Under the Prophet in Utah; the National Menace of a Political Priestcraft

by Frank J. Cannon; Harvey Jerrold O'Higgins

Here is a condition of society unparalleled anywhere else in civilization—unparalleled even in barbarous countries, for wherever else polygamy is practiced it at least has the sanction of local convention. And the consequent suffering that falls upon the women and the children is a heart-break to see. During the days when I was in the editorial office of the Salt Lake Tribune, scores of miserable cases came to my knowledge by letter, by the report of friends, and by the visits of the agonized wives themselves. I shall never forget one young woman, in her twenties, who came to ask my help in forcing her husband to obtain a marriage certificate for her from the Church, so that her boy might have the right to claim a father. She wept, with her head on my desk, sobbing out her story, and appealing to me for aid with a convulsed and tear-drenched face.

Four years earlier, she had become friendly with a man twice her age, whom she admired and respected. He had taken two wives before the manifesto of 1890, but that did not prevent him from coveting the youth and beauty of this young woman. He first approached her mother for permission to marry the girl, and when the mother-who was herself a plural wife replied that it was impossible under the law, he brought an apostle to persuade her that the practice of plural marriage was still as meet, just and available to salvation as it had been when she married. Then he went to the daughter.

"I was terrified," she said, "when he proposed to me. And yet—he asked me if I thought my mother had done wrong when she married my father.... There was no one else I liked as much. He was good. He was rich. He told me I'd never want for anything. He said I would be fulfilling the command of God against the wickedness of a persecuting world.... I don't know what devil of fanaticism entered into me. I thought it would be smart to defy the United States."

Late one night, by appointment, he called for her with a carriage, driven by a man unknown to her, and took her to a darkened house that had a dim light only in the hallway. They entered alone and turned into a parlor that was dark, except for the reflection from the hall. He led her up to the portieres that hung across an inner door, and through the opening between the curtains she saw the indistinct figure of a man. They stood before him, hand in hand, while he mumbled over the words of a ceremony that sounded to her like the ceremonies she had heard in the Temple. She caught little of it clearly; she remembered practically nothing. She was not given anything to show that a ceremony had been performed, and she did not ask for anything. The elderly bridegroom kissed her when the mumbling ceased, led her out to the carriage, took her back to her mother's house, and that night became her husband.

She bore him a son. No one except her mother, her father and a few trusted friends knew that she was married. In the early months of 1905 she read in the Tribune the testimony given before the Senate committee by Professor James E. Talmage, for the Church, to the effect that since the manifesto of 1890 neither the President of the Church nor anybody else in the Church had power to authorize a plural marriage, and that any woman who had become a plural wife, since the manifesto, was "no more a wife by the law of the Church, than she is by the law of the land."

She asked her husband about it. He replied that an apostle had married them. "I asked my husband," she said, "to get a certificate of marriage from the apostle. He told me I needed none—that it was recorded in the books here and recorded in heaven—that it would put the apostle in danger if he were to sign such a paper. I said that that was nothing to me—that I wanted to protect my good name. Finally, he said it was not an apostle. Then we had a bitter scene. And he did not come back for a long time. And he didn't write as long as he stayed away.

"When he came back he was more loving than ever. I was afraid of having more children. I said to him: 'You cannot hold me as a wife any longer unless you write a paper certifying that I'm your wife and this boy is your child. You may place that paper anywhere you like, so long as I know I can get it in case you die. Suppose you were to die and all your folks were to deny that I was your wife—say that I was an imposter—that I was trying to foist my boy on the estate of a dead man—in the name of God, then what could I do?' He went away; and he hasn't come back; and he hasn't written. I don't know who married us. I don't even know the house where it happened. I don't know who the driver was. I don't even know who the apostle was that told mother it would be all right. He made her promise under a covenant not to tell.

"I don't know where to go. A friend of mine told me you would advise me. He said perhaps you could make them give me a certificate. I don't want to expose my husband. I only want something so that my boy, when he grows up, won't be"—

What could I do? What could anyone do for this unfortunate girl, seduced in the name of religion, with the aid of a Church that repudiated her for its own protection? She had to suffer, and see her boy suffer, the penalties of a social outcast.

Her case was typical of many that came to my personal knowledge. At the Sunday Schools, in the choirs, in the joint meetings of mutual improvement associations, young girls—taught to believe that plural marriage was sacred, and reverencing the polygamous prophets as the anointed of the Lord—were being seduced into clandestine marriage relations with polygamous elders who persuaded their victims that the anti-polygamous manifesto had been given out to save a persecuted people from the cruelties of an unjust government; that it was never intended it should be obeyed; that all the celestial blessings promised by revelation to the polygamist and his wives were still waiting for those who would dare to enjoy them.