808
THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
devised to restore to the church her primacy in altruistic work? Church property erected on land which might be the site of homes and mills and stores, exempted from taxation, is not doing its duty to the locality in which it stands if its ministry is scattered all over the city, without specially serving its geographical neighborhood. Downtown churches in abundance in New York have moved uptown simply because they have been carried on to minister to the people supporting them. There is just as much ground for a graduated church tax—graduated in proportion to the social service it renders—as for a graduated income or inheritance tax.
Walter Laidlaw.
New York.
