This was polygamy without the great saving grace that had previously defended the Mormon women from the cruelties and abuses of the practice. It was polygamy without honor--polygamy against an assumed revelation of God instead of by virtue of one--polygamy worse than that of the Mohammedans, since it was necessarily clandestine, could claim no social respect or acceptance, and was forbidden "by the laws of God and man" alike. This is the "new polygamy" of Mormonism. The Church leaders dare not acknowledge it for fear of the national consequences. They dare not even secretly issue certificates of plural marriage, lest the record should be betrayed. They protect the polygamist by a conspiracy of falsehood that is almost as shameful as the shame it seeks to cover; and the infection of the duplicity spreads like a plague to corrupt the whole social life of the people. The wife of a new polygamist cannot claim a husband; she has no social status; she cannot, even to her parents, prove the religious sanction for her marital relations. Her children are taught that they must not use a father's name. They are hopelessly outside the law--without the possibility that any further statutes of legitimization will be enacted for their relief. They are born in falsehood and bred to the living of a lie. Their father cannot claim the authority of the Church for their parentage, for he must protect his Prophet. He cannot even publicly acknowledge them--any more than he can publicly acknowledge their mother. Out of these terrible conditions comes such an instance as the notorious case of one of Henry S. Tanner's wives, who went on a visit to one of her relatives, with her children, and denied that they were her children, and denied that she was married--and was supported by her children's denial that she was their mother. Similarly, a plural wife of a wealthy Mormon, whose fortune is estimated at $25,000,000--a partner of the sugar trust, a community leader, a favorite of the Church went before the Senate Committee in December, 1904, and swore that her first husband had died thirteen years before, that she had had a child within six years, and that she had no second husband. And by doing so she not only marked the child as illegitimate beyond the relief of any future statutes--legitimizing the offspring of polygamous marriages, but she left herself and the child without any claim upon the estate of its father and publicly swore herself a social outcast before a committee of the United States Senate, and perjured herself--to the knowledge of all her friends and acquaintances in Utah--for the protection of her husband and her Church. What can one say of a man who will permit a woman to commit such an act of social suicide for him--or of a Church that will command it?