Motion Picture Story Magazine (Aug 1911-Jan 1912)

148 MUSINGS OF A PHOTOPLAY PHILOSOPHER It lias been suggested that the federal government, and each city and each State, perpetuate its records of important events by making and filing away a Motion Picture film of each event. Why not? While artists may paint, and historians may write, and photographers may make portraits, there is nothiug to tell the whole story so vividly as Motion Pictures. If we could only see the real Washington, and the real Lincoln, and other statesmen, poets and philosphers, such as Webster, Longfellow and Emerson, walk and move about — how much easier we could understand them, and how much nearer it would bring them to us! As a philosopher Emerson has few superiors, but I never could quite agree with his paragraph — ' ' Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt, crept in; forget them as soon as you can/' It seems to me that every night a person should make an inventory of his doings that day, taking account of his mistakes as well as of his well-done achievements. The only way we can guard in the future against the mistakes of the past, is to hold them up as a sort of danger signal, so that we may not again fall into the same error. Preachers naturally have an antipathy for the Moving Picture theaters. Why should they not? Those Christian preachers who are honest in their religion must believe that Sunday is a sacred day and must be kept holy. They feel that anything which takes people from church and Sunday school must be wicked. Furthermore, whether they are conscious of the fact or not, if people stop attending Sunday services, the preachers will be without employment. Hence, preachers must not be condemned too strongly for their seeming intolerance of what we think is an innocent amusement. The fair way to look at it is this: people have a perfect right to do anything they please on Sunday or on any other day, so long as they do not violate a law nor interfere with the rights of others. If children or their parents wish to attend the Photoplay on Sunday, they should not be deprived of that pleasure, any more than the Photoplay managers should interfere with those who prefer to attend church services. How would it look if the theaters should hold a mass meeting to protest against the Sunday schools on the ground that the latter were interfering with their business and destroying their means of making an honest living? What if they should try to have a law passed forbidding children attending Sunday school? Would it not be ridiculous? Then why is it not equally ridiculous to see the church trying to keep people from attending the picture theaters? If the picture houses were not open on Sunday, there would probably never be anything said about their evil influences. It is only when they come in competition with themselves that the churches raise the cry of Evil Influences. Let us all be more tolerant one with another, and let us not interfere with one another's pleasures, however much they may differ with our own. I seldom jeopardize my reputation by attempting to predict coming events, and I leave these uncertain things to the weather man and to charlatans ; but I am willing to go on record as saying that within ten years every large public school will possess one or more Motion Picture machines, and that they will either take the place of certain school books, or will be used in conjunction with them.