As a Social System. The Third Wife. Children in the Cemetery. The women who will write theological treatises in the twentieth century, will probably explain its horrid advent into this world as being consequent upon the first assumption by man of authority over the mate or comrade who, though weaker than himself in body, was stronger in soul. But America need not go so far for illustrations.
Turkey is in our midst.
If ever the incalculable mischief of excluding women from direct participation in Government had an illustration so conspicuous as to silence the blindest conservative, it is afforded by the dalliance of Congress with polygamous Delegate Cannon and his unclean constituency. I have read its pages with thoughts too deep tears. Some sulphur-shrouded planet may have a vocabulary fiendish enough to fitly characterize what they reveal, but mere English is only the vocabulary of a prating parrot in presence of such pathos and such woe. There is something chivalric as the knights of old in the Author's defense of Mormon women from the harsh criticisms made by the uninformed upon their course in submitting to this most awful form of tyranny. The fact that Emma Smith, the first wife of Joseph, so trained her sons they reorganized the church, and their branch prohibited polygamy, shows that the one woman who had power in this subtle hierarchy was swift to use it for a righteous end.