Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the MormonsRobinson, Phil
General
Sinners and Saints: A Tour Across the States and Round Them, with Three Months Among the Mormons
Robinson, Phil
Latter Day Saint churches; Utah -- Description and travel; West (U.S.) -- Description and travel
My host was a good illustration of what Mormonism can do for a man. In
Yorkshire he was employed in a slaughtering-yard, and thought himself
lucky if he earned twelve shillings a week. The Mormons found him,
"converted" him, and emigrated him. He landed in Utah without a cent
in his pocket, and in debt to the Church besides. But he found every
one ready to help him, and was ready to help himself, so that to-day
he is one of the most substantial men in Nephi, with a mill that cost
him $10,000 to put up, a shop and a farm, a house and orchard and
stock. His family, four daughters and a son, are all settled round him
and thriving, thanks to the aid he gave them--"but," said he, "if the
Mormons had not found me, I should still have been slaughtering in the
old country, and glad, likely, to be still earning my twelve shillings
a week." Another instance from the same settlement is that of a boy
who, five years ago, was brought out here at the age of sixteen. His
emigration was entirely paid for by the Church. Yet last year he sent
home from his own pocket the necessary funds to bring out his mother
and four brothers and sisters! God speed these Mormons, then. They
are doing both "the old country and the new" an immense good in thus
transforming English paupers into American farmers--and thus exchanging
the vices and squalor of English poverty for the temperance, piety, and
comfort of these Utah homesteads. I am not blind to their faults. My
aversion to polygamy is sincere, and I find also that the Mormons must
share with all agricultural communities the blame of not sacrificing
more of their own present prospects for the sake of their children's
future, and neglecting their education, both in school and at home. But
when I remember what classes of people these men and women are chiefly
drawn from, and the utter poverty in which most of them I cannot, in
sincerity, do otherwise than admire and respect the system which has
fused such unpromising material of so many nationalities into one
homogeneous whole.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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