Show MR CAINES ARGUMENT the argument of delegate caine before th eHouse committee on territories ri was another discharge of hot shot into the camp of the enemy following is a brief epitome of his address after speaking of the papu population he said I 1 of the fl five ve territories which it is proposed to admit as states under your amended omnibus bill but one has a greater population and not one of the other four has so great a number of inhabitants excepting south dakota no one of the proposed new states has greater wealth and nowhere in the union or in any country on 0 n the face of the th globe is there so equitable a distribution per capita of the general accumulation of property the landed proprietorship Is the true index to the material condition of the masses in any country by the last census it was shown that the average size of the farms in utah was 69 acres and this is a less average farm acreage than ifa any state or territory in the union but this average shown by the census statistics is not a fair indication di of the general distribution of the landed proprietorship of utah the far greater number of proprietorships torsh tor ships are in extent of area less ig than 25 acres an intelligent member of the british parliament who spent a great deal of time in utah carefully investigating the condition of the people and the resources of the territory stated in an article published published u in the nineteenth century that t hat of the great bulk of the population at least 90 per cent were the owners eners of homes mr caine then took up the school question and refuted the statements of mr ferry that the district schools are mormon schools and that religious tenets are taught therein and also that no gentiles were ever employed as teachers As to the holding of religious meetings 1 8 in them he showed that in eaffy earby times the people built meeting houses by doni donation tion not taxation and used them for a double purpose as they had a right to mr mansure of the committee here said this has been a common thing in missouri all my life very common mr caine proceeded to explain how respectable ministers of all denominations had been permitted to occupy the tabernacle and other houses honses of worship as an offset to mr ferry e assertions about mormon intolerance he then said the records of the land office show that there have been since its ite opening in 1869 homestead entries for a total acreage of acres and preemption pre emption filings for acres cash entries numbered for acres and desert applications 2573 for acres timber culture 1051 for acres a total of entries and applications for acres there was no do surveyor general in utah until 1855 11 mr mcbride wishes this committee to believe that these lands were parceled out to the people by the bishops there is not a lawyer in utah who does not know this to be untrue the land there has been entered and titles obtained by the holders from the government nm e n t through the united arts states aa land n d office as elsewhere and here let me repeat what has been explained many times when groundless charges have been mado made tike like those chestnuts of mr mcbride that the mormons cormons Mor mons regarded themselves as the proprietors of the soil and that thai certain grants were made by the legislature to brigham young and others when utah was first settled the lands had not been surveyed by the government until they y were w e re brought brou t into market possessory bb rights r ilits had lf a d to be defined and established h e i this T h 1 s was all that was done or claimed to be hone done when the lands were open to entry they hadbo be purchased of the government but the bond bona fide occupants had the first claim adventurers in some instances tried to jump these claims andoe and of course were re stated slated but not in the way they were resisted in many parts of the great west where such nefarious efforts have been silenced at the end of a rope it is absurd to state that the removal of old survey stakes which were trampled out of place by stock or pulled up by indians were purposely removed by the mor honsl mons for they had an interest in preserving the lines of these surveys they were anxious to obtain titles to their lands As to the canyon grants to the persons named they were but temporary like all other arrangements of that kind and were absolutely necessary for the benefit of the people for instance brigham young expended thousands of dollars to open a road up city creek canyon and keep it in re repair air so that the people might be able ue to reach the fire wood and timber in the mountains the only vh places e where it could be obtained there ere was no coal discovered then and the canyons were their only source of obtaining fuel brigham Brigha young mYoung was secured in the control of the canyon during that period and a toll of so much of the wood and timber brought down was permitted to repay him for his personal outlay every one of these grants expired when the lands ian Is were placed on the market by the government and thrown open to public entry so much borall for all that nonsense about the primary disposal of the soil I 1 have known brigham young to expend from to a year in keeping that road in repair it was frequently washed out in the spring by freshets fresh ets 11 statistics were then given of the products of utah the railroads the mineral and other resources its ite system of irrigation etc and he then entered upon an elaborate argument to show that when the people in any locality in the united states have sufficient population they have a right to become states providing they establish a republican form of government he said it cannot be doubted that this right of local community self govern ment was at that perio dand during the years immediately following the establishment of our constitutional government held in such high esteem that it was generally conceded that a considerable body of people inhabiting a territory could not be rightly deprived of admission to the union and statehood it is unquestionably true that in more than one instance the people settled in certain districts exercised what they deemed to be their inalienable rights and formed and set in operation state governments and demanded admission for their senators and representatives to the congress odthe of the united states the power of congress to determine mineford for itself the qualifications qualification of membership was of course not disputed its constitutional rights in this respect being absolute but the right of a great body of citizens of the united states to local community self government was most strenuously contended for and was practically yielded in one or more cases this point was fortified by quotations from madison macon an drew jackson buchanan and others and the cases of michigan tennessee q etc were given as examples the origin of the principle of local community self government was traced back into ancient germany and the speaker said the clearly defined right of a considerable body of the american people who go beyond the boundaries of states to find homes in the wilderness to provide a republican form of government for themselves has I 1 repeat always been recognized statehood is something more than a boon congress is empower empowered ell to bestow it is a right inherent in the people to deny this proposition is to deny the great fundamental principle on which our government is founded nay more it is to deny that men are capable of self govern ment I 1 do not ask for any more cogent arguments in behalf of the right for which I 1 am contending for the people of utah than those which the majority of this committee have advanced in behalf of the people of dakota I 1 refer to the comments on the power of one man the territorial governor to virtually control the whole machinery of government ov in that territory we the same is is not only true in fin utah but the power of the one man there is still more absolute the governor of utah has an absolute veto the origin of a large number of the people of utah was shown to be from the new england states and the journey of the pioneers and their placing of the nag flag on ensign peak were described and he remarked I 1 mr mcbride who acknowledges himself to be one of the anti mor mon agitators endeavors to impress this committee with the idea that utah was already a garden spot prepared by nature for easy occupation and so humid that the morning dews soaked the shoes of the mounted traveler there is no fact better known than that it was an arid rainless region and that without irrigation agriculture was an impossibility what hat the country was when the mormon pioneers lonjers first stepped upon the pa parched ed and treeless soil can be seen in less than an hours drive from salt lake city where the sand and sagebrush on broad expanses of non irrigable land attest that wherever streams cannot be conducted desolation reigns and nothing can be produced for human sustenance here ensued a colloquy between mr caine and mr baskin with delegate dubois interjecting remarks claiming equal credit for idaho people with the utah pioneers but it was shown that the work of the latter made it possible for the former to exist in that region mr laine caine went on but mr fen ferry y has told y you ou that the enlistment of this battalion was to help the mormons Mor monal mons on their way to the great west indeed it is quite likely that the promoters of this scheme represented the matter in that 11 light ht to the president of the united as states but the mormon people were lif far an indian country more than a thousand miles of uninhabited desert and mountain wilds lay jay between them and their destination the five hundred able bodied men demanded and enlisted took from them the very flower of their masculine strength and exposed them hem to the mercy of the savages that roamed the broad prairies over which they had to travel if that noble band were not actually en eni i in battle they made the longest e and most arduous march known in history and their presence in california as I 1 have said saved that valuable domain to this nation As to the half bastl masting episode to which mr perry ferry referred it is almost a waste of time to explain so simple a matter some persons full of grief and humiliation that on the anniversary of national freedom a number of their lea ling and most esteemed citizens and pioneers who had laid the foundation of their prosperity were either in prison or in exile through strained interpretations of special laws placed the flag at half mast as a token of mourning it was not out of lis respect to that emblem of the nations liberty no one knows this better than the malig ners who pretend for base purposes that the act was one of defiance when was the half masting of the flag ever before construed into anything but a sign of sorrow I 1 am ashamed of men who seek in such a paltry way to misinterpret the acts of their fellow citizens the speaker then took up the objections of the minority in utah an and ar argued ed that in these questions the majority ma arity must rule in answer to the claim that the minority refused to take any part in the statehood movement he cited the similar case of kansas which was admitted into the union notwithstanding he then took up the polygamy question and disproved the statement that a majority of the people 0 of utah tah have long defied the authority of the united states by I 1 mg polygamy I 1 amy 11 and said concerning t the e assertion ion that the church made polygamy obligatory the church of jesus christ of latter day saints as a church organization does nothing of the kind it does not and never did make the P practice of polygamy obligatory the church of jesus christ of latter day saints accepts the revelation through joseph smith concerning marriage as coming coal from god that revelation related also to celestial marriage which is a different thing from plural marriage M e and while all members of f the church as binding the ordinances relating lating de to marriages for eternity as ell as for time all have not and do 0 o riot not recognize the revelation can concerning plural marriages as obligatory upon them the great majority have never entered into plural m marwe marage a r and therefore have rega regarded rd e d oat put part as permissive simply and only mr baker what is the differ noe between celestial and plural va e mr caine ine celestial marriage is a marriage for time and eternity 1 the persons are not only joined for so long as both shall live but for time and all eternity that is celestial marriage but it is not necessarily plural plum marriage m ariage celestial marriage could be entered into by persons persona in good standing in the church although there would be no polygamous relations about it A long discussion followed on this question in which several members of the committee asked numerous questions questions consuming a great deal of time but bringing out these points more sharply and showing that it would take a new revelation from god himself to abrogate the present revelation and that must come through the head of the church and be accepted by the body the opposition made inquiries after several prominent men with the yiew of showing that they were hiding from indictments for polygamy but this was shown to be untrue they were we re only charged with unlawful cohabitation the distinction between the two offenses was clearly shown mr richards taking an active part in the conversation mr ferry ferlys charge that witnesses dare not testify in such cases was met and mr caine said 1 I wish to say in answer to the charge that witnesses against mor mons are bulldozed so they dare not testify there has been a system of bulldozing in utah if not of witnesses at least of mormons cormons Mor mons for instance some two years ago there lere was waa formed among the non mor mons mom what is called the loyal league A member was required to contribute fifty cents a month for the support of agents in washington to oppose statehood and to promote remote anti mormon legislation in n the mining camps where mor mons and non mormons cormons were employed the mormons cormons had to contribute to this fund or lose their places men who had no faith in such ouch schemes were forced to pay their fifty cents a month for the traveling expenses and hotel bills of judge baskin and other gentlemen who have been here representing benting the anti mormon ring of salt lake city no gentile dare say he was in favor of statehood he would soon be expelled from the alta club and all its privileges vi leges and I 1 want to warn T this s committee here of the great danger they are incurring I 1 will read a warning to them from the salt lake tribune of january 11 commenting on an article from a boston paper in regard to this state question the editor says the above presents the situation clearly as it is understanding it perfectly it should be the duty 0 of f the gentiles of utah to preserve the name of every advocate for admission in congress that for all time to come they may be branded as unclean whenever they aspire to any position of honor or emolument now gentlemen if you do not want to be branded as unclean be careful not to report a bill for the admission of utah the bottom motive of the agats tors in utah is to bear rule themselves being in the minority they want the majority proscribed they steadily resist every attempt to bring about even business relations with the majority every gentile who dissents from their schemes is denounced and abused and whipped into line or dubbed a jack mormon a name that strikes terror to every weak kneed gentile they have a daily organ whose avowed purpose is to make friendly social and political relations between mormons cormons Mor mons and non mormons cormons Mor mons impossible mr caine after |