The Goldfield news and weekly tribune. [volume] (Goldfield, Nev.) 1911-1947, 1918-03-23
FOUR-M|nUTE MEN
ARE HELPING
WIN WAR
DEVOTING THEIR EFFORTS
THROUGHOUT NATION TO
GREAT WORK

country should know IN taDlold
what Is going on.
In the newspapers they get the
long details.
The Four-Minute men boil the
facts all down and cut columns to
lines.
The public has no time to read
each page in a newspaper, but it
never misses the mour minutes in
q movie.
The Four-Minute men are the
news and the editorial pages COM
bined.
They deal both in news and in
principles.
They appeal to the head. the
heart, and the hand.
They kindle patriotism, inspire
loyalty, and play upon the emo
tions.
They preach economy, and teach
man, woman, and child how each
a help.
With everybody helping, the day
of peace looms just over the hori-
zon.
Nothing can conquer a united
people whose guiding inspiration is
Liberty.
A movie audience, taken the
country through, is highly repre-
sentative of what Lincoln called the
Common People-perhaps more so
than any other gathering of any
other kind.
1t differs from a political audience
in that, while such an audience as
sembles largely because of curiosity,
a movie audience gathers to be en-
tertained and instructed.
1t Is not %prejudiced in advance.
1t just wants to see and hear
before.
1t pays money to see and hear.
and thus Is a value placed on what
it gets In return.
The collective mind is In a recep-
tive mood, and four minutes of
timely talk, sandwiched in between
the silence of moving pictures, Is a
welcome rest for the eyes and a
welcome opportunity for the ears.
The Four-Minute men are work.
ing in practically every city and
town where there is a movie thea
ter.
They are local men who know
how to use the English language
for the purpose of saying m
thing rather than of using it mere
ly to make a noise.
They are under the direction of
district officers, who, In turn, are
controlled by state chairmen.
All are directed from the nation
al headquarters in Washington,
where the machine is under the
management of Director William
Mccormick Blair.
The organization is as complete
and perfected a bit of human ma
chinery as is taking part in the
great war.
1t supplies all the state and dis
trict branches with the verbal am
munition to use in the four-minute
speeches at the movies, and in the
methods of training it's men is as
exact and precise as Henry Ford's.
or Patterson's. out in Dayton, who
makes cash registers.
The topics chosen for discussion
usually run through two weeks.
Each topic is timely and big
with Importance, dovetailing in with
national movements by other or
g~anizations.
Thus, when the drives for Liberty
Loans are on, the Four Minute men
pour out their appeals to he COM
mon people to become purchasers of
Uncle Sans paper.
Just how many dollars have flow
ed into the treasury because of the
fine work of these tabloid orators
will never be known, but the sum
total must have been prodigious.
These men have changed the
viewpoint of unnumbered pacifists;
have stopped waste in thousands of
homes; have started countless fling
ers knitting; have made 1t plain
that all we are fighting for are
liberty and peace; have influenced
men without number to go to re-
cruiting stations and enlist; have
taught that economy is patriotism
and that waste is near to reason.