True, there is no law to sustain this unnatural vice; but
what is needed is a law to punish it as a crime, and at the same time to
fix the status of the innocent children, the offspring of this system,
and of the possibly innocent plural wives. But as an institution
polygamy should be banished from the land.
While this is being done I invite the attention of Congress to another,
though perhaps no less an evil--the importation of Chinese women, but
few of whom are brought to our shores to pursue honorable or useful
occupations.
Observations while visiting the Territories of Wyoming, Utah, and
Colorado during the past autumn convinced me that existing laws
regulating the disposition of public lands, timber, etc., and probably
the mining laws themselves, are very defective and should be carefully
amended, and at an early day. Territory where cultivation of the soil
can only be followed by irrigation, and where irrigation is not
practicable the lands can only be used as pasturage, and this only where
stock can reach water (to quench its thirst), can not be governed by the
same laws as to entries as lands every acre of which is an independent
estate by itself.
Land must be held in larger quantities to justify the expense of
conducting water upon it to make it fruitful, or to justify utilizing
it as pasturage.
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