"I apprehend that the animosity of Mormonism is principally due to the efforts of the host of hungry office-seekers who would find lucrative posts in Utah were the Mormons disfranchised, and by the missionaries from the Eastern States who come to turn the Mormons from the error of their ways, and whose income depends on the strength of the feelings they can excite in their supporters. Utah is still a Territory, and, as such, its Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and Marshal, and other officials of the Federal Government, are nominated by the President of the United States, and are of course non-Mormons; but the municipal and other local officials are elected by the Mormons. If the Mormons could be disfranchised in a body, 500 lucrative posts in Utah would be open to Gentile office-seekers. According to the legislature which might be adopted, the offices would be filled {177} either by the President of the United States or by the small minority of Gentiles in Utah." MORMONS WRONGED BY A SENSATIONAL PRESS. 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.