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
The result is that there are no pauper Mormons, for there are no idle
ones. In the daytime there are no loafers in the streets, for every man
is afield or at his work, and soon after nine at night the whole city
seems to be gone to bed. A few strangers of course are hanging about
the saloon doors, but the pervading stillness and the emptiness of the
streets is dispiriting to rowdyism, and so the Gentile damns the place
as being "dull." But the truth is that the Mormons are too busy during
the day for idleness to find companionship at night, and too sober in
their pleasures for gaslight vices to attract them.
As a natural corollary to this life of hard work, it follows that the
Mormons are in a large measure indifferent to the affairs of the world
outside themselves. Minding their own business keeps them from meddling
with that of others. They are, indeed, taught this from the pulpit.
For it is the regular formula of the Tabernacle that the people should
go about their daily work, attend to that, and leave everything else
alone. They are never to forget that they are "building up Zion," that
their day is coming in good time, but that meanwhile they must work
"and never bother about what other people may be doing." In this way
Salt Lake City has become a City of Two Peoples, and though Mormon and
Gentile may be stirred up together sometimes, they do not mingle any
more than oil and water.
There are no paupers among the Mormons, and 95 per cent of them live in
their own houses on their own land; there is no "caste" of priesthood,
such as the world supposes, inasmuch as every intelligent man is a
priest, and liable at any moment to be called upon to undertake the
duties of the priests of other churches--but without any pay.
Last winter there was a census taken of the Utah Penitentiary and the
Salt Lake City and county prisons with the following result:--In Salt
Lake City there are about 75 Mormons to 25 non-Mormons: in Salt Lake
county there are about 80 Mormons to 20 non-Mormons. Yet in the city
prison there were 29 convicts, all non-Mormons; in the county prison
there were 6 convicts all non-Mormons. The jailer stated that the
county convicts for the five years past were all anti-Mormons except
three!
In Utah the proportion of Mormons to all others is as 83 to 17. In the
Utah Penitentiary at the date of the census there were 51 prisoners,
only 5 of whom were Mormons, and 2 of the 5 were in prison for
polygamy, so that the 17 per cent "outsiders" had 46 convicts in the
penitentiary, while the 83 per cent. Mormons had but 5!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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