WOMEN UNDER POLYGAMY
married and single, threw in their lot with the followers of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.
Although Western women are usually opposed to polygamy, it is a remarkable fact that many women are attracted to those sects, such as the Mormons, the Princeites, and the Free Lovers, that teach heterodox sexual relationships as a salient part of their doctrine. Repugnance towards plural marriage is, no doubt, deep-rooted in the mass of women in Europe and the United States; but such repugnance is by no means universal.
A lady correspondent, who wrote to me lately on polygamy from the English woman's point of view, stated that there was something to be said for the practice. In her opinion, plural wedlock solved the great problem of the enforced celibacy for a large number of women, and mitigated to a very considerable extent the evils of prostitution, seduction and desertion, and infanticide.
Judged as a pastoral and industrial community, the Mormons are a remarkably flourishing people. They have wrested a vast tract of infertile land, and cultivated it with painstaking and constant industry. Their system of irrigation is one of the best in the world, and an object lesson for agriculturists.
There is but little crime in the community. Intemperance in drink is quite unknown. There is work
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