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with the church immigration wagons. Five years later, he opened the trade wider as part of an effort to control prices and keep capital from leaving the territory. He allowed members to organize freighting companies and urged Latter-day Saints to boycott n o n - M o r m o n merchants. 5 9 With this liberalized i m p o r t a t i o n policy, new stores opened in every Davis County town. This marked the beginning of full-scale mercantile operations in the county About this same time, M o r m o n church leaders in Salt Lake City decided to build a wall against the local n o n - M o r m o n merchants. With M o r m o n imports increasing, they organized a boycott of the gentile merchants and in the fall of 1868 set up a wholesale and retail operation in Salt Lake City known as Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution (ZCMI). More than a dozen men spread out from headquarters to urge creation of similar general stores elsewhere. The result was m o r e t h a n 150 local retail co-ops in Utah. Horace S. Eldredge and William Clayton were the delegates sent to Davis County to preach the benefits of cooperation. 60 The message from headquarters was magnified in Davis County through local preachings by the bishops, other ward leaders, and the priesthood teachers who visited each Latter-day Saint home. They explained that the policy of mercantilistic exclusiveness included two aspects: first, members were encouraged not to patronize gentile merchants, because these businessmen were said to be not always willing to support ward schools and other "public" programs; second, members should buy from cooperative stores and local manufacturers. 61 With the encouragement of M o r m o n leaders, merchants in each Davis County community except South Weber followed the Salt Lake City example by organizing a local retail cooperative. During the early months of 1869, merchants in each of these towns merged their existing operations and received credit on the books of the new store. The officers were usually elected from among the leading stockholders. In Centerville and Bountiful the local bishops were elected as cooperative presidents. Leading merchants of F a r m i n g t o n and Kaysville headed the stores in those places. South Weber had no existing merchants and thus created no cooperative. The story of the emergence of commerce and the creation of coop stores differs little from one Davis County town to another. In
