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THE FOREIGN MARKET 325
is drawing into our coffers a new flood of good American dollars — still acceptable currency! It will probably serve not alone to revive the interest of the vast army of movie fans, but will attract a host of new friends, to a number now incredible. We are offering the public an entertainment no longer of a certain kind but of all kinds. This time our function is not to create one demand but to supply many. Throughout the history of our nation certain forms of diversion have been denied to all save the small fraction of those who live in or visit the metropolitan centres. We have changed all that. We have scattered the benefits of urban pleasures to the farthest crossroad. There we find the same appetites, the same hungers that stir in the cities. We have tapped a craving utterly beyond our present instruments to gratify. This is the new home market; and with the thought of it to ballast us against uneasiness we can turn the mind elsewhere, to face threat or promise squarely and calmly.
From 30 to 40 per cent, of the gross revenue of a motion picture has come from other countries, and the economic structure of the industry has been set up on that basis. To what extent will the innovation interfere with the important revenue that has been obtained in the past from foreign countries? The advent of the talking picture has created a real problem in this regard, since Englishspeaking pictures are not likely to meet with the same degree of success in non-English-speaking countries as have the silent ones. Until now most foreign countries have shown a preference for those American motion pictures that have sound and orchestral accompaniment without dialogue, for naturally their people, outside the British possessions, do not understand the language.
The silent motion picture offers entertainment within the reach of all the world. It was estimated that in excess of ten million people attended such film performances