Motion Picture Commission : hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, Sixty-third Congress, second session, on bills to establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission (1978)

MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 21 hanging of criminals, or the picturiug any crime in such detail as to suggest or teach crime, no body of men has any divine right to exhibit them. If we see a man is about to commit murder or theft, we do not let him do it and then punish him. We stop him. If a i)icture will excite children to theft and lust, we ought to take the most effective way to prevent the picture doing harm. President Dyer ought not to object to otiicial: censorship on the ground that a few persons thereby determine what the people may see. For a few film jnauufacturers are deciding that to-day. The censors represent the welfare of the people. The film makers represent the business interests involvd. The will of the people should prevail. If the State can more effectively prevent such sights from the public gaze by preliminary inspection of motion pictures than by punishnmt after the crime has been committed, the State has an ab- solute right to do the most effective thing, nay, it is its duty to do so. The people have the right to enact laws of prevention as well as of cure. The in- dividual has no divine right to see what he pleases, and thus compel the State to punish crime after it occurs, instead of t;iking effective methods to prevent it. The effect of the censor law which I am advocating, does not apply to nor restrain the ordinary citizen from showing any picture he desires in any place without previous inspection. It applies only to the business man who makes a living from motion pictures. Because of the great temptation, which assails the motion-picture man, to make money by demoralizing children, I maintain that it is the duty of the Nation to prevent this demonalization by demanding a preliminary inspection of his pictures. 8. When President Dyer says thiit •' the suggestion of censorship is a denial of personal liberty, of free speech, and of the free press," he clearly indicates that he, lawyer-like, is referring to censorship, government, and liberty as de- fined in the laws of ancient Konie. and not as used in free America of to-day. Censorship to-day means licensing of what comes up to the moral standard, by persons from whose decision there is :i legal appeal. It does not mean, ;is in Rome, the exercise of any absolutely arbitrary power. When the Government emanates from one man, like an emperor or czar, from whom there is no appeal, the exercise of any governmental power is a denial of personal liberty. But when the sovereign power resides in the people, then any law enacted for the welfare of the whole people is to establish personal liberty. It can not be considered a denial of personal liberty, no matter how effectively it may restrain men from carrying out their wicked purposes. The personal liberty of the whole community makes it necessary to restrain in some respects the personal liberty of certain individuals. This is why a minister is not free to hold a religious service in the streets of New Yorw City without a i>ermit from the mayor or :iu alderman. The Supreme Court of the Cnited States decided that such an ordinance in Boston w.-is not a denial for the constitutional right of free si)eech. Daniel AVebster said: " It is a legal and refined idea, the oftispring of high civilization, which the savage never understood and never can understand. Iviberty exists in propor- tion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep them off from us the more liberty we have. It is a mistake to think that liberty consists in paucity of laws. If one wants that kind of lil»erty let him go to Turkey. The Turk enjoys that blessing. That man is free who is protected from injury." True freedom will be more effectively established in our land if the children are effectively protected from moral injury rather than if the motion-picture manufactures are free from censorship. Many crimes are justified under the mistaken conception that liberty is a selhsh right to do what one pleases, no matter how it injures the conuuunity. Ijiberty is not selfishness. No one has any right to be selfish. Liberty is the power to do what is for the best welfare of the whole coiinnunity, and to work out Cod's will in the world. A bad motion picture does ten times as much harm among chudren as a bad book. An evil book injures only those that can read and have some power of imagination. But the evil motion picture carries its influence to the youngest and the most ignorant. The Speaker of the House of Commons, who said he favored censorship of plays before they were acted in licensed places of amusement, made, a clear distinction between books and stage plays in the presence of the parlia- mentary committee: