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Show JONAS ATTENDS THE PRIMARY. Jonah Jarvis has not yet left this city. A friend of his has seen a copy of the last letter he wrote his mother. It was as subjoined: "Dear Mother: I have had a new experience since I wrote you last. I met a reporter of one of the daily papers who said: "I wish you would help me out. There will be Republican primaries held in every precinct pre-cinct in the city .tonight and we will be worked to death. Go up and report the proceedings in the first precinct, 4th district. Delegates are to bo elected to the county convention to held next week." I said "all right." He gave me directions direc-tions where to go and at 8 p. m. I was on hand. At first things started off all right. It seemed a ticket had been agreed upon, some of the names being Gentile and some Mormon; but tho house began to fill up so rapidly that the suspicions of Eomo present was aroused. And on coking around it was discovered that nearly every1 Democratic Demo-cratic Mormon in the precinct was present. Then a motion was made that all Democrats be requested to retire. Not one moved. Then affairs af-fairs took a personal turn. One plucky woman went from one to another, shook her fist in their faces and said, "You are no Republican. For four years past I have tried to get you to vote tho Republican ticket, but you never would; you have never voted a Republican ticket in your life. Only last week you voted in a Democratic primary." pri-mary." I I ' I To this the only response was, "We are Repi-Hcans Repi-Hcans now; we are going to vote the Republican ticket this fall." Then it transpired that the Teachers had been to every house and had instructed tho people to vte, saying it was Bishop Iverson's orders. Now I must explain the gradation of officers in the Mormon church is regular, beginning with the First Presidency, then the apostles, and so on down to the bishops and teachers. These teachers teach-ers transmit from house to house the orders that come down to the bishop very much as the middies mid-dies on a war ship communicate to the sailors the commands of tho admiral. There was no shaking this new concourse of "straight" Republicans, and the convention proceeded pro-ceeded to vote, with a vote of 115 for the straight Mormon ticket to 62 for tho mixed Gentile and Mormon ticket. The entire vote was nearly equal to all that were cast in the precinct at the last general election. The next business under the call was the election elec-tion of a precinct campaign committee. A motion mo-tion to proceed to elect such committee was made, but it, by direction of Bishop Iverson, was summarily sum-marily voted down and the meeting adjourned. It was explained to me that the reason of the Bishop's Bish-op's action was because he had not received orders or-ders as to who to have elected on this committee. I wrote the proceedings up in my best stylo and turned them over to the reporter, who had asked me to make the report. He read the report, re-port, then handed it back to me, saying: "It is fine, but for obvious reasons we cannot publish it in our paper." I then carried it to the opposition opposi-tion paper and received in reply the statement: "That is a very graphic report, but you must obviously ob-viously see why we cannot publish it." I went home hot, but next day carried it to the News, as that is an afternoon journal. The editor read it with great apparent interest, then smiling he handed it back to me saying: "It is a very excellent and comprehensive report, but you obviously ob-viously do not yet quite understand Utah politics." poli-tics." And this is free America, where the safety and preservation of the country is left to the un-trammeled un-trammeled votes of an intelligent, free people. And this, dear mother, gives you an idea of the "free" press of Utah, the teachers of the people, peo-ple, the bulwark upon which the people lean for counsel, guidance and truth. Dear mother, can you not give me a chattel mortgage on something and get enough to buy a half-fare ticket for your homesick son? JONAH JARVIS. |