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The Influence of the Picture Play
By Harold Aurelius Heirberg
ITH the growing appreciation of Motion Pictures a s the most compelling and forceful influence of the age, the person is narrowminded and bigoted who fails to recognize their present uplift and tremendous value as an educational adjunct. In the light of reason and intelligence there is no height they may not reach; and, as the masses of the people realize more and more that this gigantic power for good is vested in them, the demand, already rising in its ideals, will continue to mount upward. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. The greatest achievements of the world were made the subject of ridicule and contumely in the days of their beginning. There was a time, in the earlier days of Picture Plays, when they were generally pronounced a curse. That time has passed. To-clay, at times, large audiences, wiping tears from their eyes, pour forth from the Picture Theatres with the overwhelming' sense of having
spent a pleasureable and profitable hour with the great historic characters and even with the Master in the Holy Land. No representation in the world could be more artistic, more reverent, than those wonderfully realistic scenes on the shores of Galilee, with their rich, oriental coloring, their pathos and sublimity.
It has been said that success in this world can only be measured by the evil which has been met and overcome. All evil is but goodness perverted. The superstitions which, in former days, prompted men to turn from that which was new and untried have given place to scientific analysis. Constructive forces and possibilities are now watched for with the greatest intensity. The result is an education and inspiration which has already girdled the earth. Only the narrow conservatism having its origin in the middle ages refuses to admit that which the broad Christianity of Social Service universally recognizes.
That thinking minds of the day have been right in their judgment of the Picture Play as an educational factor is evidenced by marked changes in the class of plays presented at Picture Houses. Few, if any, of the old plays are being shown this year. The object of all managers is to please their patrons. They will -give the public what it asks for. The present demand is an intelligent one and no expense is being spared to grant it. Mute, yet powerfully eloquent witnesses of .this fact are the plays now seen in every quarter of the globe, in churches, Christian Association rooms, lecture halls, social settlements, recruiting offices, theatres and even in
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