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. 215 patriotism in a projected new buildino: of our International Reform Bureau, next door to the Library of Congress, after an adequate censorship has been secured; and I have many reasons to believe that a nation-wide chain of such combinations of education and recrea- tion will be developed. Two things are necessary to such a forward movement, namely, (1) adequate censorship, and (2) national organi- zation of exhibitors who cater to the demand for films that really educate and recreate, with exhibition places at brief intervals that have a trade-mark which all good citizens know is a guaranty of those qualities. Difficulty in obtaining good films even for one exhibition a week has been experienced by many who have reported to us, of whom we recall Mr. E. Tomlinson, Y. M. C. A. secretary at Wilmerding, Pa; Eev. W. H. McPherson, Universalist Church. Joliet, 111; and Mr. H. E. Downer, Friendly House, Davenport, Iowa. The Wilmerding, Pa., Y. M. C. A. secured films for 12 week nights from the National Board of Censorship in New York City. Three of the films were rejected on private examination as of harmful tendency, and sev- eral others were run with regret by the management. The explana- tion seems to be that the New York National Board of Censor- ship allows in photoplays whatever is not worse than the dramas in New York theaters, a "standard that is far -below the censorship standard of many cities and States. Chicago, Cleveland, and San Francisco reject many films that the representatives of New York welfare societies, acting as censors, indorse, apparently on the gen- eral New York theory that only half decency can reasonably be expected in commercialized amusements. On Saturdav evening. May 23. 1914, I visited a motion-picture theater in New York City arid saw five reels, not one of which was follower' by the required "sign, " Censored by the National Board of Censorship.'' The proprietor said, on inquiry, that it was understood that all the films of the Universal Film Co. are censored. The public will hardly be satisfied with that. When Congress has honored the motion-picture business by con- necting it with the United States Bureau of Education it is reason- able to expect that State and local boards of education will cooperate to make it a real educational force in the Nation; and whole schools will be taken, at the expense of towns, to see instructive pictures— indeed schools and colleges themselves will increasingly use this powerful agency of implanting knowledge through vision, "the king of the senses." Here I wish to quote the closing paragraph of an article just published in the report of the United States Commissioner of Edu- cation for 1913, pages 582-597, on "Motion pictures as an aid to education," by Alfred H. Saunders, editor of Motion Picture News, New York City: In almost every subject in the curricula of schools. c(>lleges, and universities^ the cinematograph has already lent valuable aid. Within the next decade moving pictures will be the indispensable adjunct of every teacher and educa- tional lecturer. On the public platform the cinematograph will inevitably have Its recognized place, and it may even invade the pulpit. As the attention and interest of educators are more and more drawn to its merits, the future use- fulness of the educational cinematograph bids fair to surpass the predictions of its most sanguine advocates.