“We can’t feed and clothe them,” objected Banker Chisholm, whose white mutton chops already glowed pink from the anger-reddened skin beneath.
“It doesn’t pay to pauperise the people,” supplemented Willis Cunningham, stroking his sparse Vandyke complacently. Cunningham, whose sole relationship to economics consisted in permitting his secretary to sign checks, had imbibed a few principles which sufficed for all occasions.
“I do not wish to pauperise them,” returned the rector. “I am willing to accept the shame of having the city show Market Square Church its duty, in exchange for the pleasure of replacing the foul tenements in Vedder Court with clean ones.”
Joseph G. Clark glanced again at Chisholm.
“They’d be dirty again in ten years,” he observed. “If we build the new type of sanitary tenement we shall have to charge more rent, or not make a penny of profit; and we can’t get more rent because the people who would pay it will not come into that neighbourhood.”
“Are we compelled to make a profit?” retorted the rector. “Is it necessary for Market Square Church to remain perpetually a commercial landlord?”
The vestry gazed at the Reverend Smith Boyd in surprised disapproval. Their previous rector had talked like that, and the Reverend Smith Boyd had been a great relief.
“So long as the church has property at all, it will meet with that persistent charge,” argued Chisholm. “It seems to me that we have had enough of it. My own inclination would be to sell the property outright, and take up slower, but less personal, forms of investment.”
Old Nicholas Van Ploon, sitting far enough away to fold his hands comfortably across his tight vest, screwed his neck around so that he could glare at the banker.
“No,” he objected; for the Van Ploon millions had been accumulated by the growth of tall office buildings out of a worthless Manhattan swamp. “We should never sell the property.”