The following is a label on a film after having passed through their hands:—
“In part 3, cut out scenes of mixing drinks.” In part 6 cut out sub-title, “You don’t care a damn,” etc., also all drinking scenes.
In short, the National Association of the Motion-Picture Industry has resolved to suppress and refrain from films that “emphasize vice or the sex appeal or illicit love; exhibit nudity, excessive demonstrations of passion, and vulgar postures; unduly concern themselves with the underworld of crime, bloodshed and violence, drunkenness, gambling, and unnatural practices; emphasize the methods used in committing crime; bring into ridicule the law, the authorities, and religious beliefs and leaders; contain salacious titles, or are advertised salaciously.”
The “White Scourge” Problem.
The “white slave traffic” is as much a scourge as tuberculosis. This appalling problem is sapping the vitality of the nation, and every means of giving publicity to this menace, which, unfortunately, is not on the wane, should be used. We have the best possible publicity agent in the film. Such a film could be prepared and exhibited to initiate the ignorant, and to show those who practise in it that something is being done openly to expose this illicit traffic.
One reads in the newspapers almost daily of wrecked lives, fathers who have shot their daughters and then themselves, because she has trodden the downward path; and of others who have made away with themselves because they are beyond reclamation.
This subject is talked about, and often whispered, as if it were a plague and they were afraid of becoming infected with it.
It is a plague, and requires to be stamped out, like the Plague of London.
The daily life of the unfortunate daughter of the streets and her means of livelihood could not be portrayed more eloquently. The efforts of the reclaimer of lost souls would be strengthened. Mothers would give silent prayers for the imparting of such information to their daughters, which, although their duty, it is often shunned, to the detriment of her offspring.
In a clean, inoffensive and simple way it could be shown how unfortunate girls, attracted by finery and dress, are sometimes directly led into these channels.