Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1911-04-29

= prize ring would not endure any pictured sexual
depravity. To that was a wonderful revela-
ton of Anglo-Saxon psychology.
Thus it will always be in theater, whether
the admission price be five cents two dollars.
American audiences want action; they want
thrills; they want desperate courage and wild
heroism y but they want it all clean They want
the good to triumph, the guilty to be punished
and wrong to be avenged.
A Partisan manufacturer offered 100000 for
the right to make moving pictures of the Ober
ammergau Passion Play. His offer was refused
He went back to his studio, engaged a company
of very skillful actors. rehearsed them carefully
and reproduced the Passion Play, almost as well
as it was originally done. and the cost about
twentieth of what he offered for the original.
This manufacturer had eye a new field
for the moving picture. While his imitation will
perhaps, find comparatively small market it
cannot hope to reach the class that would have
purchased a guaranteed reproduction of
Oberammergau play; viz, the churches.
For the churches have rot yet come utterly I'M
der the sway of the moving picture, despite the
fact that the Congregational and Presbyterian
churches of Redlands, California, showed moving
pictures all last summer in their outdoor paw
lion
Yet the moving picture manufacturers are de-
voting a lot of time and money to religious sub
tects- Joseph Going Into Egypt" 1.-The Repulse
of Herod. "Jephthahs Daughter, "The Relief
of Jericho and THE Wisdom of Solomon are
a few of the subjects of moving-picture plays
founded Biblical accounts.
While the moving pictures battering the
doors OF the churches they have already par
TALLY scaled the walls of the schoolhouses. Out
of every seven subjects passed by the National
Board of Censorship, one is classed "peda-
gogical"
finds films that show lessons in Horticulture
aeronautics, animal life. bacteriology, biography,
biology, botany, entomology, ethnology, fisheries.
geography, history, industry kindergarten stud
les, mining and metallurgy microscopy, mill
tary and naval life. natural history, ornthology,
pathology. pisciculture, religion. travel and
zoology"
1t looks like the catalogue of an educational
publishing house Yet it is only the list of films
that may be and ordered by 1.-THE trade"
Subjects under these lists shown daily in the
$500 theaters that exhibit moving pictures this
country They form entertainment not instruc
ton They have put the stereopticon out of
business, the schoomaster.
For the public schools have no more surren
dered 20 the new and plausible invader than have
the churches.
Why?
Why not teach children history by showing
them from the lives of great men,
pageants from the great moments that duly
and laboriously recorded in the books. Why not
sit and watch George Washington the Della
ware the moving picture sheet. instead of
having to puzzle your head over the dry print
that records it unlivened page2 Why not
learn about the growth of flowers pleasantly. by
watching picture instead of having to patiently
dissect the flower and then piece it together
again under the instruction of a botany text
book? Such pictures be and constantly
shown Do they not mean the revolution of
pedagogy?
Not long ago the New York Board of Education
appointed committee to investigate this sub
1ect, and find out if it were feasible to install
moving picture machines in the various
OF the city Superintendent Maxwell the
committee 1 saw him few days after the
hibition.
He not very enthusiastic about the pic
lures.
"A method will never be devised that will save
any human being the labor of learning" he said.
I'VE learn only by taking thought, and that is
work. hard work. You cannot insert learning
hypodermicaily. You cannot swallow it in tab
loid form There is but way to take 1t. and
that 1t the Oldest known You will find after
all of these wi1Eo'the-wisps have vanished
it will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right back
where 1T belongs-in the theater 1t have no
permanent place in the church 1t can have no
real place in the school, though it may be auxil
larry to either or both