Arizona republican., 1910-07-07
MAYOR CHR|sTY INTERVIEWS
He Instructs the City At torney to Prepare An Or dinance Prohibiting Ex- hibition of Moving Pic lures In Phoenix

Within the past forty-eight hours T 1 general movement has been started 1 in many cities throughout the country aiming toward the prevention of the 1 exhibition of the moving pictures talk 1 en at the Jeffries- Johnson fight. Mayor Lloyd B. Christy will today instruct ] City Attorney Prescott to draw up an ordinance prohibiting all such exhi-
 bitions. This ordinance will be pre-
 sented to the city council at their next meeting Monday night.
 l In regard to the matter the mayor
 said:
 Tt is not because I fear that the ex-
 hibition of the fight pictures will tend to rouse feeling between the colored people and the whites. There is no
 danger of anything of the sort in Phoe- nix We have here a respectable col cred population-men who observe the
 laws and who get along amicably with the white citizens My reason for the faction is because I believe that such exhibitions have a bad moral effect on children; they should not witness such scenes of brutality as will be pictured in this fight
 The general crusade against the pie
 lures started in Boston. William Shaw,
 general secretary of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, has sent out telegrams to the governors of all the states asking intervention. Governor
 Sloan was in receipt of a night letter from Shaw yesterday asking his as
 sistance in preventing the pictures
 from being shown in Arizona.
 Mayor Christy's d action was dis
 cussed yesterday by many of the busi-
 ness men of Phoenix. All of those who
 gave an opinion on the subject con- corded with the mayor, though some
 gave vent to little signs of regret that they may not be able to see the pie
 lures. ORe real estate man expressed
 it in this wise: "Of course I wouldn't
 want my wife or children to see those pictures. I would not permit it. The whole thing is depraving and unworthy of the civilization of today. It savers of Rome during the days of the decline when gladiators ran each other through the stomachs to amuse the jaded popu- lace. It's brutal and gory-no doubt about it; but say I would like to see the reproduction of that fifteenth round"
 IT idhh IN IIldils dCllliS ulSlIIiL dIIOr- ney, was asked his opinion of the may or's action. Tt is timely he said. and just. In Phoenix the pictures should be prohibited on account of the brutality of the thing; in other cities, especially in the southern states, they should be eliminated on account of the feeling between the two races and the probability that in some places at least, the breach between the whites and the blacks will be widened by their exhibition. The race problem is one of the greatest that America has to | face and we shall some day pay the | penalty for the crime of our remote | ancestors in enslaving a whole race"
 There is little doubt that the pie 1 lures will be absolutely prohibited in | most of the large cities of the south. | and thS purchasers of the rights stand | to lose money on the huge investment | they made. Whether the purchasers We're ar-sighted enough to take this | into consideration or not when they | made their bids, or whether they were so sure of Jeffries winning is a mat ter of speculation. John l.. Sullivan was so sure the colored man could not | win, perhaps realizing that the pie lures could not be shown in the south at least if he did, that he made the mistake of his life by announcing the Il big fight was a frame up" The | memory of this announcement brought II on certain coolness when Big John II visited COrbett and Jeffries and re- quired some diplomacy on his part to get himself reinstated.