The Mormon Menace | Page 6

will employ it to select
the Senators whom those States send to Washington. And when they
are there, as Smoot is there, for the safeguarding of polygamy and what
other crimes Mormonism may find it convenient to rest upon from time
to time, those Senators and Representatives will act by the Mormon

President's orders. "When the lion's hide is too short," said the Greek, "I
piece it out with foxes." And the Mormons, in a day when the Danites
have gone with those who called them into bloody being, and murder
as a Churchly argument is no longer safe, profit by the Grecian's
wisdom.
But the darkest side of Mormonism is seen when one considers the
stamp of moral and mental degradation it sets upon those men and
women who comprise what one might term the peasantry of the Church.
Woman is, as the effect of Mormonism, peculiarly made to retrograde.
Instead of being uplifted she is beaten down. She must not think; she
must not feel; she must not know; she must not love. Her only safety
lies in being blind and deaf and dull and senseless to every better
sentiment of womanhood. She is to divide a husband with one or two or
ten or twenty; she is not to be a wife, but the fraction of a wife. The
moment she looks upon herself as anything other than a bearer of
children she is lost. Should she rebel - and in her helplessness she does
not know how to enter upon practical revolt - she becomes an outcast; a
creature of no shelter, no food, no friend, no home. Woman is the basis
or, if you will, the source and fountain of a race; woman is a race's
inspiration. And what shall a race be, what shall its children be, with so
lowered and befouled an origin?
At the hearing before the Senate Committee President Smith, stroking
his long white beard in the manner of the patriarchs, made no secret of
his five wives, and seemed to court the Gentile condemnation. This
hardihood was of deliberate plan on the part of President Smith. He
was inviting what he would call "persecution." He did not fear actual
prosecution in the Utah courts; as to the Federal forums, those tribunals
were powerless against him now that Utah was a State. Being safe in
the flesh, President Smith would bring upon himself and Mormonism
the whole fury of the press. It would serve to quiet schism and bicker
within the Mormon Church. An opposition or a "persecution" would act
as a pressure to bring Mormons together. That pressure would squeeze
out the last drop of political independence among Mormons, which to
the extent that it existed might interfere with his disposal of the
compact Mormon vote. In short, an attack upon himself and upon

Mormonism by the Gentiles would tighten the hold of President Smith,
close-herd the Mormons, and leave them ready politically to be driven
hither and yon as seemed most profitable for Church purposes.
Gray, wise, crafty, sly, soft, one who carries mendacity to the heights of
art, President Smith gives in all he says and does and looks the color of
truth to this explanation of his frankness. He would not prodigiously
care if Smoot were cast into outer Senate darkness. It would not be an
evil past a remedy. He could send Smoot back; and send him back
again. Meanwhile, he might lift up the cry of the Church persecuted;
that of itself would stiffen the Mormon line of battle and multiply
recruits.
President Smith looks forward to a time when one Senate vote will be
decisive. He cannot prophesy the day; but by the light of what has been,
he knows that it must dawn. About a decade ago the Democrats took
the Senate from the Republicans by one vote - Senator Peffer's. In
Garfield's day the Senate, before Conkling stepped down and out, was
in even balance with a tie. What was, will be; and President Smith
intends, when that moment arrives and the Senate is in poise between
the parties, to have at least one Utah vote, and as many more as he may,
to be a stock in trade wherewith to traffic security for his Church of
Mormon and its crimes. Given a balance of power in the Senate - and it
might easily come within his hands - President Smith could enforce
such liberal terms for Mormonism as to privilege it in its sins and
prevent chance of punishment.
There be those who, for a Mormon or a personal political reason, will
find fault with this work and its now appearance in print; they will
argue that some motive of politics underlies the publication. It is fair to
state that in so arguing