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Show - REGISTRATION OF BIRTHS. The local Legislature won't deal with the Utah problem, but the National Legislature Leg-islature will. The fault with most laws proposed in Congress for the cure of polygamy po-lygamy in Utah is that they often undertake under-take to settle the local question without for one moment, so far"as can be judged, considering the actual situation in Utah. The new Edmunds bill is 6urely a most drastic measure, but it is a sort of locking lock-ing the stable without looking to see whether or not the horse is in the stable. That bill undertakes to make fourteen men happy for life, and may succeed in doing it, but that bill, with all its provisions, pro-visions, neglects one most essential thing. It makes no provision for the registration of births, the almost head and front of the offense of polygamy. Families are founded for the purpose of raising children, child-ren, and these children become citizens the State. The State undertakes to so regulate the family that those who shall be born into the world and become citizens shall be the issue of lawful wedlock. wed-lock. It is needless to show why the State is so solicitous in this matter, but the reasons for this solicitude are most powerful and are very patent: Children born in polygamy are not born in this wedlock, and in those so born the law recognizes no rights of family and inheritance. in-heritance. - Why does not the Govern ment undertake to ascertain the number of children born in polygamy by compelling compell-ing the registration of all births? Every child born in Utah should have its birth registered, giving the date of birth, the ; names of the parents, etc., and every attendant at-tendant physician or nurse at childbed should be compelled by law to announce all births at which they were present to a registrar of births designated bylaw. If a mother refused to divulge the name of the father of her child, such child's birth should be registered the same as all other births, but it should be registered regis-tered as a nullus fillius, and when it arrived ar-rived at a certain age it should be made a ward of the State and maintained and educated by the State. The father of such child, when discovered, should be made liable for the expense to the State on account of maintenance of such nullits fillius, but over it he should have no authority. The mothers of such children should also have their names entered in a special register. ' These are but suggestions sug-gestions and do not pretend to be complete com-plete in dealing with this matter. It is all nonsense to try to suppress polygamy and never once take note of the issue of polygamous marriages. Polygamists themselves recognize that the enactment of such a law as we suggest would do more than anything else to suppress polygamy. If in the solution of the Utah question it is important to have a registration regis-tration of marriages how much more important im-portant it is to have a registration of births. We heard of a case yesterday that serves well to illustrate the need of a registration of births law. In a certain settlement south of this city a young woman of about twenty years of age married into polygamy within less than two years. She is now living in the same house with her husband and his first family. This young woman will become ; a mother in a very few months, but it is safe to say that if her husband were arrested for polygamy or unlawful cohabitation, cohab-itation, not one of his neighbors would know anything about his family, and no one in the settlement would have heard that his young wife is shortly to become a mother, although it is the common talk there now. A registration of births law would make it certain in the case to which we refer that a crime had been committed by some one, and such a law would make a young woman shrink from a marriage that brands her as a creature of the street and her offspring as the child of no one. A cessation of the" practice prac-tice of polygamy is what the Government desires in Utah, and no one law which the Government could enact would do more to bring about this cessation than the enactment and enforcement of a stringent registration of births law. |