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Show MAKING UTAH PERPETUALLY MORMON. There was a great colonist rush through Utah up to a few days ago and not one of the home-seekers stopped in this state. A conductor, con-ductor, on one of the Union Pacific passenger trains, inquired of a number of colonists why they were bound for Idaho, Washington, Washing-ton, Oregon and California, and had no thought of seeing the magnificent mag-nificent resources of Utah, and the invariable answer was, "Utah is a state of outlawry and shame, as represented in Eastern magazines and papers, and we have no desire to stop." The conductor followed up this information by asking an official I m tne passenger department of the Union Pacific how many colonists colon-ists tickets had been sold over the Harriman roads and what percentage per-centage had been sold to Utah. The reply was that not one colonist in the 20,000 buying tickets had requested transportation to Utah. What does all this mean? Simply this, that the campaign of defamation being carried on in Eastern publications against the people peo-ple of this state, is keeping out all prospective Gentile immigration and deferring indefinitely the day when peace shall come to the people peo-ple of Uta.h, both Gentiles and Mormons. Had those who are backing the magazine campaigns in denunciation denunci-ation of the people of this state deliberately planned to make Utah perpetually a state of religious bitterness and discord, with one religious re-ligious body supremely dominant, they could not have devised a more effective scheme. This oturage is being committed in the name of reformation in Utah and yet it is proving to be the most powerful factor in preventing prevent-ing a growth in population and a commercial contact which would accomplish more in a few years in improving conditions than can be hoped for in a generation from the present distressing warfare of slander and vilification. The stories being published in the East, picturing Utah men as vile and the women as unclean, are building a Chinese wall around us, with gates bolted and barred, and the western march of home-seekers, home-seekers, as a consequence, is away from the barriers, to the north, to the south and to the west, and we foolishly grin with amused indifference in-difference or applaud, according to our prejudices, as we see the effect ef-fect of these obstructions to progress and harmony. Utah always will be strongly Mormon, and, therefore, a target for sensationalists and cunning politicians, while the rest of the United States is made to believe that Utah is deep in iniquity and ail unsafe place for the rearing of a family other than of Mormon profession of faith. Against this injustice the Gentiles of Utah, who know the narrow limits of the evils to be overcome, should protest vigorously, insistently and successfully. |
