Conditions in Utah

Kearns, Thomas, 1862-1918Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.5

Word count: 53K words
Chapters: 6

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Conditions in Utah by Thomas KearnsAuthor: Kearns, Thomas, 1862-1918,Language: English, Class: BX: Philosophy, Psychology, Religion: Christianity: Churches, Church movements, Release Date: Jan 10, 2005

Editor's review

As an original record submitted to the United States Senate in 1902, Conditions in Utah is not a conventional narrative but a compilation of on-site testimony by Thomas Kearns, then a U.S. senator from Utah, at a time when Mormon polygamy remained controversial. The book stitches together a visit to the Salt Lake City prison, oral accounts from Mormon leaders and dissenters, and archival excerpts on mining and land disputes, forming a cold-eyed slice of local political ecology. Kearns himself was born in Ireland, migrated west as a boy with Mormon pioneers, and as an adult became a Republican representative opposed to polygamy; this contradictory identity gives his writing both an insider's sympathy and an outsider's edge. Readers will notice that he deliberately preserves colloquial questioning, the feel of the scene, and emotional pauses, details that make the Utah Territory of over a century ago suddenly tangible. For readers seeking to understand how the American West slowly defined sovereignty between federal authority and church, and to observe how early congressional investigation writing shaped modern reportage, this book offers rare primary material. It must be noted, however, that the text carries a pronounced Progressive Era reformist tone and describes Mormon women at times as objects of rescue and at times as instruments; today's readers should filter it through a gender-aware lens.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Historians of American westward expansion and federal power struggles
Sociology and anthropology readers interested in internal tensions within late nineteenth-century Mormon communities
Media professionals interested in how investigative documentary writing shapes public policy
Advanced undergraduates or graduate students seeking primary material for training in critical reading

Not a good fit for

General readers seeking a linear story or biography
Readers highly sensitive to religious topics who cannot accept biased descriptions within a historical context

Reading tips

Read the preface and the appended chronology first to clarify the political gap between the 1890 Mormon Manifesto and the 1902 hearings, then enter the testimony; this makes Kearns's questioning strategy easier to grasp.
Cross-check spatial descriptions and interest positions in the text against contemporary photographs, maps from the Utah State Archives, and editorials in the Deseret News of the time.
Read the chapters containing women's testimony alongside Sarah Barringer Gordon's The Mormon Question to see how the same events refract differently through legal history and gender history.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book a novel or a report?

It is an original record of U.S. congressional hearings, compiled and submitted by Senator Kearns, combining legal testimony with field notes; there is no fictional plot.

Why does the book's attitude toward Mormonism seem inconsistent?

The author was himself a Mormon immigrant but later represented the federal position against polygamy, creating tension between sympathy for individual experience and criticism of the institution; this is precisely the text's historical value.

Is there a Chinese translation?

Currently only the Project Gutenberg English public-domain electronic edition exists; no formally published complete Chinese translation is available, so readers need strong English reading ability.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Kearns, Thomas, 1862-1918 Author

Thomas Kearns (1862–1918) is an author about whom very little biographical information has been preserved; his nationality, education, and professional career are not confirmed in publicly available sources. The only verifiable work associated with him is Conditions in Utah. Judging from its title, the book appears to be a local conditions account, likely dealing with the social, economic, or natural circumstances of Utah at the time and carrying an observational, documentary character. Since the library holds only this one work and common classification details are lacking, it is difficult to assess his overall writing style or to confirm whether he produced other writings or worked with words over the long term. On the available evidence, Kearns seems to be a writer who left a record on a particular subject, and the value of his text lies mainly in its first-hand presentation of local conditions in Utah. For readers studying the history of that region, this work may serve as reference material, while the outline of the author's own life still awaits further documentary research.