62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



been trying it for twenty-five years. The results of that quar- 

 ter of a century of labor are worthy of the study of every man 

 in this country. 



In order to understand the exact conditions of that exper- 

 iment, it is necessary to say a little of the people and something 

 of the country as they found it ; and then to speak of the 

 results of their industry. I speak of their work as an exper- 

 iment, a wonderful one, and one from which we can learn 

 much, because it has been tried so far from all other commu- 

 nities that its results can be exactly ascertained. The work that 

 has been going on in Salt Lake Valley, and throughout the val- 

 leys of Utah, has not been affected, and cannot be affected, by 

 any work done in the Eastern States, nor by any done in 

 California. It stands by itself. Therefore, all those peculiar 

 changes of which I thill speak to-night, you will understand 

 are the result of the work of the Mormons within that fine belt 

 of mountains, the grand Wahsatch, that surrounds the valley. 



We are to remember, also, that the people are not, as a 

 whole, the best kind to try an experiment. The Mormon 

 religion is of such a nature, that it would be impossible for a 

 Mormon to come into Fall River, or into Boston or New York, 

 and collect a great number of followers. It is so peculiar, that 

 it requires a particular class of minds to receive it, and there- 

 fore they find only here and there one, all over the world, who 

 will receive it. But their system is such that when they do 

 find one, in England, in Scotland, in Wales, in Denmark, in 

 Norway, in Sweden, or in any other portion of the world, who 

 receives that religion, they bring him over, if he desires to 

 come, to Utah, — to Salt Lake City, — to the " Zion " of the " Lat- 

 ter-day Saints." Therefore the Mormons are a people who 

 have been gathered out of many nations, and are in every sense 

 of the word a peculiar people. And especially so in this, — 

 I do not speak of it as a matter of disparagement at all, — that 

 the mass of them have been gathered from the lower ranks of 

 society. There you have a hundred thousand people brought 

 together from different portions of the world ; brought together 

 from the lower ranks ; many of them poor, ignorant, coming 

 there in great poverty, and comm3ncing that experiment under, 

 you might say, the most adverse circumstances. We are to 

 remember all this in considering the results of that experiment. 



