Remarks by Joseph F. McGregor

(President of the Beaver Stake of Zion) ¶

I am reminded of a story of an Irishman who went into a drugstore to get some medicine. He asked the price. The druggist told him that it was so much for the medicine, and so much for the bottle and the label. He hesitated : "Well," he said, "hurry up and put a price on the cork, and let us know the worst." I am very thankful that Beaver comes toward the beginning of the alphabet so that the worst will soon be over. ¶

I was grateful, in listening to the remarks of President Grant this morning, that I was a Latter-day Saint, that my spirit had been held in reserve until this latter day, when I had been permitted to come upon the earth, when the gospel has been restored, and to think that I am affiliated with a people who enjoy so many bessings. We have been told that the death rate among the Latter-day Saints is eight and three-tenths per thousand. I believe that the death rate in the United States is nearly double that. As T recall, it was nearly double that last year; and educated people are sitting up and taking notice. They think there must be some cause for this condition. We have a very high birth rate. I did not quiet understand this morning whether it was thirty-six per thousand ; I believe that is what it was. How much higher it is than the average in the United States. I think it was twenty-two or twenty-three last year. Our birth rate is far ahead of that of the rest of the United States, and our death rate is far below. We know why this is. Through obedience to the law and ordinances of the gospel, the Lord is blessing his people, and he will continue to bless us. The way of the transgressor is hard, but we always receive blessings both in this life and in the life to come, by obedience to the laws and ordinances that He has laid down for the governing of his children. ¶

I was thinking this morning how this country had been changed since the advent of the Latter-day Saints, and I was thankful in my heart that, when the Pioneers were met at Green River by Samuel Brannan and he tried to get them to go on to California, they ¶

refused to go, that they settled in this forsaken country. It was a forsaken country, and forbidding at that time; but the Lord knew what he was doing, and his servants were susceptible to the promptings and influence of his Spirit, and they knew what to do. President Brigham Young told them, when they were anxious to go to California, that if they would remain here, the Lord would temper the climate, and he has done so. One of our elderly brothers, Brother White of Beaver, was telling me yesterday, as we were riding up, about the conditions that obtained in that town in the early days. In the first place, they thought it was so cold that they could only dairy a little, but President Young told them that if they would plant the hardier grains, wheat, oats, and grains of that kind, these would grow. They did .so. They made a dam in the Beaver river and turned all the water upon thirty acres ; but they continued, and now they are watering with (he Beaver river and its tributaries thirty-nine thousand acres, and they could water a great deal more if it were economically used. They are now raising plenty of fruit, apples, pears and fruits of that kind, and we have been told just recently by Mr. Peet, a man working for the railroad company, that it is the best place in the world, that he knows of, to raise celery. We are expecting to get some Hollanders in to show us how, this spring. We hope lo raise other things besides those that we are raising at the present time. ¶

I know that the Lord has blessed his people here in the valleys of the mountains, and what is said of Beaver could be said, practically, of most all the towns in our fair state. The Lord is overruling affairs for our good, as he has done from the beginning. I have often when a small boy, heard it stated that ship captains wanted our people on board. It was a well-known fact that the vessels did not go down when "Mormon" immigrants were on board, and they were out bidding for those immigrants to go in their vessels. I recall hearing Brother Brimhall tell a story, during the world war, as I remember it, that a ship had been torpedoed. They were getting the women and the children off on the life boats. Four "Mormon" boys stood by the railing looking over, and the captain came up to them and told them, "You go on this boat, and you on the other." And he assigned the four boys to as many different life boats. Someone spoke up to the captain and said: "Don't you know that these boys are 'Mormons'?" "Yes," he said: "I know it, and that is the reason I am assigning them to those life boats, because 'Mormons' don't sink." Brother Brimhall said he did no! want to tell that story until he knew absolutely that it was true. He wrote and got the information, and then he felt free in telling it. ¶

I know that the Lord watches over his people. I recall hearing my father tell when he was returning from a mission to Europe that a number of our elders were on their way home. They were very anxious, as the elders usually are, to get home, but when they came to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, they went to get their lunch baskets replenished. You ¶

know "Mormon" elders do not patronize the diner, as a rule, because they haven't money enough. When they returned to the depot the train was just pulling out, and they missed it. They were very much disappointed, so anxious were they to get home, and they had missed their train. But there was nothing for them to do but to wait for the next train, wlrch they did. As they came along a few miles out there was depression and a swale, and the train that they had been traveling on, and on which they should have continued, had collided, head on with another train, and the cars were piled up thirty feet high on either s;de of the track. It was no accident that they missed the train. The Lord had an overruling providence. ¶

So many instances could be told. I am reminded now of the conditions that obtained in Galveston when our elders were there at that great catastrophe, the sea heaving itself beyond its bounds, sweeping over the city, destroying so many hundreds of people there, and so much property. Our elders were housed in a small two-story frame building that was left intact in that part of the city — a wonderful manifesation of the overruling providence of. our heavenly Father ; and in the California disaster, in San Francisco, not one of them was hurt. We have been told that few have been injured in traveling to and from missions, and no vessels have gone down carrying brethren bound for Zion. We know how in the Zion's camp movement, when they were going up there, they were so anxious to reach Clay county, and President Woodruff has told us in his journal that they had so many difficulties to contend with. Wagon wheels ran off, wagon tongues were broken, and there was this, that and the other to delay them, so that they were compelled to pitch their tents between Big and Little fishing rivers. Soon after they had made their camp, five men rode in and told them that they would see hell before morning, and just then a little cloud began to unroll. It looked about as big, Brother Woodruff said, as a man's hand : it began to unroll, and in a few minutes the whole sky was inky black. A terrible storm came up. As the Prophet came into the schoolhouse, where they were for shelter, and shook the rain from his hat and coat, he said : "God is in this storm," and the enemy told them, afterwards, that in forty minutes Little Fishing River rose forty feet. You will all remember how the efforts of the enemy were thwarted. There were those in Ray and in Clay countes and in Jackson county who were uniting together to exterminate this little band of "Mormons," but the Lord intervened, and their plans were not permitted to mature. The next day Colonel Sconce, with some of his associates, came into the camp and he wanted to see and talk with the people, a people whom God had defended and whose battles he had fought. After talking with the Prophet and listening to a history of the people and their sufferings, tears came into their eyes, and they promised to go back and do all that they could in order to allay the prejudice which existed against the "Mormon" people, which, be it said to their credit, they did. ¶

I believe my ten minutes are up. I pray the Lord to bless us, my brethren and sisters, with his Spirit, that we may be fed the bread of life, in this conference, and go forth better prepared to perform our duties in this Church, is my prayer, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. ¶