International projectionist (July-Dec 1934)

16 INTERNATIONAL PROJECTIONIST December 1934 A YEAR OF THE MOTION PICTURE CODE; WHAT NEXT? James J. Finn JUST one year after President Roosevelt approved the motion picture code we are treated to the spectacle of his former chief codist, General Hugh Johnson, announcing through the newspapers to all and sundry that "the NRA is as dead as a dodo; and the only thing deader than a dodo is a doornail." Pretty words, these, worthy of an unchallenged authority on dodos. Is this former chief codifier correct? Generally speaking, and having in mind the NRA panorama the country over, one must agree with General Johnson. Of course, it is only a small detail that the chief cause for the advertised demise of the NRA is none other than Johnson himself. Johnson could blow hot, he could blow cold, but he couldn't blow hard enough. The goings-on in other industries with other codes indicate clearly just what is going to happen ultimately to the motion picture code. Frankly, this writer believes that the NRA, as we have known it do date, is as dead as a dodo. Just as prohibition foundered on the rocks of ineffectual enforcement, so was the NRA strangled by lack of compliance. Of course, the NRA big-wigs in Washington are now talking seriously and sonorously about compliance, but they might just as well attempt to breathe life into a dead horse. The answer to the proposition lies in one word — compliance, or, rather, non-compliance. Acceptance, Not Compliance So long as the NRA was received with open arms by a given industry, the leaders of which disdained to chisel, then just so long was a given code worth a class, falling, in the case of theatre types, into Classes A, B, and A Prime. The difference is a matter of the constants of the circuits — of the grid bias primarily, but also of plate current and speech transformer constants. The Class A Prime is an intermediate type that operates as Class A until a high level of volume is reached, when an automatic change in grid bias takes place and the amplifier functions as Class B until the volume is again reduced. Any amplifier using tubes about the sizes charted in Table A, but delivering several times as much power in watts per filament, is undoubtedly operating as Class B, or A Prime. Manufacturers will, however, rate their amplifiers as to class upon request. hoot. But the moment industrial leaders put up their backs and made threatening gestures in the direction of deputy administrators, the National Labor Board, and the compliance division — from that moment on a given code started to wither away. The motion piclure code bears out the truth of this statement. In San Francisco, in Boston, in Cleveland, in Chicago, in Philadelphia — in any city where more or less cordial employer-employee relations had been maintained through the years, and where good working conditions and wages were in effect — the NRA had no trouble at all in proving itself the saviour of the working man. But in those localities where there existed any employer-employee disturbance—witness New York as a shining example — there NRA flopped. There is a tendency to identify the New Yorks of this land as exceptions; but isn't it a fact that the NRA was widely advertised as a cure-all for the New Yorks? Certainly. Surely the Bostons, the Clevelands, the San Franciscos didn't care a whoop in a stiff gale about the NRA. As previously stated in these columns, the motion picture code is purely a negative exposition of labor's position in that it merely okayed things exactly as they were and cared nothing about improvement. The noble attempt to lift wages to the level of 1929 finally worked out so that not a dime of the money lost in motion picture wages between 1929 and 1933 was recovered. Not a dime. But, has anybody seen prettier figures than those imbedded in the latest financial reports of the largest exhibitors in this business? These figures are most interesting. Collective bargaining, supposedly guaranteed in the now famous Section 7a of the Recovery Act, never meant a thing to workers in the motion picture field because the union membership was distributed too thinly among the theatres. Which is well, because the interpretations now being visited upon that cornerstone of the NRA by such "friends" of labor as Donald R. Richberg make of the section not a help but a positive peril to labor. Labor's trouble was and still is that it went whole hog for the NRA. It has been playing along with the fanciful notion that employers, prodded by the Government, would eventually give that which they showed absolutely no disposition to give through years past, even when 1929 poured its imaginary wealth upon the land. Right at the moment labor and the Government appear to be engaged in some form of shell game, participated in by the usual quota of shills in the form of lawyers, pseudo labor leaders and whipper-snapper deputy administrators. Most of the latter soon will be wending their ways back to jobs in those industries which they now oversee. After the NRA, What? Last February, at a dinner given by the Easton, Penna., Local 203, this writer said that it was time to consider the after-effects of the NRA, the passing of which would leave a vacuum to be filled by that group which displayed the greatest celerity in moving into action. The day the code was signed, he continued, the code was definitely behind the craft, and future activity should be directed toward preparing to return to the eld days of job bargaining. Prophetic words, indeed, the truth of which was proven all too soon. The best interests of motion picture workers will be served if all units thereof consider the code as dead. It may live on for a while yet, true, but its span of life will be akin to a dying man. In fact, there are many shrewd labor men who desire that the NRA be abolished, preferring to go it alone rather than hobble along on a rubber crutch. The much-advertised new form for the NRA, which will be presented to the next Congress, likely will be as impotent in protecting labor as was its predecessor. There exists no lack of evidence tending to show that the recovery program has veered sharply to the right, with big business in the saddle and practically directing the activities of the deputy administrators and numerous other recovery officials. It isn't far-fetched to say that NRA is directly responsible for the rotten labor conditions existing today in many localities. The NRA kept stalling along, even in the face of flagrant and open code violations, kept making promises and threatening action that never came off and thus acting as a barrier to a settlement between the warring factions. Indeed, if the leading lights of the NRA were one-half as courageous and sincere as were the various Regional Boards over which they exercised authority, these lines could not possibly be written. One of the bright lights of the whole NRA program was the courage displayed by these Regional Boards. Thousands of projectionists and other theatre help are working today for wages far below those prescribed by the code labor provisions. NRA might answer that it cannot possibly check up on every theatre in America; but the truthful answer would be that nobody wants to present a complaint to NRA or any(Continued in Col. 1, next page)