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INTRODUCTION n
department, shoe, and grocery stores; to say nothing of many others, all testify as to the value of these studies, why should the motion picture field be any exception?" The answer should be obvious.
The lack of adequate data in this field can be illustrated by a single instance that could be supplemented by anyone who has attempted to gather tangible figures from the industry. The commonly quoted figure on theater attendance for 1928 and 1929 is somewhere between 115,000,000 and 120,000,000 persons per week. Those who use this figure almost invariably associate with it $800,000,000 per year as the annual box office receipts gross. Simple division gives the average price of admission as approximately 13^, a figure obviously absurd. On the other hand, an average admission price of 40 to 50^ would appear reasonable; but on this basis box office receipts for 1929 would be over $2,250,000,000 instead of the $800,000,000 so commonly cited. Not long since in two separate articles in the same issue of a widely read trade journal there was a discrepancy of 5,000,000 in the estimate of the weekly attendance, or, in terms of money, $2,500,000. In progressive management, such a situation speaks for itself. The simple fact is that no one, inside or outside the industry, possesses many of the essential facts.
Space does not permit a discussion even in the briefest of treatment of the many other problems that sooner or later must be attacked. The purely commercial problem of foreign distribution, the intensely difficult problem of internal organization, complicated as it is by both personnel and expansion policies, the proper and orderly development of the field open to industrial and commercial films, and the various financial problems, are but a few.
Yet it is only fair to say that the existence of these needs is increasingly recognized. They will be definitely attacked and the questions answered beyond any doubt. The fact that they have not been more definitely dealt with in the past is due almost wholly to the comparative newness of the entire industry, the astounding rapidity of its development, and the startling character of the technical changes that have been constantly occurring.
The industry could not take any one step more definitely forward than to create an organization, within the industry and mutually supported perhaps, for the purpose of meeting these purely