Mrs. Grundy. (Tracy City, Tenn.) 1903-1930, 1911-05-04


prize ring would notsendure any pictured sexual
depravity. To me that a wonderful revela
ton of Anglo-Saxon 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
herosm; but they want it all clean They want
the good to triumph, the guilty to be punished
and wrong to be avenged.
Partisan manufacturer offered 100000 for
the right to make moving pictures Of the ODER
ammergau Passion Play. His offer refused
He went back to his studio, engaged company
of very skful actors, rehearsed them carefully
and reproduced the Passion Play, almost as we'll
as 1t originally done and the cost was about
a twentieth of what he offered for the original
This manufacturer had eye 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 guaranteed reproduction Of the
Oberammergau 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 lot Of time and money to religious sub
jects. Joseph Going Into Egypt" "The Repulse
of Herod," "Jephthahs Daughter. "The Relief
of Jericho" and The Wisdom of Solomon are
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, ornthology,
pathology. piscicuture. religion, travel and
zoology" F
1t looks like the catalogue Of educational
publishing house. Yet 1t is only the list of films
that may be and 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-
ton They have put the stereoptcon 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 from the lives OF great men,
pageants from the great moments that are duly
and laboriousy 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 unvened page? Why not
learn about the growth Of flowers pleasantly, by
watching picture instead of having to patiently
dissect the flower and then piece 1t together
again under the instruction of 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 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 saw him few days after the ex
hibltion
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
Eve learn only by taking thought, and that Is
work, hard work. You cannot insert learning
hypodermically. You cannot swallow 1t in tab
loid form. There Is but one way to take 1t, and
that II the oldest way known. You will hnd after
all OF these willo'the-wsps have vanished that
I. will be the newest way, too"
Which throws the moving picture right back
where 1t belongs-in the theater 1t can have no
permanent place In the church, It can have no
real place In the school, though It may be auxl
larry to either, both.