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Show V-gK NE evening in the early summer of tj- 11-. i8l L , ""tl M X 1901 1 st00d- awed but keenly ex' V ITyP VTl I r 1' I m it4 I vMnmvrV M Mi Pectent, on the balcony of the Eth- (Q)mKA W fl 17 W Vitl Ef Wti ;! 13 nology Building at the Pan-American jT - Yff I II 4 1 1 IV It. jl SXl VhHTWS P,j t j Exposition in Buffalo. By my side OTV W fi t If ?l II I 81 l IC- 4 jfjl u ; 14 was a short, chubby man in an old U AVJ n f) B ft Myi 7 U IU &d 9 CSv WT Qtojy suit of clothes, a negligee Bhirt and ) V llsaJIK-4 i V MM AV-5?A a string tie that had come undone V g3 '"" j fx VvJl- W'M SftiinvK. Tf and was flopping over his capacious nA T"" . , "T'W '''1 ffiff W-SwiW V chest. It was a warm evening, and sV-M "V i V-EL 7 , ' TlTrWvV- he had removed his battered straw C U Wi. C7 VK t (L W'f rttlLU7 1 1 hat, which he held in his hand. The ' g VXiVFr' Zjli ' ffHlT44- size of the hat was No. 8. The man was Thomas fcr IT I WjH-iri? Before us spread that dream in frozen music; -Jl w n ?rS' the buildings fronting the esplanade, mall arid Sr . cp EEV plaza of the exposition. The twilight was done, r . c, -?3p -' J- and the moment had arrived for the night birth gp&A Vl tD UWI; V --'J' of that dream into splendor. For the first time Ss : . , , f 2. v.!i - , oi0 oii,7o at E," - 4S n r cT " prize ring would not endure any pictured sexual in history architecture was to be made alive at t i rwvivv w- ljtO C j -t m . j , night, more living than by day. Half a million lf V-OVt-XV V. depravity. To me that was a wonderful revela- incandescent bulbs were hid along the transverse f?&? CYC tion of Ango-Son psychology, lines of the buildings. The current was turned pOg&lV JSC W I our theater, whether , n. i , io,,i TnQ Affal ,. - ' s: the admission price be five cents or two dollars, on and they simultaneously bloomed. Ensued a "CTS? 1 ' " . ,. ., , , . , . . .ii i,- k,. 'iM American audiences want action; they want spectacle for which a Caesar would have bar- vu- 1 - -- .. . 1L . . . . j j i,4. ii, ,o nf -""s. JC - thrills; they want desperate courage and wild tered a province a joy that brought a gasp of . ' v. t i , tfc in,,- ., r JXZ heroism; but they want it all clean. They want ecstacy from every one of the millions who v. s. . J J . saw it Xi J- good to triumph, the guilty to be punished, Edison, bare-headed! squinted his eyes. The xjac XNX ., wrong to be avenged. poetry missed him. The gallop of scenic history Ptlsf n "facturer offered $20 .00 ) for . , .j ,im rri, C the right to make moving pictures of the Ober- over the verge of a new era missed him. The . . . . , , ., . j Tco,q ammergau Passion Play. PIis offer was refused., 1 glorv of the spectacle itself missed him. Instead, . .,..,..,. xgajtv NE evening in the early summer of Jt v 1901 I stood, awed but keenly ex-?j ex-?j pectant, on the balcony of the Eth-f Eth-f . ;! I ; j nology Building at the Pan-American 6 t;! Exposition in Buffalo. By my side b.'.i was a short, chubby man in an old X suit of clothes, a negligee shirt and a string tie that had come undone and was flopping over his capacious chest. It was" a warm evening, and vy he had removed his battered straw ' -f ' hat, which he held in his hand. The size of the hat was No. 8. The man was Thomas A. Edison. Before us spread that dream in frozen music; the buildings fronting the esplanade, mall arid plaza of the exposition. The twilight was done, and the moment had arrived for the night birth of that dream into splendor. For the first time in history architecture was to be made alive at night, more living than by day. Half a million incandescent bulbs were hid along the transverse lines of the buildings. The current was turned on and they simultaneously bloomed. Ensued a spectacle for which a Caesar would have bartered bar-tered a province a joy that brought a gasp of ecstacy from every one of the millions who saw it. Edison, bare-headed," squinted his eyes. The poetry missed him. The gallop of scenic history over the verge of a new era missed him. The glorv of the spectacle itself missed him. Instead, prize ring would not endure any pictured sexual depravity. To me that was a wonderful revelation revela-tion of Anglo-Saxon psychology. Thus it will always be in our theater, whether the admission price be five cents or two dollars. American audiences want action; they want thrills; they want desperate courage and wild heroism; but they want it all clean. They want the good to triumph, the guilty to be punished, and wrong to be avenged. A Parisian manufacturer offered $200,000 for the right to make moving pictures of the Ober-ammergau Ober-ammergau Passion Play. His offer was refused. , 1 he glanced shrewdly and carefully all around on the entrancing wonder, then cautiously into his battered straw hat and said: "I could put every filament into that hat!" Economics, mechanics these obsessed him. That brain, which required a No. 8 hat for covering, cover-ing, could think only of the compressed fact that all the space occupied by the vibrating, energizing en-ergizing and glory-working source of that gigantic spectacle could be replaced by about two pints of water or a quart of human brain. Edison is a rare man. In his speech, of which he is as careful as of his filaments, he pulls the core from a field of ideas and thrusts it at you as if it were a poniard. You think about what he says for a week, a month; and in years you don't forget it. All of this is leading up to a' consideration of what the wizard-sage said a few weeks ago when a select audience sat in his studio and watched the first performance of the kinetograph, that fabulous instrument which Is destined to reproduce repro-duce plays, operas, public spectacles with the action, the color and the voice Intact. The great old inventor was gratified once again. Another thrill had come into his life. His latest adventure into the unknown had prospered, pros-pered, and his friends and associates clustered about him with congratulations, with questions, with assurances. For some time Edison was silent. He Is grateful grate-ful that he is deaf. Then he squinted from one to the otjier, and said: "Before loEg you'll be working that in an aeroplane, aero-plane, for you'll be able to pack it into a soap-bubble!" soap-bubble!" A soap-bubble! Rather a fragile packing-case. Rather a small compass in which to place a grand opera. A curious comparison. Did Edison mean what he said? Did he know what he was talking about? Ever since I heard that Edison said that, I have been thinking of moving pictures in connection connec-tion with soap-bubbles. And not always in the way he meant bubbles in connection with the kinetograph. A soap-bubble is cheap. It is easy to make if you know how. It is fragile. It is very alluring. It reflects all colors, all forms. It appeals universally uni-versally to children. Sages ponder over it. Poets celebrate it. Artists reproduce it. Conundrum. Why is a moving picture like a soap-bubble? First, you find them everywhere. On the back streets of Reno I saw the pictures of the bull fight at Guadalajara. Mexico. The Guadalajarans now look on the moving pictures of the prize fight at Reno. At Punta Arenas, the southernmost port in the work), I saw Chileans applaud moving pictures of the Bowery and the New York water front. On the Bowery I saw pictures of the battleship fleet entering the harbor of Punta Arenas. On an island 2,000 miles out in the Pacific Ocean the exiled lepers of Molokat gather daily before the flickering wonders of a w:orld which before had been but vaguely in their dreams. The Sunday evening young people's class of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, looks in pity on the transplanted trans-planted and resurrected life of Molokai which passes before their eyes on the screen. A group of travelers in the luxurious saloon of an ocean liner study the lifelike pictures of the country for which they are bound. The beggars beg-gars who line the pathways of the tourist imploring implor-ing backsheesh give up their pennies to see the living presentment of their prey bounding to them over the ocean wave. In Iceland excited Eskimos applaud the hero-Ism hero-Ism of a cowboy who, rescues a captured maiden from the redsk.'ns. Half-way round the w'orld, In Northern Russia, tearful peasants sorrow over the pictured plight of a French lover. The Bengalee moves down Mowringhee Road and gives up two pennies to see the luneral of King Edward to see it actually move. The Moro In the alleys of Zamboanga go-so wl Shout in extra shirt, that he may view the reception of Universal as Froth. Anywnere, everywhere, you nnd them. In the United States you will have to hunt a town of less than 2,000 inhabitants if you, wish to escape the moving pictures. Five millions of Americans daily visit these shows. The exhibitors pay $18,000,000 a year for their . films. The public pays $57,500,000 a year to see them. Mr. Edison has an average weekly royalty therefrom of $8,000. So It Is a pretty big business, pretty thoroughly thor-oughly organized, quite universal in its reach, soap-bubbly in its universality. The child of the poor, with a clay-pipe and the suds from the weekly wash, can have just as good a time as any rich young fellow with an imported im-ported meerschaum and the best castile. So it is with the moving-picture shows. It requires re-quires little capital to run them. A long room, easily darkened, a nine-feet square patch of white cloth, some benches for the spectators, an operator oper-ator at ten dollars a week, and a rented film, now takes the place of a company of actors, stage scenery, properties, lights and a properly equipped building. And the poor boy gets as much value for his nickel as the rich boy can get for any number of dollars. Yet, they run into dangers that no soap-bubbles can allure. Fire is of these the most patent. Of the moral dangers .'we will speak later. It is through the moral soap-bubble that we can see more clearly the moving picture's gossamer tinsel. Fire, however, Is the first and most vital danger. dan-ger. The Charity-Bazaar fire in Paris, in which so many women were trampled to death by cowardly cow-ardly men, was caused by the fall of a spark upon some celluloid moving-picture films which had been dropped into a basket. ' In Canton 600 men, Chinamen, were burned to death in a fire in a moving-picture show house. In Quito, Ecuador, Ecua-dor, fifty men and women lost their live's in a similar calamity. It speaks well for the widespread and constant con-stant vigilance of the fire departments of the United States that no great catastrophe has yet come to , the moving-picture houses of this country. Lives have not been lost in the moving picture shows. Lives have been lost through the moving-picture moving-picture shows. Where once the dime and nickel novels suggested sug-gested ways of crime to unbalanced youth the moving picture has come to make a more ready and more potent appeal. The printed word is never so ardent with an impressionable mind as the ?ct,ed word. Several ways have been thought of to lessen these obvious evils. Charles Sprague Smith, late chief of the People's Institute in New York, thought he had solved the problem when he induced in-duced the manufacturers of the moving pictures to agree to a national board of. censorship. The manufacturers, good trade diplomats, readily assented, and then saw to it that the board of censorship should be advisory and not antagonistic. The result is that many pictures that create havoc among youthful minds w-hen shown on the public screens "get by" the national na-tional board of censorship. No. This bubble that Edison has loosed upon us will play itself out just so far as the Instincts of the whole people of this cov.ntry will permit; no farther, no sooner. One night I went to a prize fight. Only men were present. The casual observer might have said they were all tough men. After the fight a canvas was erected in the ring and an announcer an-nouncer said, "An exclusive film will now be , shown to the members of this club." The lecture proved to be of French manufacture manufac-ture and portrayed a vile situation in a dive. Instantly hisses and a storm of execration burst from the audience. The running of the film was stopped and the picture removed before It was nil shown. Grim silence greeted the removal of the canvas. Th crowd that gloried In the tctlon of the tie went DacK to nis stuaio, engaged a company of very skillful actors, rehearsed them carefully and reproduced the Passion Play, almost as well as it was originally done, and the cost was about a twentieth of what he offered for the original. This manufacturer had an eye on a- new field for the moving picture. While his imitation will, . perhaps, find a comparatively small market, it cannot hope to reach the class that would have purchased a guaranteed reproduction of the"-Oberammergau the"-Oberammergau play; viz., the churches. For the churches have not yet come utterly under un-der the sway of the moving picture, despite the fact that the Congregational and Presbyterian churches of Redlands, California, showed moving pictures all last summer in their outdoor pavilion. pavi-lion. Yet the moving picture manufacturers are devoting de-voting a lot of time and money to religious subjects. sub-jects. "Joseph Going Into Egypt," "The Repulse of Herod," "Jephthah's Daughter, "The Relief of Jericho," and "The Wisdom of, Solomon" are a few of the subjects of moving-picture plays founded on Biblical accounts. While the moving pictures are battering at the doors of the churches they have already partially par-tially scaled the walls of the school-houses. Out of every seven subjects passed by the National Board of Censorship, one is classed as "pedagogical." "peda-gogical." In the catalogues of the manufacturers one finds films that show lessons in "agriculture, aeronautics, animal life, bacteriology, biography, biology, botany, entomology, ethnology, fisheries, geography, history, industry, kindergarten studies, stud-ies, mining and metallurgy, microscopy, military mili-tary and naval life, natural history, ornithology, pathology, pisciculture, religion, travel and zoology." It looks like the catalogue of an educational publishing house. Yet it is only the list of films that may be and are ordered by "the trade." Subjects under these lists are shown daily in the 7,500 theaters that exhibit moving pictures in this country. They form entertainment, not instruction. instruc-tion. They have put the stereoptlcon out of ' business, not the schoolmaster. For the public schools have no more surrendered surren-dered to the new and plausible invader than have the churches. Why? Why not teach children history by showing them scenes from the lives of great men, pageants from the great moments that are duly and laboriously recorded in the books. Why not sit and watch George Washington cross the Delaware Dela-ware on the moving picture sheet, instead of having to puzzle your head over the dry print that records it on unlivened page? Why not learn about the growth of flowers pleasantly, by watching a picture instead of having to patiently dissect the flower and then piece it together again under the instruction of a botany textbook? text-book? Such pictures can be and are constantly shown. Do they not mean the revolution of pedagogy? Not long ago the New York Board of Education appointed a committee to investigate this subject, sub-ject, and find out if it were feasible to install moving-picture machines in the various schools of (he city. Superintendent Maxwell was on the committee. I saw him a few days after the exhibition. ex-hibition. He was not very enthusiastic about the pictures. pic-tures. "A method will never be devised that will save any human being the labor of learning." ho said. "We learn only by taking thought, nnd lhat is work, hard work. You cannot insert learning hypodermically. You cannot swallow it in tabloid' tab-loid' form. There Is but one way to take it, and that It the oldest way known. You will find after all of these will-o'-the-wlsps have vanished that It will bo the newest way, too." Which throws the moving picture right bark where It belongs In the theater. It can have no permanent place In the church. It can hnvo no real place 'in the school, though It may be nuxlV iary to either, or botlfc |