less effectively, in spreading the pestilence against which
they were blowing their religious horns!

So little by little I saw my beautiful church for what it was and is:
a great capitalist interest, an integral and essential part of a
gigantic predatory system. I saw that its ethical and cultural and
artistic features, however sincerely they might be meant by individual
clergymen, were nothing but a bait, a device to lure the poor into
the trap of submission to their exploiters. And as I went on probing
into the secret life of the great Metropolis of Mammon, and laying
bare its infamies to the world, I saw the attitude of the church to
such work; I met, not sympathy and understanding, but sneers and
denunciation--until the venerable institution which had once seemed
dignified and noble became to me as a sepulchre of corruption.

#Trinity Corporation#

There stands on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street a towering
brown-stone edifice, one of the most beautiful and most famous
churches in America. As a child I have walked through its church yard
and read the quaint and touching inscriptions on its grave-stones;
when I was a little older, and knew Wall Street, it seemed to me a
sublime thing that here in the very heart of the world's infamy there
should be raised, like a finger of warning, this symbol of Eternity
and Judgment. Its great bell rang at noon-time, and all the traders
and their wage-slaves had to listen, whether they would or no! Such
was Old Trinity to my young soul; and what is it in reality?

The story was told some ten years ago by Charles Edward Russell.
Trinity Corporation is the name of the concern, and it is one of the
great landlords of New York. In the early days it bought a number of
farms, and these it has held, as the city has grown up around them,
until in 1908 their value was estimated at anywhere from forty to a
hundred million dollars. The true amount has never been made public;
to quote Russell's words:

The real owners of the property are the communicants of the
church. For 94 years none of the owners has known the extent
of the property, nor the amount of the revenue therefrom,
nor what is done with the money. Every attempt to learn even
the simplest fact about these matters has been baffled. The
management is a self perpetuating body, without
responsibility and without supervision.

And the writer goes on to describe the business policy of this