In the old days of Mormonism--and as late as the anti-polygamous
manifesto of 1890--the whole aim and effort of the Church was to exalt
and sanctify and make pure the practice of plural marriage by means of
the community's respect and the reverences of religion. The doctrine of
polygamy was taught as a revealed mystery of faith. It was accepted as
a sacrament ordained by God for the salvation of mankind. The most
important families in the Church dignified it by their participation,
and were in turn dignified by the Church's approval and by the wealth
and power that followed approval. The inevitable mental sufferings
of the plural wives were endured by them as part of an earthly
self-immolation required by God, for which they should be rewarded in
eternity. The very necessities of their situation compelled them
to exact and cherish a super reverence for the doctrine of plural
marriage--since the only way a mother could justify herself to her
children was by teaching, as she believed, that she had been selected
by God for the exaltation of this sacrifice, and by inculcating in her
children a scrupulous respect for sexual purity. There was no pretense
of denial of the polygamous relation. Plural wives held the place
of honor in the community. Their marriages were considered the most
sanctified. They and their progeny were called "the wives and children
of the holy covenant," and they were esteemed accordingly.
But as the history of the Church shows, plural marriage was always a
heavy cross to the Mormon women; many had refused to bear it, in the
face of the frequent pulpit scoldings of the Prophets; and few did not
sometime weep under it in the secrecy of their family life. In the days
immediately preceding the manifesto of 1890, there was a general hope
and longing among the Mormon mothers that God would permit a relief
before their daughters and their sons should become of an age to be
drafted into the ranks of polygamy. The great majority of the young
men were monogamists. It required the strong persuasions of personal
affection as well as the authority of Divine command to make the young
women accept a polygamist in marriage. And when the Church received
President Woodruff's anti-polygamous revelation, every profound human
emotion of the people coincided with the promise to abstain.
Only among a few of the polygamous leaders themselves was there any
inclination to break the Church's pledge--an inclination that was
strengthened by resentment against the Federal power that had compelled
the giving of the pledge. Almost immediately upon obtaining the
freedom of statehood, some of these leaders returned to the practice of
polygamous cohabitation--although they had accepted the revelation,
had bound themselves by their covenant to the nation and had solemnly
subscribed to the terms of their amnesty. To justify themselves, they
found it necessary to teach that polygamy was still approved by the law
of God--that the practice of plural marriage had only been abandoned
because it was forbidden by the laws of man. Joseph F. Smith continued
to live with his five wives and to rear children by all of them.
Those of the apostles who were not assured of that attainment to the
principality of Heaven which was promised the man of five wives and
proportionate progeny, were naturally tempted (if, indeed, they were not
actually encouraged) to take Joseph F. Smith as their examplar. It was
scarcely worse to break the covenant by taking a new polygamous wife
than by continuing polygamous relations with former plural wives; and
when an apostle took a new polygamous wife, his inevitable and necessary
course was to justify himself by the authority of God. He could not then
deny the same authority to the minor ecclesiasts, even if he had wished
to. And, finally, when the evil circle spread to the man on the fringe
of the Church--who could not obtain even such poor authorization for his
perfidy he found a way to perpetrate a pretended plural marriage with
his victim, and the Church authorities did not dare but protect him.
This was polygamy without the great saving grace that had previously
defended the Mormon women from the cruelties and abuses of the practice.
It was polygamy without honor--polygamy against an assumed revelation
of God instead of by virtue of one--polygamy worse than that of the
Mohammedans, since it was necessarily clandestine, could claim no social
respect or acceptance, and was forbidden "by the laws of God and man"
alike.
This is the "new polygamy" of Mormonism. The Church leaders dare not
acknowledge it for fear of the national consequences. They dare not even
secretly issue certificates of plural marriage, lest the record should
be betrayed. They protect the polygamist by a conspiracy of falsehood
that is almost as shameful as the shame it seeks to cover; and the
infection of the duplicity spreads like a plague to corrupt the whole
social life of the people. The wife of a new polygamist cannot claim
a husband; she has no social status; she cannot, even to her parents,
prove the religious sanction for her marital relations. Her children
are taught that they must not use a father's name. They are hopelessly
outside the law--without the possibility that any further statutes
of legitimization will be enacted for their relief. They are born in
falsehood and bred to the living of a lie. Their father cannot claim
the authority of the Church for their parentage, for he must protect his
Prophet. He cannot even publicly acknowledge them--any more than he can
publicly acknowledge their mother.
Out of these terrible conditions comes such an instance as the notorious
case of one of Henry S. Tanner's wives, who went on a visit to one
of her relatives, with her children, and denied that they were her
children, and denied that she was married--and was supported by her
children's denial that she was their mother. Similarly, a plural wife of
a wealthy Mormon, whose fortune is estimated at $25,000,000--a partner
of the sugar trust, a community leader, a favorite of the Church went
before the Senate Committee in December, 1904, and swore that her first
husband had died thirteen years before, that she had had a child within
six years, and that she had no second husband. And by doing so she not
only marked the child as illegitimate beyond the relief of any future
statutes--legitimizing the offspring of polygamous marriages, but she
left herself and the child without any claim upon the estate of its
father and publicly swore herself a social outcast before a committee of
the United States Senate, and perjured herself--to the knowledge of all
her friends and acquaintances in Utah--for the protection of her husband
and her Church. What can one say of a man who will permit a woman to
commit such an act of social suicide for him--or of a Church that will
command it?
Here is a condition of society unparalleled anywhere else in
civilization--unparalleled even in barbarous countries, for wherever
else polygamy is practiced it at least has the sanction of local
convention. And the consequent suffering that falls upon the women and
the children is a heart-break to see. During the days when I was in the
editorial office of the Salt Lake Tribune, scores of miserable cases
came to my knowledge by letter, by the report of friends, and by the
visits of the agonized wives themselves. I shall never forget one young
woman, in her twenties, who came to ask my help in forcing her husband
to obtain a marriage certificate for her from the Church, so that her
boy might have the right to claim a father. She wept, with her head
on my desk, sobbing out her story, and appealing to me for aid with a
convulsed and tear-drenched face.
Four years earlier, she had become friendly with a man twice her age,
whom she admired and respected. He had taken two wives before the
manifesto of 1890, but that did not prevent him from coveting the youth
and beauty of this young woman. He first approached her mother for
permission to marry the girl, and when the mother-who was herself a
plural wife replied that it was impossible under the law, he brought an
apostle to persuade her that the practice of plural marriage was
still as meet, just and available to salvation as it had been when she
married. Then he went to the daughter.
"I was terrified," she said, "when he proposed to me. And yet--he asked
me if I thought my mother had done wrong when she married my father....
There was no one else I liked as much. He was good. He was rich. He
told me I'd never want for anything. He said I would be fulfilling the
command of God against the wickedness of a persecuting world.... I don't
know what devil of fanaticism entered into me. I thought it would be
smart to defy the United States."
Late one night, by appointment, he called for her with a carriage,
driven by a man unknown to her, and took her to a darkened house that
had a dim light only in the hallway. They entered alone and turned into
a parlor that was dark, except for the reflection from the hall. He led
her up to the portieres that hung across an inner door, and through the
opening between the curtains she saw the indistinct figure of a man.
They stood before him, hand in hand, while he mumbled over the words of
a ceremony that sounded to her like the ceremonies she had heard in
the Temple. She caught little of it clearly; she remembered practically
nothing. She was not given anything to show that a ceremony had been
performed, and she did not ask for anything. The elderly bridegroom
kissed her when the mumbling ceased, led her out to the carriage, took
her back to her mother's house, and that night became her husband.
She bore him a son. No one except her mother, her father and a few
trusted friends knew that she was married. In the early months of 1905
she read in the Tribune the testimony given before the Senate committee
by Professor James E. Talmage, for the Church, to the effect that since
the manifesto of 1890 neither the President of the Church nor anybody
else in the Church had power to authorize a plural marriage, and that
any woman who had become a plural wife, since the manifesto, was "no
more a wife by the law of the Church, than she is by the law of the
land."
She asked her husband about it. He replied that an apostle had married
them. "I asked my husband," she said, "to get a certificate of marriage
from the apostle. He told me I needed none--that it was recorded in
the books here and recorded in heaven--that it would put the apostle in
danger if he were to sign such a paper. I said that that was nothing to
me--that I wanted to protect my good name. Finally, he said it was not
an apostle. Then we had a bitter scene. And he did not come back for a
long time. And he didn't write as long as he stayed away.
"When he came back he was more loving than ever. I was afraid of having
more children. I said to him: 'You cannot hold me as a wife any longer
unless you write a paper certifying that I'm your wife and this boy is
your child. You may place that paper anywhere you like, so long as I
know I can get it in case you die. Suppose you were to die and all
your folks were to deny that I was your wife--say that I was an
imposter--that I was trying to foist my boy on the estate of a dead
man--in the name of God, then what could I do?' He went away; and he
hasn't come back; and he hasn't written. I don't know who married us. I
don't even know the house where it happened. I don't know who the driver
was. I don't even know who the apostle was that told mother it would be
all right. He made her promise under a covenant not to tell.
"I don't know where to go. A friend of mine told me you would advise me.
He said perhaps you could make them give me a certificate. I don't want
to expose my husband. I only want something so that my boy, when he
grows up, won't be"--
What could I do? What could anyone do for this unfortunate girl, seduced
in the name of religion, with the aid of a Church that repudiated her
for its own protection? She had to suffer, and see her boy suffer, the
penalties of a social outcast.
Her case was typical of many that came to my personal knowledge. At
the Sunday Schools, in the choirs, in the joint meetings of mutual
improvement associations, young girls--taught to believe that plural
marriage was sacred, and reverencing the polygamous prophets as the
anointed of the Lord--were being seduced into clandestine marriage
relations with polygamous elders who persuaded their victims that the
anti-polygamous manifesto had been given out to save a persecuted people
from the cruelties of an unjust government; that it was never intended
it should be obeyed; that all the celestial blessings promised by
revelation to the polygamist and his wives were still waiting for those
who would dare to enjoy them.
If the tempted girl turned to one of her women friends, and besought
her to say, on her honor, whether she thought that plural marriage was
right, the other was likely enough to answer: "Yes, yes. Indeed it is.
Promise me you won't tell a living soul. Tell me you'll die first....
I'm married to Brother I,----, the leader of the ward choir."
If she asked her mother: "Tell me. Is plural marriage wrong?" the mother
could only reply: "Oh--I don't know--I don't know. Your father said it
was right, and I accepted it--and we practiced it--and you have always
loved your other brothers and sisters, and it seems to me it can't be
wrong, since we have lived it. But--Oh, I don't know, daughter. I don't
know."
The man who is tempting her knows. He has the word of an apostle, the
example of the Prophet, the secret teaching of the Church. He courts
her as any other religious young girl might be courted--with little
attentions, at the meetings, over the music books--and he has, to aid
him, a religious exaltation in her, induced by his plea that she is to
enter into the mystery of the holy covenant, to become one of the most
faithful of a persecuted Church, to defy the wicked laws of its enemies.
She is just as happy in her betrothal as any other innocent girl of
her age. Even the secrecy is sweet to her. And then, some evening, they
saunter down a side street to a strange house--or even to a back
orchard where a man is waiting in a cowl under a tree (perhaps vulgarly
disguised as a woman with a veil over his face)--and they are married in
a mutter of which she hears nothing.
Such a case was related to me by a horrified mother who had discovered
that the marriage ceremony had been performed by an accomplice of the
libertine who had seduced her daughter and since confessed his crime.
But whether the ceremony be performed by a priest of the Church or by
a more unauthorized scoundrel, the girl is equally at the mercy of her
"husband" and equally betrayed in the world. Even in this case of the
pretended marriage, the elders of the ward hushed up the threatened
prosecution because the authorities of the Church objected to a
proceeding that might expose other plural marriages more orthodox.
Hundreds of Mormon men and women personally thanked me by letter or in
interviews at the Tribune office, for our editorial attacks upon the
hierarchy for encouraging these horrors. Strangers spoke to me on
railroad trains, thanking me and telling me of cases. Three Mormon
physicians, themselves priests of the Church, told me of innumerable
instances that had come to them in their practice, and said that they
did not know what was to become of the community. One Mormon woman wrote
me from Mexico to say that she had exiled herself there with her
husband and his two plural wives, and that she felt she had worked out
sufficient atonement for all her descendants; yet she saw girls of the
family on the verge of entering into plural marriage--if they had not
already done so--and she begged us to continue our newspaper exposures,
so that others might be saved from the bitter experiences of her life.
President Winder met me on the street in 1905, towards the close of the
year, and said: "Frank, you need not continue your fight against plural
marriage. President Smith has stopped it." "Then," I replied, "two
things are evident: I have been telling the truth when I said
that plural marriage had been renewed--in spite of the authorized
denials--and if President Smith has stopped it now, he has had authority
over it all the time."
To me, or to any other well-informed citizen of Utah, President Winder's
admission was not necessary to prove Smith's responsibility. In the
April conference of 1904, Smith had read an "official statement," signed
by him, prohibiting plural marriages and threatening to excommunicate
any officer or member of the Church who should solemnize one; and this
official statement was carried to the Senate committee by Professor
James E. Talmage, and offered in proof that the Church was keeping its
covenant.
For us, in Utah, the declaration served merely to illuminate the dark
places of ecclesiastical bad faith. We knew that from the year 1900
down, there had never been a sermon preached in any Mormon tabernacle,
by any of the general authorities of the Church, against the practice
of plural marriage, or against the propriety of the practice, or against
the sanctity of the doctrine. We knew, on the contrary, that upon
numerous occasions, at funerals and in public assemblages, Joseph F.
Smith and John Henry Smith and others of the hierarchy, had proclaimed
the doctrine as sacred. We knew that it was still being taught in the
secret prayer meetings. Practically all the leading authorities of the
Church were living in plural marriage. Some of them had taken new wives
since the manifesto. None of them had been actually punished. All were
in high favor. And though Joseph F. Smith denied his responsibility,
every one knew that none of these things could be, except with his
active approval.
Perhaps, for a brief time, while Smoot's case was still before the
Senate, some check was put upon the renewal of polygamy. But, even then,
there were undoubtedly, occasional marriages allowed, where the parties
were so situated as to make concealment perfect. And all checks were
withdrawn when Smoot's case was favorably disposed of, and the Church
found itself protected by the political power of the administration
at Washington and by a political and financial alliance with "the
Interests."
Today, in spite of the difficulty of discovering plural marriages,
because of the concealments by which they are protected, the Salt Lake
Tribune is publishing a list of more than two hundred "new" polygamists
with the dates and circumstances of their marriages; and these are
probably not one tenth of all the cases. During President Taft's
visit to Salt Lake City, in 1909, Senator Thomas Kearns, one of the
proprietors of the Tribune, offered to prove to one of the President's
confidants hundreds of cases of new polygamy, if the President would
designate two secret service men to investigate. I believe, from my own
observation, that there are more plural wives among the Mormons today
than there were before 1890. Then the young men married early, and were
chiefly monogamists. Now the change in economic conditions has raised
the age at which men marry; it has made more bachelors than there were
when simpler modes of life prevailed. The young women have fewer offers
of marriage, and more of these come from well-to-do polygamists. The
girls are still taught, as they have always been, that marriage is
necessary to salvation; and they are betrayed into plural marriage by
natural conditions as well as by the persuasions of the Church.
A perfect "underground" system has been put in operation for the
protection of the lawbreakers. If they reside in Utah, they frequently
go to Canada or to Mexico to be married; and the whole polygamous
paraphernalia can be transported with ease and comfort--the priest who
performs the ceremony, the husband, sometimes the legal wife to give her
consent so that she may not be damned, and the young woman whose soul is
to be saved. And this "underground" is maintained against the reluctance
of the Mormon people. They aid in it from a kindly feeling toward
their fellow-believers--and with some faint thought that perhaps these
wayfarers are being "persecuted" but all the time with no personal
sympathy for polygamy. By one sincere word of reprehension from Joseph
F. Smith every "underground" station could be abolished, the route could
be destroyed, and an end could be put to the protection that is, of
itself, an encouragement to polygamous practice. He has never spoken
that word.
Recently, the way in which the new polygamy is perpetrated in Utah has
been almost officially revealed. A patriarch of the Church, resident
in Davis County, less than fifteen miles from Salt Lake City, had been
solemnizing these unlawful unions at wholesale. The situation became so
notorious that the authorities of the Church felt themselves impelled
about September, 1910, to put restrictions upon his activity. In the
course of their investigations they discovered that he did not know the
persons whom he married. They would come to his house, in the evening,
wearing handkerchiefs over their faces; he sat hidden behind a screen in
his parlor; and under these circumstances the two were declared man
and wife, and were sealed up to everlasting bliss to rule over
principalities and kingdoms, with power of endless increase and
progression. He refused to tell the hierarchy from which one of the
authorities he had received his endowment to perpetrate these crimes.
He refused to give the names of any of the victims, claiming that he did
not know them!
It is probable that for a long time plural marriage ceremonies were not
solemnized within the Salt Lake temple. Now, we know that there have
lately been such marriages in it, and at Manti, and at Logan, and
perhaps also in the temple at St. George. There are cases on record
where a man has a wife on one side of the Utah-Colorado line and another
wife across the border. No prosecutions are possible in Utah; for, as
Joseph F. Smith told the Senate committee, the officers of the law
have too much "respect" for the ecclesiastical rulers of the state.
Similarly, in the surrounding states, the officers show exactly the
same sort of "respect" and for the same reason. They not only know
the Church's power in local politics, but they see the national
administration allowing the polygamists and priests of the Church
to select the Federal officials, and they are not eager to rouse a
resentment against themselves, at Washington as well as at home, by
prosecuting polygamous Mormons.
Some few years ago, Irving Sayford, then representing the Los Angeles
Times, asked Mr. P. H. Lannan, of the Salt Lake Tribune, why someone did
not swear out warrants against President Smith for his offenses against
the law. Mr. Lannan said: "You mean why don't I do it?"
"Oh, no," Mr. Sayford explained, "I don't mean you particularly."
"Oh, yes, you do," Mr. Lannan said. "You mean me if you mean anybody. If
it's not my duty, it's no one's duty.... Well, I'll tell you why.... I
don't make a complaint, because neither the district attorney nor the
prosecuting attorney would entertain it. If he did entertain it and
issued a warrant, the sheriff would refuse to serve the warrant. If the
sheriff served the warrant, there would be no witnesses unless I got
them. If I could get the witnesses, they wouldn't testify to the facts
on the stand. If they did testify to the facts, the jury wouldn't bring
in a verdict of guilty. If the jury did bring in a verdict of guilty,
the judge would suspend sentence. If the judge did not suspend sentence,
he would merely fine President Smith, three hundred dollars. And within
twenty-four hours there would be a procession of Mormons and Gentiles
crawling on their hands and knees to Church headquarters to offer to pay
that three hundred dollar fine at a dime apiece."
Mr. Lannan's statement of the case was later substantiated by an action
of the Salt Lake District Court. Upon the birth of the twelfth child
that has been borne to President Smith in plural marriage since the
manifesto of 1890, Charles Mostyn Owen made complaint in the District
Court at Salt Lake, charging Mr. Smith with a statutory offense. The
District Attorney reduced the charge to "unlawful cohabitation" (a
misdemeanor), without the complainant's consent or knowledge. All the
preliminaries were then graciously arranged and President Smith appeared
in the District Court by appointment. He pleaded guilty. The judge in
sentencing him remarked that as this was the first time he had appeared
before the court, he would be fined three hundred dollars, but that
should he again appear, the penalty might be different. Smith had
already testified in Washington, before the Senate Committee, to the
birth of eleven children in plural marriage since he had given his
covenant to the country to cease living in polygamy; he had practically
defied the Senate and the United States to punish him; he had said that
he would "stand" his "chances" before the law and courts of his own
state. All of this was well known to the judge who fined him three
hundred dollars--a sum of money scarcely equal to the amount of Smith's
official income for the time he was in court!
A leader of the Church, not long ago, asked me, in private conference,
what was the policy of the American party with regard to the new plural
wives and their children. I replied that as far as I knew it, the policy
was to have the Church accept its responsibility in the matter and give
the wives and children whatever recognition could be given them by their
religion. The Church was guilty before God and man of having encouraged
the awful condition. It was unspeakably cowardly and unfair for the
Church leaders to put the whole burden of suffering on the helpless
women and children; and, moreover, this course was a justification to
polygamists in deserting their wives, on the ground that the Church had
never sanctioned the relation.
This Church leader, himself a new polygamist, answered miserably: "The
Church will not let itself be put in such a light before the country.
That would be to admit that it has been responsible all the time."
I asked: "Has the Church not been responsible?"
He replied--equivocating--: "Well, not the Church. The Church has never
taken a vote on it."
"That," I said, "answers why you have never got redress and never will
get it because you are all liars, from top to bottom. You know you would
never have entered the polygamous relation--nor could you have induced
your wife to enter it--except with full knowledge that the Church did
authorize it. The Church is one man, and you know it. The whole theory
of your theology collapses if you deny that."
He shook his head blankly. "I don't know what is to become of us. I
don't see any way out."
I could only advise him that he should join with other new polygamists
in demanding that the Church authorities make all possible reparation to
the women and children who were being crushed under the penalties of the
Church's crime. But I knew that such advice was vain. He could not make
such a demand, any more than any other slave could demand his freedom.
And if the non-polygamists demanded it, the Prophets would deny that
polygamy was being practiced. The children could not be legitimized--for
the Church cannot obtain legitimizing statutes without avowing its
responsibility for the need of them; and the Gentiles can not pass such
statutes without encouraging the continuance of polygamy by removing the
social penalty against it.
So the burden of all this guilt, this shame, this deception, falls upon
the unfortunate plural wife and her innocent offspring. She is bound by
the most sacred obligations never to reveal the name of the officiating
priest--even if she knew it--nor to disclose the circumstances of the
ceremony. She has justified her degradation by the assumption that God
has commanded it; that her husband has received a revelation authorizing
him to take her into his household; that her children will be legitimate
in the sight of God, and that eventually the civilized world will come
to a joyous acceptance of the practice of polygamy. When the trials of
her life afflict her and she finds no relentment in the world's disdain,
she sees no avenue of retreat. To break the relation is to imply at once
that it was not ordained of God, and to cast a darker ignominy upon her
unfortunate children. Her only hope lies in her continued submission
to her husband and his Church, even after she has mentally and morally
rejected the doctrine that betrayed her. A more pitiably helpless band
of self-immolants than these Mormon women has never suffered martyrdom
in the history of the world. Heaven help them. There is no help for them
on earth.