Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

The Trappers’ Community. In one of the regions of the Northwest where trapping is carried on through the winter there are three little settlements. There are only three white people and one white family in two of them, and the third settlement, which is a trading post, has about half a dozen white families. From the time that the snow falls in the autumn until late in May of the following spring, no one comes into these communities except the man carrying the mail who comes once in about ten days. No one goes out from the community unless it is absolutely necessary. The only ministers that ever visit there are those who come in the summer to enjoy the fishing in the near-by streams. The wife of a trapper in this region said to a minister: “Our oldest girl is nearly thirteen years old. She has never been to Sunday-school and never heard a sermon. She has never seen a church and you are the only preacher to whom she has ever talked. When I was married fifteen years ago in Missouri and we started for this country, I had no idea that a girl who had been brought up in the church and was a teacher in the Sunday-school could live so long in a community where there is no church or religious service of any kind.” When we learn of places like this where there are no churches, and then hear of some small community that has six or eight churches and only about five or six hundred people, we wonder if there is not a call for a new kind of missionary effort and zeal. The church is not alone to blame nor is any one wholly responsible for this condition, and yet we are all to blame, for if it is necessary that a man should live on the outpost of civilization it should be made possible for some of the good things of civilization to be taken to him. In the foreign missionary work we have crossed oceans, traversed mountains, translated the Bible into new languages, and made every effort to reach new groups of people. In our own land we have neglected people just because they seemingly live in a world outside of our own. While they are producing the things we demand and use, we have forgotten the men who have brought these things to us.

The Theater. People have always been interested in seeing life presented in a play. The theater has had a large place in the history of every nation. It has furnished the means of recreation and amusement, and in a large measure it has been a great educator of the people. Religion was once taught through the theater. In fact, much of our church ritual is taken from performances that were meant to symbolize great facts and emotions of human life. The modern theater has become highly commercialized, and those who attend the performances continually demand more magnificent scenery, more elaborate costumes, and more thrills. What of the performers? Have you ever wondered, as you looked at the play, just how the people who are taking part would look if you saw them off the stage? For instance, there is a girl that is playing the part of an old woman. She is dressed in a plain black, close-fitting gown, and hobbles across the stage leaning heavily upon a stick. In actual life she is a young woman under twenty-five years of age, has bright red hair, a charming smile, a figure that her friends describe as willowy, and walks with a springy step like that of a high school girl. Another character in the play is a woman who plays the part of the vampire. At home surrounded by her three children, she is a demure, domestic little body.

A few years ago one of our theatrical critics said that a glimpse behind the scenes would cure almost any girl of the desire to become an actress. The glamor is all in front of the curtain. Behind the scenes we come face to face with a hard-working group of men and women who are doing their best to furnish amusement. One of the leading actresses, in writing the history of her life, said that the only opportunity for success on the stage was for the person who comprehends fully that the theater offers but one thing—a chance for long hours of drudgery and the uncertain rewards that come from the hands of a fickle public. She described vividly the actors’ boarding-house, with its narrow cramped bedrooms; its dimly-lit halls, with the faded and worn carpet; the smell of cooking that permeated the whole place “like the ghost of a thousand dead dinners;” the bitter loneliness, the jealousies, the misunderstandings, and she added, “my whole being revolts against all the petty details of the life.” Then there is the traveling; nights on the train and days spent in the hotels until time to go to the opera house; then the feverish excitement of dressing; the play; and back to the hotel for a few hours’ sleep and away again to another town.

The trouble is that most of the young people who think that they would like to go on the stage think only of the theaters in New York, Chicago, Boston, or in one of the other large cities. The great majority of the actor-folk spend most of their time traveling from place to place. There are comparatively few plays that enjoy long runs. Nowadays in one-night stands there are few places where special rates at the hotels are secured for actors. Usually the worst rooms in the house are assigned to them. In fact, the rooms that are given to the actors and actresses are known in a great many hotels as the Soubrette Row. The best rooms are saved for the regular patrons of the house, such as traveling salesmen, while anything is “good enough for the actor.” In China the player folk live to themselves. They have no other companions but form a class of their own. We have not recognized the caste system in this country, and we do not officially ostracise the players, but in effect this is what we do. Their world is a world apart, yet they are the ones that help to amuse us. Each year we pay millions of dollars into the coffers of the theaters to see plays that are produced by these men and women who work hard, and who receive but little for their toil.

Once in a while the newspapers tell the story of some old actor, who has just died poor, broken down, and forgotten by the public. One of the most pathetic figures of these modern days was that of an old actor in Brooklyn, who had to be buried at the expense of his friends. They took up a collection to buy the casket in which he now rests; otherwise he would have been buried in the potter’s field although thirty years ago he was one of the most popular men on Broadway. There are thousands of actors and actresses and they live for the most part to themselves. The Actors’ Church Alliance was formed some years ago and has branches in many of our cities. There is, too, an organization known as the Actors’ Fund, which provides relief for the poor found among these hard-working men and women who give so much pleasure to millions of people.

The Motion Pictures. The motion-picture business has become one of the greatest enterprises of our day. In 1914 there were over 20,000 motion-picture theaters in the United States. The year before that three hundred million dollars was spent for films, and over five billion paid admissions were recorded throughout the country. The motion-picture has made possible the reproduction of the best plays, and they are offered to the people at a very low price. Five and ten cents will permit any one to be amused for a whole evening. The motion-picture theater possesses great educational possibilities. It has revolutionized our ideas of entertainment. The best books have been put into films and more people than ever before are having a chance to read. This is having a profound effect upon our lives, for as has been said, “the thing we see impresses us more than what we hear.” We often say, “it went in one ear and out the other” but no one ever says, “it went in one eye and out the other.” The making of films requires the work of thousands of actors; besides carpenters, masons, machine operators, directors, and managers. It is a huge business!

A crowd gathered in New York at Thirty-fourth Street and Second Avenue one Saturday afternoon. A man was beating a boy when a disheveled woman ran out from the side entrance of a saloon and threw herself upon this beast. He grasped her by the throat and was just about to strangle her, when the boy, released from the clutches of the man, stabbed him in the back with a knife and thus freed his mother. It happened so quickly that many of the crowd thought that they were looking upon a real tragedy. It proved to be simply a “movie” being enacted upon the street.

In a Florida city an automobile dashed into town; a young girl was in the back seat, while in the front was a young man driving the machine with one hand and holding a preacher down with the other. They stopped in front of a church; went inside, and there they were met by two other men, accomplices of the young fellow, and who stood one on either side of the minister with revolvers at his head and forced him to perform the marriage ceremony. An outrage in real life, but really played for the movies.

In the West there are cities devoted entirely to the motion-picture industry. In some of the elaborate plays hundreds of thousands of dollars are expended in getting the scenic effects. Cities have been built and then burned to give the effect of a sacked town being destroyed by the enemy. Shipwrecks have been shown where real ships have been purchased, and then run upon the rocks and deliberately wrecked to get the proper setting for the pictures and the necessary thrills for the people. What of these people who follow the motion-picture industry for a living? Their lives are apart from the rest of the community. It seems fascinating, but it is one filled with hard labor, uncertain hours, and affords rather scanty pay. The pastor of one of the Los Angeles churches attempted to reach the people living in the near-by “movie-city” but he failed. A plan should be devised whereby a sympathetic understanding might bring these hard-working people into relationship with the church. The influence of such a tie would be far-reaching in results.

The Makers of Other Luxuries. Another group of workers are those who make jewelry; others are at work making fancy costumes, special designs in millinery, and artificial flowers. In fact, when we take a census of all of the people who are at work serving the demands of this age, which loves the extraordinary and insists upon luxuries as a right, you find that there are in reality hundreds of thousands of these workers who are in every sense of the word serving humanity. Whether they are serving in the highest and best way is not the question we are discussing. As long as we tolerate an age of luxury and draft an army of thousands of men, women, and children to help produce these luxuries, so long must we consider the needs of the men, women, and children so drafted. The church, if its appeal is to reach all the groups, must reach all the workers who are making possible the abundance of things that minister to an age of luxury.