Co-operation, by the way, is an important feature of Mormon life, and never, perhaps, so much on men's tongues and in their minds as at the present time. The whole community has been aroused by the consistent teaching of their leaders in their addresses at public "meetings," in their prayers in private households, to a sense of the "suicidal folly," as they call it, of making men wealthy (by their patronage) who use their power against the Saints; and the Mormons have set themselves very sincerely to work to trade only with themselves and to starve out the Gentiles. And it is very difficult indeed for an unprejudiced man not to sympathize in some measure with the Mormons. By their honesty they have made the name "Mormon" respected in trade all over America, and have attracted shopkeepers, who on this very honesty have thriven and become wealthy in Utah—and yet some of these men, knowing nothing of the people except that they are straightforward in their dealings and honourable in their engagements, join in the calumny that the Mormons are a "rascally," "double-dealing" set. For my own part, I think the Church should have starved out some of these slanderers long ago. Even now it would be a step in the right direction if the Church slipped a "fighting apostle" at the men who go on day after day saying and writing that which they know to be untrue, calling, for instance, virtuous, hard-working men and women "the villainous spawn of polygamy," and advocating the encouragement of prostitutes as a "reforming agency for Mormon youth"! Meanwhile "co-operation" as a religious duty is the doctrine while of the day, and Gentile trade is already suffering in consequence. The movement is a very important one to the Territory, for if carried out on the proper principles of co-operation, the people will live more cheaply here than in any other State in America. As it is, many imported articles, thanks to co-operative competition, are cheaper here than further east, and when the boycotting is in full swing many more articles will also come down in price, as the Gentiles' profits will then be knocked off the cost to the purchaser. Every settlement, big and little, has its "co-op.," and the elders when on tour through the outlying hamlets lose no opportunity for encouraging the movement and extending it.
Passing Spanish Fork, and its outlying herds of horses, we see, following the curve Of the lake, Salem, a little community of farmers settled around a spring; Payson, called Poteetnete in the old Indian days—after a chief who made life interesting, not to say exciting, for the early settlers—Springlake villa, where one family has grown up into a hamlet, and grown out of it, too, for they complain that they have not room enough and must go elsewhere; and Santaquin, a little settlement that has reached out its fields right across the valley to the opposite slope of the hills. This was the spot where Abraham Butterfield, the only inhabitant of the place at the time, won himself a name among the people by chasing off a band of armed Indians, who had surprised him at his solitary work in the fields, by waving his coat and calling out to imaginary friends in the distance to "Come on." The Indians were thoroughly fooled, and fled back up the country incontinently, while Abraham pursued them hotly, brandishing his old coat with the utmost ferocity, and vociferously rallying nobody to the bloody attack.
Here Mount Nebo, the highest elevation in the Territory was first pointed out to me—how tired I got of it before I had done!—and through fields of lucerne we passed from the Utah into the Juab Valley and an enormous wilderness of sage-brush. It is broken here and there by an infrequent patch of cultivation, and streaks of paling go straggling away across the grey desert. But without water it is a desperate section, and the pillars of dust moving across the level, and marking the track of the sheep that wandered grazing among the sage, reminded me of the sand-wastes of Beluchistan, where nothing can move a foot without raising a tell-tale puff of dust.
There, the traveller, looking out from his own cloud of sand, sees similar clouds creeping about all over the plain, judges from their size the number of camels or horses that may be stirring, and draws his own conclusions as to which may, be peaceful caravans, and which robber-bands. By taking advantage of the wind, the desert banditti are able to advance to the attack, just as the devil-fish do on the sea-bottom, under cover of sand-clouds of their own stirring up; and the first intimation which the traveller has of the character of those who are coming towards him, is the sudden flash of swords and glitter of spearheads that light up the edges of the advancing sand, just as lightning flits along the ragged skirts of a moving thunder-cloud.
But here there are no Murri or Bhoogti horsemen astir, and the Indians, Piutes or Navajos, have not acquired Beluchi tactics. These moving clouds here are raised by loitering sheep, formidable only to Don Quixote and the low-nesting ground-larks. They are close feeders, though, these sheep, and it is poor gleaning after them, so it is a rule throughout the Territory that on the hills where sheep graze, game need not be looked for.
An occasional ranch comes in sight, and along the old county road a waggon or two goes crawling by, and then we reach Mona, a pretty little rustic spot, but the civilizing radiance of corn-fields gradually dies away, and the relentless sage-brush supervenes, with here and there a lucid interval of ploughed ground in the midst of the demented desert. With water the whole valley would be superbly fertile, as we soon see, for there suddenly breaks in upon the monotony of the weed-growths a splendid succession of fields, long expanses of meadowland, large groves of orchards, and the thriving settlement of Nephi.
Like all other prosperous places in Utah, it is almost entirely Mormon. There is one saloon, run by a Mormon, but patronized chiefly by the "outsiders"—for such is the name usually given to the "Gentiles" in the settlement—and no police. Local mills meet local requirements, and the "co-op." is the chief trading store of the place. There are no manufactures for export, but in grain and fruit there is a considerable trade. It is a quaint, straggling sort of place, and, like all these settlements, curiously primitive. The young men use the steps of the co-operative store as a lounge, and their ponies, burdened with huge Mexican saddles and stirrups that would do for dog-kennels, stand hitched to the palings all about. The train stops at the corner of the road to take up any passengers there may be. Deer are sometimes killed in the streets, and eagles still harry the chickens in the orchards. Wild-bird life is strangely abundant, and a flock of "canaries"—a very beautiful yellow siskin—had taken possession of my host's garden. "We do catch them sometimes," said his wife, "but they always starve themselves, and pine away till they are thin enough to get through the bars of the cage, and so we can never keep them." A neighbour who chanced in, was full of canary-lore, and I remember one incident that struck me as very pretty. He had caught a canary and caged it, but the bird refused to be tamed, and dashed itself about the cage in such a frantic way that out of sheer pity he let the wild thing go. A day or two later it came back, but with a mate, and when the cage was hung out the two birds went into captivity together, of their own free-will, and lived as happily as birds could live!
My host was a good illustration of what Mormonism can do for a man. In Yorkshire he was employed in a slaughtering-yard, and thought himself lucky if he earned twelve shillings a week. The Mormons found him, "converted" him, and emigrated him. He landed in Utah without a cent in his pocket, and in debt to the Church besides. But he found every one ready to help him, and was ready to help himself, so that to-day he is one of the most substantial men in Nephi, with a mill that cost him $10,000 to put up, a shop and a farm, a house and orchard and stock. His family, four daughters and a son, are all settled round him and thriving, thanks to the aid he gave them—"but," said he, "if the Mormons had not found me, I should still have been slaughtering in the old country, and glad, likely, to be still earning my twelve shillings a week." Another instance from the same settlement is that of a boy who, five years ago, was brought out here at the age of sixteen. His emigration was entirely paid for by the Church. Yet last year he sent home from his own pocket the necessary funds to bring out his mother and four brothers and sisters! God speed these Mormons, then. They are doing both "the old country and the new" an immense good in thus transforming English paupers into American farmers—and thus exchanging the vices and squalor of English poverty for the temperance, piety, and comfort of these Utah homesteads. I am not blind to their faults. My aversion to polygamy is sincere, and I find also that the Mormons must share with all agricultural communities the blame of not sacrificing more of their own present prospects for the sake of their children's future, and neglecting their education, both in school and at home. But when I remember what classes of people these men and women are chiefly drawn from, and the utter poverty in which most of them I cannot, in sincerity, do otherwise than admire and respect the system which has fused such unpromising material of so many nationalities into one homogeneous whole.
For myself, I do not think I could live among the Mormons happily, for my lines have been cast so long in the centres of work and thought, that a bovine atmosphere of perpetual farms suffocates me. I am afraid I should take to lowing, and feed on lucerne. But this does not prejudice me against the men and women who are so unmistakably happy. They are uncultured, from the highest to the lowest. But the men of thirty and upwards remember these valleys when they were utter deserts, and the Indian was lord of the hills! As little children they had to perform all the small duties about the house, the "chores," as they are called; as lads they had to guard the stock on the hills; as young men they were the pioneers of Utah. What else then could they be but ignorant—in the education of schools, I mean? Yet they are sober in their habits, conversation, and demeanour, frugal, industrious, hospitable, and God-fearing. As a people, their lives are a pattern to an immense number of mankind, and every emigrant, therefore, taken up out of the slums of manufacturing cities in the old countries, or from the hideous drudgery of European agriculture, and planted in these Utah valleys, is a benefit conferred by Mormonism upon two continents at once.
To return to Nephi. I went to a "meeting" in the evening, and to describe one is to describe all. The old men and women sit in front—the women, as a rule, all together in the body of the room, and the men at the sides. How this custom originated no one could tell me; but it is probably a survival of habit from the old days when there was only room enough for the women to be seated, and the men stood round against the walls, and at the door. As larger buildings were erected, the women, as of old, took their accustomed seats together in the centre, and the men filled up the balance of the space. The oldest being hard of hearing and short of sight, would naturally, in an unconventional society, collect at the front of the audience. Looking at them all together, they are found to be exactly what one might expect—a congregation of hard-featured, bucolic faces, sun-tanned and deep-lined. Here and there among them is a bright mechanic's face, and here and there an unexpected refinement of intelligence. But taken in the mass, they are precisely such a congregation as fills nine-tenths of the rural places of worship all the world over. Conspicuously absent, however, is the typical American face, for the fathers and mothers among the Mormons are of every nationality, and the sons and daughters are a mixture of all. In the future this race should be a very fine one, for it is chiefly recruited from the hardier stocks, the English, Scotch, and Scandinavian, while their manner of life is pre-eminently fitted for making them stalwart in figure, and sound in constitution.