Brigham Young

“ We may preach until Doomsday, and tell how Zion will look, how wide her streets will be, what kind of dwellings her people will have, what kind of carriages and what fine horses they will have, and what a beautiful looking set of people they will be, but it is all nonsense to talk about that we will never reach if we do not stop our folly and wickedness. ”

“ To call a person a poor miserable apostate may seem like a harsh word; but what shall we call a man who talks about free schools and who would have all the people taxed to support them, and yet would take his rifle and threaten to shoot the man who had the collection of the ordinary light taxes levied in this Territory—taxes which are lighter than any levied in any other portion of the country? ”

“ Now that I am upon free schools I say, put a community in possession of knowledge by means of which they can obtain what, they need by the labor of their bodies and their brains, then, instead of being paupers they will be free, independent and happy, and these distinctions of classes will cease, and there will be but one class, one grade, one great family. ”

“ It looks very unbecoming to me to see a great, big six-footer stand and pick up little type and put it in its place to make a word or a sentence, a book or a paper; and when he has got his stickfull, taking the type out of the stick and setting it on the galley. To see a great six-footer doing this, and measuring off tape, which is about the same, has always appeared to me, according to that which I understand, as if men were out of their place. ”

“ We have no societies or persons to assist us in our efforts to school ourselves and our children; we never have had, and the feeling that is now exhibited, and which has always been shown towards us since the organization of the kingdom of God upon the earth, is that those who are our enemies would rather spend ten, yea, a hundred dollars to deprive us of the least privilege in the world, than give us one cent towards schooling our children. ”

“ Not but what there is once in a while a good man comes along as a school teacher who is not a "Mormon;" but, as a general thing, what have these men done? They have planted the seeds of infidelity in the hearts of the children, decoyed the hearts of their female pupils and led them to ruin, and they have turned round and cursed us. That is the character of some of the men our Bishops get into their school houses. There are many of our Bishops not fit to set type, measure tape or to teach a scholar. ”

“ I do not know that they are. What better is the man that can dress himself nicely and labor in a school house six hours a day, than the man who works ten or twelve hours a day hewing rock? Is he any better? ”

“ There are many of our people who believe that the whole Territory ought to be taxed for our schools. When we have means, that come in the proper way, we can make a fund to help the poor to school their children, and I would say amen to it. But where are our poor? Where is the man or the woman in this community who has children and wishes to send them to school, that cannot do it? There is not one. ”

“ Go to the poorest family in this community, and I will venture to say that they waste rags enough every year to buy the school books that are needed for their children, and do even more. This is slothfulness and neglect, and produces wickedness. To be prudent and saving, and to use the elements in our possession for our benefit and the benefit of our fellow beings is wise and righteous; but to be slothful, wasteful, lazy and indolent, to spend our time and means for naught, is unrighteous ”

“ From the whole people of the United States, after making an appeal to them in our deep distress and poverty, we got but a few dollars, and we were then starting into the wilderness, and how we were going to live God only knew. Well, we have got to help ourselves, we have to school ourselves. Has Government given us the privilege of one acre of land to educate our children here? No. The school land is kept from us, and we get no benefit therefrom. ”

“ We have the privilege of building up and enjoying Zion, and I am telling you how to do it. We want the women, from this time forth, to go to work and save the paper rags, and we will make the paper for them. And they can learn to make type. I can pick hundreds and hundreds of women out of this congregation that could go into a shop and make type just as well as men, it is a trifling thing. And they can learn to set type, and they can learn how to write for our school books. We have plenty of men and women that know how to write books, and how to teach too. ”

“ If these societies will take into consideration the further duties and obligations that we are under to each other, and the importance of becoming self-sustaining, we wish to enlist their interest to aid us in making paper, by taking steps to collect the rags. We have an excellent paper mill here, and can make our own paper, as well as to send abroad and pay out our money for it, and then bring it here. We should cease importing paper, for paper-making is a branch of manufacture for which we have all the necessary facilities, and if we carry it on it will benefit us. ”

“ They are just like some business men I have seen in my life—they have got their eye on a picayune, away off yonder in the distance, and they start after that and stub their toe against a twenty dollar gold piece ”

“ Learn some good, solid sense. Learn how to raise silk, how to make the silk into dresses, and make it, as neat and beautiful as you possibly can. Then another thing—may I say it?—girls, learn to comb your hair in the morning, and fix up your head dress. ”

“ They say ladies do not eat enough to make them strong—why I have seen scores and scores of them that could pull a hand press, and we do not use them now; they would have nothing in the world to do only to take the paper and lay it down. "But don't you let a woman know she can do this, don't say to a woman that she is capable of setting type, or of setting a stick of type on a galley, and making up a form and locking it up with a little mallet that weighs eight or ten ounces. ”

“ Keep the ladies in their proper places, selling tape and calico, setting type, working the telegraph, keeping books, &c.
See a great big six-footer working the telegraph. One of them will eat as much as three or four women, and they stuff themselves until they are almost too lazy to touch the wire. There they sit. What work is there about that that a woman cannot do? She can write as well as a man, and spell as well as a man, and better, and I leave it to every man and woman of learning if the girls are not quicker and more apt at learning in school than the boys. ”

“ Shame on the boys, and shame on the great big, fat lazy men! Let these women go to work; and let those who have children teach them to handle the needle and sew, to make lace, to raise silkworms and the mulberry tree, to pick the leaves and feed the worms, and then to wind and weave the silk, that they may make themselves good, nice silk dresses. ”

“ But the truth is women can set type, and read and correct proof as well as any man in the world, if they learn how. Men have to learn it before they can do it, and when they tell you that that is not a woman's business, you tell them they do not know what they were born for. They were not born to wash dishes, to dress the babies, nor to have babies, they were born to go into the field and do the work that the women cannot do, and should not do for fear of exposing themselves. ”

“ Never give anything to the idler. "The idler in Zion shall not eat the bread of the laborer." Well, they do eat it; but it is a commandment and a revelation as much as any other, that the idler shall not eat the bread of the laborer in Zion. ”

“ The difficulty is the tailors do not want them to do it, and they try to shame them out of it or to make them believe they can not sew a seam, press a collar, wristband, sleeve or body of a coat, and if women do it ever so nice the tailors will say it is good for nothing, and so the great, big six-footer sits there crosslegged sewing. ”

“ Because they will not take the counsel of the wise. When you hear a man, outside or inside of the kingdom of God, finding fault, complaining or casting reflections, that President Young has got so much influence over the people called Latter-day Saints that they (the grumblers) are afraid of him, you just tell them that he has not a hundredth part of the influence he ought to have. He ought to have all the influence imaginable with them, he is deserving of it, he earns it, and he knows what to do with it, and he directs and guides for the advancement of the kingdom of God on the earth. ”

“ Here I am talking to thousands of men and women who know that if we are ever helped we have to help ourselves, with what God does for us. We have heard considerable from some parties in this city about what they call free schools, which they say they have established here. ”

“ But when you come to picking up type, and making a book of it, that belongs to the women. I know that many arguments are used against this, and we are told that a woman cannot make a coat, vest or a pair of pantaloons. I dispute this. It is said that a man is stronger and that he pulls his thread stronger than a woman does. I will take any of these ladies to a tailor's shop, and they will snap every thread a tailor sews with. Tell me they can not pull a thread tight enough, and that they can not press hard enough to press a coat, it is all folly and nonsense. ”

“ You trade off your horses and mules and harness, just as quick as circumstances will let you. Raise the calves that will make oxen, break them and work with them; and let this community take this course, using oxen instead of horses, and mules for all their farming and teaming, and in one year they will save one million dollars, and this will increase year by year, and that will enable you to give a little to emigrate the poor Saints from the old country. ”

“ I have a splendid claim—I am just going to have a hundred thousand dollars for it." We have plenty of this class around, and whenever I see a man going along with an old mule that can hardly stand up, and a frying pan and an old quilt, I say, There goes a millionaire in prospect! He is after a million, he calculates to find a mine that he can get a million for next summer. These millionaires are all over our country; they are in the mountains, on our highways and in our streets. But ask them, "Can you give me a sixpence to buy me a morsel of meat?" ”

“ It is only occasionally that a boy is met with who will keep up with the girls in learning reading, writing, spelling and grammar; as a general thing the girls will go ahead of the boys in these branches, and yet we are told they are not capable of doing these light kinds of work, such as I have mentioned. ”

“ I have occasionally seen women in the harvest field, ploughing, raking and making hay, and sometimes, though very seldom, I have seen them pitch and load hay. I think this is very unbecoming, this hard, laborious work belongs to men. ”

“ Suffice it to say we want to enlist the real understanding and good sense of these women, and to tell them what their duty is. We want to make our own school books. We are paying now from thirty thousand to sixty thousand dollars, a year for school books that can be made here just as well as to send and buy them abroad. ”

“ This is not the order of prudence and economy; neither is it according to the nature of the calling and the ability that God has given us as men and women, to see a man measuring tape, and such light work, it is far more suitable for women. "Well but," say some, "a woman can not do press work." I recollect what was said to me in my youth by a journeyman printer. We were working off Ball's Arithmetic together and we boarded together. I did not eat meat at that time, and he was very fond of it. We went into the office one day from dinner and he said to the workmen, "Young never eats any meat;" ”

“ Their charity is to decoy away the innocent. Send your children to their schools and see how far their charity would extend. We sent to them when we were in the wilderness without bread, without shoes, without coats, and ploughing our way through to get away from our murderers, and asked them for help. No, they would not give us anything to save the lives of women and children in the wilderness. When we were right in the midst of Indians, who were said to be hostile, five hundred men were called to go to Mexico to fight the Mexicans, and said Mr. ”