Motion Picture News (May-Jul 1916)

MAY 24 1916 / ^GI.B. '5(5 094 8 ' When You See it in 'The News' It's News" LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 427 SO. FIGUEROA STREET [HAS THE gUALITY CIRCULATION OF THE TRADEj' NEW YORK CITY SEVEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY NINE SEVENTH AVENUE "The Exhibitors' Medium of Communication " CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 1 10 SO. DEARBORN STREET Vo! ume XIII JUNE 3, 1916 No. 22 "For the Good of the M otion=Picture'' ^^¥T is for the good of the motion picture interests, as I well as the public welfare, that I am pressing this measure for early passage." With these words of paternal benevolence, Congressman Dudley M. Hughes, of Georgia, chairman of the House Committee on Education, closes a pleading paragraph of his report, recommending to the House of Representatives the passage of the Hughes-Smith-ParamountCrafts censorship bill. * * * UR thanks to Congressman Hughes, and to his honor^-^ able coadjutors in the framing of the measure! If that gratitude is not as spontaneous nor as cordial as these gentlemen believe it should be, let them remember that good intentions, when qualified by pernicious acts, merit no more than cold and formal thanks. The well-intentioned author of the Federal censorship measure — probably the worst of all the bills that the committee has considered, in many respects — fails utterly to make his point — that " this measure is for the good of the motion picture interests." " It will make unnecessary the local boards by meeting the public demand for regulation of motion pictures," the worthy Georgian declares. " It is the one way open to the producers to protect themselves from the ruinous effects of state and municipal censorship." * * * N justice to Congressman Hughes, we refuse to believe that he believes this statement. First, because he is a Southerner — which means that he has been bred and raised in the atmosphere of the doctrine that no Federal regulation of any question which materially affected the persons, lives or concerns of the people of the several states was sufficient, at any time, to abolish or supersede state or local statutes or bodies for the regulation of the same question. Second, because he knows— or should know — that the " public demand " for censorship is the result of the deliberate and mercenary agitation of three men — Crafts, Chase and Barbour — who by a system comparable to the sleightof-hand performances of vaudeville magicians have created the illusion of a national outcry for censorship that has never, in reality, been made. * * * nr HESE same men could, if they so desired, manufacture the same sort of " public demand " in any situation in which they chose to meddle— and it would be just as artificial, just as false, as the illusion they have evoked in the present instance. Mr. Hughes asserts that such a Federal Commission will make local boards " unnecessary." Assuredly it will. If they can be made any more unnecessary than they are at the present time, a Federal motion picture commission may be relied upon to do it. But if you ask Mr. Hughes whether a Federal Commission will supersede, will eliminate local and state censorship boards, you will find that usually eloquent gentleman at a loss for a definite and satisfying answer. And yet, unless state and local censorship boards are eliminated, a Federal motion picture commission, instead of remedying matters, will only more intolerably confound and aggravate them. * * * r\ OES Mr. Hughes offer any assurance that state cen'-^ sorship boards will disappear, as the dew under the morning sun, upon the rise of Federal censorship? Hardly. Mr. Hughes is too good a politician to commit himself on that point. Mr. Hughes has heard of the Interstate Commerce Commission, and of the blessings it was supposed to rain down upon the heads of the ungrateful railroads of the country. And Mr. Hughes is quite well aware that the less said about that situation, or about the outcome of any similar situation, the better. r\ UR Congressional " Good Samaritan " is also alive to the jealousy with which states and municipalities in this country guard their right to regulate the moral welfare of their people. He hails from a section of the country where that spirit is more intense, possibly, than in any other quarter of the Union. Does he sincerely believe that the state of Georgia, which is notoriously fastidious about the observance of its moral customs and traditions, and almost maniacal in the avenging of a transgression of them, will complacently take the say-so of a body of Federal commissioners, located at Washington, ruling for the entire nation, as to the wholesomeness of any given picture — assuming, of course, as he does, that the state of Georgia is convinced that motion pictures need inspection ? ^ F he does, let him refer to the telegrams from the governors of half a dozen states, received by J. W. Binder of the Board of Trade, submitted at the Congressional hearings in January, and published in the report of those hearings, in reply to that very question. Those telegrams were sent, by design, to the Chief Executives of states where censorship then existed — and still exists. In every case, the expressed attitude was that the state would resent the creation of a Federal censorship {Continued on page 3376) Copyright, 1916, by Motion Picture Nev'S, Inc