"Hold the Line!"

Among its 1,323,000 communicants the Protestant Episcopal Church counts many a wealthy man. But the Church is no more proof against financial troubles than any other. Successively its National Council has had to reduce the yearly budgets voted in 1931 from $4,225,000 to $2,898,000 to $2,716,855. Besides a deficit of $529,000 incurred last year, a 1934 deficit of $500,000 impends. If this is not made up the National Council may abandon missionary work in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska where venerable Peter Trimble Rowe has been laboring as bishop for 40 years.

Out of the Diocese of Southern Ohio last week sprang fresh hope for the Episcopal budget. There a group of laymen were crying "Hold the Line" and organizing to raise money for their church in a highly businesslike manner. Their object was not only to raise $500,000 and present it to the triennial General Convention of their Church next October, but to do something that the Church has never before succeeded in doing--develop a strong organization among its half a million adult males.

Leader among the laymen is Charles Phelps Taft II. Cincinnati lawyer and civic leader. Son of the late President of the U. S., who was a Unitarian. Lawyer Taft is a pious Episcopalian like his mother. Last March he helped work up an "Everyman's Offering" campaign for his bishop, Rt. Rev. Henry Wise Hobson. By last week the Offering had become nationwide, with Lawyer Taft as its chairman and Eric Gibberd, a onetime department store executive (Abraham & Straus, Inc. in Brooklyn, Mably & Carew in Cincinnati), as its executive secretary. The Offering is working with posters, stickers, pamphlets, nationwide publicity, and a tabloid Hold the Line News. No diocesan or parish quotas are set. First 100% offering reported: from St. Andrew's Mission (48 communicants), Washington Court House. Ohio, oldtime home of Harry Micajah Daugherty.

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