Editing Perpetual Emigration Fund (section)

== Final years and legacy ==
Since repayment depended on the recipients building up sufficient means after emigration, the PEFC often did not collect on the notes it held. President Young and others occasionally issued harsh criticism of those who failed to repay, or at least return the gear with which they had been outfitted.<ref name="Discourses">{{cite book |last=Young |first=Brigham |date=September 16, 1855 |location=Salt Lake City |editor-last=Watt |editor-first=George D. |title=Journal of Discourses Delivered by President Brigham Young, His Two Counsellors, and the Twelve Apostles, and Others |publisher=Orson Pratt |publication-date=1856 |publication-place=London |pages=1-6 |chapter=Gathering the Poor |chapter-url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Journal_of_Discourses/Volume_3/Gathering_the_Poor}}</ref> However, church [[Bishop (Latter Day Saints)|bishops]] who oversaw PEF repayments were directed that collection should be "consistent with the ability of the debtors to pay, without distressing the poor, the widow, the aged, or the infirm."<ref name="Scandinavia"/> As the company continued to balance these competing considerations, by 1880 the amounts owed to the PEF had grown to $1.6 million.<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Leonard |first=Glen M. |authorlink=Glen M. Leonard |title=Westward the Saints: The Nineteenth-Century Mormon Migration |journal=[[Ensign (LDS magazine)|Ensign]] |volume=10 |issue=1 |date=January 1980 |pages=6–13 |url=https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1980/01/westward-the-saints-the-nineteenth-century-mormon-migration?lang=eng |accessdate=November 27, 2023}}</ref> As part of the [[jubilee]] celebration of the 50th year since the church's organization, its soon-to-be President [[John Taylor (Mormon)|John Taylor]] announced a goal to forgive half the amount. With instructions to identify those too poor to pay, church bishops managed in the end to forgive $337,000 of obligations to the PEF during the year.<ref name="Sureties"/>

[[File:Eli Houston Murray.jpg|thumb|alt=black-and-white 19th-century photo of a man with a bushy beard|Governor Eli Murray lobbied the federal government to have the PEFC dissolved]]
As the US federal government stepped up its campaign to suppress the practice of [[polygamy]] by the church, the PEFC came under collateral attack. Utah territorial Governor [[Eli Houston Murray|Eli H. Murray]] complained to the [[United States Secretary of the Interior|Secretary of the Interior]] in 1883 that the PEFC's incorporation meant the legislature had effectively handed over to the church the entire system of immigration into the territory.<ref name="Immigration">{{cite journal |last=Mulder |first=William |date=June 1956 |title=Immigration and the "Mormon Question": An International Episode |journal=[[The Western Political Quarterly]] |volume=9 |issue=2 |pages=416-433 |doi=10.2307/444615}} While the ordinance incorporating the PEFC could hardly prevent immigrants from traveling to Utah if they had other means available, Murray argued that the territory lacked any other legal system to authorize this.</ref> Subsequent sessions of [[U.S. Congress|Congress]] repeatedly considered bills to disincorporate both the LDS Church and the Perpetual Emigrating Fund Company on the grounds that it fostered the practice.<ref name="PEF Story">{{cite journal |last=Larson |first=Gustive O. |date=September 1931 |title=The Story of the Perpetual Emigration Fund |journal=[[The Mississippi Valley Historical Review]] |volume=18 |issue=2 |pages=184-194 |doi=10.2307/1893379}}</ref> The disincorporation finally took effect when the [[Edmunds-Tucker Act]] was enacted in 1887.

The church was ultimately allowed to continue operating and its assets were released in 1893 after a [[1890 Manifesto|manifesto]] officially discontinuing the practice of polygamy, but the PEFC was never reinstated. At the conclusion of court proceedings to dissolve it, the receiver took possession of $417,968.50 in net assets, nearly all uncollectable promissory notes of no value.<ref name="PEF Story"/> In 2001 the LDS Church established a new program inspired by the Perpetual Emigration Fund, this time designed to help members in [[developing country|developing countries]] obtain vocational and technical training, and named it the [[Perpetual Education Fund]].