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126 THE HOUSE THAT SHADOWS BUILT
gathered under the Trust, wanted an opportunity to express themselves. A good many tried. As things stood they had perhaps the moral right; but the Trust had the legal right. Producing independent film was by way of breaking the law. Consequently and naturally, many of the early free lances were a trifle careless of all moral considerations. Those obscene films, bootlegged through the tenement quarters, which evoked the first municipal laws for regulation of moving-picture exhibition, came largely from independent producers of this class.
They violated not only morals but propriety and taste. One of them filmed the hanging of a negro in a Southern jail, omitting no ghastly detail. For years this piece of tainted celluloid dodged through the country just ahead of the sheriff and the police. Another showed a lynching; the actor, strung up by a trick rope, made realistic gestures with his pinioned hands and feet. Already children were knocking in clamorous flocks at the doors of the motion-picture theatres. To prosper — the Trust perceived— pictures must be “pure.” By way of advertising their own purity and guarding themselves against crusaders, the licensed producers formed in 1909 the first voluntary censorship, whose successor is going yet. In their fight against the independents they needed favourable public opinion. “ We produce only clean films ” — this was their main argument with suspicious municipal authorities, newspapers, women’s clubs.
To close an unlicensed film or to squelch an unlicensed