Chapter 6, “To Make the Most of Leisure”: Recreation Responds in a Depression Decade

On the social side, when unemployment is widespread business becomes demoralized, social and industrial strife in the form of riots and strikes are prevalent and the social institutions on which our civilization rests—the home, school, church and form of government—are undermined and eroded by the dark fear and unrest that grips the people. From the standpoint of the individual, the effects of unemployment may be seen in the breakdown of self-respect and morale, and in the loss of regular habits and of health through the lack of proper living incentives food, clothing, medical care and recreation.

—A. S. Cannon (1934)¹

It appears that, given freedom through leisure, the majority of men will accept one of three alternatives. They will let down and become a watcher of somebody else, they will be enticed to anti-social conduct which will be the beginning of a career of crime, or they will acquire interests which will react to the benefit of the individual and society as a whole. The answer to this problem is the answer to the question. Can man be trusted with leisure?

—Jay B. Nash (1933)²

In the months following the stock market crash of 1929, as the United States entered the most severe economic crisis in its history, Mormons in Salt Lake City staged an impressive festival to mark the centennial of the church’s organization. The week-long celebration included the illumination of the Salt Lake Temple with floodlights and the presentation of B. H. Roberts’s multi-volume Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. A pageant written especially for the anniversary, “Message for the Ages,” entertained thousands of church members and visitors in ^[283] nightly performances for a month. Though church leaders recognized the gravity of the nation’s economic situation, they also strongly believed that the celebration was a fitting way to close out the church’s tumultuous first century and to symbolize its bright future. Turning their backs on the depression, at least for a time, Mormons celebrated in the midst of the economic emergency. It would take more than a depression to deter the Saints from gathering together for friendship and fun.

This long-held perspective in the church—which viewed recreation both as educational and as serving social values—also marked the Mormon approach to part of the problems of the Great Depression. Exploring the church’s ambitious efforts between 1930 and 1940 to provide “wholesome” recreation for its youth, this chapter reveals three interesting and little-recognized aspects of the accommodations that Mormonism made to the American mainstream of the time.

First, LDS leaders saw recreation as an effective weapon against negative social forces such as juvenile delinquency and rising social unrest that made socialism and communism appealing. Second, they believed in the effectiveness of recreational activities in holding youth close to the church and promoting internal cohesion. Recreational programs rewarded increased attendance at meetings and activities, focused greater attention on the needs of youth, promoted closer adherence to church teachings, and led to more effective proselyting activities. Finally, and perhaps most interestingly, were the methods Mormon leaders employed to meet these dual goals. After almost a century of tension with the larger American society, one in which relations were marked ^[284] by suspicion and hostility,³ Mormons willingly and openly sought the assistance of national specialists to craft the LDS recreational program, then creatively adapted these principles to meet the needs of the Mormon community.

Moreover, the large-scale recreation programs of the 1930s act as a case-study-in-time of the LDS recreation movement. Conscientiously employing organized recreation programs to offset increasing amounts of leisure time, church leaders in the 1930s used each of the aspects of Mormon recreation developed in the first third of the twentieth century. A recreation ideology specific to the needs of depression-era Mormons was developed and programs in athletics and the great outdoors received strong emphasis. Mormon recreation programs reached their zenith during the 1930s. Combining a diffuse methodology with a clearly defined mission to ameliorate social problems caused by a failing economy, church leaders used every weapon in their leisure-time arsenal to combat the increased leisure time facing LDS members during the depression decade of the 1930s.

Controlling Leisure Time

From Joseph Smith’s stick-pulling and wrestling to evening dances held along the Mormon Trail, recreation has always played a conspicuous though informal social ^[285] role for Mormons. From 1900 to 1930, however, church-sponsored recreational activities gradually became an institutionalized element of Mormon group life, especially for the youth.⁴ During these thirty years, the church developed a leisure-time ideology, officially affiliated with the Boy Scout program, built a large number of camps for young women, sponsored the first inter-stake track meet in Salt Lake, supported the construction of the Deseret Gymnasium, and used athletic heroes to “sell” a new interpretation of the Word of Wisdom. By the advent of the Great Depression, then, a well-organized Mormon recreation program was an integral component of general church activity. It thus dovetailed well with the rising emphasis on internal welfare program activities that mobilized both individuals and wards for increased self-sufficiency and greater cooperative efforts during the 1930s.

In the context of the larger economic scene, Utah had been in the throes of economic depression for almost a decade. Slow economic growth, low per capita income, and a steady migration from farm to city had combined to forestall recovery after the post–World War I economic downturn beginning about 1920. When the stock market crash touched off bank closures and economic collapse in 1929, Utah’s Mormons, like residents of other Western agricultural states, were pushed even closer ^[286] to the brink. Within a year of the stock market crash, only 33.5 percent of the population of Utah was gainfully employed, a lower percentage than that of any other state except Mississippi. Declining agricultural and mining prices, excessive freight rates, weak labor organizations, a high birth rate, and a severe drought in 1931 exacerbated the downward spiral. Given these conditions, it seems counterintuitive that recreation would have a high priority, yet such programs flourished during the depression decade of the 1930s.⁵

It is probably true that Church leaders, most of whom had reached a hardscrabble maturity in the late nineteenth century, would have preferred to see members at work. Yet the economy forbade this solution. The depression created a vast number of unemployed and underemployed church members—seen as a temporary condition—but remarkable increases in industrial production had expanded “leisure time” permanently. Though not fully subscribing to the aphorism that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” church officials believed that the increasing amount of time spent away from productive work either must be directed into socially and spiritually ^[287] productive channels or it would propel the undisciplined toward destructive and harmful activities. Recreational programs filled this need.

Recreation Responds in a Depression Decade

At the MIA’s annual June Conference in 1932, Oscar A. Kirkham, YMMIA executive secretary and Scouting executive, spelled out that relationship between mechanization and leisure: “We are grateful for the machine. It has raised the burdens from a million backs, but it has thrown out a challenge to us. We must provide for the enrichment of leisure time, and in order for us to do that we must have more than technique, more than a bundle of tricks; we must have spirituality.”⁶

G. Ott Romney, football coach at Brigham Young University and respected physical education teacher, believed that the church had to teach its members “how to utilize [their] leisure time pleasantly and profitably” because “miraculous inventions and magic labor-saving machinery threaten to increase constantly and consistently the amount of leisure time which the average individual has at his disposal.”⁷ The main concern for Romney and others was not that leisure time had expanded so rapidly; rather, they worried about how it would be used. Along these lines, the L.D.S. Business ^[288] College advertised: “Make the most of leisure by enrolling for a business course.”⁸ Leisure time was a double-edged sword: depending on how it was used, it could lead either to destruction or salvation. An unsigned editorial warned starkly, “Watch the leisure time. Through it you may either make or break for eternity.”⁹

Thus the struggle for the control of leisure time was part of the larger conflict between good and evil. As a participant in that momentous battle, the church felt compelled to enter the fray. Under the general theme of “Building Latter-day Saints through Recreation,” the MIA in 1932 sought to enlist recreation firmly as a force for good in the lives of church members. Local leaders were instructed to take advantage of “‘the opportunity of the hour’” which was to “enrich leisure” and to “spiritualize recreation” through appropriate church-sponsored activities. One anonymous Mormon author looked heavenward for the guide to proper recreation: “Jesus said: Overcome evil with good. When the mind is filled with thoughts of beauty and an appreciation of the Creator through his creations, there is no place for that which is gross, ugly or debasing. Where there is clean, uplifting, joyous activity, evil cannot enter.”¹⁰ Harrison R. Merrill, editor of the Improvement Era, also cited Jesus as the model of appropriate recreation: “Jesus stood for the enrichment of life—abundant life, abundant living. . . . ^[289] He had but few years, but he lived them to the full. He was a social being enjoying his associations with his fellow men. He attended the wedding feast; He ate with publicans and sinners; He visited with his friends Martha and Mary and Lazarus. . . . How He dignified those social occasions.”¹¹ Possessing the ultimate combination of earthly affability and supreme spirituality, Jesus made the most of every occasion. Adolescent Mormons were expected to do no less. The Improvement Era also published the idealistic comments of Dr. Ray O. Wyland, director of education and relationships for the Boy Scouts of America. “Our recreation must be put on a higher level,” he wrote, “for there is nothing that so much reveals what we are and there is nothing that so determines what we are going to be as the way we spend our leisure time. . . . Society will grow better if our recreation is wholesome.”¹²

Although social improvement was certainly a worthy goal, Mormon leaders focused on the state of the soul and warned frequently against the dangers of forbidden recreation. Expounding on the “poison” of idleness, BYU student Merrill Wood’s prize-winning essay in a church scholarship contest painted a picture of men sitting in a ^[290] “smoke-filled room . . . wasting their time, playing cards, rolling dice, smoking, profaning, and telling smutty stories.” The moral of Wood’s story made clear the degenerative potential of improper recreation. “The social degradation we see all around us, the many wrecks and downfalls of the young people of our nation have been caused by an unprofitable, improper use of their idle moments. The leisure that is forced upon the world is tainted with bitterness and tragedy!”¹³ Such warnings reinforced the value of church-sponsored recreation for faithful Mormons. Under the direction of the church, both parents and youth could be sure that the rising generation would avoid potentially destructive forms of recreation, increase in spirituality, and improve society. Thus, church recreation was seen as an effective weapon against negative social forces (primarily juvenile delinquency) and also as a strategy for promoting internal cohesion within the church. To construct this double-missioned recreation program, church leaders willingly and selectively shopped among the nation’s experts on recreational theory and practice.

Recreation in Combating Social Evils

Church leaders recognized that certain social and political forces were largely beyond their immediate control; these included juvenile delinquency, mass political and social movements, and other social temptations. Yet church leaders believed that the redemptive powers of recreation could relieve these ills. ^[291]

Juvenile delinquency, like crime in general, had been on the rise in Salt Lake City since the 1920s and was an increasingly serious problem in the years of the depression. Though the federal government had reported in 1931 that Salt Lake had “fewer major crimes in proportion to population than any other large city in the country,” city residents (including LDS church leaders) were often reminded that lawlessness was growing.¹⁴ Creating uncommon concern in the halls of both church and civic power, the uproar over delinquent adolescent behavior reached a crescendo in 1929 with the publication of Boys and Girls in Salt Lake City, written by Arthur L. Beeley, a sociologist at the University of Utah and a member of the YMMIA General Board. Beeley reported that the local juvenile court had handled more than 5000 cases of juvenile delinquency between 1923 and 1928. Citing cases of offenders as young as six years old, Beeley’s study argued that existing youth programs were inadequate to counter the trend toward adolescent aberrance.¹⁵

Concern did not abate in the next five years. Writing in the Improvement Era in 1935, Utah educator and YMMIA General Board member Philo T. Farnsworth referred to “This Thing Called Delinquency” as “one of our major problems” and enumerated specific types of delinquency that were to be guarded against: sexual misbehavior (both ^[292] fornication and what he termed “perversions”), acquisitiveness (stealing, burglary), and actions caused by “wander lust” (truancy and running away from home). Farnsworth cautioned that in a society where adolescent crime was rampant, “every leader of boys should feel a double urge to prevent delinquency and to foster positive, constructive activities.”¹⁶ In the battle against delinquency, the church recreation program was designed to turn out healthy, well-adjusted adolescents, thus preventing rather than reforming delinquents. Concurring with Farnsworth that prevention offered the best cure for anti-social behavior, Claude C. Cornwall, a former member of the YMMIA General Board who had studied social psychology at New York University, encouraged youth leaders to get to the root causes of the problems: “If these causes can only be found and eliminated, the chances are that there will not arise any necessity for treatment of delinquent behavior. If it can be prevented, it just won’t happen.”¹⁷

Although Boy Scouts had been a major component in LDS recreation since the 1910s, Scouting during the depression was accorded special rank as an alternative to anti-social behavior.¹⁸ Because delinquency was primarily considered a male ^[293] phenomenon (Beeley’s offenders were boys by a ratio of more than six to one), church leaders stressed channeling young men’s energy into socially useful directions. Apostle Melvin J. Ballard spoke specifically of the high expectations that the church placed on Scouting in “dealing with the boy in his leisure time.” Calling on every boy to join that “appealing program,” Ballard made explicit the link between Scout activity and decreasing delinquency. “Many boys are in the State Reform School but there isn’t, I am told, a single Boy Scout among them.” He warned, “If you do not have your boy active in Scouting, he will be active in some unsupervised program in the pool hall or some other place where he is acquiring bad habits in both thinking and acting.” In a world filled with socially destructive options, Scouting had the weight of church endorsement in helping youthful males avoid “the pitfalls that are in store for him.”¹⁹ Later, the Improvement Era reinforced Ballard’s point by reporting that a recent survey of juvenile delinquency in a large western city had discovered that 85.5 percent of the boys in its juvenile court system “never had the opportunity of participating in or belonging to any character building organization” like the Boy Scouts.^20 [294]

Coupled with the doom facing boys without access to Scouting were numerous Scouting success stories. Oscar Kirkham told about a mining company in an unspecified city that

sent a check for $250 to the Scout council stating that up until the organization of a Scout troop in the town, the company had to employ a watchman to keep boys from breaking windows, light globes, and otherwise injuring property; but since the establishment of a troop there, depredations had ceased; and therefore, the $250 a month formerly used to keep the boys out of mischief could now be used to aid them in their Scout program.²¹

Scouting had succeeded in turning these boys from delinquents into model citizens. Not only did Scouting prevent future delinquency, it also corrected existing anti-social behavior. Scouting, at least to some church leaders, offered a potent answer in the battle to prevent juvenile delinquency during the depression.

The LDS recreation program also countered the expanding forces of social unrest that might have led to a rise in socialism or communism among church members. According to G. Ott Romney, by making “adequate provision for the use of the individual’s leisure time,” society “takes out a splendid insurance policy to protect itself against the evils of restlessness, of anti-social activities, of the adoption of dangerous ‘isms’ and ‘-ologies’ and of perverted tastes. . . .”²² High-ranking church officials understood the growing attraction of communism for the unemployed and ^[295] impoverished. A march organized by the Communist Party in Salt Lake City in 1931 and a violent 1933 labor strike in Carbon County brought the fear of collective social action close to home for church leaders and Utah residents.²³ As Apostle Joseph Merrill proposed, “All will agree that a happy, stable state of society cannot exist where idleness and want abound, for these are fertile fields in which discontent and revolution germinate and quickly grow.”²⁴ Helped by the dire economic circumstances of the 1930s, communism apparently appealed to some Mormons, a fact which disconcerted church leaders. President Heber J. Grant issued a “Warning to Church Members” in 1936: “With great regret we learn from credible sources, governmental and others, that a few Church members are joining directly or indirectly, the Communists and are taking part in their activities.” Grant then called upon all church members “completely to eschew Communism” for “the safety of our divinely inspired Constitutional government ^[296] and the welfare of our church.”²⁵ As countermeasures, recreational activities often promoted democracy and American values. Patriotic church functions, including a rather remarkable year-long celebration of the bicentennial of George Washington’s birth, were undertaken to “bring into every home a reverential and patriotic feeling.”²⁶ Recreation, it was thought, would help to stave off revolution as a “social-insurance policy” against unwanted political “isms” and “-ologies” that might prove tempting.

Other cultural “isms” more closely related to recreation also appeared threatening to church leaders during the 1930s, particularly the growing influence of “commercialism.” The popularity of movie houses, professional sports, and commercial dance halls concerned church leaders because such businesses were outside the church’s control. Fully aware, as one author noted, that “we are competing with well organized activities and commercialized recreational activities,” Mormon leaders tailored their activity programs to meet the popular amusements on their own terms.²⁷ In some cases, the church created programs to compete with specific commercial activities in a thinly ^[297] veiled effort to destroy social activities which it could not supervise. For example, the church built a community center in St. George because local authorities found the prospect of a commercial dance hall undesirable. Juanita Brooks, a St. George resident best known for her landmark series of Mormon biographies and history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, wrote about this episode from her perspective as a mother and schoolteacher for the Improvement Era. Posing the question: “Whose Business is Recreation? The Profit-takers’ or the Home-makers’?” Brooks reported in 1939 the success story of how a group of concerned citizens led by local Mormon leaders and financed by general church funds responded when “certain commercial interests planned to put up a hall just outside the city limits where it would be free of supervision by the city officials.” LDS city leaders opposed the new building, fearing that it would be harmful to “the morals of the young people.” A committee of four local leaders—one from each of the local LDS congregations and one from Dixie College—decided that the most effective response was to build “a hall larger and finer than any private concern could afford to do, and to run it on a non-profit basis to cut out competition.” With a large share of the capital coming from general church funds, a $33,000 recreation hall was constructed. By charging only five cents to attend dances at the hall, the LDS-financed recreation center ended the threat posed by the private dance hall.²⁸ Fearful of unsupervised recreation, Mormon officials in southern Utah ^[298] used their greater resources to ensure that young Mormons would dance “in the place where the priesthood [could] keep an eye on them.”²⁹ At least in this case, it seems that Gentile “profit-takers” were bested by Mormon “home-makers” and their connections to church capital.

LDS recreation also took on another “ism”—the psychological theories of Freud. Eugene L. Roberts, former head basketball coach at Brigham Young University and a professor in the Physical Education Department at the University of Southern California, claimed that Freudian theories had “caused untold suffering.” In the place of Freudian self-expression, Roberts called for the re-enthronement of the “ideal of self-control and self-­development.” He queried, “Can we show that such Freudian abandon to desire has only the misery of mental and spiritual conflict at the end of its trail?” The best opposition was a recreation program that placed “special emphasis upon the socially cooperative activities such as were indulged in by our forefathers.” Working and playing together in groups, like early pioneer Mormons, could rebuild the sense of community that Roberts feared had been splintered by Freud’s emphasis on individualism. Though not recreation’s foremost target, the attack on Freudianism ^[299] evidences the belief that wholesome recreation could positively impact a variety of social problems.³⁰

Recreation and Internal Cohesiveness

Despite the importance in Mormonism of using recreation programs to protect from outside influences, a more important function was to foster internal cohesion. Promoting attendance at church-sponsored functions, encouraging obedience to church leaders and doctrines, and spreading the Mormon faith through missionary work comprised the primary day-to-day goals and accomplishments of recreational activities throughout the 1930s.

Like they had for decades, local leaders used recreational activities to persuade youth to spend their leisure time at the meetinghouse. Leaders noticed that boys (and boys were their primary concern) who attended social outings during the week were more likely to attend Sunday meetings. Deseret Stake in Salt Lake City noted an increase of 800 percent in monthly stake priesthood meetings after an outing was announced.³¹ “Contests” became popular devices to stimulate activity and the Improvement Era reported dozens. In Ogden, Utah, the Aaronic Priesthood challenged the Melchizedek Priesthood to a contest based on attendance at weekly Priesthood ^[300] meetings, Sunday School classes, and sacrament meetings, and fulfilling ward teaching assignments for a period of six months. Winners would feast on strawberries and cream while the losers dined on Boston baked beans. In this case, the boys enjoyed watching the men (most of whom were their fathers) eating baked beans nearly as much as they enjoyed their own tasty desserts. But the point of this contest, like other church competitions of the period, was “to stimulate greater interest and enthusiasm among the young men.”³²

Athletic games provided the backbone of the male-centered recreational program. Throughout the decade, wards, stakes, and the general church held annual sports tournaments, the most popular of which (basketball) attracted over 10,000 participants each year. Young men spent countless hours practicing and playing in the tournaments. By using contests to promote activity among church members, LDS leaders were not duping the boys into unwitting activity; rather they were providing suitable rewards for participation, and many boys found basketball and strawberries reason enough to maintain a connection with the church.

Recreational activities also allowed young men and women to mingle socially and romantically. According to Western essayist Wallace Stegner, “Even in the grave and decorous atmosphere of the Ward House, even in Sunday Meeting, the back rows ^[301] were converted into a preserve for courting couples.”³³ Local leaders were well aware that courtship was a primary reason for church attendance among the young. The Alberta Stake in Canada made a special effort to use romance to attract young men to church. Explaining their high attendance figures, the Albertans advised, “We are trying to stress the attendance of the ‘teen’ age girls at sacrament meeting . . . we think that if more of the girls would attend, this would assist in getting a larger attendance of the boys.”³⁴ All wards and stakes sponsored dances throughout the year, further fostering “wholesome” romantic associations. Unlike gender-exclusive athletic contests, dances offered the youth the opportunity to couple up and spend time together. Romance may not have been the primary motive behind church social functions, but once boys and girls became romantic couples, the church recreation program did its best to capitalize on the situation.

As was the case earlier in the century, the Boy Scout program was used as a tool to increase church attendance and promote adherence to church principles. Apostle Ballard argued that “the end of Scouting” was “to make that boy an active worker in the Priesthood, to prepare him for the service of God, the missionary field and his responsibility at the head of a home. If we fail in that we have missed the objective for ^[302] which Scouting was introduced.”³⁵ Although the Boy Scouts of America had long catered to Mormon needs, in February 1936, LDS church leaders announced that henceforth the “religious, spiritual, and moral phases of Scouting” were to be emphasized. Church-sponsored Scout troops should supplement Scouting principles with adherence to specific church teachings as a “definite part of Scouting.” Before a boy could advance in Scouting he had to prove his worthiness to the presiding officers by providing a record of his meeting attendance. Non-LDS boys in church-sponsored troops were encouraged to be active in their own religions. Though this announcement did not represent a sharp break with past policies, this new emphasis made Scouting concerns a distant second to the inculcation of religious values.³⁶

The church also continued to use recreation to promote the Word of Wisdom. Despite lax enforcement in the past, by the 1930s, adherence to the Word of Wisdom had become a barometer of a church member’s worthiness.³⁷ Having noted the increasing numbers of both female and male smokers during the 1920s and troubled by the repeal of prohibition in 1933, church officials redoubled their emphasis ^[303] on the advantages of abstention, reinforcing the scriptural prohibitions with scientific and medical statistics.

Continuing a long-standing trend, the Improvement Era showcased “celebrity” sports personalities to encourage adolescents to avoid alcohol and tobacco. In so doing, it was following a national trend. As mass consumption expanded in the first quarter of the twentieth century, advertisers increasingly used celebrity endorsements by sports and entertainment figures to increase sales, especially among young people who were anxious to mimic celebrity behavior. In the 1920s and 1930s, celebrity endorsements of cigarettes and alcohol were especially popular and effective. The church countered with celebrity anti-endorsements. The most conspicuous LDS celebrity in the church campaign during the 1930s was David Abbott Jenkins, a “superman of speed and endurance” widely known for setting world land speed records in his race car, the “Mormon Meteor.” “Ab” regularly appeared on the pages of the Improvement Era insisting that “the simple, clean and wholesome life” rewarded abstainers with “endurance, calmness, steady nerve and imperturbable poise of mind and body.” Boasting that he had “never tasted liquor or tobacco and does not use other milder beverages such as tea or coffee,” Jenkins claimed that his abstemious lifestyle had allowed him single-handedly to defeat teams of three and four in marathon cross-country auto races.³⁸ The familiar message was ^[304] nevertheless clear—abstention leads to athletic success. In language reminiscent of “worldly” ads, the Improvement Era portrayed other famous church athletes. Mormon Monte Pearson of the Cleveland Indians reported overcoming a short-lived smoking habit. “I would not be in the majors today if I had continued to use tobacco,” Pearson declared. “The men who stay for years [in the major leagues] and make great names for themselves are nearly always abstainers from tobacco and liquor.”³⁹ Denunciations of alcohol use also came from such non-LDS celebrities as renowned football coach “Pop” Warner of Temple University. No studies have ever appraised the effectiveness of such campaigns but they no doubt contributed in a major way to establishing a culture of abstention.

In addition to promoting church activity and doctrinal adherence, Mormon missionaries employed sports and recreation to change the frequently negative image of Mormonism among prospective converts. Aware that door-to-door proselyting rarely succeeded and often demoralized the young missionaries, mission leaders turned to recreation as a non-confrontational way to elicit interest in the church. In 1935, a missionary reported from England: “Baseball in Britain is proving a powerful instrument for breaking down barriers of prejudice that existed for nearly a century and for opening the way to hear the Gospel message.” More than just providing a cultural service by ^[305] introducing the American game to interested Britons, most missionaries gave sports lessons as an opening to instruct their fellow players in the spiritual doctrines of Mormonism. To that end, the apex of missionary baseball in England was not found in the reports of games played and championships won but in the realization that “scores of baseball friends, some of them players and league officials, are attending both auxiliary and sacrament meetings.”⁴⁰ The goal remained the conversion of souls but recreation provided a non-confrontational method to secure the goodwill and friendships that might translate into conversions.

The success of this program in Great Britain prompted other experiments throughout Europe and the United States. In Germany, a group of American missionaries instructed “likely candidates for the German Olympic Basketball team” in the fundamental skills of the game. Coaching sessions before large audiences were followed by an “interesting illustrated lecture dealing with Utah’s renowned national parks” after which more than 1500 LDS pamphlets were distributed to exiting spectators.⁴¹ Other attention-getting activities included parts in a community play in Germany, a singing group (the “Millennial Chorus”) that performed over the British Broadcasting radio network, a variety of sports in the Netherlands, and American songs ^[306] on Swedish television.⁴² In the United States, a “Goodwill Quartet” canvassed the Midwest “with the hope of presenting to the people of this mission the Gospel through the medium of song.”⁴³ Young Mormons in Civilian Conservation Corps camps were instructed to invite non-LDS camp members to church activities: “A wonderful missionary work can be accomplished by making all young men in your vicinity welcome to all M Men functions,” which involved athletic programs and courses of instruction, both practical and spiritual.⁴⁴ All over the globe, LDS-led recreational activities attracted non-Mormons as a first step toward conversion.

Beyond promoting church participation, fostering adherence to church teachings, and proselyting, Mormon recreation also filled several other social functions. Deseret Clubs in California colleges created a recreational environment where the “idealism of L.D.S. young people” would be safeguarded against the rampant “atheism” prevalent on many campuses.⁴⁵ Recreational programs also taught young people skills ^[307] that might lead to employment. In 1935 the Deseret Gymnasium sponsored a summer program for 150 adolescent boys from Salt Lake City who were “denied the advantages of living and working on a farm” and, in addition to recreational games, trained them in a “commodious well lighted and equipped shop under technically trained and experienced teachers.” One parent reported gratefully: “We were glad to have our son go to the Gym Summer School to keep him out of mischief. Now that he has learned so much about the technique of airplane construction and flight, we believe he may have found his vocation for life.”⁴⁶ Finding a suitable vocation represented no small feat in depression-era America.

Learning from the “Experts”

Although the story of late nineteenth-century Mormonism is often told in terms of resistance to political and economic forces that gradually wore down the church’s stubborn separatism, a focus on the unwanted intrusion fails to tell the whole story. Equally one-sided is the view that Mormonism capitulated completely to mainstream America. The church’s contacts with the outside world were often complex and ambiguous. In designing and implementing LDS recreation programs throughout the twentieth century, church officials willingly turned to outside experts and professionals for ideas and techniques about recreation. However, they consistently used those borrowed techniques to strengthen Mormon community values, rather than simply ^[308] making a wholesale accommodation to non-Mormon groups or value systems. Rather than “selling out” to Gentile experts, LDS leaders were cautiously “buying into” ideas that would serve their own ends.⁴⁷ That trend continued in the 1930s.

Judging from published statements and instructions to stake and ward recreation leaders, the parameters of the church program were not drawn from prophecy, revelation, or prophetic direction, but rather were established in accordance with prevailing professional notions of appropriate social activities for adolescents and young adults.

There were important precedents for such borrowings. Mormon artists had honed their skills at the Académie Julian in Paris before painting various temple murals during the 1890s. Mormon scholars studied theology at the University of Chicago Divinity School in the late 1920s and early 1930s, returning to teach in the fledgling seminary/institute program. Stephen L Richards, then a thirty-eight-year-old apostle, and Amy Brown Lyman, general secretary to the Relief Society General Board and later its general president, promoted professional social work within the church after attending a national social work convention in Kansas City in May 1918 to learn ^[309] techniques and programs.⁴⁸ By going beyond their borders to acquire “worldly” learning, Mormon recreation leaders furthered the LDS acceptance of secular trends. Church leaders concerned about recreation during the depression first turned to non-LDS “experts” to gain sufficient knowledge and then applied that knowledge selectively to further internal church goals, thus using secular learning to create programs that actually served as a “hedge against secular influences” and reinforced a “sense of community among the believers.”⁴⁹

Philo T. Farnsworth’s series on “The Boy, His Nature and His Needs,” published in nine installments in the Improvement Era in 1934 and 1935, explained basic principles of adolescent psychology so that youth leaders could create effective local recreation and activity programs. Farnsworth did not conceal the sources of his ideas; rather, he included extensive bibliographies with most of his articles and quoted from such reputable academic sources as Ada H. Arlitt’s Adolescent Psychology (1933), Fowler O. Brooks’s Psychology of Adolescence (1930), and M. V. O’Shea’s The Child: His Nature and His ^[310] Needs (1924). Farnsworth argued that “the basis of success [in the youth program] is the intelligent understanding of the nature and the needs of these youths and the wisdom to plan a program of activities that inspires respect, promotes confidence, and results in meaningful and worthy social responses on the part of these youths.”⁵⁰ Rather than quoting scriptures that focused on the sinful and fallen nature of humankind to explain personal and social problems, Farnsworth used psychology and sociology. In one article, he explained the effects of a “bad environment” and how unsuitable books, pictures, and companions “warp the social and moral trends of growth” and lead to juvenile delinquency and “defective” personality types. These bad influences should be replaced by church social activities, including the Boy Scout program.⁵¹ Another article warned against the “major dangers” of allowing youthful appetites to build up and recommended defusing such pressures by “the satisfaction which comes from athletic competition.”⁵² Farnsworth even instructed youth leaders in the rudimentary skills of “case social work”—what he called “the scientific approach to the solution of delinquency and to the problem of defective personality”—by directing leaders to probe “the social background” of the individual child and then to create a ^[311] matching program.⁵³ Whether any leaders actually implemented Farnsworth’s ideas is not clear without further study.

Mormon recreation leaders also borrowed extensively from the National Recreation Association, an organization of philanthropists, playground workers, and other advocates of wholesome forms of social recreation. Founded in 1906 in Washington, D.C., as the Playground Association of America, it had become widely known for its success in staffing playgrounds and implementing new methods of play for urban children. Though never officially allied with the National Recreation Association, LDS recreation leaders frequently attended its meetings, borrowed its ideals, and mined its literature for suggestions.⁵⁴

In July 1932, a delegation of ten members from the MIA general boards, joined by delegates from several stakes, attended the First International Recreation Congress, sponsored by the National Recreation Association, in Los Angeles. LDS attendees reported that this exposure had broadened “their concept of the meaning of recreation and their vision of its possibilities as a character building and spiritualizing force.” They expressed gratitude “that the leisure-time program of the MIA measures up so ^[312] completely to the ideals and methods presented by these national groups.”⁵⁵ Certainly, as the delegates reviewed the church recreation program they discovered much to make them proud, found reinforcement for their belief in the redemptive power of recreation, and redoubled their commitment to using recreation for internal purposes. In November 1932, the theme for the monthly conjoint session of the ward MIAs was “Building Latter-day Saints through Recreation.” Young men and young women gave presentations designed to “enrich leisure” and “spiritualize recreation” by describing the spiritual force of music, the educational value of drama, and the “esthetic and spiritual values in the dance.”⁵⁶ It is likely that the National Recreation Association conference influenced this new emphasis.

Two months earlier, in September 1932, Elsie T. Brandley, associate editor of the Improvement Era, quoted from Judge Robert H. Scott’s address to the National Recreation Association meeting: “The boy who steals a base is not likely to be stealing an automobile.” Brandley claimed that Scott’s conviction that proper recreation would reduce juvenile crime had “long been an unformulated statement” behind Mormon ^[313] recreation programs.⁵⁷ Brandley’s use of “expert” judicial testimony exemplifies the LDS outreach to recreation specialists; the direct application of Judge Scott’s words to Mormon programs typifies how much of that information was used.

National Recreation Association influence had earlier appeared in the “M Men Guide” for 1931–1932, a course of study for young men. Author J. Ruel Griffiths, an associate professor of physical education at the University of Utah, included a chapter on “Recreation” and a chapter-length biography of National Recreation Association founder Joseph Lee. Based on texts written by recreation authorities, the lessons stressed the importance of choosing wholesome social activities as part of a healthy lifestyle and recommended further reading in experts like Eduard Lindeman and renowned sociologist E. A. Ross for ideas and explanations.⁵⁸

Other experts influenced the MIA’s recreation plans. In 1933, at the invitation of Improvement Era, Jay B. Nash—a professor of education at New York University, an admired member of the National Recreation Association, and a leading voice in the American Association of Leisure Time Educators—wrote on problems posed by increased leisure during the depression.⁵⁹ One local MIA group took the advice of ^[314] dance sociologist Marla War Lamkin that “the modern dance is essentially a dance for two . . . [and] is usually stiff, formal, and unimaginative” and instituted new group dances that developed “friendliness and sociability.” Other youth groups were invited to follow their lead in planning dances.⁶⁰

There are even a few suggestions that the LDS recreational programs influenced recreation professionals. Eugene L. Roberts observed in 1933, “The leisure-time program of the Mormon church is the ‘talk of the town’ at present among the country’s recreation leaders.”⁶¹ In April 1938, a convention of recreation leaders from the western states gathered in Salt Lake City where they witnessed music, drama, singing, and speeches prepared by local M.I.A. groups.⁶²

The Improvement Era regularly reviewed professional and academic books on recreation and child psychology in its monthly column “On the Book Rack.” Sample titles included Ethel M. Bowers’s Recreation for Girls and Women, Arlitt’s Adolescent Psychology (1933), J. J. B. Morgan’s The Psychology of the Unadjusted School Child (1936), Martin H. and Esther S. Neumeyer’s Leisure and Recreation (1936), Ruth Lampland’s Hobbies for Everybody (1934), and Sports for Recreation (1936), compiled by the Intramural Sports Department at the ^[315] University of Michigan. In the August 1936 issue alone, three recreation titles—Leisure and Recreation, Hobbies for Everybody, and Sports for Recreation—were favorably reviewed. The titles were evidently chosen because of their helpfulness to youth advisors struggling to make local programs more effective. “The Sunday School teacher and the expert in week-day religious education should rely on the psychology of the adolescence and childhood as fully as any other teacher,” noted one analyst.⁶³ The reviewer of Arlitt’s The Adolescent (1938) explained that “all leaders of Scouts, Explorers, Bee-Hive Girls, and Junior Girls should read and re-read this helpful volume.”⁶⁴ By seeking guidance from so many “outside” voices, church youth leaders sought to augment and refine existing approaches.

Although recreational activities largely formed the social foundation of the LDS church during the 1930s, they were not the only concern of church leaders, nor was the ability of recreation to change lives and improve society the only method of behavior modification espoused by church officials. Apostle John A. Widtsoe went so far as to beatify toil: “Blessed is work, properly directed, unceasing work, throughout life! It preserves physical health and prolongs life. It adds to our material and spiritual possessions. . . . The fruits of idleness are sorrow and sin. The doctrine that men and ^[316] women must be usefully employed while life lasts, if health permits, is fundamental in the philosophy of the Gospel. It is the first law of prosperity.”⁶⁵ There was no substitute for work—either in the world or in the gospel. Linking long life with hard work, church President Heber J. Grant argued, “I do not know of anything that destroys a person’s health more quickly than not working. It seems to me that lazy people die young while those who are ready and willing to labor and who ask the Lord day by day to do more in the future than they have ever done in the past, are the people whom the Lord loves, and who live to a good old age.”⁶⁶ Going beyond the physical benefits of work, Grant reminded youth leaders and others that in directing their youthful charges the “important thing for you is have a love of your work and to do your work under the inspiration of the Spirit of the living God.”⁶⁷ Scholarly learning and expertise had their place in church recreation and social programs but, according to Grant, providence mattered more than psychology, and the Spirit of God mattered more than sociology.

Likewise, the increasing attention given to recreation programs was balanced by a never-slackening emphasis on the importance of work. Recreation provided a partial answer to delinquency and unemployment during the depression but hard work ^[317] continued to be championed as the vital force ensuring social order. In church conferences throughout the decade, church leaders glorified the value of work, called for self-reliance, and implored all to give an honest day’s work, especially those employed on relief projects. Recreation was a temporary solution to idleness, a necessary sweetener for youth, and an earned reward for serious toil.⁶⁸

Recreation served important functions in the LDS church during the depression decade of the 1930s. Recreation programs provided the church with a device to fight against large social problems like juvenile delinquency and social unrest. Furthermore, recreation increased cohesion within the church and offered missionaries a unique and effective way to meet potential converts. For the historian, depression-era recreation provides additional evidence of the church reaching beyond its borders to acquire and use expert advice and knowledge. Applying that knowledge to solve internal dilemmas, the church did not accommodate or “give in” to the outside world; instead, through the process of “creative adjustment” church recreation leaders employed knowledge from the outside world to preserve their unique way of life.

In many ways, the 1930s proved to be the apex of the recreation program in the LDS church. Building on the foundation created during the progressive era, church leaders took existing ideologies and activities and used them to attack the unique ^[318] leisure-time problems caused by the social and economic dislocations of the great depression. ^[319]