CHAPTER VI.
LEGISLATION AGAINST PLURALITY.
A people under a ban—What the Mormon men think of the Anti-Polygamy Bill—And what the Mormon women say of polygamy—Puzzling confidences—Practical plurality a very dull affair—But theoretically a hedge-hog problem—Matrimonial eccentricities—The fashionable milliner fatal to plurality—Absurdity of comparing Moslem polygamy with Mormon plurality—Are the women of Utah happy?—Their enthusiasm for Women's Rights.
UTAH, therefore, at the time of my visit was "a proclaimed district"—to use the Anglo-Indian phrase for tracts suspected of infanticide—and every Mormon within it had a share in the disgrace thrust upon it. Nor was the triumph of the Gentile concealed at the result. The Mormons, therefore, were consolidated, in the first instance, by the equal pressure of the new law upon all sections of the church alike; in the next by the openly expressed exultation of the Gentiles. I wrote at the time: "They feel that they are under a common ban. The children have read the Bill or have had its purport explained to them, and it is well known even among the Gentiles how keen the grief was in every household when the news that the Bill had passed reached Utah. Wives still shed bitter tears over the act of Congress which breaks up their happy homes, and robs them and their children of the protecting presence of a husband and father. The Bill was aimed to put a stop to a supposed self-indulgence of the men. But the Mormons have never thought of it in this light at all. They see in it only an attempt to punish their wives. And it is this alleged cruelty to their wives and children that has stubborned the Mormon men."
Meanwhile the Mormons' affect a contemptuous disregard Of the Commission and all its works. I have spoken to many, some of them leaders of local opinion, and everywhere I find the same amused indifference to it expressed. "We have too many real troubles," they say, "to go manufacturing imaginary ones. We must live our religion in the present and leave the future to God."
"But," I would say, "this is not a question of the future. All children born after the 1st of January, 1883, will be illegitimate—and in these matters Nature is generally very punctual. Now, are you going to break the law or going to keep it?"
Some would answer "neither," and some "both," but all would agree that there was no necessity for worrying themselves about evils which may never befall, and that the Edmunds Bill, with all its malignity and cunning, was "a stupid blunder," an "impossible" enactment, "an absurdity." So the questioning would probably end in laughter.
"But in spite of this expressed indifference to the working of the Bill, there can be little doubt that the more responsible Mormons have already made up their minds as to the course they will take. 'The people' will follow them of course, and forecasting the future, therefore, I anticipate that a small minority will break down under the pressure, and will return their plural wives to their parents, with such provision as they can make for their future support.
"Of the remainder, that is to say the bulk of the Mormons, I believe, indeed I feel convinced, that they will simply ignore the Bill so long as it ignores them, and that when it is put in force against them, they will accept the penalty without complaint. In some cases the onus of proving guilt will no doubt be made heavier by 'passive resistance,' and where the whole family is solid in throwing obstacles in the way of espionage, conviction will necessarily be very difficult. As a case in point may be cited the instance of the Mormon in Salt Lake City, who married a second wife and successfully defied both the law and the public to fix his relationship to the lady in question and her children. She herself was content with saying that her children were honourable in birth, and that the wedding-ring on her finger was a fact and not a fiction. But who her husband was neither the law nor the press could find out for two years, and only then by the confession of the sinner himself."
I was sitting one day with two Mormon ladies, plural wives, and the conversation turned upon marriage.