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68 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
half of comedy and half of travel or scenic pictures. Some exhibitors gave a show an hour in length, requiring four or five reels; others gave two-hour shows requiring seven to nine reels. The program in each theater was changed daily, so that about thirty to sixty reels a week represented the needs of exhibitors. This volume of pictures distributed among the ten manufacturers of the patents company necessitated the production or importation of three to six reels a week by each member.
To produce three to six reels each week, a manufacturer needed an adequate studio and a reliable organization, and, since the patents company had included in its membership all producers as well equipped as this, there seemed to be little or no chance of serious competition from any source. All of the producers omitted from the merger were small, and the quantity of their product was random and irregular. Some of the independents might have accomplished an output of one or two or three reels a week, but all of them joined together would have been unable to supply daily changes of program to all theaters. Exhibitors, therefore, apparently had no choice — they must accept the prices and terms of the patents company, or try to obtain from independents enough pictures to fill their screens each week. Those who acceded to the trust's stipulations were assured of an adequate supply to maintain their houses; those who did not were in danger of having nothing to exhibit to their patrons.
When trust officials analyzed the distributing branch of the industry, they found a number of well-organized exchanges in thirty or forty of the larger cities, and a motley crew of small film traders, each with a more or less irregular turn-over of reels obtained from small American producers or brought from Europe by importers. As in producing, there was a limited number of fairly sound business houses, and a noisy lot of ragged hangers-on.
Each of the manufacturers licensed by the patents company had his own arrangements with various exchanges, and for a while these distributing arrangements continued, but the patents company soon learned that regulation of the exchanges was extremely difficult. During the several years of unbridled competi