The review. [volume] (High Point, N.C.) 1908-19??, 1921-02-24
DIR. Tom Dixon Speaks
Against Movie Censor
Proponents of Bill Will Have Ike
Meekins to Answer Dixon-Eight

Per Cent Gets a Jolt.
Raleigh, Feb. 17.-Advocates of mo-
tion pictures censorship put it neatly
over the ants this evening when Tom
Dixon, laundering against the bill in
30 minutes of consummate theatrical
ism, sat down without anybody to re-
! ply.
The picture men wished a foeman
wrothy of DiXon's silver tongue, but
the proponents were too wise to send
raw recruit against the whirlwind.
This they deferred until Wednesday
OF next week, when Ike Meekins, song
bird of Elizabeth City, and an orator
as furious as Dixon, comes here to
reply to him.
The picture men were charmed with
the reception which the preacher-play-
Wright actor was accorded. The man
ifes hostility of the lower house had
been everywhere perceptible. Mr.. Dix
on spoke in a company weary of reg
ulators and regulation. But the spell
of his speech will have been forgotten
a week hence and Meekins will be
here to deposit a spell of his own.
That's the program.
Dixon denounced the censorship as
unAmerican, undemocratic and an as
sau1t on motion picture art. He gave
most of his reasons from his own eX-
periences. He gave as his opinion that
the "Birth of Nation" was the great
est of pictures. In Chicago board
of censors headed by negro sought
to destroy it by suppression. Judge
Cooper, holding against the revocation
of the license granted in the presenta-
tion of this picture, made himself the
tarpet of all political abuse. The or
Io7n fo 1ncf1soE1 him h11f fhn
moviemen threw his face and his le-
gend on the walls of a thousand thea
ters and they elected Cooper by $4,000
majority. The dramatist likewise fig
ured handsomely in making Jimmy
Cox, who gave the picture men the
square deal.
Mr.. Dixon expressed two great con-
victions. One was that God never
made a man wise or good enough to
censor another's thoughts. The other
was that all censorships had newt
ably drifted into the hands of polit-
ical pinheads and grafters. He was
decidedly against he whole posse COM
itatus.
Tonight Dixon figured in the most
committee debate Of the
legislative session. Johnson, Of Cur
rituck, introduced into the assembly a
local game law. 1t was dazzlingly
by Dixon, Ike Meekir1s,
Governor Beckett, and Pierce Hamp-
ton. It was just as spectacularly de-
nounced and opposed by District At
torney E. F. Aydlett, of Elizabeth
Representative Bowie, of Ashe. Dixon
spoke fiercely against the Currituck
and Swan island clubs, said to be op-
posing the bill, and declared that
northern millionaires had come down
here, gained control of $4,000 acres
of land and backed from the waters
that belong to the state, the men
who have. the right to shoot ducks.
What a logician can do for rhe-
torican was shown when Jim Pou-
came to riddle the bill, which was the
most marvelously conceived thing that
ever read. In the twinkling
of an eye Dixon was agreeing TO
which would democratl1e
the bill and bring it within few cen
turies of the present. That appeared
to be Pou's job, riddling the bilr de-
nominated by Dixon as the best he
had ever seen offered legislature ON
the subject promulgated. Governor
Beckett spoke for the preservation OF
the ducks and Bowie to show that
lucks haye a habit of taking care of
There was no report on this law TO-
night.
By. senate vote of seven to three the
committee on banks and banking this
afternoon reported unfavorably the
oill increasing the rate of interest
~ contract to 8 per cent, while the
rouse tied Ave each, Chairman Barnes
,efusing to break the tie. Thus the
ill will go to the senate unfavorably
'eported and the house without preju-
lice.
Johnston county, which never has
,wned a cent of bonded Indebtedness,