Imperial Valley press., 1908-04-04
ENORMOUS ESTATE IN NEW YORK HELD BY GREAT CHURCH
 CORPORATION.
TITLE ACQUIRED BY FRAUD
Vast Property Administered Secretly by Professed Followers of Him Who
 Bade Them to Sell All and Give to
 the Poor-Attempt to Lift the Veil.

For more than two hundred years Trinity church, New York, has been growing so enormously in wealth that today the value of it's real estate holdings in the Metropolis alone is estimated as being anywhere from $39,OOO,OOO to $1OO,OOO,OOO. Its cash surplus is colossal; its revenue in rents is only second to that of the Astors. Yet this vast fortune has amassed itself so silently and has been so carefully fostered that even it's ori- gin is generally forgotten.
 Who really administers the immense Trinity treasure, how is it done, what of its mysterious growth and history? These questions have never been satis- factorily answered. Charles Edward Russell in the Broadway Magazine, attempts to lift the veil behind which Trinity Corporation has become one of the greatest estates in America
 During the American Revolution, while the patriots struggled and starved, Trinity, true to the traditions of property and the better classes, held steadily to the established order, being for some needless Tory excesses regarded by the Americans with pc euliar disfavor. But the sLorm passed, with the expulsion of the royal red soldiery, the commonwealth became the guardian of property, and repent ant Trinity, casting its allegiance anew, resumed it's ways of pleasant ness. Its original title had been he Rector and Inhabitants of the City of New York in Communion of the Protestant Church of England" Upon the body thus designated Queen Anne had conferred her bounty In TITS in accordance with the new order. of things the name was changed by legislation to "The Rector and Inhabit- ants of the City of New York in Com munion of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of New York. Now, in 1914, in the midst of all the booming prosperity, there came about a startling change. By some means that no one may discover the State Legislature was induced to allow the transformation of the yitle to "The Rector, Church Wardens and Vestry of Trinity Church in the City of New York" Thus the great property of which the enormous possibilities were but beginning to appear passed at one stroke from the possession of all the 'Episcopalians of New York (to whom indubitably under the original grant it fbelonged) into the sole control of Trinity.
 What valid defense there may have been for this extraordinary proceeding does not appear. The justice of the act was hotly assailed and it's con stitutionality on grave reasoning re- peatedly denied, among those that called it unconstitutional being no less an authority than Chancellor Kent; and the Governor seems to have VICWCu lI WlIH COnCOln IlIcII he refused to sign it, so that it became "a law by the lapsing of the time limit and without the executive sanction. The New York City parishes, as bod ies, did not oppose the act but the disfranchised parishIuhers raised a vehement protest. YeS, with kind of chill and unwaver1ns resolution, since rather characteristic of the Trim itX policy, the thing was damned through without loss of time in argu- ment, and upon the basis of legisla- tion thus obtained now rests the right of Trinity to the exclusive administra- tion of one of the greatest estates in America.
 Generations have come and gone, vestry has succeeded vestry, comptrol- Ter has followed comptroller to the grave, the stream of wealth has risen year by year, the huge revenues have flowed in and been handled and dis posed of, and there has been no varia- ton in the rule of apsoIute silence. What each man has known he has inherited from his predecessor and transmitted to his successor and to no