Let us see. The school commissioner referred to was not only a United States official, but he was also a non-Mormon. Yet he reported that the 460 public schools of Utah were "non-sectarian." Then he enumerated eighty-nine denominational schools, of which only four were Mormon. The text books used in the schools, a list of which was given, set at rest the charge that Mormons were opposed to education; and the average of education of those who were trained in them is proof that they were not theological schools. According to the United States census for 1880 the percentage of persons in Utah of 10 years and upward who could not read was five. In Rhode Island at the same time it was seven, and in the United States at large thirteen. The average illiteracy in Mormon Utah, thirty-two years after its settlement by people absolutely without means and obliged to toil early and late to find a mere subsistence, was less than in twenty states and territories in the union.
The growth of schools in Utah is full of evidence that the Mormons were the friends of education. Remember that for years there was no money in Utah, yet the people built houses in which they lived, as well as hundreds of meeting houses. The first meeting houses were "boweries"—posts set in the ground, a flat roof of poles shingled with bushes cut in foliage. I have seen several of these old places of worship. But as soon as practicable every ecclesiastical "ward" had its "dobe" meeting house, which was also school house. But "Utah's best crop" would soon overflow any ordinary Mormon meeting house and more school room would become necessary. On Sunday the bishops of a ward would say:
"My brothers and sisters, we need more school room in this ward. What will you do to provide it?"
"I will give a team ten days."
"I will give a thousand 'dobes.'"
"I will give two weeks' work."
"I will give twenty bushels of wheat."
Thus it would go, and the school room would come as a labor of love and without the passing of a dollar. Today there are no people in the nation so eager to learn as are many of the young Mormons whom I have met in my travels about Utah. The State University, the public schools, all schools are full. The Mormon Church has its special schools, as other sects have in Utah, and their theology has its place in the studies, but the Mormons have no desire to introduce Mormon theology into the public schools and are opposed to the introduction of any other theology, as of course they should be.
Morals.
In 1876 there were thirteen counties in Utah without saloon, brewery, gambling house, brothel, lawyer, doctor, beggar, parson or politician, and the population was exclusively Mormon.