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Show Page 255 Orson undoubtedly had great faith in Brigham's cooperative "home manufacture" scheme to relieve "the general scarcity" in Utah Territory, but his own family continued to suffer "in serious straits for breadstuff," deeply in debt to Godbe's mercantile accounts. Apparently, his wives had received a scanty assistance from the tithing office in his absence, but this was immediately discontinued with his return to the valley. One of his wives, Delia, was literally without shelter, living off charity in the dusty little town of Tooele: "Adelia Ann writes: they have lived several weeks by borrowing. Adelia and family have no house to reside in, and the time is about up, when she will have to leave the little bed-room where she has been staying during the winter...It is expected that (she) will remain in Tooele city, if they do not perish with starvation." Delia had only a twelve-year-old son, Lorus, to assist her; but Orson could not come to her aid, for his families in Salt Lake were by no means any better off. "I have taken up from day to day, diligently applying the spade, and digging in the ground to procure a scanty morsel...I shall occupy myself in trying to raise Potatoes." 40 The underlining may indicate some untoward disgust at his plight, as he later writes: "I have not yet received the first thing for my labors in the office. I do not know but they think that my family and I, have learned to live on nothing, and keep fat." 41 Orson himself now spent most of his time working on office projects, on the promise of payment; holed up by a little stove, he wrote day and night behind a partition in Marian's house. After six months, his family's lot had improved little by all this labor: "While I have been straining every nerve to pay these debts, my family at Tooele have been almost starving. Adelia Ann has...been living with her family out of doors, eating and cooking out of doors, and part of the children sleeping out of doors. She has a very small bed room large enough for her own bed...." 42 |