page_999 < previous page page_999 next page > Page 999 subjected to kidnappings, tarrings and featherings, threats on his life, and vexatious lawsuits. There were also disputes among his followers over some of his precepts and policies. Nevertheless, Smith was able to attract and retain the loyalty of a large, diverse, and talented group of associates. On June 27, 1844, an anti-Mormon mob, including many members of the Illinois state militia, broke into the jail in Carthage, Illinois, where he was being held on a charge of inciting a riot, killed Smith and his brother Hyrum, and injured two others who were in jail with them. At Smith's death there were approximately thirty-five thousand Latter-day Saints. Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (1984); Donna Hill, Joseph Smith: The First Mormon (1977); Lucy Mack Smith, Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet (1853). LEONARD J. ARRINGTON See also Mormons; Religion; Young, Brigham. Smithsonian Institution This complex in Washington, D.C., has been variously called "America's Castle" and "America's Attic." Its beginnings can be traced to the death in 1829 of British scientist James Smithson, who left $500,000 to the United States with the proviso that it be used to promote the "increase and diffusion of knowledge." Robert Dale Owen of New Harmony, Indiana, a Democratic representative and son of the utopian socialist Robert Owen, wrote the bill to set up the Smithsonian Institution, which was to include a library, art gallery, museum, and lecture and scientific research facilities. In 1846, the Board of Trustees, including Owen, approved the Victorian-style plans by New York architect James Renwick, Jr., who designed that city's Grace Church, for a building to include eight towers and a chapel on the Mall between Twelfth and Fourteenth streets in the nation's capital. Eight years later, when the building was finished, the trustees hired as secretary Joseph Henry, a professor of natural philosophy at Princeton, who wanted the Smithsonian to be used only for scientific research. He largely managed to enforce his ideas until his death in 1878. The Smithsonian Institution since has become more as Owen and his fellow trustees envisioned it, although it has remained strongly oriented toward science. It has long been an important tourist attraction and cultural center. In 1964, the Smithsonian began a long-term major restoration after years of deterioration; in 1970, it opened the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to promote all forms of research. Today the Smithsonian is still America's Castle or Attic, serving as a storehouse for artifacts of American culture ranging from classical music through Lindbergh's plane, the Lone Eagle, to the chair in which Archie Bunker sat on television's "All in the Family." See also Libraries and Museums; Science and Technology. SNCC See Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Social Darwinism Social Darwinism was an application of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution to the field of social relations. Throughout human history, wrote the English philosopher Herbert Spencer, society had operated like a jungle, in which only the strongest and best adapted  the "fittest"  survived. Although the process was a cruel one, it promised long-term benefits, for humans were gradually evolving toward a wholly just and peaceful society. He emphasized, however, that this evolutionary process must proceed at its own slow pace; efforts to improve social conditions along the way would be both misguided and futile. When Spencer's works became popular in the United States in the 1870s, the American business world had itself come to exemplify the struggle for existence that he described. Corporate leaders seized on Social Darwinism as "scientific" justification for their actions. Business-  < previous page page_999 next page >