The power of the Church is also brought to bear on all the daily business of life. In the mining districts of Southern Utah, the contractors for furnishing salt, wood, charcoal, etc., are all Mormon bishops. They hire the persons under them at starvation prices, and pay them in orders on the co-operative supply stores, in which they are either principals or partners; and the men so employed never see a dollar of cash. Should one of the common people undertake to do any hauling, wood-supplying, or other business with the mines, they would get an intimation that they must desist. If this hint is disregarded, a meeting of the Council is called, composed of the bishops and apostles; and as it is shown that some one of them is being interfered with, the order goes forth from the Church that this private enterprise must stop; and this no Mormon dare disregard. If one of the mining companies undertakes to do its business with any except the bishops, every obstacle possible is thrown in its way. Teams cannot be hired. The bishop pays wages at about a dollar a day, payable from the co-operative store; but if a mining superintendent wants men, he must pay four dollars a day. Thus the Mormon bishops secure all the profits of contracts from the mines. They take possession of all the woodlands and cut off the wood, never taking the trouble to comply with the law. They rule everything with a heavy hand, and woe to the poor man who dares to try to make his living independently. The serfs of Russia in the olden time were not more abject slaves than these people under the terrible power of the Church. Independence of action is entirely taken away from them. They are in _personal bondage_. Well may we exclaim: "Genius of America! Spirit of our free institutions! where art thou?" "Shall our own brethren drag the chain Which not even Russia's menials wear?" But this is not all. II. The Mormons are not only in personal bondage, but worse than that--they are in MENTAL BONDAGE. Such tyranny as has been already alluded to is possible only because Ignorance and her handmaid, Superstition, are throwing their dark pall over the mass of the Mormon people. Mormonism grows mainly by imposition upon the ignorant and the credulous. Joseph Smith, its founder, was illiterate, and so was Brigham Young; and the mass of Mormons from the beginning were from a class of people whose education was very limited. Such also is the character of their converts now. They are gathered from the very lowest classes of the peasantry of England, Germany, and Scandinavia; and in our land the poor rural element of the Southern States, commonly called the "cracker" element, is a favorite and successful field for Mormon missionary labor, because the elders find as much ignorance and credulity among the poor whites of Tennessee, Georgia, and neighboring States, as they do among the low classes of Europe.