The theatre of science; a volume of progress and achievement in the motion picture industry (1914)

cf%)Ciencc 113 to go to Oshkosh as cashier for a clothing house at $15 a week because he argued that as a jeweler he had no future. In four years he became manager, with an interest in the profits. Said Laemmle: "I believed myself to be a nickel genius and I planned to establish a chain of five-cent stores. I found a business where I could make nickels multiply." Having saved $3,000, Laemmle went to Chicago. One rainy night he dropped into a five-cent theatre. Before he left he knew all that the proprietor knew about the business. The next day he hired an experienced man to prospect for a good location for a moving picture theatre, and was on his way to Oshkosh to draw out of the bank his $3,000. In six weeks after he opened the first theatre he had two others in Chicago. In six months he owned a film exchange, and in two years he was a manufacturer. Money fairly rained upon him. The nickels were multiplying at an incalculable rate. Laemmle regards his success as due to an insistent inquisitiveness in matters financial. From his employes he always demanded a daily report so that he knew to a dollar what yesterday's profits or losses were. From the outset he was a telegraph fiend, using the wires instead of the mails, beating his competitors. His early training as a buyer and seller helped him beyond comprehension when he became a tremendous film trader, and, most of all, he knew how to advertise. In the film world they call it "Laemmle luck"; in fact, the magnate himself in his advertising persistently refers to Laemmle luck, but to-day the reference is inadequate and wholly unjust to himself, for here is a man whose achievements of the last two years place him among the captains of industry of a tremendous