The Mormons have lived in five different states, namely, Ohio, Missouri, Illinois, Iowa and Utah. If their system is as pure morally and as patriotic as it is claimed to be, how does it happen that their sojourn in each of those states was characterized by continued and increasing conflict with the established government and laws of those states and of the United States, while the great Christian denominations lived in peace and harmony under those same laws? The Mormon Church will enjoy similar peace and harmony whenever its priesthood ceases to interfere with civil affairs, and sets the example of obeying the laws of the land as loyally as they have always been obeyed by the great Christian denominations generally.
M.
Salt Lake City, Aug. 19, 1903.
II.
A Brief Defense of the Mormon People.
To Editors of Lewiston, Maine, Journal:—
An old Spanish proverb has it that "A lie will travel a league, while Truth is getting on his boots." Truth, however, has this advantage over his nimble-footed opponent, viz., his boots once on he runs and is not weary, he walks and faints not; and at the last he wins. The progress of Truth, in other words, is irresistible and overwhelming, and his triumph over falsehood is as inevitable as the decrees of fate.
In no instance in human experience are the above truths more clearly demonstrated than in the history of Mormonism. From the beginning of its existence falsehood in the form of misrepresentation and malicious slander has been in the field against it. Early and late and viciously the liars of this world have sought to overwhelm it as with a flood. Meantime, however, Truth has not been idle. Steadily and gloriously Mormonism and the people who have accepted it have lived down the misrepresentations of their traducers, and today stand proudly erect, unmoved by the efforts which falsehood has made to destroy them. This failure of falsehood to destroy the object at which it has levelled its heaviest ordnance is naturally aggravating to those who have employed it; and very naturally they show that annoyance. As an instance of this fact I refer to your Salt Lake correspondent "M," whose communication under the title "Eastern Eulogy of Mormons' System," appeared in your issue of September 6th. "M" is somewhat grieved, not to say indignant, that the Journal's representative, Mr. L. C. Bateman, should have spoken a word of praise for the Mormons and for what they have achieved by their faith, industry and frugality, and informs the Journal that what he calls Mr. Bateman's eulogistic article called forth an editorial in the Deseret News, the official organ of the Mormon priesthood, expressing great satisfaction on the appearance of the aforesaid article. But what's to be done? Men of intelligence come to Utah; they are cosmopolitan, they understand human affairs and human nature; and many of them—among them evidently your representative, whose article is the cause of "M's" displeasure—are men accustomed to collecting evidence, sifting it on the spot, and forming their own conclusions. They find that the facts they see and investigate do not warrant the misrepresentations they have heard concerning Mormonism and the Mormons. They say that in their communications to the press, in magazine articles, and sometimes in books. They are honest enough to tell the truth as they find it; and refuse to look at facts—the things which are—through the jaundiced eyes of a bigoted sectarian priest, or through the eyes of a disappointed, and very likely disgruntled, scurvy politician. Then they are abused by those to whose interests it is to keep up a false impression concerning Mormonism and the Mormons, or whose malice is gratified by misrepresenting them. Then it is charged that they have been imposed upon by representations of "the wily Mormon leaders;" or they have been "wined and dined," and hoodwinked; or else they have sold their talents to the Mormon "priesthood for money." Only let a man, whatever his intelligence or character, or national standing, from President Eliot of Harvard to your representative—only let him pursue his investigations of Mormonism and Mormons beyond the lurid tales of hack drivers, bent on gratifying the morbid love in human nature for the unusual and the horrible; or let him push his inquiry beyond sectarian interpretation of the Mormon faith, and sectarian misrepresentation of the Mormon people, and he is doomed to be catalogued as a weak dupe, or a paid agent of the Mormon Church.
But however annoying it may be to Mormon traducers, the day is gone by when their fulminations can be accepted as sober truth. Mormonism is no longer isolated from the world. It is in daily contact with the great stream of travel which crosses the continent, in which stream is to be found some of the first and greatest characters of our own country and of the world; not merely the seekers of pleasure, or the restless curious; but educators, literati, public lecturers, editors, scientists, and statesmen. Attracted by the wonderful things they have heard of Utah and the Mormons, they stop to inquire, they meet with unexpected conditions, with facts undreamed of, they investigate, are convinced that the world has been misled in the impressions it has formed concerning the Mormon faith and the Mormon people; and thus they become witnesses against the traducers of that maligned people. Our traducers may not like this, but it is true. They have made lies their refuge, and under falsehood have they hid themselves; but their bed is shorter than that a man can stretch himself on it, and the covering narrower than that he can wrap himself in it. This much in general. Now to be more specific; and especially to cover in the evidence I quote the silly attempt of your Salt Lake correspondent "M" to deny credit to the Mormons for having redeemed a desert and given a wilderness to civilization.
Your correspondent refers to the credit accorded the Mormons for this as "an old chestnut" which has been laid on the shelf years ago here in the West, because there is no truth in it! "There never was any barren desert," he says, "in this valley, for it has always been one of the best watered, most easily cultivated and productive valleys west of the Mississippi!" It is rather an unfortunate circumstance that a man who claims to have been a careful student of Mormonism and who has lived for over twenty-five years in Utah, should include in his criticism of the Journal's representative's article an untruth so palpable, a falsehood so easy of refutation, a statement which so bluntly comes in contact with the common knowledge of all the people of the United States. How the Salt Lake Valley was regarded by the pioneers who came into it in 1847 may be learned from the following quotation from their utterances: