Salt Lake City

Commerce and Industry.

Salt Lake City is the commercial, financial and industrial centre of the State of Utah and of a large additional part of the inter-mountain territory. It is the seat of the fourth branch (established 1918) of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, serving 31 counties in Idaho and four in Nevada besides the entire State of Utah. Debits to individual accounts in the local banking institutions amounted in 1927 to $881,787,000. Manufacturing has expanded rapidly since the World War. More than roo national firms have established branch factories or distributing offices here, to supply the natural trade territory of the city (500,00o sq.m.), and many local industries have extended their markets to cover the country. Among the leading industries are slaughtering and meat-packing, printing and publishing, the refining of oil, the smelting of silver, lead and copper, and the manufacture of beet sugar, candy, flour and radio equipment. Salt Lake City makes a third of all the "loud speakers" for radios produced in the United States. Receipts at the stockyards totalled nearly 1,000,000 head in 1926, of which the local packing-plants used 155,00o head. There is an oil re finery covering 120 acres. The suburb of Murray, 7 m. S. (popu lation in 1920; 4,584) is a great smelting centre.

History.—The history of the city is bound up with that of the Mormons (q.v.) and of the State (see UTAH). On July 22, 1847, an advance party of Mormons, led by Orson Pratt and Erastus Snow, in search of a place where they might "colonize in peace and safety," entered the Salt Lake valley. On July 24, Brigham Young arrived and approved the site, and on July 28 he chose the spot for the temple. Ploughing and planting were begun forth with; the hard sun-baked earth was flooded by building a dam in City Creek canyon ; and an irrigation system was devised. The

city was named the City of the Great Salt Lake, and was so called until 1868. Bef ore the end of 1847 the main body of the people arrived. A theocratic government was set up, with a bishop in charge of each of the 19 wards into which the community was divided. The settlers were American citizens squatting on foreign soil, for the region at that time belonged to Mexico, and they were practically beyond the reach of any civil government, as their leaders had desired. This isolation was of brief duration. The Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, at the close of the Mexican War, transferred the region to the United States, and after the discovery of gold in California, the city was overrun with caravans of treasure-seekers. Many of the colonists deserted to join the stream of prospectors, notwithstanding the attitude of their leader, who opposed the exploitation of mineral wealth (even in Utah) and whose ideal was a community of farmers, merchants and manufacturers. Those who stayed at home grew rich as out fitters. There was a considerable immigration from Europe in the early years, especially from England, where the Mormon missions were very successful. By 185o the city had a population of 6,000. It was chartered in 1851 by the Territorial legislature of Utah. After the Civil War the non-Mormon population steadily in creased, and there was a long period of conflict between the op posing elements, as well as officially between the Mormon Church and the U.S. Government over the practice of polygamy and other matters of dispute (see MORMONS), all of which happily is now long past. The population of the city has grown steadily, more than doubling itself in each 20-year period since 1860.