No. Polygamy will before long be impossible, except to the rich; and in an agricultural community, restricted in area, and further restricted by the scarcity of water, there can never be many rich men. As it is, the cost of plurality was on several occasions referred to by Mormons whom I met during my tour, and I know one man who has for three years postponed his second marriage, as he does not consider that his means justify it; while I fancy it will not be disputed by any one who has inquired into polygamy that, as a general rule, prudential considerations control the system. Polygamy, then, I sincerely believe, carries its own antidote with it, and if left alone will rapidly cure itself. In the mean time the community that practises it does not consider itself "degraded," and those who take part in smashing it up must not think it does.
The Mormons are a peasant people, with many of the faults of peasant life, but with many of the best human virtues as well. They are conspicuously industrious, honest, and sober.
There is, of course, nothing whatever in common between Oriental polygamy and Mormon plurality. The main object, and the main result of the two systems are so widely diverse, that it is hardly necessary even to refer to the hundred other points of difference which make comparison between the two utterly absurd.
Yet the comparison is often made in order to prove the Mormons "degraded," and it is a great pity that such superficial and stupid arguments should be far more effective ones are at hand. Polygamy, though difficult to handle, is very vulnerable. The hedgehog, after all, will have to unroll some time or another. But to assault polygamy because the Mormons are "Turks" or "debauched Mahometans," or the other things which silly people call them, is monstrous.
The women have complicated the problem by multiplying instances of eccentric "affection." But with it all they persist in believing that they have retained a most exalted estimate of womanly honour. The men, again, have inextricably entangled all recognized ideas of matrimonial responsibilities. Yet they have not lost any of the manliness which characterizes the pioneers of the West.
Their social anomalies are deplorable, but they are not desperate. Education and the influx of outsiders must infallibly do their work, and any attempt to rob these men and women of the fruits of their astonishing industry and of the peaceful enjoyment of the soil which they have conquered for the United States from the most warlike tribes among the Indians, and from the most malignant type of desert, is not only not statesmanship, but it is not humanity.
Are the women of Utah happy? No; not in the monogamous acceptation of the word "happy." In polygamy the highest happiness of woman is contentment. But on the other hand her greatest unhappiness is only discontent. She has not the opportunity on the one hand of rising to the raptures of perfect love. On the other, she is spared the bitter, killing anguish of "jealousy" and of infidelity.
But contentment is not happiness. It is its negative, and often has its source in mere resignation to sorrow. It is the lame sister of happiness, the deaf-mute in the family of joy. It lives neither in the background nor foreground of enjoyment, but always in the middle distance. Tender in all things, it never becomes real happiness by concentration; having to fill no deep heart-pools, it trickles over vast surfaces. It goes through life smiling but seldom laughing. Now, in many philosophies we are taught that this same contentment is the perfect form of happiness. But humanity is always at war with philosophy. And I for one will never believe that perpetual placidity is the highest experience of natures which are capable of suffering the raptures of joy and of grief. I had rather live humanly, travelling alternately over sunlit hills and gloomy valleys, than exist philosophically on the level prairies of monotonous contentment. Holding, then, the opinion that it is a nobler life to have sounded the deeps and measured the heights of human emotions than to have floated in shallows continually, I contend that polygamy is wrong in itself and a cardinal crime against the possibilities of a woman's heart. A plural wife can never know the utmost happiness possible for a woman. They confess this. And by this confession the practice stands damned.
Physically, Mormon plurality appears to me to promise much of the success which Plato dreamed of, and Utah about the best nursery for his soldiers that he could have found. Look at the urchins that go clattering about the roads, perched two together on the bare backs of horses, and only a bit of rope by way of bridle. Look at the rosy, demure little girls that will be their wives some day. Take note of their fathers' daily lives, healthy outdoor work. Go into their homes and see the mothers at their work. For in Utah servants get sometimes as much as six dollars a week (and their board and lodging as well of course), and most households therefore go without this expensive luxury. And then as you walk home through one of their rural towns along the tree-shaded streets, with water purling along beside you as you walk, and the clear breeze from the hills blowing the perfume of flowers across your path in gusts, with the cottage homes, half smothered in blossoming fruit-trees, on either hand, and a perpetual succession gardens,—then I say, come back and sit down, if you can, to call this people "licentious," "impure," "degraded."
The Mormons themselves refuse to believe that polygamy is the real objection against them, and it will be found impossible to convince them that the Edmunds bill is really what it purports to be, a crusade against their domestic arrangements only. There are some among them who thoroughly understand the "political" aspect of the case, and are aware that "the reorganization of Utah" would give very enviable pickings to the friends of the Commission. Others, have made up their minds that behind this generous anti-polygamy sentiment is mean sectarian envy, and that this is only one more of those amiable efforts of narrow Christians to crush a detested and flourishing sect.