Buchman was no less forthright with benefactors than with anyone else. 'We left our friend through a crack in the door,' he wrote to Shoemaker in 1923 about a visit to one of them. 'She asked me what I thought she needed most and I told her "conversion". She said, "You are right." It is a great sense to feel that you are not going after people's cheques, but that you can check them to live the maximum. People don't like this, but then if they don't receive you at one place, follow Paul's plan, and let the dust from your feet blind them.'2

The amounts of money given to Buchman by backers in those early days of independence cannot have been large. Whereas from their earliest trips Buchman and his family had travelled first-class on transatlantic crossings, in June 1923 he went second-class for the first time 'because of the venture of Faith which compelled me to enlarge the work' - he was taking seven students to Europe. This letter was to a banker friend who was paying the passage of two of the students, and of them he wrote, 'I would very decidedly, if I were you, let them come first-class . . . because these men are to be the future leaders in their own country, and you want them to meet and know the men and women who are leaders in American life.'3

Buchman's bank statements for 1923 show that he never had more than $550 (then about £110) in his account, which often sank to $50 and once to $7.23. His average balance was about $100, and the income shown on his tax return for the year was $2,010. All the same, Mrs Finlay Shepard's contributions provoked a protest from Shoemaker. He wrote Buchman, 'You have very little feeling for social justice. You say you think reform is wanted but you see it all in terms of personal sin. I do not believe the anomaly of your rich friends being rich ever strikes you much. Hungry Coxe thinks you are a fearful snob ... I am going to write him he has never seen you with Mary and Hannah and George ... But, Frank, there is danger in too much hob-nobbing with the well-favoured classes of society.'4

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