We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTION PICTURE PLAY. 123
the public schools. The development of picture education has brought scientific, historical, geographical, industrial, pathological and all manner of ancient and modern knowledge, hitherto attainable only for the wealthy or their beneficiaries, within the grasp of all.
During the past year the sum of $75,000,000 was spent on Moving Picture shows. It has been money well expended. If there are those who cling to the thought of recorded instances where the direct result has been evil, they wou^d do well to remember that evil has resulted to a greater or less
degree from every great element for good that has ever been known. They should also remember that the recent law which prohibits children attending plays unless accompanied by a parent or guardian was made necessary, not because of harmful pictures, but to protect innocent children from immoral and unprincipled men and women who contrive to elude the most vigilant manager.
Nothing depicts things more clearly than modern Motion Pictures. The child-mind is formative and impressionable. Adults are merely grown children. In the shaping of character no greater force has ever been known than that of actual, living example. This the Photoplay sets forth as no book, painting or verbal precept could ever do.
Censorship of plays as at present conducted should be most reassuring
for the doubtful and faint-hearted. The position of the censors is difficult and responsible but the work has been made far easier of accomplishment than was at first imagined. This has been due to the splendid cooperation of the film manufacturers, whose vast expenditures, in order to give to the public the high-class pictures of reality and
actuality which are demanded, are almost beyond belief.
In no locality is the educational value of the film more noticeable than in the poorer districts. To the great army of wage earners the pictures that tell of life and action have proved a veritable god-send. They, the toilers who make the world go round, who know so well the monotonous story of disappointed hopes and ambitions unrealized, are finding new joy, hope and inspiration. The poor enjoy travel but their way leads only to the door of the factory. They long for the country in the summer, but the country is not for them. They have no time, no place, no inclination, perhaps not the ability to read. Theatres and vaudeville shows are too expensive and continue too late. The toiler must rise early. He cannot belong to the travel or sketch club. Night school is a burden which tired nature rebels against after a day spent in mill or factory. A trip up the "Rhine at a Moving Picture show is like a week in the country to the homesick, discouraged German. The workings of a great manuf actury are interesting and more instructive than books to the ambitious youth or workman who longs