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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Profits of Religion by Upton Sinclair: on an aeroplane which flies over him; he imposes on fishermen a
tax upon catches made many hundred of yards from the shore.
And in this graft, of course, the church has its share. Each
church owns land--not merely that upon which it stands, but farms
and city lots from which it derives income. Each cathedral owns
large tracts; so do the schools and universities in which the
clergy are educated. The income from the holdings of a church
constitutes what is called a "living"; these livings, which vary
in size, are the prerogatives of the younger sons of the ruling
families, and are intrigued and scrambled for in exactly the
fashion which Thackeray describes in the eighteenth century.
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