The Birmingham age-herald., 1919-09-08

 exhibitors within the next few weeks did not boost the price of admission.
 Now don't jump to conclusions. The average exhibitor, and by exhibitor I mean the man who owns operates or manages your moving picture house-the one you especially like to go to-is up against a hard game in the way of increased costs, just as you and l are trying to make a 59c dollar do the work of the le0 per cent variety.
 I am not new with the publicity end of motion pictures. Along with Frank F. Woods, l remember the days when Liz zie came running in from her play to propound the great question:
 Ma. can 1 80 to the moving picture show"
 .rhe moving picture show what's thst?"
 'Why, you know ma, Smiths grocery store Main street that has been closed so long since old man Smith died, and his stock was sold out at auction-''
 Yes. l know-some of his canned corn nearly sent us all to the graveyard What about it??''
 Well, ma. there's a moving picture show in the store now and it only costs five cents and you can see pictures on big white sheet at the end of the store ike a magic lantern; except that the people in the pictures move and act and do everything but talk, and the pictures tel story and it only costs five cents and"
 Here Lizzie ran out of breath-but that was the start you know, and a great many of my readers remember it as well as myself. Come to think of it; measur- ed by years. it has not been long ago.
 But the moving picture business started evoluting right there, and it has made some giant strides in the last few years.
 With the possible exception of the growth of the automobile business, no other business has had the growth that the moving picture business has. So much for this side of it.
 Some of us remember when the packing companies began to reach out their ten tacies all over the country and deliver refrigerated meat in the smaller cities You will also remember that the price of meat was away below what the local butcher could sell us meat for-that is until the local butcher was refrigerated out of business.
 And it has also refrigerated ever since and now you have to have a decent salary to even look a Porterhouse steak in the face, and the giant producing companies and big business are trying awfully hard to get the amusement low ing public where the packers have those of US who can afford to eat.
 And even now the big companies are reaching out all over this broad land of ours not only trying to stifle and choke of competition but trying to establish their own chain of houses in which to show their own pictures. This chain orce established, or several chains es- abolished the price of admission will go down for a time and your local exhib itor's bills for service will steadily mount higher and higher until at last like the butcher we all knew years ago he can either sell out to the trust or he can go broke.
 Right here in Birmingham service prices have already began to soar; few more days now and the moving picture operators are to have more money in the different local houses (they must have it to keep up their families with other things soaring in proportion.)
 So if, I said before the admission price goes up few cents, don't imagine your exhibitor is trying to gouge you. Other forces are after him.
 The only remedy that I know of is for the exhibitors to form a union of their own or an association of their own. as you choose to call it, and make it so strong that they, and not the produc- ing trusts can dictate the terms of business.
 Along this line some wag remarked tha other day that McAdoO Weighed his