Polygamy Crusade
THE RELATIVELY SOFT and conciliatory tone of The Tribune's 1884 New Year's editorial proved to be a temporary lapse. Before the year's end the "irrepressible conflict" reached a new high in bitterness, and the journalistic spokesmen for the contending sides were striving for new lows in lacerating editorials. On November 7, The Tribune, under a heading ' T h e Beast of the 'News' " started an editorial with this sentence: "The bastard in charge of the News again last evening filled his dreary columns with an attempt to convict a man before trial, to advertise a young girl's shame and everlasting disgrace, and to seek to make out that The Tribune was trying to conceal and apologize for a crime. . . ." 1 The News replied that evening in similar tone and phraseology, scoring a point with a less biting but more intriguing heading - "The 'Gentlemen' of the Tribune"2 The reason for the upturn in venomous editorial exchanges was the beginning of the crusade to enforce the recently enacted anti-polygamy Edmunds Act. It was a crusade which, embarked upon, could scarcely be stopped without surrender by one side or the other. To The Tribune, "crusade" was an inappropriate term to describe the implementation of the new law. But t h a t was the name it acquired in the histories of the era. To the editors of The Tribune it was a simple proposition of a theretofore spineless, in-
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