The object in starting these publications was to disabuse the public mind, then fast being prejudiced against the Church by the tongue of slander. When the Saints disappeared in the great western wilderness of America there were a variety of opinions as to what would be their fate. Few, however, thought they would survive the terrible ordeal through which they passed in their expulsion from the United States and the subsequent perils and hardships of the great desert. But when the miracle of their preservation was forced upon their attention, and not only their preservation, but the fact, also, that they were more numerous and in possession of more power than when driven from Nauvoo--when it was known that they had laid the foundation of a commonwealth which was soon to be knocking at the gate of the capital for admission into the Union as a sovereign state--when all this was known, their enemies, who flattered themselves that they had seen the last of the hated Mormons, suddenly aroused themselves for a renewal of the suspended conflict. Meantime the Church had publicly announced as a principle of its faith the doctrine of celestial marriage, including as it does, a plurality of wives. No sooner was the announcement made than misrepresentation distorted this doctrine into everything that was vile and impure. The old stories of licentious practices among the Saints in Nauvoo, fulminated by John C. Bennett and other apostates--but which had no existence except as these same apostates and a few other corrupt men practiced them, and for which they were expelled from the Church--were revived and believed with avidity by a credulous public, until Utah was looked upon as a hot-bed of impurity, and the Mormon religion as a veil under which was hidden all the ungodliness of man's baser and degrading passions. It was to stem the constantly increasing tide of prejudice, set in motion by this flood of falsehood, that the movement by the Church to establish publications in the cities I have named, was made. It was a difficult task that had been assigned Elder Taylor. Both the pulpit and the press were against him; and there could be no question as to what course political parties would take respecting the question. What the populace condemned, they would condemn. Besides, he found himself cramped financially for such an enterprise. The Church in Utah was unable to furnish the necessary means. The people there were having a severe struggle for existence with the unpropitious elements of the wilderness, and money there was none, or, at least, very little.