We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
68
THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE
tory study of lions that children could ever see," said the exhibitor. In reality it represented a terrible tragedy of a lion-tamer being torn to pieces in the den.
"Was it ignorance or unscrupulous greed that made it impossible for this exhibitor or the manufacturer of these films to respect the rights of childhood ?
It is a crime too hideous for consideration to seize the idle, playful moments of a child in his most impressionable age and show him scenes of safecracking, drunken debauches, marital infidelity, sensuous lovemaking, abduction and arson. Such pictures will give his nervous, mental or moral nature a shock, twist or bent which will brutalize or otherwise degrade his whole life.
The Bishop of Mexico recently said that there are
many who think that one reason why Spain and Mexico have not progressed like other nations is because bullfighting has been the national sport for centuries, due to the brutalizing of human nature which the cruel sport has entailed.
In July, 1912, Congress used its power over interstate commerce to protect the childhood of the nation, to a certain degree, from the brutalizing effects of evil Motion Pictures. It made it a crime for any one to carry a Motion Picture film of a prize
3
REV. WILLIAM SHEAFE CHASE, D.D.
fight from one State to another. But Congress should do more than this in order to establish the freedom of children, and should guarantee their right to effective protection from brutalizing and other immoral influences.
Think of the money and governmental machinery which Congress and the States are using to conserve forests, to enrich the land, to improve rivers and channels, prot e c t harbors and promote the welfare of cattle.
Congress has found it necessary to control freight rates and restrain trusts in order to protect the small businesses of the country.
Is not the mental and moral welfare of the children worth more than all the property, lands and animals of our republic? The children are the lifeblood of the nation.
It is foolishness for New York City to spend thirty-eight millions a year to educate her children, and then allow a false, inhuman and criminal code of morals to be taught to them in her Motion Picture shows. It is a hideous neglect to let moral blood-poisoning thus afflict our nation.
Congress should effectively censor or license Motion Pictures, either thru the Commissioner of Education, or the copyright office, or the Department of the Interior, or thru the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, or in some other way.