I found the the full pamphlet that this talk is from. I got a copy at the CHL and scanned into pdf. Elder Ballard’s talk starts on page 13. All the talks are interesting. The First Presidency all spoke, as did Harold B Lee who was then an employee, he would shortly be called to be an apostle. I have emailed you a copy

I think our leaders may have realized what a messy can of legal worms they were opening, however good their intentions, because I haven’t heard a lot about it more recently.

It was a simpler world back then.

I found my scanned copy of this item by Elder Ballard, but when I scanned it I was not smart enough to save the provenance information. I will have to find my hard copy.

I can tell you that it was originally a talk in a training meeting. It was printed in a pamphlet with the other talks from the training and came from pages 13-17 of the pamphlet. It is followed by a talk by Bishop Sylvester Q Cannon on “Beautification of Church Property.”

I will get more information for you after I mow the lawn!

If they earned $1.00 for two daily temple sessions, their room and board would be paid for in only 15 days. Assuming the temple was open five days a week (I think it was, at least in Salt Lake and probably Logan, although St. George and Manti might still have been on the more rural, lower frequency schedule), they’d have had at least another 5 days of potential earning, which would go a long way (look what $1 gets you: a room and all your meals for a day) for spending money.

And yes, you’re right, they would have been long days. Baptisms wouldn’t necessarily have been part of that (youth groups were going to the temples well before this period, doing baptisms wholesale), but from initiatory through endowment (longer than today’s) through sealing, these would have been long days, not physically intense, maybe, but long and perhaps wearying in other ways.

(By the way, how old was Melvin J. Ballard when he wrote this? It looks like he was in his early- to mid-60s. Sounds about right for the tone of the writing.)

Wow. That’s quite a program. This was proposed about the same time the Social Security program was being developed to address the same problem: poverty among the elderly.

One of the major flaws I note in the program is that it does not address the problem of what happens when the elderly become too feeble to get to the temple. What happens if they develop dementia? Major health problems? When they were no longer able to earn that $25 or $30 a month through doing temple work, what provision was made for their care? Did the proposal assume that family would step in at that point? Why at that point and not before? Or would the Church assume the burden of care for the elderly until their deaths?

1) Name is submitted with $0.50.
2) Room and board is $30.00 a month
3)

a minimum of two names per day, this would provide an income sufficient to employ them and amply pay the costs of the home and to allow some additional money for these people to spend for themselves.

I don’t see how two names a day provide ample income.

Also, how long were endowment sessions in the 1930′s? I think Salt Lake is still near three hours just for the endowment session. If the patron also needs to do baptisms, confirmations, possible ordinations, initiatories, and even sealings, just two a day is a very long day!

This item was created in the atmosphere of our obligation to the dead … and, if it can help the living in a material way, let’s do that, too. But you’re right about the underlying assumption. Thanks.

It makes me wonder if the temple emphasis has changed over the years – now I hear it preached all the time about going there to benefit yourself spiritually (which has been my experience) but the emphasis in the past appears more on the work for the dead. It isn’t explicitly stated either way but the text makes me think that the underlying assumption is that temple work is mainly a duty to be performed on behalf of the dead. I think that message is still preached in the present time but more of the temple emphasis is shifting towards the living.

Perhaps it was different because temples were only accessible in a limited area.

David B., thanks for pointing out that flavor of the better off offering work to the less well off — it does sound like that, now that you mention it. Some of the first welfare projects involved sending out-of-work people to farms and orchards of members who couldn’t afford to hire laborers, to harvest the crops, a portion of which were canned by other members in need and distributed as part of the welfare work — a win-win-win-win-win situation!