# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1887_S71
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Fifth Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1887. 71

seize it. Also, the purchase price, as experts have shown us, was a
very moderate one. What significance the property and its
management have for our mission is already evident from the number
of guests who were lodged there. In the year 1886 there were 5029. —
They have all at least received the impression that here in America
we live by the saying: Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in
the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through
him.

"3. An ugly suspicion has also been lifted from us through our
'Pilgrim House.' Our 'Lutheran' opponents had spread the report,
here as elsewhere, that our missionary was housing the people
assigned to him in 'wretched dives.' That was of course untrue, but
we could not refute it without advertising for certain lodging
houses, which was not our calling. This suspicion has now been
lifted from us. It was also high time, for the emigrant hostels are
falling more and more into bad hands.

"4. On purchasing the Pilgrim House the Committee had to take over
a 'lease' by which a saloon on the lower floor was secured for a
certain period. This fact too, entirely outside our control, was
used against us in the camp of our 'Lutheran' opponents. Through
negotiations it succeeded in persuading the holder of the lease to
surrender it, though only by a financial sacrifice, such as is
customary among businessmen, which was however comparatively very
small. The whole house now serves the purpose for which it was
bought: service to our brothers after the flesh who seek a new home
here in America. To be sure, this change has cut off a not
inconsiderable income.

"5. Coming now to speak of the financial condition of our mission
and of our 'Pilgrim House,' the Committee cannot avoid making some
painful confessions first. The first is: it never told the Synod the
full amount of the surpluses accumulated through commissions. It
allowed itself, as it now recognizes, to be moved by insufficient
reasons to conceal a sum of $3000, to which is further added a
premium value on $3000 in United States Bonds, which was
considerable. Of these sums the Synod learned nothing before this
report. Justice, however, requires it to be added that the Committee
had already, at the Delegate Synod in St. Louis, wished to free
itself of this debt and had adopted resolutions aimed at that end,
which the former treasurer, however, did not carry out. — The second
confession is: the Committee placed too great a trust in the former
treasurer, in that it simply left the entire surplus sum in his
hands without ever seeing to it whether it actually existed and
whether it was not being invested profitably

[SCAN: faint word-fragments show through on the left margin from the facing page (p-076); not transcribed.]