In his 1932 thesis on Orson Pratt, T. Edgar Lyon quotes from Pratt’s "Celestial Marriage" in The Seer 1, no. 8 (August 1853): 123-2, where he gives a defense of polygamy based on the number of men vs. women:
How many hundreds of thousands of
women there are, who, in consequence of having no opportunities of marriage,
yield themselves up to a life of profligacy . . . If these same females had not
been deprived of the rights which they should enjoy (i.e. the legal sanction of
plural marriage), they might have united themselves so some virtuous, good man,
and been happy as their second or third wives. . . . inquire into the causes of
their shameful and criminal courses of life, and it will be found that, in nine
cases out of ten, they were driven to that state of degradation for the want of
a protector - a husband in whom they could center their affections, and on whom
they could rely for support. (T. Edgar Lyon, Orson Pratt: Early Mormon Leader –[M.A.
dissertation; University of Chicago, June 1932], 145-46)
In
a footnote to the above, Lyon discusses how Orson Pratt came to believe there
were more women than men:
Pratt did not have world-wide
statistics to prove his contention, which was probably untrue. Sociologists are
almost of unanimous opinion that the sexes, in total numbers, are approximately
equal. Pratt, however, must have formed his conclusions from his own
observations. In the cities of England and the Eastern United States there was
an excess of females during his lifetime. This had been brought about by the
employment of women in the city factories and the emigration of the men to the
middle and far-West, in search of cheap lands, gold or furs. Other places, such
as western America, Canada, Australia, etc,, had relatively few women. The
Mormon religion secured more women converts than it did men and the Mormon communities
of the West were thus an exception to other parts of western America. Pratt had
observed this excess of women in cities of the Old and New Worlds and in the
Mormon community. He believed that it was a world-wide condition. (Ibid., 145
n. 1)
