Tuesday, October 10, 2023

T. Edgar Lyon on Orson Pratt's Belief there were more women than men

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)