The Church's personal property was restored by an Act of Congress approved October 25, 1893, but it was stipulated in the Act that the money was not to be used for the support of any church buildings in which "the rightfulness of the practice of polygamy" should be taught. Similarly, when the Enabling Act was approved, in July 16, 1894, it, too, provided that "polygamous or plural marriage" was forever prohibited. A constitutional convention was held at Salt Lake City under the provisions of that act, and a constitution was adopted in which it was provided that "polygamous or plural marriages" were forever prohibited, that the territorial laws against polygamy were to be continued in force, that there should be "no union of church and state," and that no church should "dominate the state or interfere with its functions." Upon no other basis would the nation have granted us our statehood; and we accepted the grant, knowing the expressed condition involved in that acceptance. But there was one other gift that came to us from the nation--by Congressional enactment and later by Utah statute as a consequence of statehood; and that gift was the legitimizing of every child born of plural marriage before January, 1896. The solemn benignity of the concession touched me, as it must have touched many, to the very heart of gratitude. By it, ten thousand children were taken from the outer darkness of this world's conventional exclusion and placed within the honored relations of mankind. It was a tribute to the purity and sincerity of the Mormon women who had borne the cross of plural marriage, believing that God had commanded their suffering. It recognized the holy nature and honorable intent of the marriages of these women, by according their children every right of legal inheritance from their fathers. If all other covenants could be forgotten and their proof obliterated, this should remain as Utah's pledge of honor--sacred for the sake of the Mormon mothers, holy in the name of the uplifted child. Chapter VI. The Goal--And After Here we were then (as I saw the situation) assured of our statehood, rid of polygamy, relieved of religious control in politics, and free to devote our energies to the development of the land and the industries and the business of the community. The persecutions that our people had borne had schooled them to co-operation. They were ready, helping one another, to advance together to a common prosperity. They were under the leadership chiefly of the man who had guided them out of a most desperate condition of oppression toward the freedom of sovereign self-government. In that progress he had saved everything that was worthy in the Mormon communism; he had discarded much that was a curse. I knew that he had no thought but for the welfare of the people; and with such a man, leading such a following, we seemed certain of a future that should be an example to the world.