Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1871-08-15
The Mormon Experiment.


Mormon line. The Apostates, as the
Saints call them, have beautiful hall
and are organizing an opposition to
Brigham's despotism in rapid and
effective way. The opposition be.
gan as protest against exorbitant
taxation but the charmed circle OF
the Prophets authority broken in
one place, snaps in fifty others, and
goes TO pieces forever. The first Sun
day in July there was meeting of
the Liberals at which Susan b. An
thony prophesied as she was moved,
in true Quaker fashion, saying things
which less brave and impulsive soul
would not have dared to utter thea
and there, and beautiful women wept
aud men ached to applaud by shout
ing. The women held q meeting ] u
ly 9Th, and organized an Improve
ment Society looking directly toward
emancipation, and all that lies be-
yond it.
Which is as it should be. Mormon
ism must be reformed from within,
by the Mormons themselves. The
system has proved as injurious, tho
less Immediately crushing, to men
as to women; and the awakening
reason and conscience of the people
will do for them what no Congress-
ional enactment enforced by the
whole military power of the nation
could possibly accomplish. There
are some things in this world that
can be let alone with impunity to
demonstrate their own absurdity and
madness; and polygamy is one of
them. The Mormons have tried the
experiment on large scale and un-
der favorable circumstances and
the result is chaos at one end ofthelr
community, and cemetery at the
other. Polygamy was undoubtedly
an advance on the lawlessness and
promiscuosity Of the earliest ages it
was an attempt at order, long step
toward the moDogamic ideal which
no human society has yet complete
y realized But to revive that insti-
tuition in our age is to reproduce the
customs Of a lower social and polite
al order, and re-enact the barbarism
from which we have emerged.
Monogomy is as yet an unrealized
ideal. The Mormon points to our
great cities fostering with vice and
blotched with disease, to our courts
with their disgusting trials and APP
peals for divorce, and exclaims, "That
is what your virtue eliminates in,
what your civilization amounts to.
We abolish the crimes that paralyze
your society and make your religion
laughing stock" Yes; polygamy
abolishes the crime by legalizing it,
and babtizing it with an other name.
That is all. 1t solves no problem
ltsettles no difficulty. For every
evil that it removes it invites TWEEN
ty that are far worse. The solution
of our social evils does not lie in that
direction. An individual may steal
a little now and then, perhaps, with
out detection, and certainly without
turning society upside down but to
organize society on thieving, to pro-
tect larceny by law, and make high
way robbery Legitimate pursuit in
which citizens may engage at will, is
to cut the hoops which hold the YES
SCI of society together, and spill what
is most precious in is contents. The
Mormons have tried the experiment
of building a society on an idea, an
ethic of lower order of civilization
and the result demonstrates the inn
possibility of taking one element Of
q barbaric type of social existence
without also taking the other ele>
ments that are logically and vitality
connected with it. 1t demonstrates
that lust is not the basis but the bane
of civil society, and that the social
evils from which every community
suffers can be eradicated by no back
ward slide, but only by forward
leap. They are incidents to yet
undeveloped humanity, the residuum
Of barbaric stages Of society, which
arc to be outgrown and sloughed off
by slow degrees as society advances
in true civilization, and man realizes
bis ideal in his relations and charac>
ter Golden Age.