ARGUMENT OF C. C. BEAN.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bean, who was a former delegate to Congress from the Territory of Arizona, desires to make a brief statement.

Mr. Bean addressed the committee as follows:

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am somewhat in the position here that Mark Twain was when he went over to Boston to introduce Joe Hawley to a Boston audience. He said:

So far as his literary attainments are concerned, I do not vouch for them. I am here merely to back up his moral character. He is a neighbor of mine and my vegetable garden butts up against his house. I have never caught him carrying off my vegetables. He is also a member of my church and I have never known him when the contribution box was passed around to take out a dollar.

I am here at nobody's instigation or solicitation to say a few words in reference to my Mormon neighbors. Utah is a neighbor of Arizona, and there are 25,000 or 30,000 people who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints who I once solicited to vote for me as the Republican candidate for Congress and they all voted against me, so that politically I owe them no obligation on earth. I owe my neighbor, however, this obligation as a good citizen: I will not stand by and see him oppressed, or maligned, or persecuted, whether he is black or white or red or yellow. I believe that a man in this country has the right to indulge in any religious belief that he chooses. He can worship the sun, moon, and seven stars and that is his business. He can worship a woman if he wants to; sometimes that is esteemed a blessed privilege. He can worship a wagon-wheel and get down and say his prayers to it when it refuses to turn, and when he has greased the axle and is ready to move on nobody in this country knows and nobody cares the upshot of his wagon-wheel prayers.

In 1869 or 1870 I had some curiosity to find out the character of my neighbor. I went across northern Arizona, and I swam the Big Colorado at Stone Ferry, with four ten-mule teams, just before the June rise of that river. I had some mules clawing the gravel, while the rest were swimming when I got over. I went up through the Territory of Utah and spent a good deal of time there. I stopped with all the Mormon bishops in the great thoroughfare from Saint Jo, Saint Thomas, and Saint George, Beager and Cedar and Salt Lake City. From that day to this-well, nearly twenty years-I have been drawn frequently amongst the Mormon community. I employ hundreds of them, and I have this much to say, that I have found them as good a class of people as I have ever met in my-life and I was born in New Hampshire and resided in New England and I have not forgotten my home-honest, temperate, industrious, and economical to the last degree; they are as good neighbors as I ever want, if I could only get them to vote for Bean. But I say that the literature of this country, as far as I am aware, abounds with more misrepresentations, to call it by a very mild term, respecting the Mormons, than any other class of people I know of.

When this act, which is now known as the last Edmunds act, was brought up in the Forty-fifth Congress, I appeared before Senator Edmunds and I said to him:

This is a piece of useless legislation and pernicious. I say polygamy is dead. You have already extinguished it. You need not pass this act to wipe it out. I know of my own individual knowledge that polygamy is as dead as slavery, and I think is a little deader, and in passing this act there are three things I would like to see done. The first is, I would wipe out the prohibition of woman suffrage, and the next thing is, I would not undertake to despoil the Mormon Church of the little property

they possess. The churches are barns; they have no lofty cathedrals. Millions of property are held by other religious denominations in this country, and has been shown here to-day. The property of the Mormon Church is utterly insignificant, and I would not undertake to enrich the United States Treasury by throwing in what little property they possess.

However, the law was passed, and in my Territory I know that polygamy is not practiced. There have been some cases of unlawful cohabitation. They dragged down three Mormon bishops from the adjoining county and brought them over the mountains nearly 150 miles and had seventy-five or one hundred witnesses against them, but they found they could not prove anything against them, so they shifted the indictment to unlawful cohabitation, and after they had convicted them of that they passed sentence upon them under the law prohibiting po. lygamy. They sentenced them for three years of hard labor in the State prison, and they were sent to Detroit, and I brought the matter up before the Attorney-General of the United States, and he looked over the papers and said it was "the damnedest outrage he had ever known."

The CHAIRMAN. What Attorney-General was that?

Mr. BEAN. General Garland. I then went to the President of the United States and told him I wanted these men taken out of prison. He said, "What did Garland say?" I said, "Shall I tell you exactly what he says in regard to this?" He said, "Yes," and I repeated it. The papers were taken over there and I waited a month until he signed them and I took these Mormon bishops out of prison to which they were unlawfully condemned.

The CHAIRMAN. Were they pardoned?

Mr. BEAN. Yes, sir; they were pardoned. Well, now-
Mr. STRUBLE. Were these recent pardons you speak of?

Mr. BEAN. It was last year. When the proposition comes up that Arizona shall come in as a State-we have got about 20,000 or 30,000 Mormons in our Territory, and I do not want Arizona to be kept out of the Union because these are Mormons and vote the Democratic ticket. I like my Democratic neighbor not quite as well as myself, but I like him. We want at some time to come in, and I do not know of any reason on earth why Utah, with her 225,000 people and a majority of them Mormons, need not be admitted into this Union as well as if they were Roman Catholics or fine old Presbyterians.

When I was in Salt Lake City, in 1869 or 1870, I had a long interview with the United States district attorney at that time-I have forgotten his name, I am sorry to say-but he told me that all of this hoodoo about Mormanism arose from this fact: When the great emigration took place to California in 1849 and in the 50's, there were stranded upon the shores of the Great Salt Lake a vast multitude of fellows who did not know exactly how to get a living and some of them remained there, and the question was whether they could not benefit their fortunes by endeavoring to steal the rent-roll of Salt Lake City. Now I should be very glad indeed, as a neighbor to Utah, to see her admitted to the Union. So far as the Mormon hierarchy is concerned, I have no doubt in the world that the Mormon bishops in my Territory all direct their people as to how they would like to have them vote, and that they did vote the Democratic ticket in consequence; but I do not know of a church hardly in this country but what undertakes to influence its members in a political question when they come to the polls. Church influence ought to be worth something at the polls, and I do not know why the Mormons should be exempt.

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The CHAIRMAN. You mean the same influence as used by other denominations?

Mr. BEAN. Yes; and no more.

Mr. WARNER. Pardon me for a moment. I understand the statement is that you have no doubt the bishop did direct the members how to vote, and the chairman's question is, did they do that any more than was exercised by other denominations.

Mr. BEAN. Not at all, and I endeavored to find out to the best of my ability, and I saw the Mormon bishops in that respect in my own county.

Mr. BASKIN. Did they all vote as the bishop directed?

Mr. BEAN. Out of 2,000 Mormon votes Bean got 17, so I will swear they did not evade the Mormon bishops' influence.

Mr. STRUBLE. Perhaps they did not receive orders in time.

Mr. BEAN. However, I have said all I have to say, and I am very much obliged to the chairman and the committee for allowing me to be heard.

Mr. STRUBLE. There is one question I would like to ask. Is it your opinion the Mormon bishops endeavor to influence the members in voting at all elections generally.

Mr. BEAN. I do not know how it is in all elections, as I am only speaking of those within my own county.

Mr. BAKER. You are expecting to have their votes next time?
Mr. BEAN. We hope we may.

A MEMBER. Do not the manufacturers of New Hampshire sometimes influence their workmen in that respect?

Mr. BEAN. Yes, sir; they do. I run a copper mine and probably I employ a hundred men working, and I want them to vote according to my directions, but I would not discharge a man because he refused to vote the way I wanted.

The CHAIRMAN. What were the influences to which you refer that were used by the bishops of the Mormon Church?

Mr. BEAN. As near as I could find out, it was simply this: They considered the Mormon people were a little better treated by the Democratic party than by the Republican party.

The CHAIRMAN. Were they coerced in any way?

Mr. BEAN. No, no; not at all.

Mr. WARNER. In answer to the chairman, I understood you to state that they went to the Democratic party because they considered they were better treated by the Democratic party; was it because the Democratic party was a little more in sympathy with their habits?

Mr. BEAN. That is it exactly.

Thereupon the committee adjourned until 10 o'clock Monday, January 14.

COMMITTEE ON TERRITORIES, Monday, June 14, 1889. The committee met pursuant to adjournment, and proceeded to hear further argument.

ARGUMENT OF JUDGE J. R. McBRIDE.

Judge J. R. McBride addressed the committee as follows:

Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: I have been for some fifteen or sixteen years a resident of the Territory of Utah, and have some practical acquaintance with the condition of affairs there. I have during that time practiced my profession as a lawyer, and have been engaged principally in the duties that pertain to that profession, and have taken a certain interest in public affairs, such as a good citizen has a right to take everywhere in this country. I became acquainted with that condition from practical experience, and I am among those whom my friend Mr. Caine, the Delegate from Utah, has denominated "The Anti-Mormon Ring" of that Territory, and represent what I conceive to be the sentiment of the non-Mormons of that Territory. Perhaps for ten years prior to this time, until last October, I was chairman of the only political organization in that Territory that has taken any action in politics there in opposition to the Mormons. This is the Liberal party, which is made up of Republicans and Democrats. My Mormon friends are in the habit of saying I am a mere agitator. I belong to that class whom Mr. Richards has denominated "adventurers," a "political band," which he regards as being at enmity with the Mormon people, whom he represents. I am ready to give an account for the faith that is in me.

This is the fifth time that Utah has made application to be admitted as a State. The first application was made as early as 1850, when the population amounted to probably 15,000 people. I think the boundaries of the State, as then presented to Congress for admission, included about 300,000 square miles, and extended from the Pacific Ocean to the summit of the Rocky Mountains, and included part of the Territories of Wyoming, Idaho, the whole of Utah, part of Arizona, a good share of Nevada, and some of California; so, even in their early days, these people were not very modest in the amount of territory they wanted to include in Utah as a State.

These boundaries have been, of course, very much reduced by Congress, so that the application now for the admission of Utah as a State contains an area of about 84,000 square miles. The population has very largely increased, and in all that has been said in regard to the country, its mines, its resources and population, I take pleasure in concurring with those advocating its admission. I think it has the necessary population, and it has the necessary resources.

Mr. BARNES. In speaking of the population of about 15,000 at the time of the original application, do you mean it was 15,000 within the limits of Utah-the present limits of Utah?

Judge MCBRIDE. I presume so, because the population at that time was principally in the valley of Salt Lake, and it was located principally in what is now known as Utah, a portion being, as I understand it, in California at that time, and other settlements; but the principal population at that time was in the valley of Salt Lake; perhaps three-fourths of it.

Mr. WILSON. Was it, at the time the first application was made, defined as a Territory by Congress?

Judge MCBRIDE. Not by Congress.

Mr. WILSON. Was it defined as a Territory?

Judge MCBRIDE. No, sir; it was before the organization of Utah as a Territory at all. The first application was made before the act of Congress organizing the Territory of Utah in 1850. The constitution. was framed either in the closing months of 1849 or the opening months of 1850; I have forgotten the precise date.

Several other applications have been made since, but as they are not material to the argument, I will not refer to them particularly. I repeat, however, that in point of resources and population to sustain a State government, I think no reasonable objection can be made to Utah with its boundaries as at present defined, and my argument will proceed upon the admission of all that has been said upon that subject.

The argument of Mr. Richards the other day-which I had the pleasure by his courtesy of looking over, so I might inform myself more in detail than by listening to it-as it was made here, is based upon, first, the idea that the people he represents here were the pioneers of that country, and he gives them all the credit which properly belongs to pioneers. I belong to that class of people myself; I was a pioneer in the West and antedated the pioneering of the people whom my friend represents here. I was in the valley of Salt Lake before the Mormon settlers had ever set foot within its limits, before any settlement was made there; and when my friend tells you that they redeemed the "Western Desert" by their industry, I want to say perhaps he is not as well informed on that subject as I am. There never was a more inviting country to the settler than the Territory of Utah before they went there. I have had my moccasins wet with the dew on the grass while riding on my horse, in passing through the meadows of Salt Lake Valley before it was ever settled. And I know that the "mountain men,” who are the original "pioneers," regarded it as one of the most inviting fields for the settler anywhere in that mountain country, as undoubt edly it was.

I will also further say that, far from "blazing" a way across the country along that which has now become the great highway known as the Pacific Railroad, the road the Mormons traveled into that valley was as plain and well-beaten a track as the old military road from Wheeling to Baltimore fifty years ago. I traveled it myself, and it was as plain a track there as Pennsylvania avenue is from the Capitol to the White House. Thousands of people, with families, with teams, and cattle, and horses, had traversed that country before any of those people had undertaken to break through the mountain difficulties and wilderness between the Missouri River and Salt Lake. There was no more difficulty in going that 1,200 miles-not as much as in the early days going from Buffalo, N. Y., to the State which your honored chairman now represents. It was a fine natural highway; they had nothing to do except to drive the teams along a plain, open wagon-way; and while I have no doubt that the people suffered the hardships of pioneers, incidental to the settlement of a new country, the credit my friend gives them of being the pioneers is an overestimate of their merits. We, who went 1,000 miles farther, had to cross what we called the American Desert, beyond Salt Lake. That was the worst part of the trip and so regarded.

I do not make this criticism for the purpose of detracting from the merits of those who went into that isolated country, but that this committee may know what the exact facts are. There were at least two wagon roads into Salt Lake Valley when the Mormon people went there;