These Mormons are in the main an industrious, frugal, hard-working
people. Few of them are habitual idlers; few live by professions or
pursuits that require no physical exertion. They make work for but few
lawyers—I know but four among them—their differences and disputes are
usually settled in and by the church; they have no female outcasts, few
doctors, and pay no salaries to their preachers—at least, the leaders
say so. But a small portion of them use tea and coffee. Formerly they
drank little or no liquor; but, since the army came in last year, money
and whisky have both been more abundant, and now they drink
considerably. More than a thousand barrels of whisky have been sold in
this city within the last year, at an average of not less than eight
dollars per gallon, making the total cost to consumers over two hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, whereof the Mormons have paid at least half.
If they had thrown instead, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in
hard cash into the deepest part of Salt Lake, it would have been far
better for them. The appetite they are acquiring or renewing will cling
to them after the army and its influx of cash shall have departed; and
Saints who now drink a little will find themselves as thirsty as their
valley, before they suspect that they care anything for liquor. As yet,
I believe, they have few or no drunkards; but there is nothing more
deceitful than the appetite for liquor. Utah has not a single export of
any kind; the army now supplies her with cash; when that is gone, her
people will see harder times. She ought to manufacture almost everything
she consumes, or foreign debt will overwhelm her. Yet, up to this hour,
her manufacturing energies have been most unhappily directed. Some two
hundred thousand dollars was expended in preparations for iron making at
a place called Cedar City; but the ore, though rich, would not flux, and
the enterprise had to be totally abandoned, leaving the capital a dead
loss. Wood and flax can be grown here cheaply and abundantly; yet, owing
to the troubles last year, no spinning and weaving machinery has yet
been put in operation; I believe some is now coming up from St. Louis.
An attempt to grow cotton is likely to prove a failure, as might have
been predicted. The winters are long and cold here for the latitude, and
the Saints must make cloth or shiver. I trust they will soon be able to
clothe themselves.
Sugar is another necessary of life which they have had bad luck with.
They can grow the beet very well, but it is said to yield little or no
sugar—because, it is supposed, of an excess of alkali in the soil. The
sorghum has not yet been turned to much account, but it is to be. Common
brown sugar sells here at sixty cents per pound; coffee about the same;
in the newer settlements, they are of course still higher. All sorts of
imported goods cost twice to six or eight times their prices in the
states; even quack medicines (so called) and yellow-covered novels are
sold at double the prices borne on their labels or covers. Consider that
the people came hither over a thousand miles mainly of desert, after
reaching the Missouri, which was many hundreds if not thousands of miles
from their former homes—that they generally reached these valleys in the
fall, which afforded them excellent chances of starvation before they
could raise a crop—that they have been constantly infested and begged or
stolen from by the Indians whose game they killed or scared away, and
who feel that they have a right to live here so long as there are cattle
or crops to live on—that these valleys are lofty, narrow, and parched by
intense drouth from May to November—that implements and seeds are
scarcely to be obtained short of a three months’ journey, and then at an
enormous cost—that they have had one year of virtual and costly
hostilities with the federal government, in which very little could be
done, and improvement was out of the question—and I am amazed that so
much has been well done here in the way of building, tilling, fencing,
planting trees, etc. Doubtless this city is far ahead of any rival,
being the spiritual metropolis and the earliest settled; but I am
assured that the valley of Utah Lake is better cultivated than this,
though Provo, its county seat, is far behind this city, which, with its
broad, regular streets, refreshed by rivulets of bright, sparkling,
dancing water, and shaded by rows of young but thrifty trees, mainly
locust and bitter cotton-wood, is already more attractive to the eye
than an average city of like size in the states. The houses (of _adobe_
or merely sun-dried brick) are uniformly low and generally too small;
but there is seldom more than one family to a dwelling, and rarely but
one dwelling on a lot of an acre and a quarter. The gardens are well
filled with peach, apple, and other fruit-trees, whereof the peach
already bears profusely, and the others begin to follow the example.
Apricots and grapes are grown, though not yet abundant; so of
strawberries. Plums are in profusion, and the mountain currants are
large, abundant and very good. Many of the lots are fenced with
cobble-stones laid in clay mortar, which seems to stand very well. The
wall of Brigham Young’s garden and grounds is nine or ten feet high,
three feet thick at the base, and cost some sixty dollars per rod.
Undoubtedly, this people are steadily increasing in wealth and comfort.
Still the average life in Utah is a hard one. Many more days’ faithful
labor are required to support a family here than in Kansas, or in any of
the states. The climate is severe and capricious—now intensely hot and
dry; in winter cold and stormy; and, though cattle are usually allowed
to shirk for themselves in the valleys, they are apt to resent the
insult by dying. Crickets and grasshoppers swarm in myriads, and often
devour all before them. Wood is scarce and poor. Irrigation is laborious
and expensive; as yet, it has not been found practicable to irrigate
one-fourth of the arable land at all. Ultimately, the valleys will be
generally irrigated, so far as water for the purpose can be obtained;
but this will require very costly dams and canals. Frost is very
destructive here; Indian corn rarely escapes it wholly, and wheat often
suffers from it. Wheat, oats, corn, barley, rye, are grown at about
equal cost per bushel—two dollars may be taken as their average price;
the wheat crop is usually heavy, though this year it threatens to be
relatively light. I estimate that one hundred and fifty days’ faithful
labor in Kansas will produce as large an aggregate of the necessaries of
life—food, clothing, fuel—as three hundred just such days’ work in Utah.
Hence, the adults here generally wear a toil-worn, anxious look, and
many of them are older in frame than in years. I ardently hope it may
not always be thus.