[The Great Depression] On the afternoon of 23 February 1933 Salt Lake County Sheriff Grant Young and several of his deputies were scheduled to conduct a tax sale from the west steps of the City and County Building. Six houses and a farm were to be sold for back taxes following mortgage foreclosures. A crowd of several hundred people gathered to try to prevent the sale. Sheriff Young appealed to them to disperse; instead, they stormed the building. Deputies turned a fire hose on them, slowing them only momentarily, and they quickly wrestled the hose from the deputies and turned it into the building, flooding the ground floor. Police finally succeeded in dispersing the crowd with tear gas and arrested seven men and a woman for "direct rioting". Eventually, fifteen people were arrested, found guilty, fined and sentenced to brief jail terms.
[Source: Utah History Encyclopedia: The Great Depression, http://www.media.utah.edu/UHE/d/DEPPRESSION%2CGREAT.html]
[ibid] Next day, the Salt Lake Tribune's account of the event featured one photograph of the crowd gathered on the City and County Building grounds and another showing clouds of tear gas billowing from it. That afternoon the Deseret News ran an editorial expressing sympathy for people who were losing their homes but characterized leaders of the crowd as "out and out communists."
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