In to the Yukon

by William Seymour Edwards

And Mormonism is already a political as well as religious power in the West. In Idaho, in Colorado, in Nevada, in Arizona, the Mormon vote is to be considered and even catered to. In Alberta, the Mormon settlement is said to be the most prosperous in the province. In Mexico, the Mormon settlements, their astonishing productivity and fertility, are already teaching the wonder-struck Mexican what irrigated agriculture may do. And as I beheld this and the evident success of a religious sect which mixes fanatical zeal with astute practical management, I asked myself what is the real secret of their accomplishment and their power! Is it the theory and practice of polygamy. Did or does polygamy have anything to do with the unquestioned success and prosperity of the Mormon people? I think not. Polygamy has been merely an incident, and the disappearance of polygamy has in nowise lessened the formidable growth of Mormon power. The secret, I think, is the secret of the amazing growth and spread of early Christianity, the putting into actual practice the Christian doctrine of the brotherhood of man—with them the brotherhood of the Mormon man in particular. Once a Latter-day Saint, and all other Saints are ready to lend you a hand, and the organized and ably administered mechanism of the church lends the new Saint a hand as well, and those hands once extended are never withdrawn except for powerful and well-merited cause. The Mormon farmer feels that back of his success is the ever helpful and protecting eye of his church in material as well as spiritual things. The Gentile farmer may succeed or may fail, and who cares; but the Mormon must succeed. If he do not himself possess the innate power and force of character and judgment to get on, then men will guide and aid him who do possess that power, and so he gets on even in spite of himself. In a certain sense, the Mormons practice the doctrine of collective socialism, and that collective unity is the secret, I think, of their wonderful accomplishment.

The creed of the brotherhood of man, and of man within the Christian pale, has been the secret of Christianity wherever it has won success. The failure to heed it and obey it is the cause of failure to every religious movement that has come to naught. And so long as the Mormon Church adheres to this fundamental principle, just so long will it continue to be a power, and a power of increasing weight.

And this cardinal principle is also the secret of their missionaries’ success. All over the world they are, in every State of the Union, in nigh every land, and they serve without recompense, without pay even, as did the early missionaries of the Christian Church.

GREAT SALT LAKE.

There is and always has been a good deal of cleverness in the leadership of the Mormon Church. It is an old adage that “The blood of her martyrs is the seed of the church,” and the Mormon leaders have comprehended this from the start. Not only have they cultivated the Christian socialism of the early church, but they have also never fled from, but they rather have greatly profited by, a real good case of martyrdom. The buffets and kicks of the Gentile world have helped, have been essential in welding the Mormon believers into that political, religious and social solidarity so much sought by the leaders. They were driven from New York, from Ohio, from Missouri, then from Nauvoo. They have been shot, stoned, murdered by scores. They have been imprisoned and harried by the federal laws (very justly, perhaps). But the effect of all this has been only to make them stand together all the closer.

Just now the attack upon Senator Smoot is profiting them immensely. He sits by and smiles. He has only one wife. He is no more oath-bound to his own church than is every Roman or Greek Archbishop vowed to his. A matter of conscience only. The effort to oust him will probably fail, but it’s a good thing for the church to have him hammered. The more martyrs, the fewer backsliders. The faithful line up, stand pat, the church grows.

On the streets of Salt Lake City we have noted the very few vehicles of fashion anywhere to be seen, and, on the other hand, the many substantial farm wagons which generally seem to be driven by a woman accompanied by one or more children, more usually a half-grown boy. The men would seem to be working on the farms, while the women come into town with the loads of produce. The faces, too, of these women were generally intelligent and contented.

In our own country we frequently hear the Mormons denounced as polygamists. In Utah and the neighboring States you hear nothing about polygamy, and, upon inquiry, I was told that while once this tenet of the church had been urged and practiced, yet that under modern social conditions, which have come in with the railways, the younger Mormon of to-day finds that one woman is all that he can take care of, and shows no disposition to load himself up with the burden of half a dozen. To my observation, the strength and danger of Mormonism is not in polygamy, but rather in their social and political solidarity, the Mormon president of the church wielding political influence over his followers similar to, although in nowise so vast as, that of the Roman Pope.