Exemption of church property from taxation is a deliberate invitation to the concentration of wealth, in opposition to its equitable distribution. While social reformers are straining every nerve to devise and apply effective methods for the breaking down of monopoly, the policy of favoritism toward ecclesiastical bodies is building up the evil in its most aggravated form. If the churches really regarded themselves as simply trustees of the resources placed in their hands by private benevolence and state favor, and spent all or practically all that they received for the benefit of humanity, some defense, though even then an insufficient one, might be made of the practice of tax exemption. The tendency, however, is wholly in the reverse direction. The more the churches receive, the more property they accumulate, heedless of the stern warning of Isaiah, the iconoclastic Hebrew reformer, who, according to tradition, was sawn asunder for offending the priests and the king by the heretical doctrine that Jehovah "would have mercy and not sacrifice" and preferred social justice to religious ceremonialism. "Woe," cried the prophet, "unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no room, and ye be made to dwell alone in the midst of the land!" It needs no expert knowledge of political economy to comprehend how readily untaxed property can be made to multiply. Sharing all the social advantages, and bearing none of the social burden, its owners can bide their time through all the tips and downs of the market, sure to gain in the end. All things come to him who is in a position to wait longest. While the possessions of others are automatically limited by the effective lien placed on them by the taxing power, the churches can placidly increase their holdings to their hearts' content. In the long run, they can outbid competitors, who must add the cost of annual taxation to the original payment for the property acquired. Safe in the evasion of their civic duties, they have nothing to do but to grow richer and richer. Paying no taxes, they become independent of the state, an _imperium in imperio_, a power rivaling that of organized society itself. WEALTHY CHURCHES, IMPOVERISHED PEOPLE. No class in the community can grow steadily richer without causing other classes to grow relatively poorer. The two tendencies are halves of the same process. If a larger and larger percentage of the land falls into the possession of a given institution, it is mathematically demonstrable that a greater number of individuals must remain landless and homeless, and that the cost of access to the remaining land in the community must become greater and greater, making it harder and harder for the common citizen to live. Untaxed property in any community adds heavily to the common burden.