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)

66 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. total cost to the manufacturers in negatives and reproductions was $582,000. During that year there were 988 meetings of the censor- ing committees; the aggregate hours of attendance of the vohmteer members was 9,880. That brings me to what happens after action has been taken by the board. As soon as action is taken it is recorded, and at the end of the week a circular is gotten up, of which that is a sample [indicat- ing], which is sent broadcast all over tlie country. That is in addi- tion to the orders which are delivered to the producers. A pro- ducer is ordered to change a film and then the order, as made by the board, is sent broadcast over the country to the mayors, chiefs of police, and grouj^s of people who are interested in the subject, to the number of 366. There are 360 organizations or individuals who are in weekly communication with the board. That is in the nature of a back-fire: it is the coercion which is applied when it is necessary to coerce a man into conforming to the orders of the board. If a man tries once or twice to get awav from the eliminations ordered or get away from a condemnation, he finds that his films are thrown back on him from cities. States, and ex- changes. The object in sending out these circulnrs is to familiarize mayors, censoring committees, chiefs of police, and other agencies as to just what the action of the board has been. Then with that par- ticular description before them they view the picture, and if they find it does not correspond with the action taken by the board they act upon it. Here is something which indicates the growth of the business, too. In 1911 there were an average of 231 reels inspected monthly and the next year there were 371, while the average monthly films in 1913, for the year just passed, was 588. or a growth in two years' time of more than 100 per cent and an increase over the year before of 63 per cent. Now. if there are any questions that anybody wants to ask me about the procedure of the board before I go on with other matters I shall be glad to answer them. The Chairman. Why was that board established? Was it estab- lished from the fact that you thought it was a necessity? Dr. Howe. I can not go back into the minds of Mr. Smith and Mr. Collier, but from the records of the board and the history which has been written it woujd seem that Mr. Smith felt that there was a need of some sort of agency that would act in cooperation with the pro- ducers on the one hand and the exhibitors on the other. Now, it is quite possible that he thought, as I feel, that possibly that national board ought not to be called a board of censorship at all. It is a coercive agency, an educative agency, and I think he organized it very largely for the purpose of bringing up the tone of the motion- picture business through tbe universal cooperation on the one hand of the producers, aided and enforced by the national board, and en- forced again by coercive power on tlie local producer. He no doubt had in mind a board Avhich would have the right to reject films if they did not come up to the standard. I do not know what his psychological motive may have been, but no doubt the object was to coerce the twentieth man. I remember that years ago wc used to hear a good deal about nineteen men Avanting to close barber shops on Sunday, but that the