I'm on intimate terms with one of the biggest robbers in this country.
He's an expert at the business, but has now retired from active work.
The fact of the matter is, Joe didn't know he was robbing, at the time
he did it, but he got there, just the same, and come mighty nigh doing
time in the penitentiary for it, too.
Maybe I'd better commence at the beginning and tell you that I first
knew Joe Hogg in '79, out at the front, on the Santa Fe. Joe hailed from
Salt Lake City, and had run on the Utah Central, which gave him the
nickname of "Mormon Joe," a name he never resented being called, and to
which he always answered. I never did really know whether he was a
Mormon or not, and never cared; he was a good engineer, that's about all
I cared for. Joe took good care of his engine, wore a clean shirt and
behaved himself--which was doing more than the average engineer at the
front did.
I remember, one night, Jack McCabe--"Whisky Jack," we used to call
him--made some mean remark about the Mormons in general and Joe in
particular, and Joe replied: "I don't propose to defend the Mormon
faith; it's as good as any, to my mind. I don't propose to judge or
misjudge any man by his belief or absence of belief. All that I have got
to say is, that the Mormon religion is a _practical_ religion. They
don't give starving women a tract, or tramps jobs on the stone-pile. The
women get bread, and the tramps work for _pay_. Their faith is based on
the Christian Bible, with a book added--guess they have as big a right
to add or take away as some of the old kings had--bigamy is upheld by
the Bible, but has been dead in Utah, for some years. It can't live for
the young people are against it. In Utah the woman has all the rights a
man has, votes, and is a _person_. (Since cut out of new constitution.)
Before the Gentiles came to Salt Lake, the Mormons had but _one_
policeman, no jail, few saloons, no houses of prostitution--now the
Gentile Christian has sway, and the town is full of them. I guess you
could argue on the quality and quantity of rot-gut whisky a good
engineer ought to drink, better than on theology, anyhow."