-- Oct 4, 1860
Brigham Young's financial report informs general conference that from 1857 to this date, church spent total of $70,204 in excess of what has been received in money and Tithing." This is first financial report to acknowledge church's deficit spending. (1)
-- Oct 8, 1860
Brigham Young preaches "he was contending against a principle in many of the Bishops to use up all the Tithing they could for their own families." (1)
-- During 1860s
For six years in the 1860s the pioneer system of labor tithing was tapped by each spring sending ox teams, wagons, and teamsters from Utah to a frontier outfitting point to haul immigrants back. Immigrants who benefited from this assistance by the "Church trains" signed promissory notes to the Perpetual Emigration Fund (PEF). Theoretically, the PEF was to repay the church; but in practice this became a church investment that would yield other than monetary returns. Nearly two-thirds of all beneficiaries of the PEF were passengers of the "Church trains." (2)
-- Jan 17, 1861
Brigham Young's office journals records: "The President remarked that the People were very unwilling to pay taxes, and men that ought to know better felt this also. Men will spend money for drink but not to build up the Kingdom and if we did not mind the Lord might Let the gentiles overrun us. If gold was discovered here the gentiles might over-run us and break us up. He remarked as good a man as Patriarch Jno Smith could not see that taxation builds up a people. The neglecting the payment of taxes would run a nation into barbarism observed the President, The destitute and degraded condition of the Lamanites was through their fathers being opposed to principles of tithing and taxation." (3)
-- Apr 6, 1863
[Sermon] Daniel H. Wells: Building the Temple and a New Tabernacle - Labor Tithing - Call for Faithful Laborers, JD 10:139 - 143 (4)
Footnotes:
1 - On This Day in Mormon History, http://onthisdayinmormonhistory.blogspot.com
2 - Utah History Encyclopedia: Perpetual Emigration, http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/p/PERPETUALEMIGRATING.html
3 - This Day in Mormon History, http://www.advent-adam.com/jakestand.html
4 - Journal of Discourses, http://jod.mrm.org
Mormon Tithing Timeline /Chronology
http://lds-church-history.blogspot.com/
