The Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1914)

64 MOTION PICTURE MAGAZINE but unscrupulous business men who use their vast financial resources to corrupt officials and demoralize the people. These arc the autocratic powers which claim that they ought to be free from all law to defeat the will of the people, in order that they may be tree to make money without rest raint. President Dyer is representing the reactionary tendency wThen he says : ''It is not properly within the power of any man to tell us or our children what we shall or shall not see." For he is denying the citizens the right to pass laws which will be for the people's welfare in order that his own business may make money without proper restraint. If the people decide it is unwise for the children to see bullfights, cockfights, naked men or women, the electrocution or hanging of criminals, or the picturing any crime in BUCh detail as 1<» sii'ijrcst or teach crime, no body of men has any divine right to exhibit them. If we see a man is about to commit murder or theft, we do not let him do it and then punish him. We stop him. If a picture will excite children to theft and lust, we oughl to take the most effective way t<> prevent the picture doing harm. President Dyer ought not to object to official censorship on the ground that a few persons thereby determine what the people may see. For a few film manufacturers are deciding that today. The censors represent the welfare <>f the people. The film-makers represent the business interests involved. The will of the people should prevail 1 1 the state can more effectively prevent such sights from the public by preliminary inspection o\' M • ion Pictures than by punishment the crime has been committed, t! te has an absolute right to ^i\ the • «1 effective thing -naj . it is its dutj i do s<>. The people have the "The censor represents the welfare of the people ; the filmmakers, the business interests involved. The will of the people should prevail." right to enact laws of prevention as well as of cure. The individual has no divine right to see what he pie and thus compel th. state to punish crime after it occurs, instead of taking effective methods to prevent it. The effect of the censor law which I am advocating, does not apply to nor restrain the ordinary citizen from showing any picture he desires in any place without previous inspection. It applies only to the business man who makes a living from Motion Pictv Because of the great temptation, which assails the Motion Picture man. to make money by demoralizing children. T maintain that it is the duty of the nation to prevent this demoralization by demanding a preliminary inspection of his pietn 8. When President Dyer says that ''the suggestion of censorship is a denial of : liberty, of free speech and fret' press." he clearly indie that he. law like, is referring to censorship, government and liberty as defined in the laWfl ancient Home, and not as used in America of today. asorship today means licensing of what comes up to the moral standard, by persons from whose decision there is a Legal appeal. It (\ors not mean, as in Rome, the exercise <>f any absolutely arbitrary poW( When the government email, from one man. like an emperor 01 czar, from whom the?-.' is no appeal, the exercise of any governmental power is a denial of personal liberty. Put when the sovereign power sides in the people, then any lawenacted for the welfare o\" the whole people is to establish personal liberty. Snnot be considered a denial o( tnal liberty, no matter how (actively it may restrain men from carrj ing out their wicked pui 'Hie personal Liberty ^\' the whole community makes it necessary to re