This argument was of little worth; for many of the so-called vices of the Negro members of the church could be reduced largely to unconfirmed reports and indulgences of the imagination of persons having foul minds. While the writer offers no brief for the religious workers of long ago, he must insist that we have no evidence to justify the sweeping generalization that the Negro Christians of the conservative order were, as a rule, morally corrupt or that they generally harbored unclean persons in their group. Their record rather shows a most healthy attitude toward maintaining a high standard of morality. The adulterer, the gambler, the thief, and the like, were usually summarily expelled from the church as undesirables, who should not sit in the congregation of the righteous. In fact, had it not been for the hold of Christianity on these freedmen, their standards of morality would have been so much lower; for they saw for emulation little of the righteous in the white people with whom they came into contact when these generally imposed upon the blacks by lying and stealing and openly sought Negro women with whom the flower of southern families lived in open adultery. The conservatives stood for the right, although they were often too narrow to overlook the so-called vices which supplied to those of talent the harmless pleasures of this world. The progressive element seriously objected to church management. Negro ministers and the governing bodies of the churches often manifested more zeal than tact in the conduct of church affairs. They too frequently built rather costly edifices, paid their pastors disproportionately large salaries, and lavished unduly upon them and their families gifts which the poor of their congregations could ill afford. The Negroes wanted a well-groomed leader in a heaven on earth to lead them to the heaven beyond. The management then incurred debts of such magnitude that the church too often developed into a money raising machine dominated from without by white speculators who profited by this folly. The progressive element militantly arrayed itself against this outlay made at the expense of the moral and religious life of the community. In their zeal they too often denounced the conservatives in control as tricksters and grafters, when, as a matter of fact, the management lost more by inefficient administration than it acquired by so-called corruption.