William Hepworth Dixon, White Conquest: Volume 1

Such wrecks come after storms. The tempest is not over yet; but there are signs of lull and clearance in the sky. If things are left alone, the end may soon be reached. Polygamy belongs to a state of society in which females do the chief work. When women cease to find their own food, light their own fires, and make their own clothes, not many fellows care to have five or six wives.

“ The thing that touches our plural system most,” says a Mormon elder who has recently escaped from polygamy into freedom, “ is an agent over which the carpet-baggers have no control. It is Fashion. Ten years ago, our women were content to dress like rustics. Since the railway brought us into contact with the world, our women see how ladies dress elsewhere; they want new bonnets, pine for silk pelisses and satin robes, and try to outshine each other. All this finery is costly; yet a man who loves his wives can hardly refuse to dress them as they see other ladies dress. To clothe one woman is as much as most men in America can afford. In the good old times, an extra wife cost a man little or nothing. She ”