BOTH the Herr Director and his wife had a strange desire to see the Mormons. They explained it by saying that besides the Indians whom they had as yet not seen, and the Negroes whom they had seen everywhere, they always thought of the Mormons as most American, that is most unlike other people.

The Rocky Mountains, as I had expected, did not impress them. From the car window they seemed more like elevated plains, with here and there a restless chain of hills in the distance.

“As restless as the American people,” quoth the Herr Director. “Your plains and your mountains seem to be fighting with each other.”

I hoped that the plains would win the fight and pointed out another, more visible struggle—that of man with the desert. I admitted that the Rocky Mountains which he had thus far seen were uninteresting from the scenic standpoint, especially as compared with the beauty of the Alps, those snow-capped mountains with meadows to the timber line, their picturesque villages and herders’ huts all as trim and neat and finished as the carving one buys in Interlaken or Luzerne.

From the human standpoint, the Rockies are infinitely more interesting, for there the elemental struggle is still going on. A giant race is taming tumultuous rivers, and forcing their waters through flumes and tunnels into mighty reservoirs on the mountainsides and in the valleys. No indolent, unaspiring, uninventive, docile people could survive in the Rockies.

In common with many Americans, my guests believed that this matter of irrigation is as easy as turning water from a faucet into a basin; and that all a man has to do is to drop his seed into the ground and watch it grow. I showed them farms, desolate and forbidding, which men had to level or lift, ditch and plow and harrow; a back-breaking, often a heart-breaking task. In such an environment they built shacks which only accentuated the loneliness—where women lived and children were born, where hopes were cherished and God was worshipped.

It was an Old Testament environment, the wilderness. Compared with these pioneers the Israelites had an easy task. They sent spies into the Promised Land where they found and from which they brought back grapes and pomegranates; but to stay in the wilderness, to drive back the drought inch by inch, to kill coyotes and rattlesnakes one by one, to contend with claim jumpers, real estate agents, water right privileges and unscrupulous lawyers, and then raise grapes and pomegranates, families, churches, schools and colleges—that seems to me the greater and more heroic task. And it was done by men with the courage of soldiers and the vision of prophets, who turned that land of drought, alkali and sage-brush into one “flowing with milk and honey.” Because in a certain portion of that desert those who were the pioneers and performed those tasks were Mormons, takes nothing from the glory of the achievement.

As we neared Salt Lake City the Frau Directorin looked into every house, eager to detect the numerous wives whom she expected to see surrounding one man; while the Herr Director marvelled at the beauty of the vast Salt Lake valley which, with its poplars and mountains and its intensively cultivated farms, reminded him of Lombardy, that beautiful stretch of country along the railway from Milan to Boulogna.

Salt Lake City is sufficiently different from other cities we had seen to arouse interest; but as in Rome the Vatican overshadows everything else, so here the Temple and the Tabernacle hold one’s attention, and work upon one’s imagination.

We had scarcely put ourselves to rights in our rooms at the Hotel Utah, as pretentious and comfortable as any in the country, before we were out on the streets, looking for Mormons. There is a fairly defined type and I thought I knew it, for I have lectured before Mormon audiences; but out upon the busy city streets it was quite impossible for me to gratify the curiosity of the Frau Directorin by pointing them out to her. I did tell her that a third of the population was non-Mormon and she looked curiously at two out of every three persons we met without, however, being able to say definitely that she had seen a real, live specimen.

Not wishing to join the crowd of tourists who were taken in relays through the Tabernacle and other buildings open to the curious among the Gentiles, we walked through the park, and stopping before the monument to Joseph Smith I took the opportunity to enlighten my guests upon the history of that singular personality, and the church of which he was the founder.

Evidently my remarks were overheard, and before I realized it I was in a discussion of Mormon doctrines with a woman, a zealous defender of her faith, whose religious zeal shone out of her face, which was homely enough to need this adornment to save it from repulsive ugliness.

Of course she believed implicitly in the Book of Mormon, the plates of which were found, and translated from a language which the best informed philologists have never known to exist; in a God who has body, parts and passions, in spirits which fill Heaven, and clamor to be born onto the Earth, in the baptism for the dead, and in that strange doctrine, that no woman can be saved without being sealed to a man, upon which the practice of polygamy rested.

The Herr Director did not quite understand, and I had to explain each of these dogmas as well as I could, and then the Frau Directorin, not understanding anything, begged to be told about the one thing in which she was primarily interested, their belief in regard to marriage. I asked the lady to explain this doctrine of the Mormons, to which she replied that they are not Mormons, but Latter Day Saints. She was indeed a saint, for she was not offended by our curiosity, nor the lack of seriousness with which we were discussing the subject.

She addressed the Frau Directorin: “You are married to your husband.” The Frau Directorin understood and nodded comprehendingly; “but,” the saint continued, “you are married to him only for time.”

“No, no, not for a time, not for a time!” the Frau Directorin cried, clinging to her husband, who had jokingly threatened that when they reached Utah he would improve the occasion and double his blessings.

“You could not be married to him any other way unless you are sealed according to our rites; we alone marry for eternity.”

“Oh!” said the facetious Herr Director, “you believe in eternal punishment.” When I translated that to the Frau Directorin she slapped him playfully.

He asked our guide how many wives he could marry if he became a Latter Day Saint and she said there would be no limit to the wives he could have sealed to him; but according to the latest ruling of the church and in conformity with the laws of the United States, only one to live with here upon the earth; so he decided to “bear the ills he had,” and not “fly to others that he knew not of.”

The saint could not have expected her teaching to take root in soil so shallow, but she determined to sow a few more seeds, and showed us the interior of the Tabernacle with its “largest organ in the world and its perfect acoustics.” The Frau Directorin tried her charming voice and sang, much to the delight of the saint, who confessed to three consuming passions. She loved to sing better than to eat, next in order came dancing, which seems to be a specialty among Mormons, and evidently does not interfere with their piety, and third, that of saving feminine souls from destruction, on account of their unmarried state. To satisfy this last passion she has had ten thousand of her female ancestors married to well-known Mormons. To accomplish this, she had her genealogical tree traced back to prehistoric times, and had spent her fortune upon that pious extravagance. She told us that she was a plural wife, and living with her husband merely in the celestial relationship: but she believed polygamy to be in harmony with the will of God, and that the women as a whole favor it.

As we returned to our hotel, the Frau Directorin amused herself by asking each child she met: “How much brothers and sisters you are?” I was profoundly thankful she did not stop the men to ask them about the number of their wives.

Having promised her that I would introduce her to a real, live Mormon who as yet had only one wife, she could hardly wait until dinner, to which I had invited my Mormon acquaintance. He proved to be a very normal sort of man whose face betrayed his European peasant ancestry, his father and mother having emigrated from Switzerland, lured across by the promise of land, and an all but perfect Zion. They had passed through every hardship of the early persecutions, and the march across the plains and mountains. He himself had grown up in the martyrs’ faith, which remained unshaken until he was sent to college.

Although his teachers were Mormons they could not explain away all the inconsistencies of Mormon history and belief; doubts assailed him, and when in due course he became a missionary and it fell to his lot to go to Europe, instead of making converts, he became one. The six years abroad were spent in the study of history, and, applying the methods to his own church and its Book of Mormon, he began to doubt, and is a doubter still. Yet so strong were the ties that bound him that he did not formally sever his connection with the church, and unless he is ejected from that communion he will doubtless remain within its fold.

He belongs to an increasingly large group of young Mormons who, while they themselves have lost faith in the church and its doctrines, believe that they must remain loyal to those whose belief is still unshaken, help them to discard the crudest elements of their doctrine and so gradually democratize the whole institution.

The growth of the church has been checked and the accession of foreign converts has almost ceased, due to the prohibition of polygamy which was a lure to the evil minded, and due also to the fact that immigration is not being encouraged.

Mormonism would have continued to grow in alarming proportions if the missionaries were still offering a husband, or a part of one, to every woman, and to every man as many wives as he cared to take unto himself.

Within the church two forces are working towards its liberalization. The influence of a strong, Gentile population, and the school; while neither of them will destroy Mormonism, our informant believed that ultimately it will prove no more formidable or dangerous to the nation than any other religious denomination, whose government is strongly centralized.

After dinner he took us to his own home, and either from a recently acquired habit, or from renewed curiosity, the Frau Directorin asked the little son of the house, “How much brothers and sisters you are?” and I am not sure she was convinced that his wife whom he introduced to us was the only wife he had.

He was good enough to insist upon taking us into the country in his machine to call on his father, his mother having died some years before; which, however, according to Mormon usage of bygone days did not leave the old man a widower.

His gnarled, wrinkled face shone when we greeted him in his native tongue, and it was as pleasant as it was instructive to hear him tell of the emigration of his people from Switzerland to Missouri, of the stormy days there, the struggles against infuriated mobs, the long, dangerous journey across the desert, and the pioneer days in Utah where he had acquired lands, sheep and oxen, wives and children, in true Old Testament fashion.

The Frau Directorin asked: “How much wives you are?”

When he told her that he had gone beyond the apostolic twelve, although he lived with only a few of the number, she exclaimed: “Um Gottes Himmels Willen!”

The Herr Director wanted to know how he managed so many of them when he had difficulty in managing one.

“Ach! in those days,” he said, “the wives were subject to their husband, knowing that without him they could not live comfortably here, nor safely hereafter. They were docile enough, and it did not cost so much to keep them as it does now.”

With a shrewd smile playing around his almost toothless mouth he added: “You know if polygamy had not been prohibited it would have died out gradually, because these are different times. We couldn’t afford it now.”

The old man said he had known Joseph Smith and, of course, Brigham Young. He spoke of them with reverence and awe, as men of God who received revelations and could work wonders. There seemed to be little or nothing of the mystic in his makeup; his religion was of a hard, materialistic, matter-of-fact kind to which he clung most tenaciously. There was an unmistakable coarseness about him which revealed itself in his conversation. It may have been due to his peasant origin, but during all the years, a really ethical religion would have refined him. In a sense he still did not belong to the United States—he was a Mormon first and last, and the government in Washington was to him as Pharaoh’s rule was to the Jews.

His religion evidently had taught him submission. He paid his tithes ungrudgingly, and had gone on a mission uncomplainingly. He was a cog in a great wheel whose resistless force he did not question.

From his farm we were taken to others, and to neighboring towns. The whole system in all its minute details was explained to us, and the Herr Director was quite fascinated by its efficiency, although I am sure he would not care to be governed by it. Everywhere we found prosperous conditions and outward contentment, but underneath, especially among the young people, a brooding discontent and smouldering rebellion; yet at the same time much stolid ignorance and fanaticism.

Our final visit was to the University, built solidly against the rocks, its great U in purest white marked upon the mountainside, its very existence seeming a menace to the system which supports it.

There was a fine group of students, both Mormons and Gentiles. The library in which I spent some time astonished me. I wondered, as I looked at some of the books, if the church authorities knew what was between the covers. Dynamite under the Temple walls could not be as dangerous as those volumes.

Possibly the students are as ignorant of their contents as the leaders are. There are books on Philosophy and Psychology which do not seem to me so menacing as those on Economics and Sociology; for it is upon these subjects that the questioning will come first, and also the discontent.

After long and confidential conferences with some of the professors who told me their views, and how they are struggling to maintain their academic freedom, and after long talks with bright, energetic boys and girls who expressed themselves freely, I could assure the Herr Director that some problems, which have so long vexed the United States and have threatened certain ideals of the American Spirit, are in process of solution.

They are being solved by virtue of the broad tolerance of that spirit, than which nothing is so feared by the reactionary forces in the Mormon Church.

One thing which that institution desires more than anything else is renewed persecution; not too much of it, but enough to rally the children of the martyrs to face new martyrdom and so perpetuate the waning power of the church.

One must remember that Mormonism is not only a sect, but a strongly knitted society, and that men who have long ago ceased to believe in its doctrines still hold to it with a loyalty born of past suffering, which will be fostered by any future injustice or persecution.

When we left Salt Lake City and were safe in the Pullman on our way to the Pacific Coast, the Frau Directorin put her stock question to the colored porter when he came to make up the berths.

“How much wives you are?”

When I interpreted the question for him he smiled his broadest smile, but looked puzzled. I told him that the lady thought him a Mormon.

“No, ma’am. I’s a Baptist. But I sho’d like to be one. I likes de ladies poheful.”

He was not a Mormon, certainly not a saint, but he rendered us loyal service on that long, dusty journey to the Coast. Perhaps because he “likes de ladies poheful,” or it may have been because I gave him half of a generous tip in advance.