Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTUEE COMMISSION. 13 still other arguments to fortify him in his position, and in the same number Mr. Dyer will rei)ly to Canon Chase and fire another broadside from his battery of arguments. Then there will come rebuttals and sur rebuttals, and, when the debaters have done, we are confident that the whole subject of censorship will have been covered in a masterly manner. FIRST ARTICLE FOK THE AFFIRMATIVE, BY CANON CHASE. This debate upon the advisability of censorship of motion pictures is begun with confidence in the uprightness of my opponent's motives, with a wish to benefit the business interests involved, and with a very strong desire to secure freedom for the children of our land to grow to maturity in a normally uplift- ing, moral atmosphere. " I shall never go there again; it was horrible." said the boy, who had come from a motion-picture show all of a tremble. " What was horrible?" said Canon Kawnsley, of England, to the horrified lad. " I saw a man cut his throat," was the reply of the boy, whose liberty had been infringed by an unscrupulous motion-picture manufacturer, or by one who was ignorant or careless of the rights of childhood. " There was no harm in it at all," said an exhibitor, in England, who had gone to Canon Rawnsley to get him to protect him from the unreasonable criticism of the proprietor of the building where he was giving his show. " It was the finest natural history 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 safe cracking, 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 bull fighting 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 anyone to carry a motion-i)icture film of a prize fight from one State to another. But Congress should do more than this in order to establish the free^lom of children, and should guarantee their right to effective protection from brutalizing and other inunoral influences. Think of the money and governmental machinery which Congress and the States are using to conserve forests, to enrich the laud, to improve rivers and channels, protect 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 afllict our Nation Congress should effectivelv censor or license motion pictures, either through the Commissioner of Education, or the copyright office, or the Department of the Interior, or through the Children's Bureau of the Department of Labor, or in some other waj'. By the new tariff law Congress has provided that all m()tiou-i)icture films that are imported from foreign countries shall first be censored under the direc- tion of the Secretary of the Treasury. Will Congress be less conscientions in the exercise of its interstate power than of its power over the importations from foreign lands? . , , ,- The Federal law should forbid any unlicensed film to be carried between the States. The statutes of the United States forbid immoral pictures in the Territories and the sending of any obscene, lewd, or lascivious pictures or other matter of an indecent ch.aracter through the Unitt'd States mails. It is clearly