| 112 By a careful reading of these two epistles one will see that their only expressed policy was to build up the city of Nauvoo, and to thoroughly organize the church throughout the United States under the supervision of the Twelve, as such. If any thought was entertained
employed. In order the more effectually to do this, we must turn our attention to the erection of workshops for the manufacture of every useful article; and wares thus manufactured must find a market not in Nauvoo alone, but in all the wide country, and in cities and towns abroad.
If the saints will commence and follow out this plan, and lay out their cash for the raw material, and employ their friends and themselves at home, instead of sending away all our cash for manufactured goods, we can soon produce millions of wealth, and the poor will have no cause of complaint: for among a temperate people thus employed there would soon be no poor except the widow, the orphan, or the infirm, and these could be abundantly provided for.
The fact is, we have a country abundantly supplied with natural resources and calculated for the production of wool, flax hemp, cotton and many other articles; and we have water power to any amount; an after all our troubles, a prospect of peace and protection; in short everything for the encouragement of capitalists and workmen. Come on then, all ye ends of the earth, take hold together, and with a long strong, steady, and united exertion, let us build up a stronghold of industry and wealth, which will stand firm and unshaken amid the wreck of empires and the crash of thrones.
In regard to principle and doctrine, we know that we are founded upon the plain and manifest truth as revealed from on high; and which is sufficiently manifest and plain to convince all honest men who look into it, and to confound all who oppose. The main object then which remains to be carried out is to practice accordingly, and to live according to our knowledge.
In order to do this we must not only be industrious and honest, in providing abundantly for our temporal wants, and for those for whom duty and charity bind us to act. But we must abstain from all intemperance, immorality, and vice of whatever name or nature; we must set an example of virtue, modesty, temperance, continency, cleanliness, and charity. And be careful not to mingle in the vain amusements and sins of the world.
In nearly all cities or towns of an extensive population there are certain vices, or crimes, not exactly tolerated by law, but yet borne with by the people, as a kind of unavoidable or necessary evil; such, for instance as gambling, drunkenness, vain and wicked amusements and allurements, directly calculated to corrupt the morals of the people and lead them from the paths of virtue and truth. Among the most conspicuous and fashionable of these we might mention, balls, dances, corrupt and immodest theatrical exhibitions, magical performances, etc., all of which are apt not only to have an evil tendency in themselves, but to mingle the virtuous and the vicious in each others society; not for the improvement of the vicious, but rather to corrupt the virtuous.
Nauvoo is now becoming one of the largest towns of the West, and as it was founded, and is still in a great measure managed by the saints we greatly desire the united influence of all well wishers to our society; and to good order and morality, to cooperate with us in preserving the
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