When he told her that he had gone beyond the apostolic twelve, although he lived with only a few of the number, she exclaimed: “Um Gottes Himmels Willen!”
The Herr Director wanted to know how he managed so many of them when he had difficulty in managing one.
“Ach! in those days,” he said, “the wives were subject to their husband, knowing that without him they could not live comfortably here, nor safely hereafter. They were docile enough, and it did not cost so much to keep them as it does now.”
With a shrewd smile playing around his almost toothless mouth he added: “You know if polygamy had not been prohibited it would have died out gradually, because these are different times. We couldn’t afford it now.”
The old man said he had known Joseph Smith and, of course, Brigham Young. He spoke of them with reverence and awe, as men of God who received revelations and could work wonders. There seemed to be little or nothing of the mystic in his makeup; his religion was of a hard, materialistic, matter-of-fact kind to which he clung most tenaciously. There was an unmistakable coarseness about him which revealed itself in his conversation. It may have been due to his peasant origin, but during all the years, a really ethical religion would have refined him. In a sense he still did not belong to the United States—he was a Mormon first and last, and the government in Washington was to him as Pharaoh’s rule was to the Jews.
His religion evidently had taught him submission. He paid his tithes ungrudgingly, and had gone on a mission uncomplainingly. He was a cog in a great wheel whose resistless force he did not question.
From his farm we were taken to others, and to neighboring towns. The whole system in all its minute details was explained to us, and the Herr Director was quite fascinated by its efficiency, although I am sure he would not care to be governed by it. Everywhere we found prosperous conditions and outward contentment, but underneath, especially among the young people, a brooding discontent and smouldering rebellion; yet at the same time much stolid ignorance and fanaticism.
Our final visit was to the University, built solidly against the rocks, its great U in purest white marked upon the mountainside, its very existence seeming a menace to the system which supports it.
There was a fine group of students, both Mormons and Gentiles. The library in which I spent some time astonished me. I wondered, as I looked at some of the books, if the church authorities knew what was between the covers. Dynamite under the Temple walls could not be as dangerous as those volumes.
Possibly the students are as ignorant of their contents as the leaders are. There are books on Philosophy and Psychology which do not seem to me so menacing as those on Economics and Sociology; for it is upon these subjects that the questioning will come first, and also the discontent.