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years had not been sufficient to prove a relation of cause and effect between the film and violent crime.
Some films doubtless favored the development of criminal statistics but the good done in the aggregate by the cinema as an educative factor is incalculable.
These films facilitate a form of cheap instruction for a vast public that would otherwise remain adrift. According to students of social conditions and of educational progress, the cinema must be considered one of the chief, if not the most efficacious method, of acquainting, the public with subjects of the greatest importance which would otherwise be neglected.
On the other hand, the tendency of the industry itself was towards eliminating what might be harmful to social life. All industrial effort is doubtless subject to error, but in view of the good done by the cinema the evil of which it might be the source and its possible relationship to crime pass for negligible.
To the contribution of this statistician, Carl E. Milliken, Secretary of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, added an open letter published almost contemporaneously with that of Frederick L. Hoffman.
Mr. E. Milliken remarks that, first of all, instead of making a questionnaire to discover whether the school, the church or the home has most influence on modern youth, which is to put the problem incompletely, the circular to the educators and psychologists should have included questions referring to films, newspapers and reviews, thus giving them an opportunity of making a definite choice between five or six, instead of only three, terms of comparison.
a) Questionnaires. — On the other hand questionnaires as such have doubtless a relative value. Recently, under the auspices of the Psychology Section of one of the American Universities, a questionnaire of the Babson type had been distributed among a certain number of masters and University teachers. Seventy of the hundred and nine answers received affirmed the influence of the home on the moral development of the young, thirty-seven that of the school, one that of the church and one stressed the influence of the streets and of friends.
b) The world crime wave. — Furthermore, the observation that the murder wave was increasing the world over, and that this should lead to the consequence of excluding any influence of prohibition laws limitted to the United States, was incorrect. From statistics compiled by Thorster Sellin regarding murders in Northern Europe from 19001923, that is to say referring to that group of nations which have most affinity with the United Stated as regards climatic condititions and general characteristics of the population, it is remarked that the maximum was reached in
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