In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants (1914)

Record Details:

Title:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants
Date:
1914
Publisher:
New York, Appeal Printing Co.
Volume:
In the District Court of the United States, for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the United States of America, petitioner, vs. Motion Picture Patents Company, et al., defendants : record volume 5
Leaf #:
000551
Language:
English
Collection:
Government & Law and Early Cinema
Format:
Periodicals
Contributor:
The Museum of Modern Art Library, New York
Sponsor:
Media History Digital Library
Coordinator:
Media History Digital Library
Description:
These seven volumes contain the testimonies and supporting documents from the U.S. District Court's antitrust lawsuit against the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC). Formed in 1908, the MPPC (sometimes referred to asœ"the Edison Trust" or just "the Trust") sought to control the American film industry through pooling patents and demanding that producers and exhibitors acquire licenses to those patents. Independent producers and exhibitors, who refused to license the patents, argued that the MPPC was an unlawful monopoly. In 1912 and 1913, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania heard testimonies from both MPPC members, such as Siegmund Lubin, and "Independents" who later became Hollywood moguls, such as William Fox. Ultimately, in 1915, the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, which found the MPPC in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and spelled the end for the already weakening MPPC. -- Eric Hoyt, 2012
Date Added:
September 21, 2023
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George K. Spoor, Direct Examination. 2993 average salary you paid in 1909 to your better class of artists? A. From twenty to thirty dollars. Q. What is it to-day? A. Well, it is from — the better class of artists — one hundred and fifty dollars, one hundred and seventy-five dollars, and three hundred dollars, and a number of people at sixty-five dollars and seventy dollars. Q. How many artists or actors and actresses did you have in your employ regularly in 1909? A. Six or seven. Q. How many have you at the present time? A. Fully a hundred, that is, in both California and Chicago. Q. What other factor or element enters into the increased cost of the negative? You have mentioned salaries of actors. A. Well, the cost of the production, the building of the production, the scenery, and all the mechanics all the way through, are high class. Camera men are much higher. Q. What did you pay camera men in 1909? A. We paid them twenty-five dollars, and we pay them now fifty and sixty dollars and as high as a hundred and fifty dollars. Q. And stage directors, what did you pay them in 1909? A. Sixty dollars a week, and we pay them from one hundred and fifty to two hundred and twenty-five dollars now. Q. How about the cost of your scenarios or photoplays? A. In 1909 they cost scarcely nothing, ten and fifteen dollars, but we pay a great deal more to-day, that is a hundred dollars, a hundred and fifty dollars, and two hundred and fifty dollars. There is no real limit to what we have got to pay today. Q. Will you state what investments you have made in your business since you became a Patents Company licensee? A. We have made very heavy investments in our business. We have built an entire plant, and have continually added to it. Also, we have built a second plant in California — Mr. Grosvenor : I make the same objection to all this line of testimony, and to all topics on this subject, as heretofore made, namely, that it is all immaterial and irrelevant. The Witness: — a second plant in California. In fact, we have an investment in our plants and properties today