During the last generation, however, the Negro church has decidedly changed in its attitude toward this work, as is evidenced by the fact that wherever these social welfare agencies have succeeded in carrying out their program they have done so largely with the aid of Negro churchmen. In the midst of the health crusades and the community service organizations favorably impressing the public, the Negro church in many urban centers where it might have continued conservative, found itself facing the alternative of either responding to these social needs of the membership or seeing its constituency gradually drawn away by agencies which would. In case some social uplift agency failed to attract the youth, they too often drifted to the dance halls or places where their needs were supplied in the midst of vices. Many churches have, therefore, modified their program. Seeing that the young Negro is decidedly social and hoping to save him, they have done what many formerly questioned. The Negro church, moreover, has become in many respects a social welfare agency itself, doing in several communities so much of this work that it has been unnecessary for the national agencies to invade some of their parishes with an intensive program. [Illustration: DR. M. C. B. MASON A pulpit orator in the Methodist Church.] The form this social work of the church takes in our day varies from that of a mere church club or so with a precarious existence to that of an organization almost like that of the Young Men's Christian Association. The beginnings of this work appear first in such as the men's forum, the women's league, the girls' club, or the boys' athletic association. When these clubs tend to endure they finally work toward the natural end of constituting themselves branches of an organization directed by one trusted worker assisted by those in charge of the various activities.