One Mormon's Revolt

Through its key legislative spokesman and its powerful daily Deseret News and Salt Lake Telegram (circ. 85.105), the voice of the Mormon Church made its message clear to heavily Mormon (65.5%) Utah. The message: it was high time for the legislature to enact a new Sunday closing law to replace the one declared unconstitutional in 1943. Under similar pressure from the big merchants and supermarket operators (who would have to pay union labor triple pay to stay open on Sunday), both houses of the legislature comfortably passed a bill prohibiting Sunday sale of uncooked meats, groceries, clothing, boots and shoes, alcoholic beverages other than beer.

The bill seemed as good as law when it went to the desk of Republican Governor George Dewey Clyde, 60, a good Mormon who had never been known to raise his voice loudly about anything. But this time George Clyde spoke up, sent the Sunday closing bill back to the legislature with a surprising, stinging veto message. Reasons for the veto: i) the bill was "inequitable" to small merchants; 2) through it. big merchants were seeking "to regulate competition"; 3) Utah's rich seven-day-a-week copper mines, not specifically exempted from Sunday closing, might be "seriously affected"; 4) the bill would force such minority religious groups as Seventh-day Adventists (400 in Utah) "to work on their own Sabbath day" (Saturday) or else be limited to a five-day business week. Pleaded George Clyde to his fellow Mormons: "The true democratic process rests as much on the principle of respect for the fundamental rights of minorities as on that of majority rule."

"A bitter disappointment to the people," the Deseret News said forebodingly, as the state legislature tried but failed to override Clyde's veto. "It is an affront to the legislators ... it is an astonishing, unaccountable reversal of what the people expected from the Governor."

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