J. Reuben Clark

Joshua Reuben Clark, Jr. (September 1, 1871 – October 6, 1961) was an American attorney, civil servant, and a prominent leader in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). Born in Grantsville, Utah Territory, Clark was a prominent attorney in the Department of State, and Under Secretary of State for US president Calvin Coolidge. In 1930 Clark was appointed United States Ambassador to Mexico.

He received his BS from the University of Utah where he was valedictorian and student-body president. He received his law degree from Columbia University where he also became a member of Phi Delta Phi, a prominent international legal fraternity in which Clark remained active throughout his life. He later became an associate professor at George Washington University. Both the J. Reuben Clark Law Society and the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University were named in his honor.^[4]

Childhood and youth

Clark was the first of ten children of Joshua R. and Mary Louisa Wooley Clark. He was born and raised in Grantsville, Utah. Grantsville is located thirty-three miles southwest of Salt Lake City in Tooele Valley, and at the time, it was a four-hour trip by buggy and train from Grantsville to Salt Lake. Large tracts of desert land provided winter grazing for cattle in the winter. South Mountain to the south, and the Stansbury Range to the west provided timber, water, berries, and summer grazing. The Latter-day Saints who settled the area were industrious, and community-oriented. Although hard work was mandatory for survival, the year was often punctuated by community events, parties, dances, celebrations, plays, lectures, and outdoor recreation.^[5] As a break from farm work, Clark participated in mounting dramatic productions from his youth, and acted in some. He manifested a propensity for public speaking, comedy, and humor at a young age. Clark also participated in the childhood diversions available on the frontier — sledding in the winter and swimming in the summer.

Clark's grandfather had been a minister in the Dunker Faith (Church of the Brethren).^[6] Clark's father, Joshua R. Clark, had worked his way west through Utah as a trapper and freighter and felt drawn to the LDS Church after attending his first Sunday service, being baptized a month afterward. Education and culture were important in the Mormon communities in Utah Territory and later the State of Utah. Clark's father Joshua, although accustomed to hard physical labor, was also reputed to be a knowledgeable, culturally-oriented man. He was hired soon after his baptism to teach school in Grantsville. Shortly after moving there from Salt Lake, he married Mary Louisa Wooley, who was born on the plains as her parents made their way west with Mormon Pioneers. Joshua was the sort of man who, while doing business in Salt Lake, would sleep in a hay loft in order to afford to see a Shakespearean play, and would make great sacrifices to afford to buy a good book.^[7] The small library in the Clark home was made up of history books, classics, and an encyclopedia, the Bible, plus the other religious works of the LDS Church. Although young Clark's education was spotty in his youth, due to the demands of farm life and meager family resources, he was able to take music lessons and to play with various bands. He played the piccolo and then the flute.^[8]

Clark's father became the clerk and then the superintendent of the Grantsville educational co-op, was elected the Tooele County Superintendent of Schools in 1878,^[9] became president of the Tooele County Education Association, and by 1879 was assessor and tax collector, with his two eldest sons helped with the accounting and record-keeping.^[10] When his father later taught at a local private school, Clark was able to be formally educated for the first time. He was ten years old, and in the past had been schooled by his mother. Clark was not at school every term. Sometimes, financial difficulties and farm work kept him at home. His father once related that Clark would “rather miss his meals than to miss a day from school.” After completing the eighth grade, the highest grade offered at the Grantsville school, Clark repeated it two more times.^[11]

College education and early career

In 1890 at age 19, and with his father’s consent, Clark was taken to Salt Lake City to enter Latter-day Saints' University.^[12] Clark lived at the home of an aunt to save money, and he earned extremely high grades. The principal of the school was James E. Talmage, the foremost scholar and scientist in the LDS Church.^[13] Talmage hired Clark to be the assistant curator (and later, curator) for the Deseret Museum.^[14] It was a paid position and helped immensely to support Clark during his higher education. The curator position was also considered a mission, and relieved Clark of being called to serve a formal full-time mission for the LDS Church. When Talmage was released as principal and called to create a new college for the LDS Church, he brought Clark with him as his chemistry lab assistant and clerk, while Clark would still curate at the museum. This again, helped Clark with his financial support and enabled him to finish six years of advanced schooling in four. Two of those years had been meant to finish his unmet high school requirements. It was Talmage who called Clark “the greatest mind ever to leave Utah,”^[15] and who encouraged him to attend an eastern university.

In 1894, Clark entered the University of Utah.^[16] Clark lived frugally and was even able to partially support his father, who had been called to serve in the Northern States Mission of the Church, first as a missionary, then as president of the mission.

James E. Talmage became the President of the University of Utah and also the first recipient of the recently endowed Deseret Professorship of Geology. Clark graduated in 1898 as valedictorian of his graduating class, still serving as clerk to Talmage and on the faculty of the university.^[17] He had met Luacine (“Lute”) Annetta Savage of Salt Lake City in 1894, but could not afford to marry her. She taught kindergarten, then worked at her father’s store, while dating Clark for four years. They married on September 14, 1898, in the Salt Lake Temple. James E. Talmage performed the sealing.^[18] The couple had a modest reception by Lute’s choice, owing to Clark's small means, although she came from a prosperous family.^[19] A few days later, Clark left for Heber, Utah, to find a place for them to live and start his first career position as a teacher and principal of the new Heber City High School.

The next year, Clark signed on as a teacher at Latter-day Saints' University, but resigned in February to teach at Salt Lake Business College.^[20] Joseph Nelson headed the college and became an important benefactor to Clark. In the fall of 1900, Clark went to Cedar City, Utah, to become the principal of the Branch Normal School.^[21] The following year, Clark was an instructor in Commercial Law, Principal of the Shorthand Department, and Secretary of the Faculty at Salt Lake Business College. In 1903 Nelson was named cashier of the Utah National Bank, and Clark assumed most of his duties at the college. That year, Nelson offered to pay for law school for Clark, and Clark applied to Columbia University. He was accepted, and he received his entire education in law at Columbia.

Columbia

In the beginning of Clark's second year of law school at Columbia he was elected to the editorial board of the Columbia Law Review.^[22] (He was the oldest on the board, the only one married, and the only Mormon in the law school.) In 1905 (at the end of his second year of law school) he was admitted to the New York bar.^[23] He was granted a Bachelor of Laws degree in 1906. Clark had worked with James Brown Scott on the 772-page book Cases on Quasi Contracts (1905) during his schooling.^[24] Brown recommended him as Assistant Solicitor of the Department of State,^[25] and Clark received the appointment on September 5, 1906.^[26]

Government service and law career

Clark began his government service in 1906, when he was appointed Assistant Solicitor to the State Department. During their tenure in Washington, the Clark family (consisting of Clark, his wife and four children) was in the wake of the controversy over the Reed Smoot hearings in the US Senate.

In his position as Assistant Solicitor and then as Solicitor in the State Department, Clark was often confronted with critical issues of international consequence. For example, when the Mexican Revolution erupted in 1911, he was called upon to make crucial decisions and recommend courses of action to the secretary of state and Howard Taft. Of particular concern to Clark was the plight of the Latter-day Saints who lived in Mexican colonies, who were often caught in the middle of the conflict and whose presence in Mexico was resented by the revolutionaries.^[27]

After resigning from the State Department in 1913 following the election of Woodrow Wilson, Clark turned his attention to the practice of law. His family returned to Utah, and he opened law offices in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Salt Lake, and specialized in international and corporate law. One of his first major clients was the Japanese government, who enlisted his services to combat anti-Japanese discrimination in California. Officials in the Japanese government extended an offer for him to become their permanent counsel in Tokyo and reside in the Imperial Palace. Clark declined the offer, partly on the advice of Joseph F. Smith.^[28]

When the United States entered World War I, Clark was commissioned as a major in the Judge Advocate General Officer Reserve Corps (Army) and later asked to become Special Counsel to Judge Advocate General.^[29] Also during World War I, Clark worked in the Attorney General's office. He also participated in creating the regulations for the Selective Service.

In 1926, Clark was called back into government service as tensions with Mexico flared. His past experience in Mexican affairs as Solicitor and his experience in diplomacy were called upon as the President appointed him to the Mexican and American Mixed Claims Commission.^[30] The Commission, established by treaty ^[31] in 1924 to settle monetary disputes between the two countries, was thought to be the best means of avoiding war with Mexico.^[31] Other positions of national prominence followed, such as appointments to Special Counsel for the United States before the American-British Claim Arbitration, and Agent for the United States on the US-Mexico General and Special Claims commissions. Later, Clark took a position as personal legal adviser to US Ambassador to Mexico Dwight Morrow, who had been impressed with Clark's work in the State Department.

In 1928, as Under Secretary of State to Secretary of State Frank Kellogg in the Calvin Coolidge Administration, Clark wrote the "Clark Memorandum on the Monroe Doctrine",^[32] which repudiated the idea that the United States could arbitrarily use military force in Latin America. The Memorandum was a 238-page treatise exploring every nuance of America’s philosophy of Western Hemispherical guardianship. The “Clark Memorandum,” which was published as an official State Department document^[33] and partially reprinted in textbooks for years.^[34]

When Dwight Morrow resigned as ambassador to serve in the US Senate, Clark was recommended as his replacement. Herbert Hoover appointed Clark as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States to Mexico on October 3, 1930. The Mexican ambassadorship was a key post in US foreign relations and earned him instant prestige.^[35] Clark served as US ambassador to Mexico from 1930–1933.

While Clark was serving in the First Presidency of the LDS Church, he was summoned to the White House by Franklin D. Roosevelt who asked him to be a delegate to the Pan-American Conference at Montevideo, Uruguay. Again, in 1933, Roosevelt tapped Clark, this time to serve on the newly formed Foreign Bondholders’ Protective Council.

Church service

In June 1925, Clark was appointed to the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association Board of the LDS Church. In April 1933, Clark was called to serve in the LDS Church as the Second Counselor in the First Presidency to Heber J. Grant. President Grant held the position in the First Presidency vacant for over a year until Clark was able to resign from his ambassadorship and resolve necessary government matters.^[36]

Clark was sustained as second counselor to Heber J. Grant on April 6, 1933. He replaced Charles W. Nibley, who had died in December 1931. This call was unusual, not only for the delay between Nibley's death and Clark's call, but also because counselors were generally selected from within the general authorities of the Church. (Clark had also never been a stake president or bishop in the church.) He immediately set out to relieve Grant of some of the unessential administrative duties he placed upon himself that became a source of fatigue.^[37]

Grant had been active in business throughout his life and encouraged his new second counselor to continue to take advantage of business and governmental opportunities whenever possible. The interests of the LDS Church would be best served, he believed, by Clark continuing to be involved in leadership endeavors outside the Church. A week after joining the First Presidency, Clark was asked to fill a position on the board of directors of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States headquartered in New York. Soon afterward, he was summoned to the White House by Franklin D. Roosevelt who asked him to be a delegate to the Pan-American Conference at Montevideo, Uruguay. Grant gave his approval to both of these proposals, and Clark felt duty-bound to again serve his country when it needed him.

Following October general conference in 1933, Roosevelt again tapped Clark, this time to serve on the newly formed Foreign Bondholders’ Protective Council. As the Great Depression ravaged the world’s economies, a billion dollars in US citizen-owned foreign bonds had fallen into default. Clark was asked to lead the Council’s effort in recovering money on the defaulted bonds, first as General Counsel and then as Council President.

In 1933, Clark began urging his brethren to change the welfare policy of the LDS Church, which directed members to seek assistance from the government before the Church, and adopt many of the innovative techniques instituted by Harold B. Lee of the Salt Lake Pioneer Stake to aid the Saints, such as employment coordination, operation of a farm and cannery, and the organization of jobs for stake members to refurbish and sell a Utah company’s unsold, defective products.^[38]

Apostleship

In September 1934, Heber J. Grant's First Counselor Anthony W. Ivins died. In October 1934, Clark was ordained an apostle and member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for purposes of seniority. Immediately thereafter, he was set apart as Grant's First Counselor, with David O. McKay as the Second Counselor.^[39]

In 1935, Grant presented a new “Church Security” program, renamed the “Welfare Plan” in 1938, which encouraged industry and personal responsibility and enabled the members to turn to the Church instead of relying on the “demoralizing system” of government dependence. The Welfare Plan would centralize the Church’s efforts and grow to include a “Beautification Program,” Church farms, Deseret Industries, and a Bishop’s Central Storehouse. To a special meeting of stake presidents on October 2, 1936, Clark would capture the goal of Church welfare: “The real long term objective of the Welfare Plan is the building of character in the members of the Church, givers and receivers, rescuing all that is finest deep down inside of them, and bring to flower and fruitage [sic] the latent richness of the spirit which after all is the mission and purpose and reason for being of this Church.” ^[40] Clark’s counsel remains the guiding principle of LDS Church welfare.

In 1940, Clark initiated a project to transmit sessions of LDS general conference to additional assembly halls via closed circuit radio. In February 1940, Grant would suffer a stroke that left the left side of his body paralyzed and would eventually lead to his virtual incapacitation. Soon afterward, McKay fell seriously ill, and by necessity, Clark took hold of the reigns of LDS Church administration, although he always kept his president and fellow counselor apprised and consulted with them prior to making any major decision.

After Grant's death, Clark and McKay were also First and Second Counselors, respectively, to George Albert Smith. However, when Smith died and David O. McKay became President of the Church, he surprised some by choosing Clark as his Second Counselor, with Stephen L. Richards as First Counselor, citing Richards' longer tenure as an apostle as his only reason for doing so. It was after this that Clark famously remarked that, "In the service of the Lord, it is not where you serve but how. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, one takes the place to which one is duly called, which place one neither seeks nor declines."^[41] Clark was returned to the position of First Counselor after Richards' death in 1959 and continued to serve in that capacity until his own death on October 6, 1961.

Death

J. Reuben Clark, Jr., died 6 October 1961, at his residence, 80 D Street, Salt Lake City, Utah, at ninety years of age.^[42] Clark served in the First Presidency for twenty-eight years and six months, longer than any other man who has not been President of the Church.^[35] He was buried at Salt Lake City Cemetery.

Approach toward minorities

As noted in D. Michael Quinn's 2002 biography, Clark's attitude toward the equality of African Americans was nuanced. Clark was opposed to interracial marriage of white and black people, and he advocated the separation of blood in hospitals to ensure that white people were not given the blood of black people. (African Americans were denied LDS priesthood until 1978, and some Latter-day Saints believed that such a mixing of blood would invalidate the white recipient's priesthood status or his future potential priesthood status.)^[43] However, in his later life, Clark advocated some degree of civil (if not spiritual) equality for African Americans.^[43]

According to Quinn, Clark's attitude toward Jews was more consistent. In his 1898 valedictory, Clark spoke of "the foul sewage of Europe," a phrase that Quinn interprets as referring to Jews.^[43] "There is nothing in their history which indicates that the Jewish race have either free-agency or liberty," Clark argued in reply to a 1941 book on Hitler.^[43] "‘Law and order’ are not facts for the Jews."^[43] Clark also criticized prominent Jewish political commentator Walter Lippman on the basis of his religion, claiming that "I long ago ceased reading his stuff, because he veers like a weather-vane, but I am sure always true when the wind blows from Jew-ward."^[43] Clark retained his antisemitism until his death.^[43]

Clark was adamantly against the use of the atomic bombs in Japan during World War II. He was quoted thus:

Then as the crowning savagery of war, we as Americans wiped out hundreds of thousands of civilian population with the atom bomb in Japan, few in any of the ordinary civilians being any more responsible for the war than were we and perhaps no more aiding Japan in the war than we were aiding America. Military men are now saying that the atom bomb was a mistake. It was more than that: it was a world tragedy.^[44]

Clark developed a regard and affection for the Mexican people he served while Ambassador to Mexico. The Mexican people and leaders returned this respect and love. Said Clark in his farewell address as ambassador:

To no one could come a greater honor than the assurance you give me of the sympathy and affection of the Mexican people. To possess a place in the hearts of a people is the most priceless heritage that can come to any man, however high may be his degree and however lowly may be his station.^[45]

Career timeline

Published works

• Clark, J. Reuben (1930). Memorandum on the Monroe doctrine. US GPO. ASIN B0006D9U6Q. OCLC 1739572. 
•    (1947). "Gratitude for our heritage": Address before the Salt Lake Rotary Club. Rotary Club. ASIN B0007HE99Y. OCLC 28325923. 
•    (1947). Wist Ye Not That I Must Be About My Father’s Business. Reprint, Relief Society Magazine. OCLC 7810610. 
•    (1949). On the way to immortality and eternal life: A series of radio talks. Deseret Book Company. ASIN B0007EJWAS. OCLC 3051171. 
•    (1954). Our Bible: Address at General Conference, The Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, April 4, 1954. Bookcraft. ASIN B0007H2ZL8. OCLC 22012699. 
•    (1968). Immortality and eternal life. Course of study for the Melchizedek Priesthood quorums. LDS Church. ASIN B0007G3A2C. OCLC 3405390. 
•    (1974) [1954]. Our Lord of the Gospels: a harmony of the Gospels. Deseret Book Company. ASIN B00183Z8S2. OCLC 16790161. 
•    (1978) [1962]. Stand fast by our Constitution. Deseret Book Company. ASIN B0006WZ8SG. OCLC 4558825. 
•    (1979). Why the King James version. Classics in Mormon literature. Deseret Book Company. ISBN 9780877477730. OCLC 5008280. 
•    (1987). Yarn, David H., Jr.. ed. J. Reuben Clark: Selected Papers on Americanism and National Affairs. Deseret Book Company. ISBN 9780875791098. OCLC 16004232. 
•    (1991). Behold the Lamb of God. Classics in Mormon literature. Deseret Book Company. ISBN 9780875795362. OCLC 23769367. 
•    (1998). To Them of the Last Wagon; and, Who Was This Jesus. Classic Talks Series. Deseret Book Company. ISBN 9780875799759. OCLC 40197720. 

Quotes

• "There has not been another such group of men in all our history that even challenged the supremacy of this group. It is the union of independence and dependence of these branches -- legislative, executive and judicial -- and of the governmental functions possessed by each of them, that constitutes the marvelous genius of this unrivaled document. ... It was here that divine inspiration came. It was truly a miracle."^[47]

See also

• Kimball-Snow-Woolley Family

Notes

References

External links

• Grampa Bill's General Authority Pages
• J. Reuben Clark Law School
  • Biography on the J. Reuben Clark Law Society website
  • Making of the J. Reuben Clark Law School
  • J. Reuben Clark Law Society Attorney Chapters
• J. Reuben Clark Law School Annual Conferences
• J. Reuben Clark Law School Women in the Law Committee
• Inspiring Lives: J. Reuben Clark, BYU TV video
• J. Reuben Clark.co