Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1897-07-18
UTAH's GOLDEN JUBILEE.
Mormons Have Occupied the "Promised Land" Fifty Years.
Extraordinary Prosperity of saas Lake City and It's Causes-SOrne Parallels with Israelitish
 Experiences.
TCopyright. 1S97.1

Copyright, 1S971
 Salt Lake City.-The new state of Utah begins we'll, with the golden jubilee celebration of the fiftieth anni- versary of the arrival of the church of the Latter Day Saints in the Promised Land.
 So far as material prosperity goes. no community in the far west has so much cause for satisfaction as Utah. It's founders began right-with irrigation. It took other sections Of arid America 20, 30 or 40 years to learn that rain is poor substitute for ditch water; in some places the lesson is not vet learned. Utah has lived by ir1igar ton from the first.
 It is 70 years since the Book of Nor mon, engraved on thin metal plates held together at one edge by three rings, was, according to the legend im plicitly believed by the church, placed in Joseph Smiths hands by the Lords angel The plates were engraved in an unknown tongue. No one professes to have seen them within the last 60 years. Anti-Mormons claim that there never were any plates; that the book was really a romance, written by preacher named Spaulding, who died in 1916. Certain it is that when Smith translated the book. he sat behind blanket hung across the room to hide the plates from prying eyes, his sec retary taking down the words outside the screen. The Book of Mormon thus o4 1o;, 4a EoI ha place of the Bible. It is received as an additional revelation. being in that re- spect like the Koran.
 The parallel the Mormons are able to draw between their experiences and those of the Israeites in their wander ings is certainly curious. They suf- fered in Egyptian bondage, as they termed the abuse and mobbings they met in the east. They were driven from Manchester, N. H., 10 kirtland. O., in 1881; to Missouri in the same year, whither those remaining in Kirt- land followed in 1887; to Illinois in 1898; and after Smiths death and the elec- tion of Brigham Young to succeed him, to Iowa in 1846, and 10 Utah in l847, Brigham Young and the main body of the colonists reaching their haven on July 24 Thus ended their long wander ing in the wilderness.
 But the parallel continued. The great Salt lake was likened to the Dead sea, Utah lake to the Lake of Fiberias. and the stream connecting them to the Jordan. Mormon maps have often been published showing the Jordan and Dead sea side by side with Great Salt lake and it's tributary, the remarkable like ness between them exaggerated to an almost exact resemblance. As a matter of fact, the Great Salt lake is larger body of water than the Dead sea, while the connecting river is shorter in pro portion, wider and more irregular in form It is probable that Brigham Young, in selecting the Utah site was influenced almost as much by these ac- cidental resemblances as by the abun- dance of water obtainable for irriga- tion.
 Utah is perhaps the most uniformly prosperous community in the world It's people-the Mormon people-are nearly all of English, German or Swedish blood They were ideal eolonists be- cause they had the virtue of obedience. The heads of the church could at any time order a man to remove his home and begin cultivation of a new tract in the desert; but the bishops saw to it that no one starved meanwhile. The city itself is a splendid example of what can be done by a certain intelli- gence working upon a willing people. The wide, clean streets, the streamlets of running water, the shade trees, the absence of drunkenness or the graver forms of vice or poverty, the total lack of slpms, are all peculiarities to which the Mormons will refer with pride dur ing the anniversary week, and that never fail to impress the visitor from older civilizations.
 Compared with Nevada and other dry states, the growth of Utah has been remarkable. The present population is estimated at 300,00 It was POT ,000 in 1890, 143,0oo in 1880. In 1870 it was 86, GOO, and already more than enough to have secured Utah's admission as a state, but for polygamy. This, it is said, has now practically disappeared, yielding in part to the desire for state hood, but quite as much to the ineyi- table growth of discontent with a 'creed outworn" among the most in telligent Mormons. It is very easy to renounce polygamy while retaining Mormonism by simply joining the sect of the Josephites, founded by Emma Smith, widow of the prophet; for they declare with truth that polggamy was not commanded in the Book of Mormon, and repudiated the later revelation which grafted it upon the church.
 One secret of the material prosperity