# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1914_S119
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

14th Delegate Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, 1914. 119

quite natural; for in our peculiar business the producers and the consumers, the buyers and the sellers, the beneficiaries and the benefactors, are all one and the same owners and proprietors.

Unfortunately we have a death to report this time. A longtime and well-deserving member of the board of directors, Mr. Hermann Ellermann, died on October 17, 1913. In his honor we left his position vacant for forty days and then chose as his successor Mr. H. Lührmann, who already had experience on our board of directors in earlier years and agreed to accept the election.

In the triennium now past, dear God has also graciously kept us from serious mishap, though we cannot help but recall that in both 1912 and 1913 extraordinarily heavy downpours flooded our pressroom, from which we suffered damage amounting to several thousand dollars. We have taken measures to the best of our judgment to make a repetition of this damage very unlikely.

Unfortunately it also happened in 1913 that an employee of another firm, who was working on our building, fell to his death. We, however, bore no responsibility in this matter.

Authorized to do so by a resolution of the 1911 Delegate Synod, we proceeded right after the Synod with the construction of the new fireproof building, which was finished toward the end of the year and was also put into use. It has proven satisfactory in every respect. We are now able not only to have a better pressroom at our disposal, but also to store our goods more practically and to assign to a salesroom space that had long been needed. We did not exceed the sum allowed us for this building; but since thorough repairs and reinforcements to two of our buildings proved unavoidably necessary, we spent, in all, during the last triennium, not quite $55,000 on repairs and new construction. About $3,000.00 of that may be regarded as regular repair expenses, so that our extra outlay for buildings in the last triennium amounts in all to $52,000.

The 1911 Delegate Synod had authorized us to issue bonds for the new building. We had requested this permission for the extreme case that we might have to resort to this means in order to have the necessary sum available for the building. We succeeded, however, in erecting the building without incurring the cost of a bond issue.

Our fiscal year now closes on May 1. Since, by synodical resolution, these reports are to be sent out for printing as early as April 6, it is not possible for us to include our financial report already in the present report. It will also be difficult to have the report entirely finished by the opening of the Synod, because our inventory count must be accurate as of May 1, and between May 1 and the opening of the Synod on May 6 there is scarcely time for a