MORMON SCANDAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 36, 5 August 1911, Page 9

MORMON SCANDAL.

FIVE WIVES AND 43 CHILDREN.

After three weeks' investigation at Salt Lake City and other towns in Utah, the stuff correspondent of tin; New York World telegraphs an interesting report of an interview with Joseph Smith, head of the Mormon Church. Speaking in the presence of his two counsellors, Anthony Lund and John l-lenr.v Smith. Mr. Joseph Smith, who is the spiritual and temporal head of the church, and also "president, prophet, seer and revelator," emphatically denied the charges rife in England that hundreds of young girls are being sent to Utah yearly by Mormon missionaries to lead a life of polygamy or white slavery. He declares that the indignation which may exist in England, resulting in the appeal to the Home Secretary, is quite unjustified, and he adds: '"The Mormons in England ,as elsewhere, are simply preaching the gospel of the Primitive Christian Church, as revealed by Divine Authority in Command. We accept the Bible as the Word of God. We preach honesty, truth, chastity, benevolence and virtue. We believe in the pure home, and we are true to our wives.

"As to myself," he continued, "I believe in being tvne t<j live wives, who are loving, loyal, contented and liappv mothers. They have been my wives for from over 27 "to more than 40 years. They have looked up to and been true to me through all these years, and I have held my love and duty to tlieni to be above all things else. My love for them, my conscience, my manhood, would not allow it to be otherwise.

"In England individuals have maliciously misrepresented us, as they have done in the United States, and at Home they have said we seek to win women and girls from their homes to come and live amongst us here. They have said, for example, that 800 such leave England every month, and by the time this lying report reaches America it is made to read that 800 women leave England every week. There are more women in Utah now than men, and you will tind this to be true not only in Utah, but elsewhere throughout the church. This statement is so absurd, notwithstanding its wide circulation, that it needs no denial, for its falsity must be apparent to all.

"They say that we are bringing girls here for immoral purposes. This is infamous. The fact is that we are seeking to purge Utah of the iniquitous white slave traffic. There is no place in the United States where the light against'it is heing waged more vigorously than in Utah."

President Smith stands over fift high, and hardly looks 73 years of age. John llenrv Smith is the second cousin.of the Mormon chieftain.

Mr. Joseph Smith admits that he not only has five wives, but 43 children, and he laughed frankly at his inability offhand to classify his numerous offspring. The youngest child is five years old, and on its birth he was fined £OO on a charge of unlawful cohabitation with this child's mother, who is Smith's fifth wife, but actually his sixth, for he divorced his first wife in 1867.

In his discussion of the present feeling in England, Mr. .Smith spoke with some personal knowledge, for lie served as a missionary there in IS6O-G3, and again in 1874. Mr. Smith says the case of a group of girls emigrating from Liverpool is being made the foundation of most of the agitation in England. As a sample of the cases, he specified Margaret Jane Roe and Catherine Roe Souter. daughters of James Roe, of Liverpool, who made an affidavit that the girls had been inveigled to Utah. He declares that the Roe sisters are both pretty and intelligent, Margaret is working as a servant in Salt Lake City, and will soon he married to a Mormon widower with a large family. ITer sister is married, and lives at Provo. Utah, her husband, Robert Souter, having been a neighbor of hers in Liverpool, and migrated to Utah a year after his fiancee. Mr. Smith quoted from affidavits made l>y the sisters that they had come to Utah of their own free will, with the knowledge and consent of their father, that there is no truth whatever in the charges of enticement and inveiglement, that 110 undue influence whatever was used, and that the alleged affidavit of their father to the contrary is untrue. "The accusation," says Mrs. Souter's sworn statement, "of white slavery concerning inc. my sister, or any other English girl I know who.has come to Utah, is a lmse falsehood, and without foundation."

Mr. Smith is not surprised at the "per sedition" 011 both sides of the Atlantic

and lie adds that this persecution is one of the many proofs of the Divine origin of the Mormon organisation. As to whether polygamy is being gradually banished from the Church, as the old wives die, and whether the younger generation of Mormons are monogamsists, the New York World's investigator says he will speak later.