| 620 and enjoyment in spiritual exercises. Or, if they choose, to engage in sewing rags, cutting and making quilts, carpets, or whatever in their judgment may be advisable to be done to aid in charitable purposes. What business has Bro. Joseph or any other elder or member to interfere with any laudable enterprise or commendable labor which the mothers, wives, sisters, and daughters of the church may choose to engage in?
Our opinion is that Dorcas Societies, Mite Associations, and Prayer Unions are laudable and permissible associations; and stand to the sisters of the church in the relation that business-meetings, quorum associations, and priesthood councils do to the brothers. If the latter are warped from their legitimate purpose to cabals, story-telling bouts, or schools for wrangling and back-biting, they become useless and bad; and the same is true, if the sisters' associations are permitted to interfere with other legitimate duties of the wives and mothers, or if in them the sisters attempt to interfere with branch or church work that belong to the elders; in such cases wrong and bad work are sure to follow. Conducted for the purpose of its institution the Prayer Union, or Prayer League of the sisters is productive of good, and fathers, husbands, and brothers should not only be willing that their women folks should attend these stated meetings, but should help to so arrange home affairs that such attendance would not do harm or make neglect.-The Saints' Herald, vol. 36, p. 209.
The annual conference for 1889 met at St. Joseph, Missouri. President Joseph Smith being absent, President W. W. Blair presided over the conference, assisted by Elders A. H. Smith and M. H. Forscutt. Elders H. A. Stebbins, F. M. Sheehy, and T. W. Williams acted as secretaries.
The following ministers were present at the conference and reported labor done: W. W. Blair, A. H. Smith, J. H. Lake, W. H. Kelley, J. R. Lambert, E. C. Briggs, J. W. Gillen, G. T. Griffiths, Joseph Luff, Charles Derry, Mark H. Forscutt, H. A. Stebbins, E. C. Brand, R. J. Anthony, M. T. Short, I. N. Roberts, J. F. McDowell, J. H. Thomas, Duncan Campbell, Columbus Scott, I. N. White, F. M. Sheehy, A. J. Moore, J. S. Roth, Henry Kemp, R. C. Evans, H. O. Smith, W. E. Peak, M. M. Turpen, J. Arthur Davies, H. N. Hansen, M. H. Bond, W. T. Bozarth, W. J. Smith, W. R. Rumel, R. M. Elvin, J. J. Cornish, E. D. Bennett, J. D. Bennett, Henry Grim, W. S. Pender, R. Etzenhouser, Hiram Rathbun, E. L. Kelley, H. C. Bronson, C. E. Butterworth, John Hawley, E. E. Wheeler, James McKiernan.
The following ministers not present reported by letter: T. W. Smith,
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