UTAH A STATE.

Otago Witness, Issue 1340, 4 August 1877, Page 4

UTAH A STATE.

" Why is not Utah a State 1 I see it has twice the population that Colorado and Nebraska had when they were made States," I asked Brigham Young. "Because the Government," said the Prophet, "is afraid to make it a State. Here we have a Territory with 30 incorporated cities, 250 schoolhouses, 40,000 school children, nearly a quarter of a million of people, and we are still left a Territory, with no school land, no school appropriation, and without one single fostering care." "If Utah were a State, what then 1" "Why, we would have a moral State, Mr Perkins. The Mormons are in the majority, and I would be Governor at the first election. We'd break up bar rooms, shut up gambling houses, and break up prostitution everywhere. It's this Territorial law that brings all the whisky and gambling into Utah. Make Utah a State, let us have the control, and we'll make Salt Lake City the City of Zion. We'll make it a godly, religious city. Our people number over 150,000, and they double every six years. They extend, from Ogden clear down into Arizona. They are all good, hard-working, praying, religious people — all trying to make two blades of grass grow where, when I came here in 1847, it was a leafless desert. We increase 60 per cent, faster than other communities. We receive 3000 Mormon emigrants from England, Denmark, and Germany every year. Our missionaries are at work converting the heathen in England, Palestine, France, Germany, Denmark, Hindostan, China, Sandwich Islands, and in fact every nation on the globe. We have missionaries in the Pacific Islands, and even down in Mississippi and Arkansas." — Eli Perkins in New York Times.