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

Anywhere everywhere, you find them. In the
United States you will have hunt a town of
less than 1000 inhabitants if you wish to escape
the moving pictures.
Five millions of Americans daily visit these
shows.
The exhibitors pay 5000 900 a year for their
hlms- The public pays s57,50oooo year to see
Mr. Edison has an average weekly royalty
therefrom of IS 600
So it is pretty big business, pretty thor
,oughly organized quite universal in its reach
soap bubbly in its universally
The child of the poor, with clay pipe the
suds from the weekly wash can have Just as
good time as any rich young fellow with an i'm
ported meerschaum and the best CASTLE.
So 1t is with the moving picture shows 1t re-
cures little capital to run them long room,
easily darkened. ninefeet square patch of white
cloth, some benches for the spectators an oper-
ator at ten dollars week, and a rented film now
scenery. properties. lights and properly
equipped building And the poor boy gets as
for any number of dollars
Yet, they run into dangers that no soapbubbles
can allure Fire is of these the patent.
OF the moral dangers we will speak later IT
is through the moral soap-bubble that we can see
tinsel.
Fire, however, is the first and most vital dan
ger The Charity-Bazaar fire in Paris in which
SO many women were trampled to death by cow
aroly men, was caused by the fall a spark
upon some celluloid moving picture films which
mad been dropped into a basket In Canton 600
men. Cinnamon. were burned to death in a fire
In movingpicture show house. In Quito. Ecua-
DOR. fifty men and women lost their lives in a
similar calamity
1t speaks well for the widespread and con-
slant vigilance of the fire departments of the
United States that great catastrophe has vet
come to the moving picture houses of this
country.
Lives have not been lost in the moving picture
shows Lives have been lost through the moving
picture shows
Where once the dime and nickel novels sug-
gested ways of crime unbalanced youth the
moving picture has come to make a more ready
and more potent appeal. The printed word is
never ardent with an impressonable mind as
the acted word.
Several ways have been thought of to lessen
these obvious evils. Charles Sprague Smith late
chief of the Peoples Institute in New York
thought he had solved the problem when he in
duced the manufacturers of the moving pictures
to agree to a national board of censorship.
The manufacturers, good trade diplomats
readily assented and then to it that the
board of censorship should be advisory and not
antagonistic- The result is that many pictures
that create havoc among youthful minds when
shown the public screens get by" the ma
tional board of censorship.
No. This bubble that Edison has loosed upon
US will play itself out just far the instincts
of the whole people of this country will permit:
no farther. sooner.
One night to prize fight Only men
were present The casual observer might have
said they were all tough After the fight
a canvas was erected in the ring and an an
nouncer said. AN exclusive film will now be
shown to the members of this club"
The picture proved to be of French manufac-
ture and portrayed vile situation a dive
Instantly Kisses and storm of execration burst
from the audience The running of the film was
stopped and the picture removed before 1t was
all shown Grim silence greeted the removal Of
the canvas.
The crowd that gloried In the action Of the