The Woman's Exponent: Forty-two Years of Speaking for Women

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 44, 1976, No. 3

The Woman's Exponent: Forty-two Years of Speaking for Women

BY SHERILYN COX BENNION

THE WOMAN'S EXPONENT, founded in Salt Lake City in 1872 by and for women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was one of the earliest periodicals for women in the United States. In the West two papers in San Francisco and one in Oregon preceded it, but only the New Northwest of Portland survived for any length of time. Never owned or officially sponsored by the church, the Exponent grew out of the same sort of impulse that fostered most of the other early church publications: individuals saw a need for a medium through which ideas and information might be exchanged and moved to meet that need. Of course, no official magazines existed to offer competition, and the early periodicals had the approval and support of the church hierarchy; general authorities speaking at Relief Society conferences regularly urged the sisters to subscribe to the Exponent, and its first editor was reluctant to assume her post until Brigham Young called her to it as a mission.

Although the Exponent served as a forum where women could express differing views on subjects like the extent to which they should become involved in activities outside their homes and where Eliza R. Snow could publish theological treatises and be chastised only after the fact, it remained loyal to church leaders and policies. A traveling author quoted it in his book to illustrate the point that Mormon women actually did not want to be rescued from polygamy and made sure his readers understood that such defenses of the practice were not written under duress:

It is of no use for "Mormon-eaters" to say that this is written "under direction," and that the women who write in this way are prompted by authority. Nor would they say it if they knew personally the women who write thus.

Only once was a general authority questioned in the paper, and that was done indirectly when the Exponent reprinted an article from a Denver magazine explaining that B. H. Roberts had been elected to Congress by Utah Democrats in spite of the women's vote, since he did not support suffrage. Lula Greene Richards, the first editor of the Exponent, sent quotations from the article in a letter to the only other editor, Emmeline B. Wells, who also happened to be a founding member of the Utah Republican party, with thanks from the women of Utah for "the fair-minded and sensible way" in which the Denver author had analyzed "the present embarrassing situation we are placed in by the election of B. H. Roberts to Congress."

Susa Y. Gates wrote that the Exponent was "conservative, true to truth, pure and exalted in tone, ... a safe, sound, faithful exponent of woman's place in the world." This makes the paper sound considerably more staid and bland than it really was, but the description is basically accurate. Emmeline proudly proclaimed in an editorial published toward the end of the Exponent's life that

whatever criticism may be made, one thing must be said if truth is told, it has always stood for the principles of right and never pandered to the vitiated tastes and frivolities of modern society, or entered into any arguments that would lead to controversy adverse to the best interests of the community in which it is circulated. . . .

The Exponent had several purposes, announced at its inception and adhered to throughout its forty-two-year career. It would discuss all subjects interesting and valuable to women, report Relief Society meetings and other matters connected with the workings of that organization, encourage both new and established women writers, and provide an outlet for their work. Finally, it would furnish to the world an accurate view of the grossly misrepresented women of Utah.

To a large extent the Exponent fulfilled these purposes. It reported not only Relief Society affairs but those of a multitude of enterprises organized by Relief Society leaders, plus developments in the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association, the Primary, and numerous other women's groups. It spearheaded the drives to encourage Mormon women to collect and store grain and to develop a home silk industry. Its office served as Relief Society headquarters for many years.

The influence of the Exponent among Relief Society members extended beyond those who actually subscribed, because excerpts from it frequently were read and discussed in local meetings. Minutes of the Oakley Second Ward Relief Society for 1902 illustrate this use of the paper. On February 6, the stake Relief Society president read "a peice from the exponent entitled Greeting to Relief Societies. Sister Sophia Elison then bore her testimony. . . . Sister Leonora Severe then read a peice from the exponent entitled official announcement."

The editors continually invited readers—and hearers—of the paper to contribute to it, and women from throughout the territory, and sometimes beyond, responded. The Exponent also encouraged members of local Relief Societies and Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations to start their own papers and published excerpts from those that were sent in.

These readers' contributions were responsible for much of the tone of the paper, although they undoubtedly followed the lead of the editors in the type of writing they submitted. In letters, poetry, articles, and fiction they expressed their humor, sentimentality, and religious and social convictions—sometimes simultaneously. To be sure, the humor that today's reader sees in many Exponent items was not intended by their authors. "Inez" was very serious when she warned that

With many young ladies, waltzing has become almost like an intoxicating beverage to an habitual drinker. Too much dancing of any sort in their early years is likely to make them frail, weakly women all their lives, and doubtless shorten their days and retard their usefullness.

But "Aunt Jerusha" intended her readers to smile when they read her story, related in an unidentifiable dialect, of attending with her fashionable nieces a modern cooking school where she was amazed to find pupils relying on a new-fangled gadget she certainly never would have used—a cookbook.

Serial novels were short on humor but long on sentimentality and religious conviction. Heroines were born Mormons, converted to Mormonism, or the ancestors of Mormons. One, Jane Bland, experienced an unusual number of vicissitudes, even considering that they were spread out over fifty-seven episodes. "True to her nature," she endured each "trying ordeal with the greatest heroism, after the first severe nervous shock." Another heroine reached the height of printed passion, Exponent-style, when her intended "drew her toward him, looked into her eyes, and, as if satisfied with what he found there, folded her in his arms and kissed her tenderly."

Even with its varied content, the Exponent could not, of course, discuss all subjects of interest to women, but it made a valiant effort in that direction. As for giving the world an honest view of Mormon women, it certainly tried, although most of the world ignored it. Emmeline did see to it that copies were distributed at national and international meetings of suffrage and other women's groups and at world's fairs held during its lifetime, and she frequently told readers that they did not realize "what a power in the hands of women of this Church a newspaper is." Some individuals outside the church changed their minds about Mormon women as a result of reading it. Emily Scott, a non- member from the Midwest, wrote the editor that this had happened in her case, and she continued to contribute to the paper for several years. The Exponent office was a stopping place for "hundreds of tourists" who came each year "to inquire concerning the 'peculiar people' and especially the 'Mormon' women."

A recent thesis by Gail Farr Casterline suggests that the Exponent did less to change the opinions of Mormons held by outsiders than it did to cultivate a positive image of Mormon women in their own minds at a time when they were threatened by negative perceptions of their religious beliefs, moral standards, intelligence, and even their appearance. Exponent editors and contributors were women of talent and independence. They recognized that they and their readers were involved in significant activities and were capable of carrying them through. They defended their beliefs with dignity and diplomacy. Edward W. Tullidge was correct in writing that they produced a periodical "fully up to the standard of American journalism."

However, credit for the impetus that got the paper started, as well as for its name, must go to a man—Edward L. Sloan, editor of the Salt Lake Herald. He formulated the idea, found the editor, and furnished not only instruction but facilities for printing the paper.

The editor he found was Louisa Lula Greene, a grandniece of Brigham Young, whose family lived in Smithfield, Utah. She had begun her journalistic career in 1869 as editor of the "Smithfield Sunday School Gazette," a two-column, hand-written paper distributed after Sunday School each week to those who would "come to Sabbath School, keep order and pay attention." Her literary efforts received wider distribution after several poems she wrote were published in Sloan's Herald.

Then Lula received a letter from Sloan asking if she would be interested in editing a paper for Mormon women. She later wrote that he first had contemplated giving her work on the Herald, but, since other staff members did not agree with that plan, he conceived the idea of the women's paper. Lula was reluctant, pleading inexperience, but Sloan persisted, so she wrote Eliza R. Snow, the "Captain of Zion's womanly hosts," to find out what Eliza thought about the suggestion and also what Brigham Young's reaction was. Lula explained that, if President Young approved of her embanking upon such an enterprise, she would like him to "appoint the duties of that calling" as a mission. Eliza wrote back that both she and the president "heartily sanctioned the undertaking" and that he "would gladly appoint me the mission and bless me in it," Lula reported. He agreed after inquiring about Lula's capabilities for such an undertaking and being assured that what she lacked in education she could learn and that she was "staunch." According to Susa Y. Gates, President Young also suggested that provision be made for the education of girl typesetters. He wanted even the printer's helper to be a girl, although she was not to be called a "devil."

From the fall of 1871 until June 1, 1872, when the first number of the Woman's Exponent appeared, Eliza and Lula corresponded several times about the paper, discussing possible printers, methods of financing it, proper subscription price, the necessity of keeping careful records of subscribers and the types of content that would be appropriate. Eliza established the rule of sending all Relief Society minutes to the Exponent and also gave her opinion that "it will be no detriment to you to write a few stories more particularly if they are good ones and I should presume that you would write no others." A method of financing mentioned nowhere else was noted by a great-granddaughter of Emmeline B. Wells, who wrote that interested women incorporated and bought stock at ten dollars per share.

Lula moved to Salt Lake to begin her editorship, staying with her uncle, Lorenzo D. Young, and using his parlor as an office until the fall of 1872, when Sloan had a small office constructed near the Herald building wdiere Lula lived with her aunt, Persis Richards. They used the back room as living quarters and the front as public office. The first issues of the Exponent were printed at the Herald plant. Campbell and Patterson, book sellers, served as general agents. They subtracted a bit more from the feminine aura of the paper by advertising in the Herald for "twenty active, intelligent boys to sell the Woman's Exponent."

Target date for the first number was the beginning of April, to coincide with general conference, but delays in shipments of type and paper postponed its issuance until June 1, 1872. That June 1 was also Brigham Young's birthday was a happy coincidence but no more than that.

In the meantime, a prospectus explaining the aims of the publication and soliciting subscriptions for it was prepared and sent to the presidents of all Relief Society organizations in the church. Sloan probably used part of its contents in an advertisement April 9 that did get out in time to appeal to the general conference crowds and stated that the Exponent would aim to discuss "every subject interesting and valuable to women. It will contain a brief and graphic summary of current news, local and general; household hints, educational matters, articles on health and dress, correspondence, editorials on leading topics of interest suitable to its columns, and miscellaneous reading," as well as reports of the Female Relief Societies of Utah. It would "endeavor to defend the right, inculcate sound principles and disseminate useful knowledge."

The next day, Sloan followed the ad with an article pointing out that, at two dollars a year, the paper was bound to be a bargain. He also predicted that, since women of Deseret already enjoyed suffrage, there would be little need for the Exponent to make "a specialty of that pet subject with most woman's papers," an assumption that showed that, in spite of his aid and influence, Sloan was not completely familiar with Lula's concerns.

The first number set the pattern, in both format and contents, for the entire life of the paper. It was three-column quarto (10 x 13/ 2 inches), eight pages long. "L. L. Greene" was listed as editor. The first page consisted of "News and Views," a miscellaneous collection of notes about almost everything: women, religion, fashion, politics, unusual events. Two continuing interests were keynoted in the following two paragraphs:

Great outcry is raised against the much marrying of the Latter-day Saints. The tendency of the age is to disregard marriage altogether, but there seems no indication of a desire to have the race die out.

Reverend James Freeman Clark claims "that if it is an advantage to vote, women ought to have it; if a disadvantage men ought not to be obliged to bear it alone." Speaking from experience we feel safe in affirming that the Reverend gentleman is right, and we hope for a time when this immunity may be universally enjoyed by our pure-minded and lightloving sisters. We don't presume that those belonging to the opposite class care anything about it.

Defenses of polygamy were published regularly until that practice was discontinued by order of President Wilford Woodruff in 1890, and the fight for suffrage was carried on for the entire forty-two years of the paper's existence. Other continuing themes were the necessity of education for women, the value of home industries, and the question of woman's proper place in the world.

Page 2 featured the first part of a history by Eliza R. Snow of "The Female Relief Society," a report on its activities from the Relief Society in Ogden, and a brief essay on "Personal Development" titled "There Is No Excellence without Labor," read by "M. A. F. J." to the Salt Lake Retrenchment Society. It also offered one of the wise or witty fillers that the Exponent used regularly to take up bits of space at the ends of columns. One was a definition of the dinner horn, a glorious instrument capable of accomplishing wonders with children who seemed to have hearing problems.

Page 3 contained two poems, unsigned, on themes that were to prove Exponent favorites, "Remember Thy Mother" and "Rearing of Children"; short articles urging wives to cultivate cheerful dispositions and all readers to avoid the mistake of relying on first impressions; a quotation from a speech on the power of the press; and a column of "Household Hints."

The fourth page contained more fillers, noting President Young's birthday and a new tonic extracted from sausages by an ingenious Yankee doctor, and also more news notes, in a column headed "Splinters," which must have been culled from other papers. Virtually all newspapers of the period used such "exchanges" regularly, and the first numbers of the Exponent relied heavily on them. Their number decreased as more original contributions and reports of church women's organizations were received.

Page 4 was also the editorial page, and the editor used it to support statehood for Utah and to explain the goals of the new publication. In "Salutatory," Lula noted the large list of names already on the subscription book as evidence "that such a journal was demanded by the circumstances and the times," explained the delay in publication, and expressed the hope that subsequent numbers would appear regularly on the first and fifteenth of each month.

More articles and columns of news, humor, and information occupied pages 5, 6, and 7. An article on "Woman's Rights and Wrongs," by "E," offered a preview of content to come by supporting the rights of women —but with certain reservations:

There are many rights which woman should possess yet of which she is denied by custom and by statute law, but more especially by the former. She should have the right to live, and to live purely, and not be compelled by the force of custom and fortuitous circumstances to seek a living death that the physical body may be sustained. And to secure her this right, she should have access to every avenue of employment for which she has physical and mental capacity.

She should have equal pay and suffrage, and she should not be held "more responsible than man—if as much—for sexual crime."

But when women seek to essay the role of revolutionists instead of reformers, when they set up one sex as of necessity antagonistic to the other, when they claim for women not liberty but license to set at defiance wholesome social regulations and nature's laws, then they are endeavoring to compass a wrong beside which the ordinary wrongs of the sex sink into comparative insignificance.

The last page carried a few short items and advertisements for Weed sewing machines, H. Dinwoodey's furniture store, a dentist, Mrs. Wilkinson's Bazar of Fashion, J. E. Johnson pharmaceutical products, and the Exponent. The last, probably a duplicate of the announcement circulated earlier, pointed out that women in Utah, being engaged "in the practical solution of some of the greatest social and moral problems of the age," had attracted the attention of the entire civilized world and that, since they had been "grossly misrepresented through the press," they needed an opportunity to reply. And "who are so able to speak for the women of Utah as the women of Utah themselves?" Thus, the first number demonstrated that the purpose of the paper was not only to allow Mormon women to "help each other by the diffusion of knowledge and information," another quotation from the ad, but to express their point of view to the world.

The ad went on to request presidents and secretaries of Relief Societies throughout the territory to send reports of their meetings and other matters of interest, noting that Eliza R. Snow, president of the entire Female Relief Societies, cordially approved of the journal and would be a contributor to it. Bishops, as well as Relief Society officers, were urged to "interest themselves in getting up clubs" to recruit subscribers; clubs would receive ten copies for the price of nine. Payment was expected to be strictly in advance, although, judging from the paper's continuing pleas for payment of overdue subscription bills, this expectation was never met.

This first number received a warm welcome from Mormon publications, like the Deseret News and the Millennial Star, and from those friendly to the church, like the Salt Lake Herald. A comment indicating that the general public reception may have been somewhat less enthusiastic appeared nine years later in Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine:

At the onset, the Woman's Exponent was looked upon by the public generally as a very unimportant affair and treated by some of the kindliest disposed brethren as a woman's whim,—harmless to be sure, and therefore to be tolerated for "their'' dear sakes.

However, Tullidge went on to say that it "now wields more real power in our politics than all of the newspapers in Utah put together," that it was not only the representative of fifty thousand women at home, but could call a million women of America to the aid of its cause. Tullidge was prone to lavish praise and lofty exaggeration, but he was correct in claiming that the Exponent grew to be a force among Mormon women.

That it did become such a force was due in large part to the ability and dedication of its two editors. Louisa Lula Greene was born on April 8, 1849, in Kanesville, Iowa, the eighth of the thirteen children of Evan M. and Susan Kent Greene, both of whose mothers were sisters of Brigham Young. By the time she was twenty-two years old, Lula had edited the "Smithfield Sunday School Gazette," attended a private school in Salt Lake City, and helped organize a Young Ladies' Cooperative Retrenchment Association in Smithfield. When Eliza R. Snow sent her instructions on how to set up the association, a few sentences in the letter indicated that Lula felt some concern over being still unmarried:

To be sure, while unmarried, one cannot be fulfilling the requisition of maternity, but let me ask Is it not as important that those already born, should be cultivated and prepared for use in the kingdom of God; as that others should be born? If left to me to decide, I should say, that of the two, the cultivation is of the most consequence. How many mothers give birth to children who themselves are altogether unqualified to perform the duties of mothers? And yet, for Zion's sake, those children must be cultivated.

One year after she became Exponent editor, however, Lula did get married—to Levi W. Richards. Her name on the masthead, which had been changed from L. L. Greene to Louisa L. Greene after she received letters addressed to Mr. L. L. Greene, or Dear Sir, became L. Greene Richards, then Lula Greene Richards. After another year, Lula had a baby daughter.

By 1877 she decided she needed more time to devote to her family. Since she had asked for and been given the editorship as a mission, she wrote Brigham Young to ask for a release. He complied, and all that remained was to explain her resignation to Exponent readers, which she did in an editorial:

. . . during the years of my life which may be properly devoted to the rearing of a family, I will give my special attention to that most important branch of "Home Industry." Not that my interest in the public weal is diminishing, or that I think the best season of a woman's life should be completely absorbed in her domestic duties. But every reflecting mother, and every true philanthropist, can see the happy medium between being selfishly home bound, and foolishly public spirited.

Although Lula no longer sat in the editorial chair, she continued to be a frequent contributor to the Exponent, "in cases of necessity carrying much of its responsibilities," as she wrote in the margin of Susa Y. Gates's history of the paper. She also traveled with other leading women of the church to visit and organize Relief Societies, Young Ladies' Retrenchment Associations and, later, Primaries, serving on the general board of the Primary Association from 1892 to 1917. She contributed to the publications of these organizations, as well, becoming closely associated with the Juvenile Instructor and conducting a column, "Our Little Folks," for it.

In 1904 a collection of Lula's poetry titled Branches That Run over the Wall was published. The title came from the first work included, an epic based on the Book of Mormon. The following year marked the centennial of Joseph Smith's birth, and in a contest for the best poems honoring him, sponsored by the Deseret Sunday School Union, Lula won all three of the prizes. She also wrote several hymn texts and verses for the childrens' song books published by the church.

She was active as an officer in the auxiliary organizations of her own ward, and from its dedication in 1893 until 1934, she was an officiator in the Salt Lake Temple. In the meantime she bore seven children. Three daughters died in childhood; four sons survived. Lula lived to be ninetyfive years old, dying in 1944.

The other Exponent editor was Emmeline Blanche Woodward Harris Whitney Wells. She was born in Petersham, Massachusetts, on February 29, 1828, a date that added a certain element of novelty once every four years to the reports of birthday tributes and surprise parties that were a staple of the Exponent during her thirty-eight years as editor. Her parents were David and Deiadama Hare Woodward. At fifteen years of age, she married James Harvey Harris, a son of the local LDS branch president, and soon moved to Nauvoo. Her husband's parents left the church—and Nauvoo—soon after, although they could not persuade Emmeline and James to accompany them. However, after a baby boy was born to Emmeline in September 1844 and died a month later, James, too, left Nauvoo. Emmeline never saw him again.

In 1845 she became the second wife of Presiding Bishop Newel K. Whitney. At both Nauvoo and Winter Quarters, where they went early in 1846, Emmeline taught school. She also became a fast friend of Whitney's first wife, Elizabeth Ann, and the two traveled together across the plains to Salt Lake in 1848. By 1850, when Whitney died, Emmeline had two daughters. She again taught school in 1852 and, on October 10 of that year, married Daniel H. Wells.

From 1866, when Brigham Young directed that Relief Societies be organized, she assisted Eliza R. Snow in that task. She also sang in the Tabernacle Choir and was one of the first to cast a ballot after Utah women were given the vote in 1870, running unsuccessfully for the legislature a year later.

Her literary hopes, born at age four when she wrote her first verses, were not forgotten, however. When her husband asked her what her dearest ambition was, according to an article in the Relief Society Magazine, she replied immediately, "I would like to be the editor of a magazine." In November 1873 she made the first step toward that goal when her article, "Take Care of the Boys," was published in the Exponent under the pseudonym Blanche Beechwood. In it she advised that mothers pay close attention to the rearing of their sons as well as their daughters. From that time on, she wrote poetry, editorials, Christmas essays, articles, and news notes and in December 1875 became coeditor. As Lula pointed out in her letter to Brigham Young, Emmeline was her logical successor. She became sole editor in August 1877 when she was forty-nine years old. In 1899 she began listing herself as editor and publisher.

By the time she became editor, Emmeline had borne three more daughters, but the youngest was fifteen, old enough to assist in the Exponent office along with her two sisters, and Emmeline found time to get involved in many activities besides the editorship. All her interests were reflected in the paper, though. In fact, it became more and more a chronicle of the groups with which she was affiliated, including the Relief Society and many of the projects connected with it: the wheat storage program inaugurated by Brigham Young in 1876, the Deseret Hospital, and the Woman's Cooperative Store. She was a member of the Relief Society general board from 1888 until 1910, when she became general president, a post she held until a few weeks before her death.

An officer of the Utah and National Woman's Suffrage Associations and the Woman's National and International Councils, she also was chairman of the Utah Woman's Republican League and regent of the Utah Society of Daughters of the Revolution. She founded the Utah Woman's Press Club and was vice-president for Utah of the National Woman's Press Association. She also founded a women's literary group called the Reapers' Club.

Emmeline, like Lula, published a collection of poetry, Musings and Memories, which appeared in 1896. She also wrote hymns, the most familiar being "Our Mountain Home So Dear." These contributions to the world of letters were recognized in 1912 when Brigham Young University bestowed upon her the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. That same year another honor came when she was selected to unveil the Seagull Monument on Temple Square in Salt Lake City. She died in April 1921 at the age of ninety-three.

The editors had similar ideas about what the paper should be, and during its forty-two years many things about the Exponent remained the same: its goals, the themes running through it, its format—with a few etchings and photographs in the final years being the only innovation. Others changed: its business arrangements, its editorial advisers and assistants, some features of its content. The office moved several times, until both the Exponent and the Relief Society were quartered in the Bishop's Building at 40 North Main Street in 1909.

Little information about business arrangements can be found. In December 1873 composition and press work were moved from the Herald to the Deseret News, "where the type setting will, hereafter, be done by Young Ladies." Girls made up the paper, as well, so that in 1893 the paper could boast that "all our work is done by women except the press work." Campbell and Patterson lasted as agents for two years. Then, their firm went bankrupt and James Dwyer, another bookseller, was named agent. The subscription price remained at two dollars a year, with discounts for clubs, until 1889 when it was reduced to one dollar in an effort to entice more subscribers.

Pleas for additional subscribers and promises of expansion or improvement in appearance were regular features of the Exponent. Premiums, such as a handsomely framed engraving of Brigham Young or a portrait of Lucy Mack Smith, did not seem to help much. Sometimes Emmeline even resorted to scolding:

It seems remarkably strange that the very women whose influence should be used to uphold and maintain the paper, should realize its importance so little as to think because times are hard and there is a depression in the money market and the value of silver is low, that they cannot afford to take a paper at a dollar a year, which would not average the amount of one third of a cent a day the year round. . . . To make flimsy excuses such as are often sent in letters to this office is childish.

How many subscribers there actually were is a mystery. The Exponent may have represented fifty thousand Utah women as Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine claimed, but it certainly never came close to having that number of subscribers. In 1881 it printed a statistical report from Relief Society general conference that listed, from the stakes reporting, 12,444 officers and members and 754 Exponent subscribers; but several stakes were not represented in the report. If the ratio remained the same this would indicate around twenty-four hundred subscribers in 1898 when an editorial stated, "With the Relief Society of 30,000 women if one tenth of the number would take the paper and pay cash down it could be carried safely, yet that has been looked for, hoped for, and waited for in vain."

The earliest listing for the Exponent in a national directory of periodicals credited it with a circulation of between 500 and 1,000 in 1885. Later figures, admittedly estimates, peaked at 700 in 1902 and dropped to 500 in 1909. The Pacific States Newspaper Directory for 1888 lists a circulation of 4,000, from which the only safe conclusion may be that errors of fact or typesetting are not a twentieth-century invention.

Even before the turn of the century, combined numbers (two or more issues in one) testified to financial problems. For example, a paper appearing in January would be labeled Numbers 13 and 14 for January 1 and 15 but still contain only the regular eight pages, or one summer and one holiday number would substitute for the three of four ordinarily issued during those seasons. The final volume, extending from September 1912 to February 1914 contained only fourteen numbers.

These later issues still offered basically the same sort of content, although Emmeline did change the subtitle, which began in 1879 as "A Word fitly Spoken is like Apples of Gold in Pictures of Silver," to "The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of the Women of all Nations." This ran from November 1, 1879, until 1897 when the right of Utah women to vote was restored and the subtitle became "The Ballot in the Hands of the Women of Utah should be a Power to better the Home, the State and the Nation." Finally, with the last volume, the legend under the paper's name was "The Organ of the Latter-day Saints' Woman's Relief Society."

Featured poetry was moved from inside the paper to the front page but continued to focus on nature, motherhood, children, friendship, church leaders, and, occasionally, topics of the times, like polygamy or Prohibition. Articles, like the columns of short items, were miscellaneous in subject, but the most popular topic was women. If the numbers of articles about women's rights, women's place, and women's organizations are combined, they make up at least half of the total. Household hints appeared regularly during the first few years but were used only rarely later on.

As was the case with articles, editorials about women's place led the list of topics. The Exponent supported—consistently and at length—the woman suffrage movement. This was not a radical cause for Mormon women, since they either had the vote or were fighting to regain it during the years the Exponent was published. Other frequent subjects were self-improvement, problems and goals of the paper, and the Mormon question. The paper supported Prohibition in its later years. Editorial tributes to leaders of the church and of the women's organizations in which the paper was interested were common.

The Exponent defended polygamy in its poetry, fiction, and biography, as well as in editorials and articles. Sometimes fiction and biography were difficult to distinguish, since they were written in a similar style. Both also appeared in serial form. Closely related to biography, obituaries came to occupy a large share of the Exponent's space. Church leaders, Relief Society officers from throughout the church, United States presidents, prominent literary figures, a pope, and relatives of editors, all were eulogized.

Lesson helps were published when standard courses of study began to be adopted by Relief Societies around 1900. They became more frequent until 1914 when they were issued as a separate Relief Society Bulletin, edited by Susa Y. Gates. From the Bulletin came the Relief Society Magazine—and the end of the Exponent.

Years before it succumbed, the Exponent had evolved into Emmeline's personal property. She announced in April 1912 at the Relief Society general conference that she had decided to give it as a present to the Relief Society but requested that she be retained as editor and her daughter, Annie Wells Cannon, as assistant editor, a position Annie had held since 1905. In the process, the paper would become a magazine. However, Emmeline announced to the Relief Society general board in January 1914 that she intended to discontinue the paper completely.

She had desired the privilege of giving the good will of her paper and the name to the Society, she had also desired that her name be used as editor of the Relief Society organ. These privileges had been denied her, and she had given up the paper, the name of the paper, and the idea of having her name used as editor.

Later that year the board heard that a Relief Society magazine would begin with the year 1915, as advised by the First Presidency, that it would be called the Relief Society Magazine, and that Susa Y. Gates would be editor.

The final number of the Exponent contained no explanation for its cessation, although Emmeline listed what she considered its major contributions in a "Heartfelt Farewell": assisting those who needed assistance in many lines; providing a medium through which many successful writers first appeared in print; standing for high ideals in home, state, and church; proclaiming the worth and just claims of women; teaching Latter-day Saints; having a positive influence in the mission field; and serving as the organ of the Relief Society.

Emmeline also wrote the front-page poem for the final number. Perhaps by accident it was a very uncharacteristic work for this writer who usually found her topics in the beauties of nature, her cozy New England childhood, or the inspiration of great lives. On the other hand, then eighty-six years old, she may well have intended it as the poignant farewell it became:

SORROW AND TEARS

Out of my sorrow and mourning, Out of its grief and its pain;

Its sighing and sobbing, and moaning,

The deepest, and wildest refrain Swells forth with a melody pleading For the heart that is stricken and bleeding.

Regrets for past promises waiting, And prophecies yet unfulfill'd;

The tears and the voice that is waiting,

The strength of strong passions distill'd; The agony past self-containing, The grief that o'ermasters restraining.

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