The admissions are small, but the expenses are usually not great. Most of the exhibition places are cared for by an operator, usually paid not more than twenty-five dollars per week; a piano-player, a doorkeeper, and a ticket-seller, varying from fifteen to eight dollars per week. Many proprietors operate a chain of several places, and many fenced-in city lots are pressed into service in summer.

The moral tone of the pictures now exhibited has been greatly benefited by the movement started in New York by those public-spirited citizens, headed by the late Mr. Charles Sprague-Smith, known as the National Board of Censorship, which wisely serves without compensation. The film-makers voluntarily submit their work, and are more than glad to have it reviewed, and it is said on good authority that no manufacturer has ever refused to destroy a film which did not receive the indorsement of the board. In a recent letter to “The Outlook,” Mr. Darrell Hibbard, director of boys’ work, Y. M. C. A., Indianapolis, discusses this phase of the subject. He writes: “Why is it that from juvenile, divorce, and criminal courts we hear constant blame for wayward deeds laid on the ‘five-cent shows’? The one answer is the word ‘Greed.’” He adds that when a film has passed the National Board of Censors, copies of it go to distributing agencies, in whose hands “it can be made over uncensored, strips can be inserted, or any mutilation made that fancy or trade may dictate.... A so-called class of ‘pirated’ films are the extreme of irresponsibility.... They are either manufactured locally or smuggled in from Europe, and thus miss the National Board of Censors.... The only way that the people, and especially the children, can be safeguarded from the influence of evil pictures is by careful regulation of the places of exhibition.... The nation-wide supervision of public exhibitions should be under the Department of Education or Child Welfare at Washington.”

Produced by Thomas A. Edison, Inc.

A SCENE FROM “THE BLACK ARROW”

This picture, showing the “Battle of Shorebytown,” was posed near New York City.

There are now many auxiliary boards. Some are under the city governments, and are compulsory, as in Chicago. Last year this board passed on more than 3000 reels of pictures, comprising 2,604,000 feet of films. They found it necessary to reject less than three per cent. If, however, on investigation Mr. Hibbard’s fears are found to be justified, the recently organized Children’s Bureau of the Department of Commerce and Labor will here obtain an early chance to justify its existence, as probably ninety-five per cent. of the films, as articles of interstate commerce, can now be subjected to its jurisdiction. Such supervision should also be welcomed by film-makers as an important step in furthering an advancement in the moral tone of films, long since on the upward grade, and thus to open up an even wider field of usefulness than they now exert.

THE FILMS

By permission of “The American Quarterly
of Roentgenology” and “The Archives
of the Roentgen Ray”