MATERIAL PROGRESS OF UTAH
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A certain man persisted in keeping a dog. Now a dog would eat pretty much of what, under the circumstances, could be eaten by the people and therefore all could not afford to keep dogs. This dog stole some biscuits from a man and the fellow borrowed a shot gun and shot the dog. The case was brought before me for arbitration, and I gave the man who had lost the biscuits the full benefit of the law, namely, allowed him four fold—or 16 biscuits, which kept the fellow a whole week.
MATERIAL PROGRESS OF UTAH Dictated by William Jennings, ex-Mayor of Salt Lake City in 1884 (Bancroft Library) One of the most important articles brought by the pioneer women were their looms. For many years homespun woolen linseys were all there was to wear. Brigham Young at one time decreed that the men mustn't dance with ony one in other than home-spun garments; this was to discourage vanities and extravagance and to encourage home manufacture's. They undertook to raise cotton in St. George, but it didn't pay. Considerable cotton was shipped about '58 or '60; still it was not a paying experiment. The freight upon it was lessened as they sent it in the otherwise empty wagons to Omaha on the Missouri, whence they had gone for the emigration for Utah. Sometimes as many as 500 wagons, and cattle would be sent out to meet them. In the spring of 1858, when Johnston's army entered Salt Lake, not a soul was to be seen—everybody had fled the city. It was not long before the clothing became exhausted; women were so scantily dressed as scarcely to cover their nakedness; barefooted and bleeding, too, with no means for supplying their needs. They dressed sometimes in sacking or with remnants of rag carpets thrown about them. There were cattle and sheep, however, in abundance. The railroad coming into Utah was a great blessing as an educator. It is impossible for a people to live by itself without communication more than once in six years with the outside world, without becoming narrow-minded a n d retrograding. Boys eighteen or twenty years old, sons of Brigham Young and other dignitaries, satisfied their highest ambition when they would ride about the town on horseback, dressed fantastically, with leathern leggings, Spanish spurs, soft slouch hat with fur twisted around it and hanging down like a coon's tail. A Bowie knife would be
