I cannot see the necessity of importing vast quantities of beef and pork, tea and coffee, tobacco and [p.158] liquor, which are now brought here and find a ready market among the Latter-day Saints. Yet our streets are full of purchasers of things from abroad which are unnecessary to our comfort. People do not realize that those things which are brought to us so plentifully from abroad are, in many instances, impure. The demand for them is becoming so great that the pure article cannot be furnished in sufficient quantities to meet it. The tobacco that we use, the tea and coffee that we drink, are all adulterated in such a manner as to destroy the purity of the blood of those who indulge in their use. Do you believe it? I know it. They are adulterated to that extent that no man can indulge in their use continuously and preserve his health. If I remember aright, I heard from this stand the servant of God say that the time was when the Word of Wisdom came to us as a word of persuasion and counsel, but now, he said, it is a commandment from God that this people observe it. Does anyone remember hearing those words from this stand more than twenty years ago? I remember it—and yet I have broken it many times. Is the time coming in my life when I will observe it? Is the time coming in the lives of this people when they will observe it, and before God and man carry out the revelation that God has given for the protection of His people, that they dwindle not, that their children may be healthy and strong, and a generation be raised up in these mountains that will honor God, having pure blood in their veins, and strong and healthy tabernacles, wherein the Spirit of God may dwell to the protection of the work of the Lord in these latter days? This is what is incumbent upon us, and I know that we cannot enjoy the blessing and the inspiration of God if we do those things that God has commanded us not to do. ~Brigham Young, Jr. Brain Stuy, Collected Discourses Vol. 4, p.157
We hear a great deal about hard times. The Latter-day Saints last year expended in breaking a commandment of God by disobeying the Word of Wisdom, over a million dollars. In other words, the Latter-day Saints expended more cash in breaking a commandment of God than they paid tithing. I have faith in the integrity and honesty and in the testimony existing in the hearts of the Latter-day Saints. I know that the Latter-day Saints desire the onward advancement of God's kingdom. I know that the mistakes they make as a rule are mistakes of the head and not of the heart. But when we stop to reflect that a great deal more is expended by the people in breaking a commandment of God than [p.171] they pay in tithing, do you not think that some of the mistakes of the head ought to be remedied? I do. The average price paid to-day for wheat in this Territory is about forty cents, and yet I am told that there comes into Utah Territory every year over one hundred thousands pounds of one brand of smoking tobacco, called the Duke of Durham, and as I understand it retails at eighty cents a pound, it takes one hundred and sixty thousand bushels of wheat to pay for that one brand of smoking tobacco! And we have had preached to us for the past fifty or sixty years that tobacco is only fit for sick cattle! The agent of this tobacco gives us the proud distinction, if you consider it so, that Utah Territory leads every other State and Territory west of the Mississippi River, in proportion to its population, in buying Duke of Durham smoking tobacco. Do you know that it is humiliating to me to realize that a man can make such a statement? There must be more or less truth in it, or I do not think he would say it. We raise in this Territory some four or five millions of bushels of wheat a year, and at forty cents a bushel it would take 2,500,000 bushels of that wheat to pay for all we consume in breaking the Word of Wisdom. A pound of coffee amounts to thirty cents and a bushel of wheat only amounts to forty cents, and there are sixty pounds in it. I went out to Wasatch Stake not long ago, and took dinner with Brother Hatch, the President of the Stake. He gave me a cup of coffee, and it was very good indeed, and it only cost three-fourths of a cent a pound, because it was made of wheat. I am acknowledged to be a crank on home productions and home manufactures, and when I get first-class coffee for three-fourths of a cent a pound, I ought not to be such a fool as to pay thirty cents for it. If a man pays one cent a pound for wheat and makes coffee of it, he is making twenty-nine cents profit by not drinking the other article. Brother Hatch told me that by browning it well and steeping it a long while it was not necessary to grind it up, and that it made first class chicken feed after you had had it for coffee. Then, if it is worth one-third the original price for chicken feed, that would make the coffee only half a cent a pound, and the actual profit made by drinking homemade coffee would be 6000 per cent. Now, if we could only make 6000 per cent in investing in some business, how soon we would all get wealthy. And every one of you coffee-drinkers can make 6000 per cent on your coffee if you do not on your other investments-that is, Brother Cannon says, if you keep chickens. (Laughter) ~Heber J. Grant, Brain Stuy, Collected Discourses Vol. 4, p.170
I will not say anything about the greater blessings that you will receive by keeping the commandments of God; that when you have any sick you are entitled to call down the healing influences of the Spirit of God into your homes; that you are to have health and strength and power given unto you, and hidden treasures of knowledge. All these things you will find recorded in the Word of God revealed to us and known as the Word of Wisdom. But I have been requested by President Smith to give a few figures, and that is why I am talking on this side of the question. We have it given as a fact that in the business that is transacted only five per cent of it is actually in money; the balance is in exchange of values. Money represents to the business world what the blood represents to the body of man. The heart takes that blood every few hours and it goes through the body over and over again. Tons and tons are pumped by the little heart within us in a day or two. Yet it is the same blood going over and over again. It is the same with money. It goes over and over again. Brother Brigham Young stated to us here yesterday that twenty years ago [p.172] the Prophet of God laid it down to this people that the Word of Wisdom was no longer given merely by the way of constraint, but that it was from that time a commandment of God that we keep it. Now, if we have expended from half a million to a million dollars a year for twenty years in breaking this commandment, the total amount would be at least fifteen millions of dollars of money during that time, and with compound interest semi-annually at 10 per cent for the term of twenty years it would amount in round numbers from thirty-five to forty millions of dollars, or enough to build Salt Lake City. As I have said, it takes two and a half million bushels of wheat, at the present price, to pay for breaking the Word of Wisdom. Where are there any Latter-day Saints who would contribute a bushel of wheat to have a match set to it? Where are there any Latter-day Saints who would gather together 2,500,000 bushels of wheat and burn it up? Yet I say that it would not be half the crime in the sight of God to burn that quantity of wheat as it is to spend its equivalent in breaking a commandment of the Almighty God. I am informed that there is in the neighborhood of $250,000 worth of tobacco consumed in this Territory by the Latter-day Saints alone. Figuring on the basis of $5 of actual circulation of money to every $100 of business that is done, if we could save in this Territory a million dollars a year of hard cash that goes out for these articles, that amount of money, circulating around during the year, would cancel twenty million dollars of the bondage of indebtedness which to-clay rests upon the people. I remember hearing Brother George L. Farrell in the Assembly Hall six months ago make a statement with reference to home made goods, and I have quoted it at every conference I have been at since, and I expect to go on quoting it. He stated that he bought some home made shoes, and he met at the depot the man he owed for making these shoes. He went up to him and gave the $5. This man turned around, saw another person that he owed, and handed him the $5. He saw another and gave it to him; and he saw another and gave it to him; and he saw another and gave it to him; and the fourth man walked up to Brother Farrell and said, "Brother Farrell, I owe you $6; here is $5 of it, I will give you the other dollar the next time we meet." The $5 canceled, in about the same length of time it takes to tell it, $25 of debts. And debt is bondage; therefore, it lifted $25 of bondage from the shoulders of these people. Now, if this $5 canceled $25 in ten minutes, to make a mathematical calculation, how much will it cancel in the remaining 364 days and twenty-three hours and fifty minutes of the year? Figuring on what a million dollars would do for the Latter-day Saints if they were to obey the Word of Wisdom, I say to you that it would make the Latter-day Saints, in twenty years from to-day, the wealthiest rural and laboring people in these United States, in proportion to their population, if they would save this money that is now worse than burned up. In speaking in this way I do not wish to rail at anybody, because I want to say that some of the sweetest spirited men whom I have ever known, and men as true to the Gospel as I ever could be, have disobeyed the Word of Wisdom. But I endorse with all my heart and in all humility President Smith's remark that if any are standing in the door of salvation and their example is injuring other people, let them step aside. ~Heber J. Grant, Brain Stuy, Collected Discourses Vol. 4, p.171
There are lots more of these. Thing is, they considered it a COMMANDMENT in 1841. This appeared in the Times & Seasons:
To say nothing about the disputed point contained in the word of wisdom: the Lord has said strong drink and tobacco are not good for man. But here an objector will arise and say, 'I know that strong drink is good, for I have tried it many a time, and have found great benefit from it, so much so, that if it had not been fo' Then what 'I cannot give it up, is it not a little one? Let me have it and my soul shall live.' And thus whether they consider it, or not, they give their Maker the lie. Those who use tobacco say we cannot make such a sacrifice; and thus, with Lot, they find that what God has ordained for life, to be unto death; Let me have this little tobacco and my soul shall live. Lot said I shall die if I go to the mountain, but in a short time he was compelled, for he feared to live in Zoan [Gen. 19, 30.] And you spirit drinkers, and tobacco users, will soon have to witness the same things, viz: if you cannot live without it, you cannot live with it, so you must either obey the commandment or be reconciled to your doom. But I would advise you to come forth with the resolution of a man, and show to the world that you are determined to take the kingdom if it be by storm, and enjoy all the blessings, contained in the word of wisdom. But if you are determined to pursue your own course, and hug your idol to your heart -- I would say, go on, and the God of heaven will reward you according to your works: for that period is not far distant, when the destroying angel will pass through the land, who will lay great Dagon with all his worshippers prostrate on the earth: for no idol shall stand in the presence of the great God, for when he comes, all evil will be gathered out of his kingdom, and only they who keep his commandments shall be able to stand. ~Times and Seasons, Vol.2, No.23, p.556
