History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

654 SCHISMS AND APOSTASIES.
The first effect of this movement on the trade of
gentile merchants was disastrous, the sales of the
Walker Brothers, for instance, decreasing in a brief
space from $60,000 to $5,000 per month, 23 while those
of the Auerbach Brothers fell off in like ratio, 24 these
two firms, among others, offering to dispose of their
entire property to the directors of the Zion's Cooperative
Institute for fifty cents on the dollar, and leave
the territory. 25 The offer was refused. Hence, perhaps,
as will presently appear, the rapid development of
the mining resources of the country after 1869, toward
which purpose several prominent merchants, among
them Godbe and the Walker Brothers, applied the
remnants of their fortunes. Soon, however, even the
Mormons began to disregard the warnings of their
leaders against trading with gentiles or apostates.
The spell was broken, and during the conference of
1870 the stores of the latter, and especially of the
Walker Brothers, were so crowded with purchasers
that it was almost impossible for them to serve their
patrons. The reformers preached against and wrote
against the president, and the better to support their
cause, established a newspaper named the Salt Lake
Tribune, at first a weekly and afterward a daily pub-
23 Walker's Merchants and Miners of Utah, MS., 3. Samuel Sharp, Joseph
Robinson, David, Frederick, and Matthew Henry Walker were in 18S3 the
membess of this firm. Englishmen by birth, being the sons of a Yorkshire
squire, possessed in 1846 of a considerable landed estate, but who, like
thousands of others, suffered financial shipwreck during the railroad panic of
the following year, they arrived at S. L. City in 1S52, at which date there
were only five business houses on Main street. They laid the basis of their
fortune during the presence of the army at Camp Floyd, soon making their
mark among the commercial community, and being classed a few years later
among the leading merchants of Utah. After 1869 their attention was chiefly
given to mining, in which connection further mention will be made of the
firm. Autobiog. of the Walker Bros., MS.
24 The Auerbach Bros., a dry-goods firm, state that at this time ruin stared
them iu the face, and but for the mining developments which followed almost
immediately afterward they could not have remained in the territory.
Fred. H. and Sam. H. Auerbach, natives of eastern Prussia, came to S. L.
City in 1864, after suffering heavy business reverses in Austin, Nev., where
they afterward paid their debts in full in gold coin. Their sales for 1885
amounted to about $500,000. Auerbach's Edmunds Bill, MS.; Utah Biogr.
Sketches, MS., 9-10.
25 Harrison's Crit. Notes on Utah, MS., 52; Walker's Merchants and Miners
of Utah, MS., 3.