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14 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
directly forward, many people screamed as the engine roared into their faces, and strong men sighed with genuine relief when it disappeared without wrecking the theater. Nothing in the million-dollar spectacles of later years ever excelled the punch delivered; by this pioneer filmlet.
When screen pictures spread from vaudeville theaters to the back-rooms and up-stairs halls of phono-kineto parlors and arcades, they passed into another, and much larger, section of human life. Perhaps a million, possibly two millions, of the hundred millions of people living in the United States were regular patrons of the various forms of theater entertainment — opera, spoken drama, musical comedy, vaudeville and burlesque — and perhaps another million enjoyed the stage occasionally. Ninety percent or more of the American population was not reached by any method of story-telling and character delineation by playacting.
Three important obstacles prevented the populace from participation in theatrical amusements, — the cost of admittance, the infrequency of plays and other stage productions designed for the mental habits and moral viewpoints of the majority of the people, and ecclesiastical condemnation of theater-going.
The price of tickets ranged from $1.50 or $2 for orchestra seats, to 50 cents for the gallery or "nigger heaven," in metropolitan centers; and fi.50 to 25 cents in second-class houses or in smaller cities. The cost of the better seats was an insurmountable barrier to most families in the years when "a dollar a day was workingman's pay," and "white collar" households struggled to make both ends meet with incomes only slightly larger than laborer's wages. The lower price of the gallery was no great inducement, considering the noise of the mob and the annoyance of peanut shells, popcorn, and a variety of robust odors.
After 1880, the presentation of drama and melodrama or Negro minstrel shows at "popular prices" in second-class theaters in large cities attracted new groups of entertainment buyers, and