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)

102 MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION". think it is wrong, find I do not find the demand except from the man who is president of an exhibitors' organization wdiose organization is not in sympathy with his views. Mr. Towner. Let me ask you this further question: Should not the effect of a national board of censorship be in some way, or at least to a considerable extent, an answer, or rather a preventive of State municipal censorship? Would it not be said it is unnecessary for the reason that we have a national censorship? Would it not be urged in every State legislature, and would it not be said in every municipal body: "What is the use of our organizing for a State or municipal board when the National Government does this? " Would that not likely be the effect ? Mr. Seligsberg. I think the opposite would bo the effect, if I may differ with you, because it would attract attention to that subject, and each community would feel it is the guardian of its own morals. We find, for instance, that the national pure-food law has only stim- ulated action among the States, and that a manufacturer in Indiana has to comply with the naticmal hnv, and also has to comply with the State law which requires him to label each package with the ingredients of its contents. Mr. Towner. Are you entirely justified in saying that? You see, in such a case as that the national law can not apply at all to the manufacturers of the State. It can only appl}^ to the goods that are shipped into the States; and unless they have laws upon their own statute books to protect the citizens against the manufacturers of her own State, of course every manufacturer of deleterious article of food would be able to manufacture what goods he pleases. Mr. Seligsberg, Nevertheless, the State laws affect objects of inter- state commerce which are sold within the State. I will refer you in my brief to the case of Grossman v. Lurman, in which the importa- tion of coffee is subject to a national law and also subject to a State statute. Mr. Towner. That is not the proposition. The propositicm is this: To protect the people against food you must have both National and State legislation—National legislation to keep out the articles of food from the State that are other than what the State considers pure, and State h^gislation within tlie borders of the State regarding the chai'acter of the food manufactured in the State. Mr. Seligisbkkg. Pjut (he State hiws also affect those articles which come from without the State, and so our commerce, which is entirely interstate commerce, in films at the present time, unless we entirely change the nature of the business, will undoubtedly be subjected not only to national censorship, but to State censorship, and the way the censorship will work, the way it has worked, is beyond the reckoning of human understanding, and what it will be in the case of a national censorship is hard to understand. The company that I represent may show a picture that might be passed by the censors in New York or Massachusetts. It may be all right there, but what might happen to it if it were shown in Alabama or Georgia or South Carolina we do not know, because the people there might feel differently about it. If there is an Alabama man on your board of censors and he feels he is against it, is the rest of the United States to be bound by his judgment? That is the problem. Is censorship not going to establish a uniformity in matters of opinion, which, of all things,