* New York Sun, January 27, 1901.
The Mormons estimate the membership of their church throughout the world at a little over 300,000. The numbers of “souls” in the church abroad was thus reported for the year ending December 31, 1899, as published in the Millennial Star:–
Great Britain 4,588
Scandinavia 5,438
Germany 1,198
Switzerland 1,078
Netherlands 1,556
These figures indicate a great falling off in the church constituency in Europe as compared with the year 1851, when the number of Mormons in Great Britain and Ireland was reported at more than thirty thousand. Many influences have contributed to decrease the membership of the church abroad and the number of converts which the church machinery has been able to bring to Utah. We have seen that the announcement of polygamy as a necessary belief of the church was a blow to the organization in Europe. The misrepresentation made to converts abroad to induce them to migrate to Utah, as illustrated in the earlier years of the church, has always been continued, and naturally many of the deceived immigrants have sent home accounts of their deception. A book could be filled with stories of the experiences of men and women who have gone to Utah, accepting the promises held out to them by the missionaries,–such as productive farms, paying business enterprises; or remunerative employment,–only to find their expectations disappointed, and themselves stranded in a country where they must perform the hardest labor in order to support themselves, if they had not the means with which to return home. The effect of such revelations has made some parts of Europe an unpleasant field for the visits of Mormon missionaries.
The government at Washington, during the operation of the Perpetual Emigration Fund organization, realized the evil of the introduction of so many Mormon converts from abroad. On August 9, 1879, Secretary of State William M. Evarts sent out a circular to the diplomatic officers of the United States throughout the world, calling their attention to the fact that the organized shipment of immigrants intended to add to the number of law-defying polygamists in Utah was “a deliberate and systematic attempt to bring persons to the United States with the intent of violating their laws and committing crimes expressly punishable under the statute as penitentiary offences,” and instructing them to call the attention of the governments to which they were accredited to this matter, in order that those governments might take such steps as were compatible with their laws and usages “to check the organization of these criminal enterprises by agents who are thus operating beyond the reach of the law of the United States, and to prevent the departure of those proposing to come hither as violators of the law by engaging in such criminal enterprises, by whomsoever instigated.” President Cleveland, in his first message, recommended the passage of a law to prevent the importation of Mormons into the United States. The Edmunds-Tucker law contained a provision dissolving the Perpetual Emigration Company, and forbidding the Utah legislature to pass any law to bring persons into the territory. Mormon authorities have informed me that there has been no systematic immigration work since the prosecutions under the Edmunds law. But as it is conceded that the Mormons make practically no proselytes among then Gentile neighbors, they must still look largely to other fields for that increase of their number which they have in view.
As a part of their system of colonizing the neighboring states and territories, they have made settlements in the Dominion of Canada and in Mexico. Their Canadian settlement is situated in Alberta. A report to the Superintendent of Immigration at Ottawa, dated December 30, 1899, stated that the Mormon colony there comprised 1700 souls, all coming from Utah; and that “they are a very progressive people, with good schools and churches.” When they first made their settlement they gave a pledge to the Dominion government that they would refrain from the practice of polygamy while in that country. In 1889 the Department of the Interior at Ottawa was informed that the Mormons were not observing this pledge, but investigation convinced the department that this accusation was not true. However, in 1890, an amendment to the criminal law of the Dominion was enacted (clause 11, 53 Victoria, Chap. 37), making any person guilty of a misdemeanor, and liable to imprisonment for five years and a fine of $500, who practises any form of polygamy or spiritual marriage, or celebrates or assists in any such marriage ceremony.
The Secretario de Fomento of Mexico, under date of May 4, 1901, informed me that the number of Mormon colonists in that country was then 2319, located in seven places in Chihuahua and Sonora. He added: “The laws of this country do not permit polygamy. The government has never encouraged the immigration of Mormons, only that of foreigners of good character, working people who may be useful to the republic. And in the contracts made for the establishment of those Mormon colonies it was stipulated that they should be formed only of foreigners embodying all the aforesaid conditions.”
No student of the question of polygamy, as a doctrine and practice of the Mormon church, can reach any other conclusion than that it is simply held in abeyance at the present time, with an expectation of a removal of the check now placed upon it. The impression, which undoubtedly prevails throughout other parts of the United States, that polygamy was finally abolished by the Woodruff manifesto and the terms of statehood, is founded on an ignorance of the compulsory character of the doctrine of polygamy, of the narrowness of President Woodruff’s decree, and of the part which polygamous marriages have been given, by the church doctrinal teachings, in the plan of salvation. The sketch of the various steps leading up to the Woodruff manifesto shows that even that slight concession to public opinion was made, not because of any change of view by the church itself concerning polygamy, but simply to protect the church members from the loss of every privilege of citizenship. That manifesto did not in any way condemn the polygamous doctrine; it simply advised the Saints to submit to the United States law against polygamy, with the easily understood but unexpressed explanation that it was to their temporal advantage to do so. How strictly this advice has since been lived up to–to what extent polygamous practices have since been continued in Utah–it is not necessary, in a work of this kind, to try to ascertain. The most intelligent non-Mormon testimony obtainable in the territory must be discarded if we are to believe that polygamous relations have not been continued in many instances. This, too, would be only what might naturally be expected among a people who had so long been taught that plural marriages were a religious duty, and that the check to them was applied, not by their church authorities, but by an outside government, hostility to which had long been inculcated in them.
It must be remembered that it is a part of the doctrine of polygamy that woman can enter heaven only as sealed to some devout member of the Mormon church “for time and eternity,” and that the space around the earth is filled with spirits seeking some “tabernacles of clay” by means of which they may attain salvation. Through the teaching of this doctrine, which is accepted as explicitly by the membership of the Mormon church at large as is any doctrine by a Protestant denomination, the Mormon women believe that the salvation of their sex depends on “sealed” marriages, and that the more children they can bring into the world the more spirits they assist on the road to salvation. In the earlier days of the church, as Brigham Young himself testified, the bringing in of new wives into a family produced discord and heartburnings, and many pictures have been drawn of the agony endured by a wife number one when her husband became a polygamist. All the testimony I can obtain in regard to the Mormonism of today shows that the Mormon women are now the most earnest advocates of polygamous marriages. Said one competent observer in Salt Lake City to me, “As the women of the South, during the war, were the rankest rebels, so the women of Mormondom are to-day the most zealous advocates of polygamy.”
By precisely what steps the church may remove the existing prohibition of polygamous marriages I shall not attempt to decide. It is easy, however, to state the one enactment which would prevent the success of any such effort. This would be the adoption by Congress and ratification by the necessary number of states of a constitutional amendment making the practice of polygamy an offence under the federal law, and giving the federal courts jurisdiction to punish any violators of this law. The Mormon church recognizes this fact, and whenever such an amendment comes before Congress all its energies will be directed to prevent its ratification. Governor Wells’s warning in his message vetoing the Utah Act of March, 1901, concerning prosecutions for adultery, that its enactment would be the signal for a general demand for the passage of a constitutional amendment against polygamy, showed how far the executive thought it necessary to go to prevent even the possibility of such an amendment. One of the main reasons why the Mormons are so constantly increasing their numbers in the neighboring states is that they may secure the vote of those states against an anti-polygamy amendment. Whenever such an amendment is introduced at Washington it will be found that every Mormon influence–political, mercantile, and railroad–will be arrayed against it, and its passage is unlikely unless the church shall make some misstep which will again direct public attention to it in a hostile manner.
The devout Mormon has no more doubt that his church will dominate this nation eventually than he has in the divine character of his prophet’s revelations. Absurd as such a claim appears to all non-Mormon citizens, in these days when Mormonism has succeeded in turning public attention away from the sect, it is interesting to trace the church view of this matter, along with the impression which the Mormon power has made on some of its close observers. The early leaders made no concealment of their claim that Mormonism was to be a world religion. “What the world calls ‘Mormonism’ will rule every nation,” said Orson Hyde. “God has decreed it, and his own right arm will accomplish it.”* Brigham Young, in a sermon in the Tabernacle on February 15, 1856, told his people that their expulsion from Missouri was revealed to him in advance, as well as the course of their migrations, and he added: “Mark my words. Write them down. This people as a church and kingdom will go from the west to the east.”
* Journal of Discourses, Vol. VII, pp. 48-53.
Tullidge, whose works, it must be remembered, were submitted to church revision, in his “Life of Brigham Young” thus defines the Mormon view of the political mission of the head of the church: “He is simply an apostle of a republican nationality, manifold in its genius; or, in popular words, he is the chief apostle of state rights by divine appointment. He has the mission, he affirms, and has been endowed with inspiration to preach the gospel of a true democracy to the nation, as well as the gospel for the remission of sins, and he believes the United States will ultimately need his ministration in both respects . . . . They form not, therefore, a rival power as against the Union, but an apostolic ministry to it, and their political gospel is state rights and self-government. This is political Mormonism in a nutshell.”*
* p. 244.
Tullidge further says in his “History of Salt Lake City” (writing in 1886): “The Mormons from the first have existed as a society, not as a sect. They have combined the two elements of organization–the social and the religious. They are now a new society power in the world, and an entirety in themselves. They are indeed the only religious community in Christendom of modern birth.”*
* p. 387.
Some of the closest observers of the Mormons in their earlier days took them very seriously. Thus Josiah Quincy, after visiting Joseph Smith at Nauvoo, wrote that it was “by no means impossible” that the answer to the question, “What historical American of the nineteenth century has exerted the most powerful influence upon the destiny of his countrymen,” would not be, “Joseph Smith.” Governor Ford of Illinois, who had to do officially with the Mormons during most of their stay in that state, afterward wrote concerning them: “The Christian world, which has hitherto regarded Mormonism with silent contempt, unhappily may yet have cause to fear its rapid increase. Modern society is full of material for such a religion . . . . It is to be feared that, in the course of a century, some gifted man like Paul, some splendid orator who will be able by his eloquence to attract crowds of the thousands who are ever ready to hear and be
carried away by the sounding brass and tinkling cymbal of sparkling oratory, may command a hearing, may succeed in breathing a new life into this modern Mohammedanism, and make the name of the martyred Joseph ring as loud, and stir the souls of men as much, as the mighty name of Christ itself.”*
* Ford, “History of Illinois,” p. 359.
The close observers of Mormonism in Utah, who recognize its aims, but think that its days of greatest power are over, found this opinion on the fact that the church makes practically no converts among the neighboring Gentiles; and that the increasing mining and other business interests are gradually attracting a population of non-Mormons which the church can no longer offset by converts brought in from the East and from foreign lands. Special stress is laid on the future restriction on Mormon immigration that will be found in the lack of further government land which may be offered to immigrants, and in the discouraging stories sent home by immigrants who have been induced to move to Utah by the false representations of the missionaries. Unquestionably, if the Mormon church remains stationary as regards wealth and membership, it will be overshadowed by its surroundings. What it depends on to maintain its present status and to increase its power is the loyal devotion of the body of its adherents, and its skill in increasing their number in the states which now surround Utah, and eventually in other states.