MORMONISM EXPOSED Etext prepared by Susan Pixley (nymormon@yahoo.com) Electronic manuscript © 2008 Cumorah Foundation. www.cumorah.com. All rights reserved. PLEASE READ, then hand to your Neighbour, or mail to a Friend. There are two sides to every question. To judge the Mormons by the "They say so" of enemies is manifestly unjust. "By their FRUITS ye shall know them." We are very willing to be judged by this divine method of ascertainment. Certainly no one can read the following disinterested testimonials from distinguished sources without concluding that the Mormons are a conspicuously clean and good people, and they have been most outrageously defamed. We have tomes of similar certificates of character on file. HON. JEREMIAH M. WILSON, before the US Senate Committee on Territories, March, 1888, made the following truthful allusions to the Mormons: EXCERPTS. I regret to say that there is a wide-spread belief that the Mormon people are degraded and ignorant; that Utah is a hot-bed of vice ; that the Mormons live for gratification of Just; and, associated with this conception of them, is the almost natural conclusion that there is an utter want of those qualities and responsibilities, moral and legal, which are essential to make them fit elements in the organization of a State. I venture to say, and I feel a and believe what I say, that this is an utter and cruel misconception. They are a moral people; I mean that their walk and conversation in the presence of the world is such that no other community can say: Here is your superior. They are a law-abiding people in observing those rules essential to the peace and good order of a community, and the protection of property. They try to settle their disputes, civil and ecclesiastical by the machinery of their Church, and without the aid of lawyers, judges and juries. They are a courageous, patient industrious, energetic people. That cannot be successfully disputed. They have not been neglectful of intellectual development; as they have grown in wealth they have established and maintained schools, and I hazard nothing in saying that in this respect they are far in advance of many localities of thrice their years. They are temperate people, not addicted to the use of intoxicants; and the vice, crime, and untold miseries that issue from this Pandora's box do not fret and vex their domestic or social life; for abstinence from this, the most potent source of discord and crime, is a fundamental principle in their economy and creed. Individuals and communities who are so unsparingly harsh and uncharitable in criticism might profit by their example in theory and practice. I assert that in these respects they are more than up to the average. The statistics will indicate this assertion. This wonderful growth in wealth and population, this marvelous transformation of a desert into the most fruitful fields, this creation of useful industries, this establishment intellectual appliances, the presence of achievements which not only indicate but demonstrate the existence of those qualities which must enter into and be the life of all free and successful government, are of themselves a standing refutation of the common estimate of these people; and I point to these as the highest evidences of the existence of the qualities which I attribute to them; for it will hardly be disputed that the results which they have attained never were and never will be attained by a depraved and vicious people. They are only attained by the enforcement of those principles that are essential to every well-ordered community, and the presence of these is the indisputable evidence that back of them, underlying them creating them are a people moved by motives utterly different from those usually attributed to the people to whom I refer. As an orderly, energetic, thrifty, progressive people, I do not hesitate to challenge comparison with any other Territory that ever knocked at the door and asked for admission to this family of States. Which of them can show more development; which can show more manufactories, better schools, better cultivation of the soil, greater evidence of advancement in all that pertains to a well-ordered, progressive community; less intemperance, less crime? I assert, not one, and I hold up Utah as it is, and challenge comparison. So you have in these people the most important elements -- those high qualities and characteristics that are essential to the organization and management of a government -- courage, industry, and thrift. From such qualities everv great nation has sprung, and the possession of them is sufficient evidence of fitness to organize and manage a government. Who will dispute this? Extracts from the Report of Congressman Springer, during the Session of Congress held in the Spring of 1889. The population of the Territory may be classified generally as follows: Mormons ... ... ... .. 1170,000 Non-Mormons ... ... ... 40,000 It is universally conceded that no locality equally populated with Utah is freer from the vices that afflict communities than this Territory. It is singularly free from saloons, houses of prostitution, and the like, and it is undisputed that the people generally are moral, industrious, and law-abiding. While this is true as to their, population as an entirety, it is especially true as to the Mormon portion of it. Their characteristics in these respects are indicated by the following: Governor West, in his report to the Secretary of the Interior for 1888, says: "I shall not arraign the Mormon people as wanting in comparison with other people in religious devotion, virtue, honesty, sobriety, industry, and the graces and qualities that adorn, beautify, and bless life." Dr. Miller, editor of the Omaha Herald, says: "To the lasting honour of the Mormon people and system, be it said that for twenty-five years such machines of moral infamy as whisky shops, harlotries, faro banks, and all the attending forms of vice and iniquity, were totally unknown in Utah." Bishop Spaulding, in the Forum of March 1887, says: "The Mormons are sober, industrious, and thrifty." Mrs. Emily Pitt Stevens, editor of the Pioneer, a woman's journal, writes: "Utah is the wisest and best governed of any large section of people in the United States. In Great Salt Lake City there is less rowdyism, drunkenness, idleness, theft, conspiracy against the peace of society, and crime generally than there is in any other city of the same population in the country, if not on the globe." The testimony of Bayard Taylor, the illustrious traveller and author, is: "The Mormons as a people are the most temperate of Americans. They are chaste, laborious, and generally cheerful." Governor Stevenson, of Idaho, in his report to the Secretary of the Interior 1888, says: "Paris (Bear Lake County) has a population of about 1,500, all Mormons, and there is not a saloon or gambling house, or any other place where intoxicating liquors are sold, and this is, I am told, the case in all the towns in Idaho where these people have exclusive control." The Governor of Arizona bears similar testimony, and it appears that the moral character of the Mormons is good wherever they reside. Again I turn to the testimony of Mr. Robinson: "I have seen and spoken to and lived with Mormon men and women of every class, and never in my life, in any Christian country, have I come in contact with more consistent piety, sobriety, and neighbourly charity. I say this deliberately, without a particle of odious sanctimony, these folks are in their words and actions as Christian as I ever thought to see men and women ... The Mormons are a peasant people, with many of the faults of peasant life, but with many of the best human virtues as well ... The demeanour of the women in Utah, as compared with Brighton or Washington, is modesty itself; and the children are just such healthy, vigorous, pretty children as one sees in the country or by the sea-side England." Bishop D. S. Tuttle, for years an Episcopal clergyman in Salt Lake City, an opponent of "Mormonism," but an honourable one, in a lecture on "Mormonism," delivered in New York and published in the New York Sun, says: "In Salt Lake City alone there are over 17,000 Latter-day Saints. Now, who are they? I will tell you, and I think that after I have concluded you will look on them more favourably than you have been accustomed to do. Springing from the centre of your State (N.Y.) in 1830, they drifted slowly westward until they finally rested in the Basin of the Great Salt Lake. I know that the people of the East have obtained the most unfavourable opinion of them, and have judged them unjustly. They have many traits that are worthy of admiration, and they believe with a fervent faith that their religion is a direct revelation from God. We of the East are accustomed to took upon the Mormons as either a licentious, arrogant or rebellions mob, bent only on defying the United States government, and deriding the faith of the Christians. This is not so. I know them to be honest, faithful, prayerful workers, and earnest in their faith that Heaven will bless the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Another strong and admirable feature in the Mormon religion is the tenacious and effective organizations. They follow with the greatest care all the forms of the old Church."