Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1905-04-15

dnedu Ol us, DuI lie uOeS uOI appear
to have very clear ideas about mat
ters and things of our own day. l
don't like to mingle in matters re-
lgious; | don't like to criticise people
who are designated as agents and min
listers of the Almighty, because having
an extremely comforting religion of
my own | am so happy in it that l
have net time to rant at others. But
if / am anything | am a newspaper
man. For nearly quarter of a cen.
fury | have devoted the best hours of
my life toward making newspapers
Hence | cannot refrain from rising up
and resenting the statements made at
the last conference by Apostle Smith
wherein he places the responsibility
for the killing of Lincoln, Garfield AMI
Mckinley on the shoulders of the ed
itors of the country, on the cartoonists
and other attaches of the press.
~ ~
The immortal Lincoln was assassin
ated by John Wilkes Booth, an actor,
whose sympathies were with the
cause of the south. Booth was an
erratic character and by his intimate
| friends was regarded as not exactly
right in the head. He slew Lincoln
because he had an insane notion that
| it was right. His last words were:
Tell mother | died for my country;
thought did it for the best" Barnes,
who wrote the text books of history
| for the common schools when | was a
| lad, declares Booth was insane. Other
eminent historians take the same
ground. Booth had an idea the kill
;,,,x - \ ,n1rA H.
that would enable the south to renew
! its fight, but God reigned and the
government at Washington lived on"
There was absolutely nothing in the
Staying of Lincoln that can be by the
most vivid imagination twisted into
| a condition such as is alleged by
Prophet Smith. Garfield fell at the
hands of crazy cuss whose brain
was turned because he was denied
office. Guiteau was a crank. He had
no wrongs to tight save his own. His
mind was not inflamed by newspaper
| publications, but was in an unsettled
| state because he had brooded over a
| fancied wrong until he thought it was
a just cause. Serious doubts have ex-
| listed in the minds of many men as to
the rightfulness of hanging him. He
was undoubtedly sort of lunatic and
| there is grave idea that he was not
morally responsible. The lamented
Mckinley fell at the hands of a man
who was an anarchist man who had
been trained in school of anarchism;
who believed in the abolition of all
| forms of government. His mind was
not inflamed by newspaper publica.
tons, nor wrought up by cartoons.
AS matter of fact a cartoon never
caused a man to Stay. People never
kill the victims of cartoons; they
either laugh at or pity them Nor
had Czolgosz been brought to a state
where murder became as he thought,
necessary through reading the papers
Whatever may be said of the press of
the country, it is nothing if not ratri-
otto. The assassin got his ideas from
foreign agitators and not from the
press.
To my mind Apostle Hyrum Smith
was, at the conference, in the position
of fathers old gun: Went off half
cooked" | commend to him a line in
my old copy book: IF anything
strikes you as being particularly
smart; don't do it," Because Apostle
Smith made a monkey of himself by
his assertions. Prior to that time |
had presumed him RI ha a mon of