Strip Polygamy

Isolated in the "Arizona Strip," a barren district near the Utah border, live a people called the Brethren of the United Order, expelled years ago from the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-Day Saints. Quietly and religiously certain Brethren have been practicing polygamy. Bothering no one, they might have continued to do so had not U. S. relief agents found it out last month. Families of Brethren, reported agents, run from nine to 15 children. Specifically, one 18-year-old had three wives. On this information County Attorney Elmo Bellinger charged into the "Strip," began serving warrants.

The polygamists were quick to find defenders. Ever since the Mormon Church bowed to the U. S. and forbade plural marriage in the Manifesto of 1890, the penalty for getting caught is excommunication. Mormon officials still find it necessary to deplore polygamy publicly. But a monthly magazine called Truth, published in Salt Lake City, is a spirited defender of the abandoned practice, bolstered with copious quotations from Mormon law, Mormon writ and the sayings of the founders.

Last week a Truth writer named Joseph W. Musser appeared in Short Creek, Ariz. as counsel for four alleged polygamists haled into court. Among the defendants was John Y. Barlow, Brethren leader and man of family. Said he: "If we throw away our belief in polygamy, we throw away our entire belief." Counsel Musser explained: "Perhaps they are practicing polygamy but they are living only with one wife at a time, and when you consider that big business men in the larger cities of the nation are doing the same thing, only under the guise of wife and mistress, why should these men be persecuted for doing something that their religion teaches them is right and proper?"

Such argument was a huge success but unnecessary. The judge dismissed complaints against the four on the ground they were improperly drawn. And before County Attorney Bollinger could prepare new ones his four polygamists vanished, presumably into Utah.

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