Footnotes
Willard Richards succinctly summarized the topic of JS’s discourse as “economy of Nauvoo.” (Richards, Journal, 15 Oct. 1843.)
Richards, Franklin D. Journals, 1844–1899. Richards Family Collection, 1837–1961. CHL. MS 1215, boxes 1–5.
Alanson Ripley, “Nauvoo,” Times and Seasons, June 1840, 1:122.
Times and Seasons. Commerce/Nauvoo, IL. Nov. 1839–Feb. 1846.
An Act to Incorporate the Nauvoo Agricultural and Manufacturing Association, in the County of Hancock [27 Feb. 1841], Laws of the State of Illinois [1840–1841], p. 139, sec. 2.
General Laws of the State of Illinois, Passed by the Eighteenth General Assembly, Convened January 3, 1853. Springfield: Lanphier and Walker, 1853.
Sidney Rigdon, “To the Editor of the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 21 June 1843, [3].
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
The editorial further argued that workers were “not employed at what they ought to be. Men that have been accustomed to manufacturing cotton goods are making ditches on the prairie, woolen manufacturers are carrying the hod, and working at day labor, and silk weaver’s are mixing clay at the brickyard, iron smelters are turned farmers, and potters have got metamorphised into builders and wood choppers. . . . The prosperity of this place depends in a great measure upon the encouragement of home manufacture.” (“Home Manufacture,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 31 May 1843, [2].)
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Lydia Knight, “Manufacturing Straw,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 10 May 1843, [3]; “Important to Weavers,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 17 May 1843, [2]; Sidney Rigdon, “To the Editor of the Neighbor,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 21 June 1843, [3]; James Spratley et al., “A Word from the Suffering Boot and Shoe Makers,” Nauvoo Neighbor, 13 Sept. 1843, [3]; Letter from Jared Carter, 14 Oct. 1843. Hoping to facilitate the construction of mills, the city granted JS a charter to build a wing dam on the Mississippi River in early December 1843. (JS, Journal, 23 Nov. 1843; “An Ordinance to Erect a Dam in the Mississippi River, and for Other Purposes,” 8 Dec. 1843, JS Office Papers, CHL; see also Nauvoo City Council Minute Book, 8 Dec. 1843, 192–193.)
Nauvoo Neighbor. Nauvoo, IL. 1843–1845.
Richards, Journal, 15 Oct. 1843.
Richards, Franklin D. Journals, 1844–1899. Richards Family Collection, 1837–1961. CHL. MS 1215, boxes 1–5.
A pin’s head was often used as a metaphor for “a type of something very small, or of very slight value or significance,” and a picayune was a “5-cent piece or other coin of small value.” (See “Picayune,” and “Pin,” in Oxford English Dictionary, 7:817, 870–871.)
Oxford English Dictionary. Compact ed. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971.
In mid-March 1842, a Masonic lodge was installed in Nauvoo, and JS was raised to the degree of Master Mason. JS associated Masonry with secret-keeping. In a 31 March 1842 letter to the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, he urged the sisters to treat the correspondence as “a private matter in your society & then we shall learn whether you are good masons.” (Minutes, 15–16 Mar. 1842; Letter to Emma Smith and the Relief Society, 31 Mar. 1842.)
JS frequently allowed visitors to address the Latter-day Saints in Nauvoo. One month earlier, he invited a Unitarian minister from Massachusetts and John Finch, a disciple of social reformer Robert Owen, to deliver discourses. In Finch’s account of his visit to Nauvoo, he noted, “Joe Smith was in the practice of inviting strangers, who visited Nauvoo, of every shade of politics or religion, to lecture to his people. . . . He said that he allowed liberty of conscience to all, and was not afraid of any party drawing his people away from him.” (Discourse, 17 Sept. 1843; John Finch, “Notes of Travel in the United States,” New Moral World: And Gazette of the Rational Society, 5 Oct. 1844, 113.)
New Moral World: and Gazette of the Rational Society. London, 1834–1837; Manchester, England, 1837–1838; Birmingham, England, 1838–1839; Leeds, England, 1839–1841; London, 1841–1845; Harmony, Hampshire Co., England, 1845; London, 1845.
See Luke 6:24.