Motography (Jan-Jun 1918)

10 MOTOGRAPHY Vol. XIX, No. 1. ture ever presented. And it owes its tremendous importance to the fact that it is operated not by MOTOGRAPHY'S editors, but by its thousands of exhibitor readers, who thus daily prove their good will to us and to each other. Don't Write If You Are Satisfied DOUBTLESS every exhibitor in the country, above the five cent class, has something to say about the film and ticket tax situation. Few of them are in a position to say it to a listener who can be of any help. It is hardly fair to expect the Allied Exhibitors' Legislative Committee to do all the actual work — hard work — of convincing Congress, and to guess at the wants of the exhibitors besides. As a committee, the Allied Exhibitors' five representatives have power; but as exhibitors, they have information only on their own comparatively few houses. Data on a mere handful of theaters, out of fifteen thousand or more, will not be convincing to Congress. The committee will do the work, and do it with enthusiasm, if the exhibitors at large will spend three cents apiece for a postage stamp and tell just what it is they want and why they should have it. They should not expect their committee to dream it out. Briefly, if any exhibitor believes the present war taxes are obscure or unduly oppressive or dangerous to business, his only possible chance for relief is to tell the committee why he believes so. But if he is entirely satisfied, and feels that the taxes as applied are just and right, he may be justified in ignoring the committee's appeal. For those who are not satisfied, the committee's address is 407 Indiana Trust building, Indianapolis. Nineteen Eighteen THIS is one New Year's Eve when we cannot persuade ourselves to make complacent predictions. Our optimism is strong, as always. We believe 1918 can erect no barriers that the picture industry cannot victoriously surmount. We are certain that the picture itself has become a part of human life, no more to be repressed than the simple acts of reading and conversation. We know that the business of making and showing pictures is as stable and solid a part of civilization as the marketing of coal and iron; and that the fluctuations and alarms that sometime agitate the industry are not industrial at all, but merely signs of the intense human agency whose ambitions are so wholly devoted to it. But the conventional wishes for a prosperous New Year sound a little too conventional today. There is no guide in experience to tell us what strange demands the coming months may reveal. For though the art will go on forever, the men who devote themselves to it will change and shift about and come and go. There is no pessimism in the declaration that 1918 will witness the elimination of those producers and exhibitors, yes, and trade paper publishers, who cannot meet new and more tightly drawn conditions. On the contrary, there is in that very circumstance hope and optimism for the strong and worthy. Already the strengthening of the industrial front line is presaged in rumors of combinations— rumors of the kind familiar enough through the past years, but always to be seriously received and considered. Some of these predicted activities are wholly logical and, therefore, to be welcomed. Amendment of the new tax laws is, of course, an interesting possibility that will be decided before the new year is fairly started. Whatever the outcome, it is certain that admission prices will average higher than they did a year ago — which is as it should be. The fifteen cent ticket is the new standard. MOTOGRAPHY will continue, more devotedly than ever, to render all the service it can to help tie the industry together by carrying the word of progress from one trade unit to another. There is no need to say how heartily and how sincerely it extends its best wishes to all those who work with the pictures, from the producing preident to the errand boy in its competitor's office. P. H. W.