In the busier parts of the city the constant street noise puts a nervous tax upon the children; the proximity of so many bright and moving objects taxes the eyes; the splash of gaudy and gross advertisements creates a fevered imagination; slang, profanity, and vulgarity lend a smart effect; the merchant's tempting display often leads to theft, and the immodest dress of women produces an evil effect upon the mind of the overstimulated adolescent boy; opportunities to elude observation and to deceive one's parents abound; social control weakens; ideals become neurotic, flashy, distorted; the light and allurement of the street encourage late hours; the posters and "barkers" of cheap shows often appeal to illicit curiosity, and the galaxy of apparent fun and adventure is such as to tax to the full the wholesome and restraining influence of even the best home.
The cheap show is an adjunct of the street and a potent educational factor in the training of the city lad. These motion-picture shows have an estimated daily patronage in the United States of two and a quarter millions, and in Chicago 32,000 children will be found in them daily. Many of these children are helplessly open to suggestion, owing to malnutrition and the nervous strain which the city imposes; and harmful impressions received in this vivid way late at night cannot be resisted. At one time, after a set of pictures had been given on the West Side which depicted the hero as a burglar, thirteen boys were brought into court, all of whom had in their possession housebreakers' tools, and all stated they had invested in these tools because they had seen these pictures and they were anxious to become gentlemanly burglars.[4] Through censorship bureaus, national and municipal, the character of the films put on exhibition is being greatly improved, and the moving picture is destined to a large use by educational and religious agencies.
Many instances of valuable moving-picture exhibits come to mind, including those on travel, nature-study, the passion play, athletic sports, sanitation (especially the exhibits showing the breeding and habits of the house-fly), and various others having to do with the health, happiness, and morality of the people; and from the study of hundreds of nickel shows one is forced in justice to say that although there are dangers from the children's being out late at night and going to such places unattended, and although the recreation is passive and administered rather than secured by wholesome muscular exercise, yet there has been brought within the reach of the entire family of moderate means an evening of innocent enjoyment which may be had together and at small expense. Properly regulated, it is an offset to the saloon and a positive medium of good influence.
Such a commendation, however, can safely be made for those communities only which take the pains to censor all films before exhibition is permitted. In less than two years the censorship bureau of Chicago has excluded one hundred and thirteen miles of objectionable films. It should be said also that the vaudeville, which now often accompanies the nickel and dime shows, is usually coarse and sometimes immoral. The music, alas, speaks for itself and constitutes a sorry sort of education except in the foreign quarters of our great cities where, in conformity to a better taste, it becomes classic and valuable.
But to describe a typical film of the better sort and to indicate its practical use may have some suggestive value for wide-awake ministers who wish to turn to good account every legitimate social agency. During the Christmas season of 1911 the following film story was set forth to vast audiences of people with telling effect: In a wretched hovel you see a lame mother with three pale children. The rich young landlord comes to collect rent and is implored to improve the place. This he refuses to do because of his small returns on the property. He departs. The father of the family returns from work. They eat the bread of the desolate.
The landlord marries and sets out on an ocean voyage with his bride. On the same ship the father of the tubercular family, working as stoker or deck hand, reaches the last stages of the disease and in his dying hours is mercifully attended by the bride. She contracts the disease and later appears weak and fading. The husband, ascertaining the real nature of her malady, brings her home with the purpose of placing her in the private sanitarium. There is no room in this institution, but good accommodations are found in the public sanitarium to which she goes and where she finds the children from their tenement.
The facts have now been put in such juxtaposition that the husband has a change of heart. The patients recover and the landlord endows a great sanitarium for the tuberculous. One may easily criticize the crudeness of the plot and the improbabilities with which it bristles. But it sets forth love and death and conversion and an appeal to rescue those who suffer from the great white plague: and this was sufficient for the crowd, for all are children when beholding the elemental things of life. At any rate the women who stood at the exits of the theater selling the Christmas stamps of the anti-tuberculosis society will tell you that the purse strings as well as the heart strings of the crowd relaxed to the crude but deep melody of mercy.
The social hunger also, turning its back upon the meager home and heightened by the monotony and semi-independence of early toil, takes to the street. The quest is quickly commercialized and debauched by the public dance halls which are controlled by the liquor interests. A recent thorough investigation of 328 of these halls in Chicago showed a nightly attendance of some 86,000 young people, the average age of the boys being sixteen to eighteen years and of the girls fourteen to sixteen years. Liquor was sold in 240 halls, 190 had saloons opening into them, in 178 immoral dancing went on unhindered. The worst halls had the least dancing and the longest intermissions. Everything was conducted so as to increase the sale of liquor, and between the hours of one and three A.M. the toughest element from the saloons, which close at one o'clock, poured into the halls to complete the debauch and to make full use of the special liquor license which is good until the later hour.[5]
The quest of fun and social adventure can be traced also through other commercialized channels, in public poolrooms where minors waste time and money--gamble, smoke, tell unclean stories and plan mischief; in great amusement parks where the boy and girl on pleasure bent meet as strangers to each other and without social sponsor, where the deluded girl not only accepts but often invites a generosity which will tend to compromise if not break down the morality of both; on excursion boats which, if neglected, tend to become floating palaces of shame; and in many ways that lead from the inadequate home to sorrow and disaster.
It is to be doubted whether the average pastor or parent has an adequate conception of the tremendous odds against which the moral forces contend for the conservation of the city's childhood and youth, and whether we have as yet begun to solve the problems that arise from the city's sinister treatment of the home. Public parks, field-houses, libraries, and social settlements graciously mitigate the evil, but are far from curing it.