Dakota farmers' leader. (Canton, S.D.) 1890-19??, 1911-04-28

depravity. To me that was a wonderful revela-
ton of Anglo-Saxon psychology.
Thus it 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 it all clean. They want
the good to triumph, the guilty to be punished,
and wrong to be avenged.
A Partisan manufacturer offered 100000 Tor
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 was about
a twentieth Of what he offered for the original.
This manufacturer had an eye on a new field
for the moving picture. While his imitation will,
perhaps. find a comparatively small market, 1t
cannot hope to reach the class that would have
purchased a guaranteed reproduction Of the
play; viz, the churches.
For the churches have not 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
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 moving-picture plays
founded on Biblical accounts.
While the moving pictures are %battering at the
doors Of the churches they have already par
TALLY scaled the walls Of the school-houses. Out
of every seven subjects passed by the National
Board Of Censorship, one is classed as "peda-
,gogical."
In the catalogues of the manufacturers one
finds films that show lessons in agriculture,
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, ornithology,
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 are ordered by "the trade"
Subjects under these lists are shown daily in the
1900 theaters that exhibit moving pictures in this
country. They form entertainment, not instruc-
ton. They have put the stereopticon out Of
business, not the schoolmaster.
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 laboriously 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 it on u%nlivened page? Why not
learn about the growth Of flowers pleasantly. by
watching a 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 are constantly
shown. Do they not mean the revolution Of
pedagogy?
Not long ago the New York Board Of Education
appointed a committee to investigate this sub
ject, and find out If 1t were feasible to install
moving picture machines in the various schools
of the city. superintendent Maxwell was on the
committee. I saw him a 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
hypodermically. You cannot swallow it in tab
loid form. There is but one way to take 1t, and
that it the oldest way known. You will find after
all of these wilIo'the-wisps have vanished that
it will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right back
where it belongs-in the theater. 1t can 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.