Unfortunately the religious and political adventurers in Utah can
succeed in their designs the more readily because the agents sending
out the _Associate Press_ dispatches to the entire press of the country
are in sympathy with these parties or controlled by them; so that all
information going out to the country at large from that source is
generally distorted to the disparagement of the "Mormons."
In addition to this, it will be remembered that the American Press is
nothing if not sensational. This is true in a general sense, it is
doubly so in relation to the "Mormon Question." Ever ready to pander
to the prejudice of the populace, and finding the "Mormon" people the
victims of popular hate and without political influence, the American
Press has recklessly traduced the character of as noble a community as
ever graced God's earth. Every sensational rumor derogatory to their
character has been seized upon with avidity and published without
reserve, while the correction of the mis-statements or the vindication
of their character has seldom struggled through the columns of the
press to the public eye. The people of America, and other countries,
too, have taken everything for granted that has been said against the
"Mormon" people, no matter how absurd it is, or how unreliable the
source from whence it came. Very few men have had the fairness to
investigate "Mormonism" for themselves, or inquire into the character
of the "Mormon" people.
Respecting the misrepresentation of the "Mormon" people and the source
from whence the public has drawn its views and fed its prejudices, I
introduce the testimony of Mr. Phil. Robinson, an English journalist
and correspondent of note, and a traveler of world wide experience;
and who is at present the editor of the _Court and Society Review_,
published in London. Mr. Robinson went to Utah in 1882, where he
remained for three months. He visited nearly every town and village
in the Territory, and saw the people at their firesides and at work
in their fields, as well as in their public meetings--in fact he
saw them in all the relations of life--and on the subject of their
misrepresentation, he says:
"Whence have the public derived their opinions about it [meaning
{178} Mormonism]? From anti-Mormons only. I have ransacked the
literature of the subject, yet I really could not tell any one
where to go for an impartial book about it later in date than
Burton's "City of the Saints" published in 1862. There is not,
to my knowledge, a single Gentile work before the public that
is not utterly unreliable from its distortion of facts. How can
anyone have respect for literature or the men who, without knowing
anything of the lives of Mormons, stigmatize them as profane,
adulterous and drunken? These men write of the squalid poverty of
the Mormons, of their obscene brutality, of their unceasing treason
towards the United States, of their blasphemous repudiation of the
Bible, without one particle of information on the subject, except
such as they gather from the books and writings of men whom they
ought to know are utterly unworthy of credit, or from the verbal
calumnies of apostates; and what the evidence of apostates is
worth history has long ago told us * * * I am now stating facts;
and I, who have lived among the Mormons and with them, can assure
my readers that every day of my residence increased my regret at
the misrepresentation these people have suffered" ("Sinners and
Saints," Roberts and Sons, Boston).