Many descriptions have been given by the press, metropolitan and interior, of the success with which one of the trustees built up the largest Sunday-school in his city at the same time that he was building up the monopoly--leading the children of his competitors and customers to salvation with his left hand, while with his right he led their fathers in the opposite direction financially. The church where these men appear has had columns of admiring description in the leading daily papers of New York and other cities. "There are few wealthier congregations than this one," says a reporter of the New York _World_, though he adds, "the wealth is elsewhere more evenly divided." The trustee of the light of the world "is the magnate of the church, the centre around which all lesser millionaire lights revolve. Everybody stops to speak and shake hands with him. Everybody smiles upon him, this modest man of nearly $200,000,000." "It is amusing," says the Brooklyn _Eagle_, "to note the manner in which his neighbors watch him during the service. Quite a number of people loiter near the door to see him as he walks out of church." "They are worth a bit of careful study," says another paper of the trustees, "and no place is quite so convenient as when they are at church. Their interest in religion is as sincere as their belief in oil. From the moment they enter church until they leave they are examples that Christians of high and low degree might follow with profit." "They have made the most of both worlds," writes another journalist. The oil trust was criticised by the Rev. Washington Gladden at Chautauqua, in 1889. One of its prominent officials, as reported in a friendly journal, defended it as "a sound Christian institution; and all these communistic attacks are due entirely to the jealousy of those who cannot stand other people's prosperity."[539]