The Moving picture world (April 1921)

464 MOVING PICTURE WORLD April 2. 1921 Industry Splits With Reformer Crafts Sharply Criticised for Failure to Keep Spirit of Promises The harmonious relationship temporarily established between Dr. Wilbur F. Crafts, the leader of the International Reform Bureau, and the leaders of the industry has come abruptly to a close, and the moving picture industry is not responsible. Dr. Crafts, after attending the conference in the offices of the National Association and pledging co-operation so that the industry might do its own housecleaning, hardly waited twenty-four hours and then rushed into print, proposing an inter-state licensing commission and asking that it be made a Federal law. Dr. Crafts is continuing his agitation in behalf of this measure, which he himself invented, and the present indications are that the industry will refuse to have any more to do with him. Dr. Crafts has violated the spirit of his agreement as ruthlessly as any pothouse politician might by throwing aside a solemn pledge. The situation is not without value to the industry, because after giving in good faith its promise to Dr. Crafts and sincerely endeavoring to co-operate with the noted reformer, it has discovered that it was not being met frankly and openly by the reverend gentleman. The industry must, therefore, profit by this unhappy experience and solve its own problems in its own way without the guiding hand of the reverend gentleman. In a long letter addressed to William A. Brady, Gabriel Hess, Arthur James, B. B. Hampton, Adolph Zukor and Jesse Lasky, in order named, Dr. Crafts wrote as follows: "Gentlemen: "I believe when the history of the great art of motion pictures is written, the thirteen exclusion standards adopted on March 5th by the producers of eighty per cent, of the films will be considered as the Magna Charta of the new era of increasing honor and prosperity for this new form of recreation and education. History, I feel sure, will record with honor among those who have ministered to the welfare and happiness of the people of this period those whose names are at the head of this letter and others associated with them in this forward movement in photoplays of 1921. It is the year when the century comes to its majority, and a fitting time to put away childish and substitute manly things in all departments of life. "I was greatly impressed by the frankness and courage with which Mr. Hampton did his duty at once to the art and to the public by his epoch-making article in the Pictorial Review. I confess that I feared it would be more likely to break him by the condemnation that is likely to come upon men who confess the faults of their own trade, but it is very creditable to the men who are at the head of this business today, that they have accepted the verdict, not of Mr. Hampton alone, but of the American public, in regard to the need of radical reforms especially along the line of sex appeal. However, I think none of us would have expected, even after many of his fellows had expressed approval of Mr. Hampton's course, and after Mr. Lasky had promulgated exclusion standards for his own firm, that producers would make so complete and thorough a schedule of reforms to be accomplished as are found in what I call the 'Thirteen Exclusion Standards.' If I had been asked to write a list of exclusions I should hardly havedared to make it so thorough, lest it would be considered rather "blue" and impracticable. "But on the appearance of this list of standards I at once began to study the possibility of realizing them, knowing it could not be done simply by wishing or resolving, not even with eighty per cent, of the production represented behind this expression of purpose. If only ten per cent, or five per cent, should stand out the result would be, as has been stated by Mr. Hampton and many others, that the low competition would draw the thoughtless crowd and drag down those who stand for the higher standards. "And so I had been studying, before the recent conference with the producers in New York, to which I was invited, and have been studying since, on the one essential part of the plan, without which it will be mere cloudland, beautiful as the sunset and as powerless, namely, how we could invoke the law to compel those who would not voluntarily adopt these standards, to accept them and at the same time to hold all of those who had agreed to them against any temptation that might come. "My last word at the conference, after adjournment, in the conversations that followed, was that we must find some sort of a commission, whether in New York State or elsewhere, that would attend to the enforcement of those standards. No other great interest, I argued, neither the packers nor the banks, nor the railroads, were supervised governmentally merely by local police. All great interests were rather controlled, in their own interest and the interest of the public, by such a commission as the Interstate Commerce Commission in the case of the railroads. Similar provision exists for the inspection of banks, the packers, public utilities, and the like.