I got your point. The Pilgrims were into the notion of “commonwealth”, a type of communism. Everything was to be shared, notions about accumulating wealth were considered evil. The big issue was that the industrious worked hard while the layabouts did nothing to contribute...thus there was nothing in the “common storehouse” when winter famine and sickness struck. (Thus friendly indians had to “help out”).
Such “heavenly minded” commonwealth(read also communism) minded types in the churches you describe put you out of business and discovered they couldn’t handle the load. I wonder if any of them ever learned any lessons from this.
When you ran your enterprise did you have many folks who didn’t “make their rent’? Were there special situations of which you had to show some “flexibility”? What was going on that your enterprise came to the attention of these “do gooders” anyway? I wonder why they felt they had to “compete” with you? ( I’m not being critical, I sympathize with your side of it. The irony of your situation reminded me of that “commonwealth” chapter of the Plymouth colony that historians gloss over because it puts socialism in a bad light!)
I was evil because I was charging rent for those poor people. An yes,I ate a lot of lost rent. It was not break even