Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb 1914 - Sep 1916 (assorted issues))

THE GREAT DEBATE 75 reach the public, unless the censors were inefficient or bribed. In that case, there is a legal remedy for the removal, of the censors. In replying to my second article, Mr. Dyer claims that demoralizing pictures can be eliminated by the police, whose duty it is to arrest exhibitors who show immoral pictures. He then says that he does not think I can fairly charge any community with the failure to enforce its laws. I certainly do claim the very general non-enforcement of law as my principal reason for urging censorship. A conspicuous instance is the failure of New York City to enforce the law which forbids, on Sunday, the sale of liquor as a beverage, except in hotels with meals. Policemen arrest certain saloon-keepers ostensibly for breaking the Sunday law, but really because they do not pay the weekly or monthly contribution to their liquor organization. Magistrates convict, but the grand juries, before whom these cases are illegally transferred, know such cases to be instances of persecution, and refuse to be a party to such rank injustice. They will not indict a man who has refused to pay graft for a violation which the mayor and police department are openly permitting all the other saloon-keepers to commit. Motion Picture shows for pay are also open on Sunday, contrary to law, in many parts of New York State. The growth of serious crime and lawlessness in the United States is alarming. In every other great Christian country, except the United States, even in Japan, there is decrease in serious crime. Most authorities declare the United States leads the civilized nations of the world in at least two serious forms of crime : civic corruption and crimes of violence and murder. " Censorship is necessary because of the inefficiency, inexperience and ignorance of the police, juries and judges." There were twenty-six murders for every million of the population in the United States in 1886, and eightyeight murders for every million in 1911. London's seven millions averaged twenty homicides each year from 1908 to 1910, but New York City's five millions averaged, annually, one hundred and seventeen homicides. In London, in 1911, there were twentythree murders, but in New York City, in the same year, there were one hundred and forty-eight murders. This spirit of lawlessness and of civic corruption makes it unwise to depend upon the local police to detect bad pictures or to secure the punishment of the exhibitor thru the lower courts. If effective work could be done by the police, the result of their work would be to punish an exhibitor who was not responsible for the choice of the picture. For it had been sent by the exchange to him, as to all the other exhibitors in the same circuit. Censorship brings the punishment for bad pictures where it belongs — upon the manufacturers. But even if the local police were absolutely honest and free from temptation to graft upon Motion Picture exhibitors, they are not, by education or training, qualified to pass upon such intricate, psychological questions as are necessary to determine what would be the moral effect of certain pictures upon the minds of children. The author of the "Inside of the White Slave Traffic,' ' which the local police and courts of New York City have condemned as tending to corrupt the morals of youth, is said to be in favor of official censorship, because he believes that such a board would be better qualified intellectually and artistically to determine the moral purpose which he claims has inspired his production.