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THE STAR SYSTEM 97
active life — and this corporation was a merger, accomplished without the employment of outside capital, of concerns that only a few years before had started with nothing but "shoestrings." American industrial history is filled with romantic stories of sudden rise to wealth, but there is no story to compare with this one.
The roar of the torrent of nickels and dimes, transforming themselves into gold as they sped into ticket windows throughout the country, deafened the rulers of the trust to the demands of progressive exhibitors that the public was advancing in appreciation and discernment, and that new methods of making and distributing and exhibiting pictures must replace the standardized practices established by the patents company. Such declarations from the battle front were pigeon-holed at General Film headquarters, but the information leaked through to the studios, and in several of them were ambitious young men, keen and daring, who yearned to go forward with the public, as far as audiences might want to go. At weekly meetings of General Film they presented their reasons for belief that the time had arrived for a loosening of the iron-clad rules that bound them to the daily-change program system, and soon they were vehemently insisting to their associates that the independents were forging ahead of General Film in public favor. To all such protests the rulers of the trust returned the same answer, "We have grown rich by following sane business practices; our wealth is continuing to increase. Why jeopardize our success? As sensible men let us leave well enough alone." And as the progressives and radicals in General Film viewed their monthly statements, and sent their huge checks to the banks, their arguments did somehow seem out of place.
The most advanced radical in General Film was William Wadsworth Hodkinson, the telegraph operator in Utah whose crazy dream of a well-managed nickelodeon had materialized so successfully that he had become owner of several small theaters and manager, from time to time, of various General Film exchanges, advancing finally to the important San Francisco