The Mormon Menace | Page 4

away, and they go through the vale, every woman will have
a husband to herself. I wish more of our young men would take to
themselves wives of the daughters of Zion, and not wait for us old men
to take them all. Go ahead upon the right principle, young gentlemen,
and God bless you for ever and ever, and make you fruitful, that we
may fill the mountains and then the earth with righteous inhabitants."

President Heber C. Kimball, in a lengthy discourse delivered in the
Tabernacle on the 4th day of April, 1857, took occasion to say: "I
would not be afraid to promise a man who is sixty years of age, if he
will take the counsel of Brother Brigham and his brethren, that he will
renew his youth. I have noticed that a man who has but one wife, and is
inclined to that doctrine, soon begins to wither and dry up, while a man
who goes into plurality looks fresh, young, and sprightly. Why is this?
Because God loves that man, and because he honors his work and word.
Some of you may not believe this - I not only believe it, but I also
know it. For a man of God to be confined to one woman is a small
business; it is as much as we can do to keep up under the burdens we
have to carry, and I do not know what we should do if we only had one
woman apiece."
President Heber C. Kimball used the following language in a discourse,
instructing a band of missionaries about to start on their mission: "I say
to those who are elected to go on missions, Go, if you never return, and
commit what you have into the hands of God - your wives, your
children, your brethren, and your property. Let truth and righteousness
be your motto, and don't go into the world for anything else but to
preach the gospel, build up the Kingdom of God, and gather the sheep
into the fold. You are sent out as shepherds to gather the sheep together;
and remember that they are not your sheep; they belong to Him that
sends you. Then don't make a choice of any of those sheep; don't make
selections before they are brought home and put into the fold. You
understand that! Amen."
When the Edmunds law was passed, and punishment and confiscation
and exile became the order, even dullwits among Mormons knew that
the day of terror and bloodshed as a system of Church defense was over
with and done. Then the Mormons made mendacity take the place of
murder, and went about to do by indirection what before they had
approached direct. Prophet Woodruff was conveniently given a
"revelation" to the effect that polygamy might be abandoned. They
none the less kept the Mormon mind in leash for its revival. The men
were still taught subjection; the women were still told that wifehood
and motherhood were their two great stepping-stones in crossing to the

heavenly shore, missing which they would be swept away. Meanwhile,
and in secret, those same heads of the Church - Smith, the President,
Cluff, the head of the Mormon College, Tanner, chief of the Young
Men's Mutual Improvement Association - took unto themselves plural
wives by way of setting an example and to keep the practical fires of
polygamy alive.
True, these criminals ran risks, and took what President Smith in his
recent testimony, when telling of his own quintette of helpmeets, called
"the chances of the law." To lower these risks, and diminish them to a
point where in truth they would be no risks, the Mormon Church, under
the lead of its bigamous President several years rearward, became a
political machine. It looked over the future, considered its own black
needs as an outlaw, and saw that its first step towards security should
be the making of Utah into a State. As a territory the hand of the
Federal power rested heavily upon it; the Edmunds law could be
enforced whenever there dwelt a will in Washington so to do. Once a
State, Utah would slip from beneath the pressure of that iron statute.
The Mormons would at the worst face nothing more rigorous than the
State's own laws against bigamy, enforced by judges and juries and
sheriffs of their own selection, and jails whereof they themselves would
weld the bars and hew the stones and forge the keys.
With that, every Mormon effort of lying promise and pretense of purity
were put forward to bring statehood about. What Gentiles were then in
Utah exerted themselves to a similar end, and made compacts, and went,
as it were, bail for Mormon good behavior. In the end Utah was made a
State;