Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

So successful was this campaign that Hubbard then tried targeting specific, and potentially
vulnerable, groups, starting with the victims of one of the most feared diseases of the 'fifties. The
classified columns of the evening newspapers soon began carrying the following, apparently
innocuous, advertisement: 'Polio victims. A research foundation investigating polio desires
volunteers suffering from the effects of that illness to call for examination . . .' The 'research
foundation' followed up with similar advertisements aimed at asthmatics and arthritics.
'Casualty Contact' was another thoroughly distasteful recruiting method advocated by Hubbard. He
recommended that ambitious auditors looking for new pre-clears should cut out stories in the
newspapers about 'people who have been victimized one way or the other by life. It does not much
matter whether that victimizing is in the manner of mental or physical injury . . .' Then they should
make a call on the bereaved or injured person as speedily as possible, representing themselves
as 'a minister whose compassion was compelled by the newspaper story'.
By the summer of 1956, Scientology was prospering mightily and so, at last, was its founder.
Hubbard's gross receipts for the fiscal year ending June 1956 amounted to $102,604 - a
handsome income by any standards.[6] His salary from the Church of Scientology was only $125 a
week, but he earned commission from the sale of training processes and E-meters, in addition to
substantial royalties from his innumerable books. More than sixty books on Scientology by L. Ron
Hubbard were in print by this time and a new one was appearing approximately every two months,
usually containing new processes and procedures superseding those currently in use.
The church could easily afford the expense of allowing its founder to become an early transatlantic
commuter and Hubbard made frequent visits back to Washington during the year, collecting lecture
fees on each trip. In November, the Academy of Religious Arts and Sciences (also known as the
Academy of Scientology) moved to 1810-1812 19th Street, adjoining grey-brick townhouses with
two flights of stone steps leading up to the front door in a tree-lined street of eminent respectability.
The Hubbards took a lease on a handsome four-storey brownstone on the other side of the street
for their use when they were in Washington.
In March 1957, the Church of Scientology adopted a compensation scheme known as a
'proportional pay plan' under which Hubbard would henceforth receive, in lieu of salary, a
percentage of the church's gross income. The effect was dramatic: before the end of the 'fifties the
founder of the Church of Scientology would be coining around $250,000 a year, a great deal more
than the President of the United States.
By April it seemed that Hubbard had given up his heroic, single-handed attempt to rid the world of