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

THE MOVIE DEVELOPS A CONSCIENCE 63 their own narrow beliefs and habits. Is it strange, then, that the movie, a new form of art qualified to make an instant appeal to both the good and the bad in human nature, should have had, at the outset of its career, a hard struggle to justify itself to the more conservative elements of the community? Bad boy that he was in his earlier years, the movie made it difficult for a public largely puritanical in its origins and tendencies to believe that the youngster could be reformed, that he had in him untried and unmeasurable powers for upward progress, that he was a prodigal son of Art and Science fated to exercise a controlling influence upon the destinies of the race. However, there is an element in the make-up of the American people that leads it, even at the eleventh hour, to institute reforms whenever an institution seemingly worth saving must either be heroically treated or permitted to go completely to the dogs. There came a time when negro slavery must be destroyed if our Federal Constitution was to survive. At an enormous cost of life and treasure, the blacks were freed and the Union preserved. It became apparent recently to the American public that there were destructive influences at work within our three most popular forms of amusement, that our stage, our base-ball diamond and our movie-screen