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)

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MOTION PICTURE COMMISSION. 219 has spoken against the bill in behalf of the unofficial " national board of censorship," but the Methodist and Presbyterian preachers' meetings of New York and vicinity have both petitioned Congress to pass the bill, and the moral leader of the International Y. M. C. A., Dr. George J. Fisher, has sent a letter in support of Federal censor- ship. The unofficial " national board of censorship " has made the Nation its debtor by a vast amount of free and conscientious service, which has doubtless mitigated the evils of motion pictures, but surely the alert philanthropists in this board and the welfare societies back of it will not allow those who are selfishly interested in the production of such pictures as they know would not pass a thorough censorship, to deceive them by specious cries about " liberty " and " State rights " and " political censorship " into opposing an adequate Government regulation of a great business " interest" that has become as mighty and even more widespread than the railroads, an " interest" whose abuses are infinitely more serious than railroad abuses, in that they strike not our pockets but at the plastic hearts of our children. Almost very objection to this bill is answered hj the useful history of the Interstate Commerce Commission. Those interested declared that Government control of railroads was an interference by Government with the liberty to which private business was en- titled. The country now knows that railroads are " public-service corporations," properly subject to governmental supervision. Super- vision of public amusements is still more important, and is being undertaken, mostly by local but partly by State authority, and has now reached the national jurisdiction. Of course no attempt to curb the efforts of greed to win gold at the cost of public demoralization can ever escape the specious cry of " unconstitutionality." It would be well for these new champions of the Constitution to remember that its most fundamental provision is the statement that it was adopted to " promote the general welfare." Censorship is no new and has been upheld by the courts. The dis- cretionary powers of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which the courts have upheld, are very similar to those given in this bill to the Federal motion-picture commission. This bill does not forbid States and cities to have censor boards of their own, but it aims to make them unnecessary, so far as judging films is concerned. If some paragraph in the bill needs technical modification, the good lawyers on the committee can be trusted to amend it. All who favor the general purpose of the bill in Congress or out- side should expedite its passage. As this bill is greatly needed and presumably constitutional, good citizens and good legislators should give the children, and not the money interests, the benefit of the doubt, leaving the question of constitutionality to the courts. It is irrelevant to say Federal censorship of films will lead to Federal censorship of theaters. The mayor of every city is ex officio a censor of theaters, and uses that power occasionally, and should have an advisory committee to make his censorship more complete. A play in an actor's memory can not be stopped at a State line. But a film is a fixed proposition for interstate business that may be and should be censored once for all before its first public exhibition by commissioners of high character, such as President Woodrow Wilson