The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-09-17

" HERE probably never was queerer
 lot of financial junk under one roof ! than the Carnegie Trust company had in it's vaults. Among the so called ''cats and dogs'' was a mortgage of S275, GOO on a church in a middle west city. It was one of the famous Kieran lot. Kieran was the man mixed up in the Catholic university muddle the Fidelity Funding company failure and many other weird deals.
 A Wall street concern to which the Car nege company owed money had reason to know the Carnegie company was in deep water and in pressing for payment got this church mortgage among other bits of collateral. The Wall street con cern was not fooled in taking the mort gage. It knew it was getting a lemon. It knew. too that the Carnegie company had used every means within it's power to collect on the mortgage. which was more than year overdue, with its interest in default.
 A church in the west, especially when that church has lost a good deal of it's congregation, is not much of an asset. The Wall street concern had no particu- lar use for churches anyhow, so the head of the house turned the mortgage over to one of his bright young men, to see If ne could not by some hook or crook collect enough on the mortgage to re- leve the Wall street concern of the odium of having been stung by the Carn egie crowd.
 The young mans name was McGill. Mc- Gill is mild of voice. mild of manner, but has pretty good chin and well defined jaw. He is a fine student of character and has a clear logical mind He packed his suit case and went west to take a look at the church. It. was very fine church, as churches go, but that about let it out
 Mir McGill soon learned it's story. A ! young Polish priest, fervent, enthusias- ticNfired by the zeal of religious spirit, had received the idea of building one of the finest churches in the state. His congregation was comparatively poor, but that did not dampen his ardor. He instilled so much of his own spirit into shis people that many of them turned over to him all the money they had in the world With this money he went as far as he could with the church. Then he had to seek outside help. He got some, and that carried the church lit tie further, but the structure was only half finished and he was in a maze of difficulties. Some one suggested Pat rick J. Kieran as a Moses who could lead him out of this financial wilder ness
 The young priest and his bishop knew nothing of business, and signed papers without understanding their meaning. They had to pay so much in bonuses, commissions and multitude of other charges in the transactions they were led into that the church was swamped with debt. and yet they received hardly enough money to complete the building. There was one commission alone of S50000.
 The congregation struggled under the weight of debt for a few years, and then one by one of the members began to drop off Those who had loaned all their money to the church were very bitter They saw no chance af repay ment. Every dollar that came into the church seemed to be going out on tha. mortgage.
 When the Carnegie company got hold of this mortgage the church had de- faulted on the interest and was a year or more in arrears. Meanwhile the Franciscan order had taken over the church in the hope of ministering;to the needs of it's congregation and winning back those who had strayed off.
 Young MT. McGill saw there was no use wasting time around the church or in the