The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The City of the Latter Day Saints IT WAS during my college days that we had the most excitement about the people who call themselves Latter Day Saints and are...
...On the whole, their peculiarities seemed to be on the positive side...
...But it does not explain why the administrators of this town continue to make streets wide and keep them clean...
...They boast of the large proportion of their people who enjoy the advantages of higher education...
...They say that Salt Lake City has its wide streets, so convenient for modern motor traffic, because Brigham Young ordered them made so that a twelve-horse team could swing around and make a U-turn...
...Our visit to the Mormon capital could not have been more fortunately timed...
...When we finally rolled down Temple Square and took in this wide-streeted, clean and brilliant town, I was ready to confess that, whatever I might think of their religion, I must surely acclaim the Mormons as city-builders...
...They look care of their poor, and I was told that they had no slums...
...Since then, I have read the Book of Mormon and other works on the subj ect...
...They organized projects which gave work to the unemployed and so at once furnished them income and preserved their self-respect...
...In the end, we came away with the impression that these were highly civilized people...
...And any Mormon will explain to you that their success in business life, social development and city building is closely connected with their religion...
...When I came across these young propagandists, I found them to be highly civilized persons and not at all Mark Twainish...
...There we heard the 400-voice choir in a magnificent program...
...And no mere tradition can account for the fact thai during the Depression the people of Salt Lake City took care of their own...
...And we strolled with them under the moon among the monuments on the Tabernacle grounds...
...They send their young men out in pairs to spend two-year periods spreading their gospel...
...The Latter Day Saints have a regular missionary system...
...This tale may be true...
...We watched each motion and listened to the conversation between the conductor and the members of the choir...
...I went with a guide and a group of tourists through the parts of the Mormon establishment which are open to the public...
...It was 110 years ago that Brigham Young pronounced the historic words: "This is the place...
...But some parts of it are so far beyond the limits of credibility that it is difficult to take them seriously...
...We missed the great parade of bands and floats...
...To an admiring and sympathetic friend like me, the religion of the Latter Day Saints offers a difficult puzzle...
...The grotesque pictures of them presented by Mark Twain and Artemus Ward helped to spread this notion...
...They had mure children than other people and seemed to care more for them...
...But that evening there was a concert in the famous Tabernacle which seats 10,000 listeners...
...My conclusion is that, in addition to polygamy, the Mormons must surrender or tone down certain other features of their faith before they can expect their missionary work to produce any great results...
...There was really nothing queer about them...
...But the capital of the Latter Day Saints, Salt Lake City, I never saw until this summer...
...And we, by pure chance, arrived among them on that anniversary day...
...Our leader was a "bishop" and an intelligent and persuasive young man...
...They might work even outside of Salt Lake City...
...Later I had occasion to visit a number of Mormon towns on a Western lecture tour, and the people I met seemed to me very much like the simpler sort of country folks belonging to the great Protestant religious denominations...
...It is quite an idea—to try out a couple of the notions of Jesus Christ...
...Each year, one day in July, the people of Utah celebrate the advent of their ancestors to this wide and salty valley...
...In 1896, their state of Utah was finally admitted to the Union, but this did not happen until there had been a lot of investigation and legislation and until the people of Utah had agreed to surrender polygamy as a feature of their way of life...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The City of the Latter Day Saints IT WAS during my college days that we had the most excitement about the people who call themselves Latter Day Saints and are generally known as Mormons...
...The material and social effects of their creed are obviously and undeniably good...
...It is easy to foresee that, unless they modify some of their beliefs, many of their intelligent young men and women will begin to fall away...
...While all this was going on, the people of the United States got the impression that these mountain folks were, if not immoral, at least a mighty queer lot...
...After the tour, I had a frank talk with him...
...The good features of their life result, not from any peculiar quirks of belief initiated by Joseph Smith, but from realistic application of some of the plain and ancient doctrines of Christianity...
...Not long after this period, I met my first Mormon missionaries...
...The following evening, we attended a rehearsal of this distinguished group of singers...
...At the present moment, they are to be found patiently preaching and distributing leaflets over a good part of the world—including the eastern part of the United States...
Vol. 40 • September 1957 • No. 38
