The Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1914)

THE GREAT DEBATE 63 as I advocated in my first article, is no foe to freedom of conscience of the press, of speech or of personal liberty. In his first article President Dyer says that an official body of censors would have the power "to require that no picture should be shown anywhere in the United States until first submitted to the censors.' ' President Dyer seems to think that I am advocating something as impracticable as Plato did when he advised, in the laws of his Republic, that no poet should so much as read to any private man what he had written until the judges and lawkeepers had seen it and allowed it. It would clearly be absurd to advocate giving any such power to a federal board of censorship, even if our form of government allowed the national officials to exercise such a power in the sovereign states. It would also be unwise to grant such a power to a state board of censorship, altho the State of Ohio has done so. Nothing that I have said would favor forbidding any citizen the privilege of taking a Motion Picture film of his family of children playing tag or romping with the house-dog, and exhibiting that or any other in his house or upon the public common, without ever going to the board of censors at all. If he wants the privilege of interstate commerce, he should secure a license for his Motion Picture from a federal board of censors. But if he wants to show it only in his own state in licensed places of amusement, he should obtain a license from a state board of censors, unless the state has authorized that any Motion Picture can be shown in such places which bears a seal of the approval by the federal board of censors. 4. Upon reflection, I hope that President Dyer will realize that a federal law, such as I advocate, will not increase, but rather greatly diminish the number of censor boards. For I am persuaded that as soon as there is an effective state and federal censorship all village and city censorships will disappear. It is likely that many of the state censor boards will accept the licensing of the federal board. 5. I hope also he will come to realize, in spite of what he has said to the contrary, that while a picture, which has been licensed by the censor board, will be still subject to the police power of the state, yet it will be practically impossible to get any court or jury to convict a maker or exhibitor for showing a licensed film. This is true of censored plays in England. 6. Is President Dyer speaking from theory or actual knowledge when he says that experience teaches us that we must assume the worst, and expect that official censorship would be administered unfairly ? Is he convinced that graft has to be paid in Chicago, in San Francisco and other places, in order to get good pictures approved? Is there not an effective remedy, which is in the hands of the Motion Picture makers, if they want real justice done? My conviction is that the local police are more likely to be influenced by graft than are censor boards. Furthermore, federal and state censorship will largely eliminate village and city censorships, and thus vastly reduce the number of persons who can demand graft. My plan would reduce graft to a minimum. 7. When President Dyer speaks of censorship as being contrary to American ideals he argues as if we were living in the days when power resided in kings, emperors, bishops and popes, who acted arbitrarily, and as if I were proposing that we return to what the people have won from them by hard struggle. But it is not so. Power in America now resides in the whole people. I am asking merely that the will of the whole people shall be effectively executed, and that criminals, who are breaking the laws and making money by corrupting children, shall be effectively prevented from so doing. Such criminal Motion Picture manufacturers are like the arbitrary kings or bishops of old, who claimed a divine right to make money by robbing the people of their rights. The people who exert tyrannical power today are no longer kings, police or clergy.