Motion Picture News (Apr - Jun 1914)

When You See It In ""The News'''' It's NEWS The MOTION PICTURE NEWS The Fastest Growing Picture Journal *'The Exhihkor'sMedium of Communication with His Fellow Showman ' Volume IX June 6, 1914 Number 22 GET TOGETHER! TWO national conventions of exhibitors will be assembled within the next two months. Many topics of national importance have been announced and will be discussed at each convention. iNIuch business of moment to the trade will be transacted at both. But none of the official topics that will engross the attention of the delegates at New York and Dayton rank in importance or moment with the topic, unannounced but already uppermost in the minds of the leaders, the delegates and their constituents, the great body of exhibitors. That topic is— AMALGAMATION. THE spectacle of two organizations, both claiming to be national, each asserting it fulfills the missions of the other, is a disgrace to every exhibitor who countenances it. The situation is ludicrous to those who are not exhibitors and disastrous to those who are. The United States is large, but it is not large enough to furnish a valid reason for the existence of more than one exhibitors' organization. And the time has arrived zvhen the existence of two organisations is not only superfluous, but a positive menace to and an obstruction in the way of the exhibitor's forward progress toward better things. THERE are battles to be fought that only an organization can fight — and win. There are conditions to be reckoned with that only organized effort can meet — and remedy. There are problems to be dealt with that only united co-operation can grapple — and solve. And the undivided, harmonious effort of all the exhibitors in the country is none too much for the winning of those battles, the remedying of those conditions, the solution of those problems. * * * SO essential is it that the strength, ability and purpose of all exhibitors be fused into one solid and indivisible unit for the accomplishment of these purposes, that it may be truly said, the exhibitors zvoidd be no zi'orse off zvithout any organization than they zmll be if tzvo organisations continue to compete for their allegiance. '~r^ HE body of American motion picture exhibitors, -■ torn between two factions, is like "a house divided against itself." And like a house divided against itself, it cannot stand. There must be union. There must be co-operation. The men, in either organisation, zvho will, consciously or unconsciously, intentionally or unintentionally, oppose the union and co-operation of their fellow-exhibitors, should be branded as the enemies of the exhibitor and driven from among them. 'T~*HE time is ripe. The hour is at hand. -* If the exhibitors of the country have not learned, during the last two years, the futility and costliness of discord and disunion, of divided effort and conflicting energies, when and by what means will they ever learn them? Fortunately for the future, the spirit of arbitration, conciliation and reunion is in the air. IT emanates from both camps. The trend of exhibitor opinion is toward amalgamation. It promises to manifest itself unmistakably at both conventions. And when those two conventions are over, the fact that there ever were two exhibitors' organizations in the United States should be a matter of history, no longer of fact. IF the exhibitors at New York and at Dayton, Ohio, fail to accomplish everything else, and bring about the merging of the two organizations they represent, they will have done more for their fellew-exhibitors than all the conventions that have preceded them. UNITE! CO-OPERATE! FIGHT!