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. 163 secretaries whose infiueiice. even without a vote, is very great. The secretaries undoubtedly know which one of the eight sections of the board is the most liberal or most critical, and they are under tempta- tion to submit a film to tliat section which will be most likely to ap- prove it. 6. Because the board does not feel that it lias a right to live up to its own standard of moral judgment. On page 6 of " Standards of Judgment," issued by the board, it says: The board often passes a film, but with strong protest and regret, because, although the film may not be properly condemned by the board, it yet may be inane, wearisomely sentimental, excessively crude, or with a disproportionate amount of violence. Again, there come seasons when an actual majority of all motion pictures deal with crude open-air melodramatic topics like western wild life, or "low" life generally, and the bo.ird knows that the total effect of all tbese pictures will be a debased ijublic taste momentarily, and to create ad- verse criticism toward the board itself; and yet the board does not feel that it has any right to interfere. The evidence that the so-called national board is not raising the standard of the pictures high enough and is pleasing the film manu- facturers rather than the public is seen in the fact that four States have enacted State censorship laws, and that many cities and villages have found it necessary to have censorships of their own in order to protect their children.' The fact that the censor in Chicago is re- fusing to censor 3 per cent and Cleveland 15 per cent of the pictures shown them, and most of which have been approved by the national board, makes the need of an official Federal commission self-evident. I was suprised to hear the Rev. Mr. Carter and Dr. Howe, the chairman of the board, say that they did not know that the New York Society for the Prevention of Crime and the Women's Mu- nicipal League had withdrawn from the national board, because they thought its work protected the financial interests of the film manu- facturers rather than the moral welfare of the public. I had some other points I desired to especially present to the com- mittee, but there is time only to say one other thing in closing, and that is in reference to the statement that the care of the children does not belong to the United States Government. We know that the care of the harbors and rivers, of the forests, and the commercial interests of the country, has been recognized as a part of the duty of the Federal Government. My contention is that there is no part of the duty of the United States Government so gi-eat or so clear as the care of the children. The Government is under moral obligations to care for the weakest and most helpless. It has its greatest responsibility to those who will do most for its future w^ elf are. The welfare of our country depends most upon the morality of the children of to-day. The builders of the Congressional Library across the way evidently did not agree with my opponents, for they have put up there in the Library the words of Dionysius, " The foun- dation of every State is the education of its youth." Congress, in establishing the Bureau of Education as a part of the Department of the Interior, evidently did not agree with my opponents, for it recognized that it is a national matter, the education of the youth of the country. In establishing a Child's Welfare Bureau, the Na-