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MoviKg Picture
WORLD
Founded Jn ltyOJ by %J. P. Chalmers
The Editor's Views
Explanatory Words for the Benefit of Puzzled Friends — Being FIRST Seems to Have Become a Habit
SOMETIMES a publication can achieve the element of surprise by the things it says and does; very rarely, it can secure the same result by a passive attitude.
We had the latter unusual experience last week.
A New Jersey exhibitor friend met us during the week and said :
"You gave me the big surprise of my life last week. With the Admission Tax repeal signed, sealed, and delivered, I picked up last week's World expecting to see you 'twenty-four sheeting' the Admission Tax and grabbing all the credit in sight.
"Instead of that, all I could find was the straight news story and information about the repeal. What's the matter — did you lose your tooting horn?
"It is now over a year and a half since you announced in a January 1st platform that the Admission Tax COULD be repealed, and that you would keep banging away at your readers until by their work it was repealed.
"You kept it up. Other editors ignored you at first, kidded you later, sneered at you occasionally, and every now and then overwhelmed you with the weight of their own 'inside Washington information.' All of the 'information' being to the effect that THERE WASN'T A CHANCE to get the tax repealed.
"And still you kept at it.
"Isn't this the time for you to shout?"
T
HEN we told our New Jersey friend something about our own personal theory of publishing. "First of all." we declared, "the things
we say in Moving Picture World can only be said to READERS. As far as non-readers are concerned they might as well not be said.
"That being the case — where is the need of shouting? If we have had nothing at all to do with the fight for tax repeal OUR READERS KNOW IT. If we have had an humble share in prodding the indifferent to action, in keeping alive the spirit when days were dark, OUR READERS KNOW IT.
"In either case, a ballyhoo on our part does not alter the facts, or change OUR READERS' FIRSTHAND KNOWLEDGE."
"Well," granted our friend, "maybe you are right, ■in theory. But if you are counting on sitting back in the shadow and waiting for an avalanche of letters from your readers you are sadly mistaken.
"I'll lay you odds that aside from my conversation today you will never hear a word from an organization leader or a plain, ordinary reader about your work in the Admission Tax fight."
We wouldn't take the bet. But that makes little difference. There is one very concrete way that an EXHIBITOR READER can show appreciation or condemnation. That is through his CASH. He either renews — which means that he parts with cash — or he drops a paper.
And we ask no more appreciation than the RENEWAL RECORDS readers of Moving Picture World are chalking up each month.
B
UT our New Jersey friend had not concluded. "In the front of The World last week," he went on, "I saw your ad about being FIRST