menace 



The Days of a Man Cisso 



A great drainage of Lake Bonneville used to run. Utah 

 sucker Lake, at the head of the Jordan flowing in from 

 the south, is full of fine trout, and my Mormon 

 friends used to claim it as "the greatest sucker 

 pond in the Universe," three large species — - Chas- 

 mistes liorus, Chasmistes fecundus, and Catostomus 

 ardens — swarming there in prodigious numbers. 



The At the time of my visit to Utah there was much 



'mZTf'^ discussion in the East about the "Mormon menace," 

 and many thought polygamy should be "stamped 

 out" by military force. In any nation one may 

 always find intolerant supporters of conventional be- 

 liefs, who would "stamp out" every form of opinion 

 which they have come "to view with alarm." But 

 really serious objection could then be made to 

 certain features of Mormonism; namely, polygamy 

 and autocratic control. The first had already begun 

 to pass; the second, however, was still much in evi- 

 dence. For the theocratic hierarchy of the "Latter- 

 Day Saints," through a system of tithes and by 

 means of its business branch, "Zion Cooperative 

 Mercantile Association," held absolute mastery over 

 all Utah outside Salt Lake and Ogden as well as 

 over much of Idaho and Nevada. Entire control 

 of irrigation and markets lay in the hands of the 

 bishops and elders; a thumb on the irrigating ditch, 

 and the crops perished in the fields! 



While in the territory, therefore, I gave some 

 attention to the special problems of Mormonism, 

 on which subject I prepared an essay read several 

 times publicly but never printed. In it I tried to 

 make clear a number of points, among them the 

 necessity of tolerance. 



n 232 ] 



