The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1885-06-07
TOURIST CORRESPONDENTS.


The tourist visitors at present in the
city number between $50 and 800. and
from now until the cold weather re-
turns there will be no fewer than 200
strangers in town, while at times there
will be as many as 1000. Most of these
travellers belong to the educated. we'll
TODD classes; they come from every
State and city of the Union, and from
the countries of the Old World; they
are moving about for rest. pleasure and
sightseeing. very few of them having
more weighty affairs on their hands
than observation and enjoyment. On
all trains that come, in every party tina.
arrives, be it large or small, there are
editors, special correspondents or people
who write for their home papers;
to all who hold commissions to write
and to others who write for pleasure,
Utah furnishes material for one or
more letters. 1t is these letters that
largely make up the mass of CORES
pondence from Utah that we find in the
press of the country. The character of
much of this correspondence is pc
culiar; most Of the letters are made
up largely from rot" which the guilt
BILE writers have imbibed while drifting
about town under the guidance of
sar,a fr,rfb aoopor1izi,,o baol-p,,r, ,rbo
delights in the imaginative and sensa-
tional; or the facts are gathered
from some wag lounger about the
hotels who knows how to make him
self interesting to strangers seeking in
formation concerning the Mormons. In
many of these letters the tongues of the
hack-driver and of the maliciously
humorous hotel loafer are distinguished
from first to last; in others the vicious
ness of the vile and wicked who make
it their business to poison and inflame
the public mind against Utah is appar-
ent. One can frequently tell from
reading the letter, though no names
are mentioned, just where the writer
obtained his information, and from
whom he imbibed is inspiration.
The tourist correspondents will do
Observation-Disclosures the people of Utah
justice if they will write home only
facts, telling of things as they find
them, and not as they imagine they
should be. If they find in Salt Lake
community of men, women and
children comparing favorably with
other American communities in the
matters of intelligence, education, ap-
pearance and enterprise, it will only be
fair and just to say SO. instead of say
ing that the women look shaggard,
heart-broken and discontinued, the
men appear sensual and brutal and the
children sickly and degenerate; if they
are received courteously and people show
them the respect that the tourist and
stranger ever command in this city,
is it asking more than should be readily
conceded that the fact be stated? 1t is
also suggested that a sojourn of twenty
four or forty-eight hours in Salt Lake
will hardly enable one to write intel
ligently Of people and their institu-
tons, though books have been written
about Utah and its peculiar commu-
nifty by persons whose residence in this
Territory has been limited to a few
hours.
! We do not believe a major
ity of the men and women
travellers who write from here are
vicious at heart or disposed to willfulIy
misrepresent the people. with the view
to the latter's injury, though it must be
confessed that the larger proportion of
the correspondence by them. in view of
the truth, gives the impression that the
writers are malicious. They have
simply allowed hemselves-willingl
too often-to be imposed upon and de-
ceived, and thus become the dupes and
tools of the wicked and malignant. All
that The HERALD asks of these writers
is that they be fair and truthful with
Utah as they would be with another
Territory or State; that they will be
honest in their correspondence, and tell
OF what they see and learn, and not what
they imagine or hear from persons
whose mission it is to deceive and
SANDER.
An APPLICATION for pension hav-
ing been made by a man, who
originally enlisted in the Union
army, but on beng taken prisoner