We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
72 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
gant, dictatorial expression of the power of an oppressive monopoly.
Theater owners assembled in conventions throughout the country, and enthusiastically applauded speakers who denounced the patents combination and General Film as a merciless trust, determined to dominate all branches of the film business and to absorb for its members the profits hitherto enjoyed by the exhibitors. This menace could be removed, or at least reduced to harmlessness, declared orators and zealous promoters, by the formation of cooperative manufacturing and distributing companies by theater owners; — the films thus produced could earn their costs in the houses of the members of each company, and additional profits would accrue through rentals to other houses than their own.
If respect for the patents laws had been making headway in the industry, — and there is no evidence that any tendency in this direction had appeared save among the members of the patents company and their associates in distribution and exhibition — it certainly disappeared in the heat and clamor of these conventions.
As the result of the antagonism of exhibitors to the regulations of the patents company and General Film and the agitations aroused in meetings of protest, numerous producing companies, more or less cooperative in theory, invaded the trust's field of production and distribution, despite the perils of violating the patents laws. Nor were they fearful of the business or the technical menaces involved in movie-making, as in that formative period the commercial risks of film production were limited to the possible loss of a few hundred dollars in an unsold picture, and the artistic mysteries that later surrounded the craft simply did not exist.
Although all of these "mutual" producing and distributing ventures collapsed, or passed to the control of a few members within a short time — "cooperation" disintegrating because of internal jealousies and dissensions — some of the individuals connected with the independent movement persisted in determination to win success despite the protests and processes of a power