That marvel - the movie : a glance at its reckless past, its promising present, and its significant future (1923)

THE MOVIE GOES TO THE BAD 51 Reference has been made to the fact that in the United States, England and France the first exploiters of motion pictures were under the delusion that this new form of entertainment was of merely ephemeral value, that its drawing-power as a theatrical novelty would soon pass away. Thus it was that in this country small men, of small means, hastened to "take flyers" in the latest get-rich-quick device, and throughout the United States was observed a mushroom growth of "picture palaces," financed on a shoe-string and designed to collect "easy money" before it became uneasy. There were those among the pioneer promoters of motion pictures who had read of the tulip craze in Holland, or of the Mississippi bubble in France, and imagined that the bottom would some day suddenly fall out of the "movie boom," ruining those who had not "cashed in" in time. They failed to realize that humanity could not afford to lose an inestimable boon that had come to it, namely, a new method for the telling of stories. There had existed, before the movie's birth, but four media for the dissemination of narratives — the tongue, the play, the printed story, and the printed poem. In the childhood of the race, tale-telling was confined to word of mouth. Later on, the stage came into existence, and mankind's craving for stories was