40 n party which fell from power as a conspiracy against human rights, and now attempts to sneak back to power as a conspiracy lor plunder and spoils. When it is recalled that 83 Democrats voted against considering the recent Civil Service Act, and only 5 for it, it is evident that their platform statement that “We favor honest Civil Service reform,” is a falsehood made to catch votes. THE MORMON QUESTION. The author of this vile system, Joseph Smith, of Vermont, professed to have found some gold plates belonging to the lost tribes of Israel, who had wandered into America. One of their prophets, named Mormon, had written their history on these plates. The idea was probably obtained from a novel written about this time in Ohio. Smith first converted his family, started the sect at Fayette, N. Y., in 1830, moved to Kirtland, O., in 1831, from whence they were driven by the people, and thence to Nauvoo, Ill., in 1839. Here the most astounding revelations were made to the leaders—that it was the will of God that a man should have several wives, or suffer punishment in the world to come if he .refused. Their practices were so shocking to the community that an armed mob killed Smith and his brother, and the rest, some 15,000, fled for their lives to Salt Lake City, Utah. Brigham Young, who was a gross sensualist, became president, and had new and more vicious “revelations.” The women rebelled, and have seldom regarded the second and third wives as better than outcasts. Says a prominent judge, in Utah: “Several wives are often in one hovel; not a hovel, but one room. That room serves, of course, as kitchen, bed-room, dining-room and parlor.” Divorces are very common. Brigham Young was opposed to the education of the people, and always encouraged hostility to our Government. In the few schools which he permitted, polygamy is taught in earliest childhood. Mormons are ■compelled to trade at stores kept by Mormons, to employ only Mormon lawyers, and to obey the priesthood absolutely. They believe in “blood atonement,” by which Young had the power to put to death any refractory member of the church, and he seems to have used this power. Shocking cruelties were perpetrated, among them the massacre of one hundred Gentiles, at Mountain Meadow, in 1857. MORMONISM IS INCREASING. They numbered, in 1866, about 60,000. In 1880 they numbered 143,963, of whom more than half were under eighteen.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=