THE GROWING WEST.
THE PROBLEM IN UTAH.
RAILWAY SCHEMES—BRIGHAM YOUNG AS A SPECULATOR—PRESENT EVILS AND FUTURE MORMONISM.
SALT LAKE CITY, Sept. 3.—The Pennsyl-vania Central Las begun to absorb the west end of the central Pacific Railroad, Tom Scott having, in con-junction with Mark Hopkins and C. P. Huntington, re-cently bought out the interest of the two Crockers in that road. Huntington is said to be interesting himself in the Pennsylvania Central at the same time. The Cali-fornia Ring once broken, it seems likely that the Central and Union Pacific Railroads will soon become one con-cern, run under one management. This will add to the pleasure of overland travel, as there would then he no change of cars at Ogden; and no doubt it will also fa-cilitate overland business. The Union Pacific has lately Lad a survey made down Bear River, northward from Evanston to Soda Springs. The surveying party are Just in, and they do not speak very favorably of the route. Meanwhile, Brigham Young is turning his at-tention in that direction. He has bought most of the rights to the Springs and country adjacent, supposed to have been acquired by "squatting," and is about se-riously to establish a Mormon settlement there. With him, in such things, to will is to do. He names a detail of the Brethren to go and settle at any point he pleases, and they go, asking no questions, and the thing is done. He and his Ring are constructing a railroad this season southward from this city. It is completed for 20 miles, and every nerve is to he strained to push it to Provo this Fall, 40 to 50 miles distant. The design is to continue ex-tending it southward indefinitely, or to a junction with the Southern Pacific, in the future. The mines discov-ered all over Southern Utah encourage this. He is also contemplating a northern extension of the Utah Central from its intersection with the Union Pacific at Ogden, along the base of the Wasatch range, on the old Montana stage route, to Bear River bridge, 90 miles from here; thence over a depression in the range into and through Cache Valley to Soda Springs. Ground was broken at Brigham City, on this proposed line, last week, and the Mormons are going to settle their tithing and other accounts with Brigham by making the road-bed at once. From Provo to Soda Springs is about 200 miles, and if nothing unusual happens, these places are likely to he connected by rail within a year or two. The coming years will doubtless see the road thus begun extended to the Northern and Southern Pacific Roads. Brigham has made money very fast since the era of railroads opened in this part of the country, and his power is proportionally increasing. Everything turns to money with him, and he and his lit-tle Ring bid fair to swallow up the whole great basin. He will soon be able to take not toll only, but the whole grist. Last week he turned the Mormon banking-house of Hooper, Eldredge & Co., of this city into the "Bank of Deseret," and by and by, having advanced beyond the necessity, we expect to see him quit making and selling whisky, cease oppressing and robbing the poor in the name of God, and abandon other little disreputable prac-tices whereby he made his start. He has recently bought his son John two rather expensive playthings—a steam road-engine and a steam yacht—each costing about $20,000, and worth nothing, showing that he has some natural feeling left, such as is not always retained as one advances in life and makes money.
The new steamer built last Spring to ply between Corinne, on the Central Pacific Railroad, and the mining district south-west of Salt Lake, is temporarily laid up for want of patronage. It was a Corinne enterprise, and as everything centers at Salt Lake this year, it has been neglected. It was thought it would do a good business with the mining section, taking in machinery, lumber, supplies, and merchandise, and carrying back ores and bullion; also, that it would be patronized by overland tourists desirous of exploring Salt Lake and its environs. But the boat was launched too late in the season for the tourists, and beside, to furnish this as a part of the over-land route, another boat is needed, so that one could leave each end of the Lake every day; a railroad, too, is wanting for about 20 miles from the southern landing to Salt Lake City. With these additional facilities the Lake route would attract the tourist travel overland, the price being the same, the transportation all the way by rail or steamer, the time six hours longer, but interestingly filled, and the Lake stage of the journey altogether a pleasing one. Whether the enterprise will be pushed to this consummation, I know not, but think it probable. Nothing less will make it more than an equivocal success.
As for the mines spoken of, they have not as yet devel-oped what was expected of them. True, it is not long ince they were discovered, and a production (from all the Utah mines) of 14,200 tuns of ore and 1,200 tuns of base bullion in little more than a year is a tolerable showing, to all appearance. It doesn't look so well, however, when it is known that four-fifths of the ore has come from one mine (the Emma), and that the furnaces, nearly all erected last Winter and ready for operation when the season fairly opened, three months ago, ought to have run out 1,200 tuns of bullion in thirty days. The truth is, the business is still in the speculative stage. Mines are hunted and held for sale only. They are as yet, in most instances, bought only to sell, and the most fanciful prices imaginable are asked; I may add that they will be as long as they are paid, as is sometimes the ease. But all mines have this feverish, ruinous era to go through, sooner or later, and perhaps it is lucky for Utah that the disease set in so soon and so violently. It will the sooner be over and allow the business to start from a solid foundation.
So far the cause of decency in Utah has gained little from the influx of miners. Perhaps it is Questionable if it has gained at all. Indeed, the Emma Mine litigation got so mixed up with politics at one time that it seriously threatened all that had been done. Judge McKean's Court was too "high-toned" a tribunal for any use. Failing to get McKean removed and the Courts turned over to the Mormons again, the case was submitted to arbitration, and subsequently, it is understood, compro-mised. But these men, led by Senator Stewart of Ne-vada and ex-Congressman Fitch, who has settled in Salt Bake, had their influence, and it has been deleterious. Stewart's friends gave him a reception here, at which he substantially pronounced against those who are endeav-oring to enforce the laws and uphold the authority of the Government, and in favor of those who are fighting both. Fitch took the same course. The consequence is that the new-comers, particularly from the West, either hold themselves neutral, or else indirectly give aid and com-fort to the enemy. Many of them publicly took part in the Mormon celebration of Indepen-dence Day rather than in that of the Gentiles. It may seem strange to outsiders that there should have been two celebrations, that all the people could not have joined in one. The Gentiles tried to have it so, but were pointedly snubbed. The managers hadn't been here long enough to know that the Mormons compromise with nothing. They have a machine of their own, and want no assistance to run it. There was nothing left for us to do but celebrate it ourselves. And we did it, creditably, too. The preventing of the parade of the Nauvoo Legion on that day has been censured. It was held by the late Gov. Shaffer and his advisers that the Nauvoo Legion was an illegal organization. It has always been known to be a disloyal one. Therefore, Gov. Shaffer disbanded it, and on its refusing to recognize his authority to do so, the question was taken into the courts, where it is still pending. Under this state of affairs, how could Gov. Woods allow it to parade, and under its old leaders, with-out rendering himself and the authority he represented contemptible ?
The election came soon after, and it was vastly more hopeless than your perpetual struggle with Tammany. We have a power to contend with quite as unscrupulous, really outnumbering us 10 to 1, counting all our incon-gruous forces as actually in service, when it is impossible to get half of them to act together, or to act two years in the same direction. We had been weakened greatly by the crowd of trucklers and time-servers who sided with the Mormons because "they were here to make money, not to create disturbance;" and we finished the business for this year by attempting to yoke ourselves with the Godbe faction, who, when the crisis came, deserted us and went over to the enemy. When put to the test they protested against any interference by the Government with polygamy. That ended it. We polled no more votes than we did last year—about 1,500.
But in spite of all this blundering, cowardice, and treachery in politics, things begin to look brighter. We have wrested the courts from Mormon control com-pletely in two years, and the Attorney-General has lately expressed himself of the opinion that the rulings by which this was done were sound. The only trouble is in the payment of the expense, and this seems likely to be obviated by the Attorney-General's coming to see the matter in the same light that we do. Now comes a Mor-mon wife into court and complains of her husband for bringing two women into her house and living with them as man and wife, in all respects, in her presence, year after year. This is adultery, and there is a Territorial statute giving a man or woman 20 years in the Peniten-tiary for adultery. It precludes anybody but the hus-band or wife from prosecuting, No Mormon wife ever dared do it before, and when the statute was made the makers evidently thought no Mormon wife ever would dare to. Another clause in the same statute severely punishes lascivious conduct, and this any one can com-plain of. Utah is full of it; that is, if a man's keeping several women in one house and having children by them is lascivious conduct. The question as to whether a man may violate our criminal laws with impunity un-der the plea that it is his religion, is in a fair way to be answered by the courts. The answer cannot fail to have a great effect, at least on the more intelligent Mormons, even if many women do not follow this one's example.
Then we have "struck another lode" that promises to "pan out" richly. Bill Hickman, the notorious Danite Captain, has given himself up to justice, with one or two of his associates in crime, having been worn out with the constant fear of Church assassination. It has long been thought that if Hickman should do this he would a tale of Mormon deviltry unfold that would chill the coun-try with horror. Whether he will or not, and whether many like him will follow suit, and whether the Mor-mons will succeed in breaking the force of their united testimony touching the responsibility for the long series of assassinations that has written the history of Utah in blood, remains to be seen. But things are rapidly coming to a climax, and it need surprise no one if a weight of odium should attach to the Mormon leaders within a year or two that would make this country intolerably disagreeable to them. Should they be forced to leave it, on this and other obvious ac-counts, be it observed, it will not be through persecu-tion, through the operation of narrowness, prejudice, bigotry, and hate, as is too often charged; it will be through the operation of just laws, laws that the rest of us submit to—laws for the restraint of lust; the lust of women, lust of power, lust of gold, lust of blood, which has so long run riot in Utah. For the first time since I have been in Utah I begin to think such an event among the near possibilities of the future. Mormonism and Americanism are absolutely incompatible. We are not going to repeal or modify laws which lie at the very base of our social and civil structure, and give up popular for theocratic government, to accommodate the Mor-mons; and whenever this becomes unmistakably patent to them, it will be seen that they will go out from among us at any sacrifice rather than give up or modify in the least their inveterate antagonisms to us. When-ever and wherever we have met them before, face to face, they have had to retreat to save themselves. This time we do not meet them with violence; our power appears not in the form of a club, hut is that of law and justice. They believe sin-cerely that our courts cannot constitutionally hold poly-gamy to be adultery when practiced as a religious rite. They are on the eve of seeing that our courts will not, be-cause they cannot, hold it to be anything else. And there will not be a voice in America to question the soundness of such ruling. What then? Nothing but another re-treat, and this time beyond our confines.
Many unacquainted with the circumstances will think such a result to be deprecated. But If the leading Mor-mons could secretly of openly get off, and establish them-selves in the Sandwich Islands, to be followed, as occasion served, by as many as desired to follow, believe me, who have lived among them long enough to know what they are aiming at, how well they are organized, and how in-flexible they are, 'twere a consummation devoutly to be wished. The brains of the entire sect are held in less than 500 craniums, and the aver-age of their ability is less than that of the same class in the rest of our country; while the great majority of the Mormons are trash, the sweepings of the slums of the Old World, to whom even Mormonism has been on the whole a blessing. In case of an exodus probably not more than 31 per cent of them would go. Those who should need sacrifice nothing. Their property would sell for all it is worth when once it was understood that Utah was to be free from the Mormon incubus. The places of the ruling class among them would thus be taken by our people quietly and naturally, and in ten years nobody would know there had ever been such a nuisance in-cumbering our soil.
And finally, if it should be absolutely necessary, it would be good policy—the best the case admits of—for the Government to buy Utah outright of Brigham Young, giving him a liberal price for the improvements of his people, on condition that say two-thirds of the Mormons should leave the United States at once, never to return.
