LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Salt Lake City: Mormons
built 288 days ago
For about a generation after its founding, Salt Lake City was very much the kind of society its founders intended. A grand experiment in centralized planning and cooperative imagination, it was a relatively self-sufficient, egalitarian, and homogeneous society based mainly on irrigation agriculture and village industry. Religion infused almost every impulse, making it difficult to draw a line between religious and secular activities. A counterculture that differed in fundamental ways from its contemporary American society, it was close-knit, cohesive, and unified, a closely-woven fabric with only a few broken threads. The hand of the Mormon Church was ever present and ever active.
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Salt Lake City has enjoyed excellent economic growth over the past several years and is widely considered a good place to run a business or find a job. Major employers include software, biomedical and high-tech companies, as well as the Mormon Church, local government, finance, education, research and tourism.
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As Salt Lake changed, and in particular as the population became increasingly diverse, conflict developed between Mormons and non-Mormons. During its second generation, that was the city's most striking feature, just as earlier the degree of unity was most conspicuous; Salt Lake became a battleground between those who were part of the new and embraced it and those who were part of the old and sought to hold on to that. Local politics featured neither of the national political parties and few national issues. Instead, there were local parties--the Mormon Church's People's party, and an anti-Mormon Liberal party--and during elections people essentially voted for or against the Mormon Church. Separate Mormon and Gentile (non-Mormon) residential neighborhoods developed. While many Mormons engaged in agricultural pursuits, few Gentiles owned farms.
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