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2900 John Collier, Direct Examination.
Mayors, Police Chiefs, and civic societies who are in correspondence with the National Board. For more than a year, all the regular independent producers and most of the feature companies have been submitting in just as regular a way as the Patents Company group.
Q. Have you observed during the period of censorship whether the independent producers furnish more subjects with multiple reels than the licensed producers? A. They do, for the reason that the feature film is likely to be the subject for multiple reels, and most of the feature films have been independent productions, and that is still true, although the Patents group are producing more multiple reels than ever before.
Q. I understood you to say that at the beginning of the censorship the censors found it necessary to condemn approximately ten per cent.? A. Yes, sir, that is true at the beginning, but that might be qualified. At the beginning the manufacturers frequently brought films to the Board they knew in advance would be condemned, whereas now they do not make film that would be condemned, or never submit it, knowing the Board would condemn it, and the ratio of condemned film has been cut way down now, betweeen one and two per cent.
Q. Have you observed whether or' not ;the criticisms which prevailed at the time of the formation of the National Board of Censorship have been to a large degree silenced? A. The drastic criticisms have been to a large degree silenced, and the movement for more police and local censorship has remained at a standstill, taking the country as a whole. The Boa id, however, does not itself win the approval of all elements of the country, as it is impossible for any censor to satisfy everybody so long as the same film is seen by young people, and by old people, and by the cultured and the ignorant, but in general the moving picture is, we believe, the cleanest form of theatre now before the American people, and contains a larger proportion of educational matter than any other form of theatre.
Q. Will you tell us something about the actual work of passing upon motion pictures and criticizing them, how it is done, and where? A. The censoring is done by this large sub-committee on censoring of about one hundred and forty members. Tliis committee is broken up into smaller committees, which are at work every day in New York, except