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THE MOTION PICTURES PATENTS COMPANY 75
they're getting and they'll come on the run." Acting in accordance with this cheering thought, the outlaws combed the trust studios for desirable personnel, with the result that Biograph, Vitagraph, Edison, Selig, and other producers saw their staffs melting away almost as soon as men and women learned the rudiments of their work. The independents' product improved under this system of engaging the other fellows' expert craftsmen, and exhibitors were soon able to rent non-trust films of steadily improving quality.
Trust producers were infuriated but helpless. If a trust studio was paying a director $75 a week, for example — and that figure is fairly illustrative of salaries of the period — and an independent hired him at $125, the General Film producer had to let him go or raise all wages in the studio to conform to the higher figure. The independent, with a small organization, faced no such problem; he might have one or two or three directors, as contrasted with a dozen or two dozen in a General Film plant, and he could easily pay the higher price as insurance against the expensive delays and errors of inefficient craftsmen.
Lawsuits lost much of their terror for independents as soon as they began to make money enough to employ lawyers who knew how to take every advantage of the law's delays. The principal independents formed an association for mutual defense and protection, and, although they were never happy in one family, they paid their dues to the association's treasurer and more or less maintained the semblance of unity during the several years of trust litigation. Within two years after the formation of the patents combination enough independent projection machines were coming into the market, and there were enough films from independent studios to reduce the fear of exhibitors that the trust could darken their houses, and many of them began openly to defy the octopus by showing independent pictures whenever they chose to do so.
The patents company and General Film, prospering mightily, were nevertheless in a hazardous position unless the progress of competition — which they declared to be illegal— could be stopped.