The enterprise. [volume] (Harlem, Mont.) 1899-1926, 1911-04-27

ZION OF AneloSaXOn psychology.
Thus 1t will always be in our theater whether
the admission price be five cents or two dollars.
American audiences want action; they want
thrills; they want desperate courage and wild
heroism; but they want 1t 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 company
of very skilfu actors rehearsed them carefully
and reproduced the Passion Play, almost we'll
as it was originally done, and the cost was about
a twentieth of what he offered for the original
This manufacturer had eye on 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 the
Oberammergau play; viz. the churches.
For the churches have not yet come utterly un.
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 lot of time and money to religious sub
jects. Joseph Going Into Egypt" "The Repulse
of Herod" "Jephthah's Daughter, "The Relief
of Jericho" and "The Wisdom of Solomon" are
a few of the subjects Of movng-picture plays
founded Biblical accounts.
While the moving pictures batterng at the
doors of the churches they have already par
TALLY scaled the walls Of the school-houses Out
of every subjects passed by the National
Board of Censorship one Is classed as "peda-
gogcal."
In the catalogues of the manufacturers one
finds films that show lessons in agriculture
aeronautcs animal life bacteriology, biography,
biology, botany, entomology, ethnology, fisheries
geography, history, industry, kindergarten stud
ies mining and metallurgy, microscopy, mill
pathology, piscicuture religion, travel and
zoology"
1t looks like the catalogue of educational
publishing house. Yet 1t is only the list of films
that may be and are ordered by "the trade"
Subjects under these lists are shown daily in the
$500 theaters that exhibit moving pictures in this
country. They form entertainment not instruc-
tion They have put the stereopticon out Of
business, not the schoomaster.
For the public schools have no more surren.
dered to the new and plausible invader than have
the churches.
Why?
Why not teach children history by showing
them scenes from the lives Of great men,
pageants from the great moments that are duly
and laborously recorded in the books Why not
sit and watch George Washington cross the Della
ware on the moving picture sheet, instead Of
having to puzzle your head over the dry print
that records 1t on unlivened page? Why not
learn ABOUT the growth or mowers pleasantly, by
watching picture instead of having to patiently
dissect the flower and then piece 1t together
again under the instruction Of a botany text
book? Such pictures can be and constantly
shown Do they not the revolution OF
pedagogy?
Not long ago the New York Board of Education
appointed committee to investigate this sub
ject, and find out If 1t were feasible to install
moving picture machines i'll the various schools
Of the city. Superintendent Maxwell the
committee. I saw him few days after the ex
hibition.
He was 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
1--WE learn only by taking thought, and that is
work, hard work. You cannot insert learning
lypodermcally. You cannot swallow it in tab
loid form. There is but one way to take it, an(
that it the Oldest way known You will find afte
all of these will-o-the-wisps have vanished thai
it will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right bacl
where it belongs-in the theater. 1t can have NJ
permanent place in the church. 1t can have M
real place in the school, though it may be auxil
larry to either, or both.