484 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



B is a man of uncommonly fine business abilities, and would any- 

 where in the States have long since been a millionaire. He has had 

 five wives, and reared twenty children, besides having lost some by 

 death. Five times in his life (so he tells me) he has had a good start ; 

 now he is practically without means, the rent of his real estate being 

 consumed in the payment of debts incurred in caring for his family. 

 For years at a time he was never without one or more children sick, 

 and has been literally compelled to repudiate one of his wives, who is 

 supported by her son. Two others have died, and by the most heroic 

 exertions he is barely able to provide for the other two and their 

 seven children, who are still too young to assist. 



C holds a very high position in the Mormon Church, and two civil 

 offices, all with good salaries and fine opportunities. In the early 

 days, when the Church ruled everything, the Mormon Legislature 

 made large grants to him of pasture-lands, timber-lands, and water- 

 privileges, to all of which he enjoyed the exclusive right for twenty 

 years. He has had six or seven wives, and children in proportion. 

 Of several fine pieces of property he owns most are mortgaged to 

 their full value, and he is often cruelly embarrassed for money. With 

 such opportunities he should now have been ready to retire with a 

 fortune. 



D is an apostle with five wives and a good family to each. Hav- 

 ing always been more a missionary than trader, he is now actually 

 an object of charity. It is openly charged, and not very strenuoiisly 

 denied, that one of his wives died of want ; all the others either sup- 

 port themselves or are supported by their children, the old gentleman 

 not being able to support even one family. So runs the list. Even 

 Brigham Young, with all his opportunities, cannot be considered very 

 wealthy. He has repeatedly sworn in his entire property at less than 

 half a million, and in his " answer " to the suit of Ann Eliza he put 

 it at $600,000. I should not call that great wealth, for a man with a 

 hundred and twenty children, grandchildren, and sons-in-law, hanging 

 on his financial skirts. The assessed wealth of Utah does not ex- 

 ceed $28,000,000, of which it is known that the Gentile minority owns 

 about one-half. This would leave the 90,000 Mormons no more 

 than $140 each, a lower average, I believe, than in any other part of 

 the United States. The question might well be raised in Congress, 

 whether polygamy did not bring its own punishment to the men ; and, 

 if their case alone was to be considered, we might appropriately let 

 it alone. An old lawyer who attends to much of their business gives 

 me his opinion that in ten years nearly all the leading Mormons will 

 be bankrupt. 



Another peculiar effect of polygamy I advance, with the sugges- 

 tion that it may be due somewhat to other causes. As families in- 

 crease so rapidly in size, amounting in some instances within my 

 knowledge to fifty children of one man, there must be a vast increase 



