Improvement Era 5 (Jan. 1902): 212.
38. Edwin F. Parry, “On Choosing Life Models,” Improvement Era 5 (Jan. 1902): 173.
39. Lyman’s talk was reviewed in “Our Work—The Annual Conference of the Young Men’s and Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Associations,” Improvement Era 2 (Aug. 1899): 711.
40.”Our Work—To Stake and Ward Officers of the Y.M.M.I.A.,” Improvement Era 9 (Oct. 1906): 979.
41. Ibid.
42. “Our Work—General M.I.A. Conference,” Improvement Era 10 (July 1907): 760.
43. “Mutual Work—Class in Athletics,” Improvement Era 16 (Dec. 1912): 177.
44. See “Mutual Work—The Third Y.M.M.I.A. Normal Training Class,” Improvement Era 16 (Feb. 1913): 393.
45. “Mutual Work—February Class in Athletics,” Improvement Era 16 (Feb. 1913): 392.
46. B. H. Roberts, “Physical Development,” Improvement Era 15 (Aug. 1912): 920.
47. “Mutual Work—The New Traveling Secretary,” Improvement Era 16 (June 1913): 833.
48. Parent’s Bulletin No. 1: Recreation and Play (Salt Lake: Deseret Sunday School Union, 1914), 3.
49. Ibid., 3–4.
50. Ibid., 4.
51. One popular 1913 song quoted by George Weston included such racy lyrics as “He’d feel around and fool around and then they’d kiss again/And then he’d row, row, row/A little further he would row, oh, oh, oh, oh.” Weston was appalled to find such “erotic syncopation” in contemporary love songs. See Parents’ Bulletin No 1, 43–44.
52. Parents’ Bulletin No. 1, 9.
53. Ibid., 46–47.
54. Joseph F. Smith, “Editors’ Table—Social Doings, Improvement Era 20 (Jan. 1917): 259.
55. “Editors’ Table—Dress and Social Practices,” Improvement Era 20 (Dec. 1916): 172.
56. Ibid., 172–173.
57. The most complete discussion of the Social Advisory Committee appears in Thomas G. Alexander, “Between Revivalism and the Social Gospel: The Latter-day Saint Social Advisory Committee, 1916–1922,” BYU Studies 23 (winter 1983): 19–39.
58. “Teacher-Training and Social Work,” Improvement Era 23 (June 1920): 746.
59. “Synopsis of Course in Social and Recreational Leadership, 1920,” 1. A copy of the synopsis can be found in the LDS Church Historical Department, Salt Lake City.
60. For more on the life of Charlotte Stewart, see Robert C. Lally, “The Life and Educational Contributions of Charlotte Stewart,” Master’s thesis, University of Utah, 1950.
61. For the titles, though not the texts, of the “Special Lectures,” see “Synopsis of Course in Social and Recreational Leadership, 1920,” 2–3.
62. See David O. McKay, “Religious Instruction in Relation to Recreation,” in “Synopsis of Course in Social and Recreational Leadership, 1920,” 26.
63. “Social Advisory Committee News Letter,” No. 3, 12 July 1920: 3–4.
64. Ibid., 4.
65. Lowry Nelson, “The University a Workshop for Leaders,” Improvement Era 26 (March 1923): 450.
66. “Passing Events,” Improvement Era 26 (April 1923): 585.
67. President Elmer G. Peterson, “Utah Invites the Nation: A National Summer School at Logan,” Improvement Era 27 (March 1924): 445. During the U.A.C. summer session of 1924, Prof. Frederick Jackson Turner, the “prince of American historians,” taught a course on the Utah, California, and Oregon pioneer movements.
68. See advertisement for “National Summer School,” Improvement Era 30 (April 1927): back of magazine.
69. “Mutual Work—Appreciation for the M.I.A. Handbook,” Improvement Era 29 (Oct. 1926): 1199.
70. “Mutual Work—Leadership Schools for Recreation,” Improvement Era 27 (Feb. 1924): 389.
71. “Mutual Work—Recreation Leadership Institutes,” Improvement Era 28 (May 1925): 703.
72. “Mutual Work—Preaching the Gospel of Better Recreation,” Improvement Era 27 (May 1924): 696. For further information on church recreation institutes, see W. O. Robinson, The Church and Recreation: A Resumé of the LDS Recreation Program as directed by the Mutual Improvement Association (n.p.).
73. “Editor’s Table—The June M.I.A. Conference,” Improvement Era 26 (July 1923): 843.
74. “Timely Thoughts from the June Conference,” Improvement Era 26 (Aug. 1923): 924.
75. Ibid. On the life of Ephraim Erickson, see Scott Kenney, ed., Memories and Reflections: The Autobiography of E. E. Ericksen (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1987); and Scott Kenney, “E. E. Ericksen—Loyal Heretic,” Sunstone 3 (July–August 1978): 16–27.
76. Ibid. On the dissolution of the Social Advisory Committee, see Alexander, “Between Revivalism and the Social Gospel,” 35–39. For another perspective, see Kenney, “E. E. Ericksen—Loyal Heretic.”
77. Ibid., 930.
78. MIA Recreation Bulletin No. 5 (Salt Lake City: General Boards of MIA, 1925).
79. MIA Handbook (Salt Lake City: General Board of MIA, 1928), 342.
80. For a full list of prescribed activities for each age group, see MIA Recreation Bulletin No. 5 (Salt Lake City: General Boards of MIA, 1925), 29–30.
81. See Davis Bitton, “Those Licentious Days: Dancing among the Mormons,” Sunstone 2 (spring 1977): 16–27; Karl E. Wesson, “Dance in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1830–1940,” (Master’s thesis, Brigham Young University, 1975); Leona Holbrook, “Dancing as an Aspect of Early Mormon and Utah Culture,” BYU Studies 16 (1975): 117–138; and Michael Hicks, Mormonism and Music: A History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), especially chapter 5, “Going Forth in the Dance.”
82. MIA Handbook, 369–371.
83. Ibid., 403.
84. Ibid., 434. Though the reading list played a major role in the MIA’s educational and literary programs, they were not entirely successful in reaching young church members. For example, only 4 percent of the active membership read the assigned books in 1907. The next year only 7 percent participated in the program. See Alexander, Mormonism in Transition, 142.
85. Ibid., 440.
86. Ibid., 442–443.
87. Ibid., 446.
