their recorder, treasurer, assessor, collector, marshal, and supervisor of streets, and have sole charge of the police. They establish and support schools and hospitals, regulate "hacking," "tippling houses," and gambling and billiard-tables; inspect lumber, hay, bread and provisions, and provide against fires—which here, contrary to the rule throughout England and the Eastern States, are rare and little to be feared; direct night-lighting and the storage of combustibles, and regulate streets, bridges, and fences. They have power to enforce their ordinances by fines and penalties. Appeals from the decisions of the mayor and aldermen are made to the Municipal Court, composed of the mayor as chief justice, and the aldermen as associate justices, and from the Municipal Court to the Probate Court of Great Salt Lake City.
In the young settlements of the Far West there is a regular self-enforced programme of manufacturing progress. The first step is to establish flouring or grist mills, and lumber or saw mills, to provide for food and shelter. After these sine quâ nons come the comforts of cotton-spinning, wool-carding, cloth-weaving, tailoring, and shoemaking. Lastly arise the luxuries of life, which penetrate slowly into this Territory on account of the delay and expense of transporting heavy machinery across the "wild desert plains." The minor mechanical contrivances, the remarkable inventions of the Eastern States—results of a necessity which removes every limit to human ingenuity—such as sewing-machines, cataract washing-machines, stump-extracting machines, and others, which, but for want of hands, would never have been dreamed of, are not unknown at Great Salt Lake City.
The subjoined extract from the list of premiums of the Deserét Agricultural Society[1] will explain the industry at Great Salt Lake
- ↑ The act incorporating the society, which was established "with a view of promoting the arts of domestic industry, and to encourage the production of articles
the year 1860 (Green River and Carson counties excepted) amounts to $4,673,900." Assessors in Utah are, I presume, like assessors every where, not likely to obtain an exaggerated estimate of the value of property, as on that estimate assessments are made. Property, therefore, may be set down at a much larger figure than that given in the above extract. The Territorial tax at one half of one per cent. is $23,369 50. As an evidence of the increase of population and of improvement in property, the excess of Territorial tax is over that of last year $13,278 33—five sixths of which is collected in Great Salt Lake County, and that chiefly in this city. Of the other counties, the report states, "The counties of Weber, Box-Elder, and Juab each show a decrease in the valuation of property, compared with the assessment for 1859, of 16 per cent., and Iron County a decrease of 33 per cent., while the counties of Beaver, San Pete, and Cache show a more than corresponding increase in the following ratio, viz.: Beaver, 86; San Pete, 50; and Cache, 900 per cent. The increase in the three last-named counties, especially Cache, may account in some measure for the decrease in the other counties named, from the fact that, during the fall of 1859 and the spring of 1860, very many wealthy families moved with their stock and effects to form new settlements in Cache and San Pete counties, and probably the same may be said of Beaver."
The tax of all the counties amounts to $23,369 50; the totals of auditor's awards issued $19,184 88, which, together with $5450 95 payable on appropriations heretofore made, shows that the Mormons have the good sense to keep clear of a Territorial debt.
