The Farmington times. (Farmington, St. Francois County, Mo.) 1905-1926, 1922-02-24
MR.. HAYS AND THE PICTURES

The mystery of Will Hays, as he i
about to enter personally, as adver
tised, upon the management of tn
movies, begins to take speculative
form. After the Sunday school mott
had been duly exploited, namely, tina
Mr.. Hays was going into movie man
agement to stop their extreme ant
nauseating naughtiness, the sober sec
ond thought of the sophisticated be
gan to play with interesting results
Aside from its being regrettable thai
the movie kings could reach into thu
Presidents cabinet and, by the pull
ing power of a spectacular salary
lift out promising cabinet officer
it is fraught with menace in number
of directions.
Mr.. Hayes is described as "the
Lands of the Movies" This is an UNI
justified comparison. Baseball need
ed cleaning out, but Judge Lands was
not hired by the men who were to be
cleaned out. On the contrary, Mr..
Hays is hired by the men who ought
to be cleaned out if the movies are TO
be brought up to an American stand
ard. The source of the rottenness IN
the movies is the source Of the moves
themselves, in the grade Of control
that has been exercised over them,
and that control has been exercised
without let or hindrance by Adolph
Zukor, Carl Laemmle, Hiram Abrams,
Lewis j. Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn,
Marcus Loew, William Fox. These
names are not all of them the real
names of the men designated but
they are the names by which the con-
trollers of moviedom are known. Ihey
are the men who have agreed to pay
Will Hays $l50,000 year to clean up
the movies. And where shall he be-
gin, if not with his own bosses?
The price. the spectacular gesture
of repentance. indicates the desperate
plight into which the indecent motion
picture had been forced by the moral
indignation of the American people.
Indeed $150,000 is a mighty low fig
ure at which to buy off the moral in
dignation of the American people. 1t
is reckoned at one per cent of the pos
sible Sl5,000,000 censor's inslstence
on decency would cost. Mr.. Hay real
ICES, of course, that this is precisely
what he has been chosen to do, name !
", to head off the righteous wrath of
the American people. The crowd
which ran the movies into the deepest |
possible pollution went to the Pres
ident's cabinet, acquired an unqueS- |
tionable American, a Presbyterian ell |
der, in fact, to do the work Of heading |
off. If it is done it is worth thou |
sand times $4,000 to the movie |,
kings, and it means further incalcula- |
Bile damage to American character.
As far as we are aware, Mr. Hays |
had never shown any interest in re-
forming the movies prior to this bus |
mess engagement. If he had been the
least stirred toward that needed re-
form he would have known that as
Postmaster General of the United
States he could have been a greater
force in compelling the movies to
clean up than he can possibly be as
the movies hired man. Any cabinet
member, standing up in his place to-
day against the torrent of degeneracy
poured by the film into the American
people, any cabinet member whatso-
ever could do more for clean movies
in the next thirty days than Will
Hays, as movie employe, could do in
five years. Mr.. Hays by resigning
from the cabinet has lost his best OPP
portunity to serve the people in this
matter.
1t becomes clearer that Mr.. Hays
will not exclusively serve the people.
The movie kings know what they
want. One thing they want is tar
iff against foreign films. Under the
exploitation of Messrs. Zukor, Laem-
mile. Abrams, Goldwyn, Fox, Selznick
and Loew, American films have Jagged
far behind in progress. These men
did not invent the film, have not i'm
proved it, have only exploited 1t.
Other countries have forged far
ahead in both the mechanical and ar |
tistic elements of film production. Now !
that these foreign films are begin !
ming to appear in this country and are
making their unbounded superiority t
felt. the movie eXploiters want them 9
kept out by tariff. Mr.. Hays would q
be very useful on the political end OF
that matter.
Again, the movie kings do not want /
a censorship. They fear censorship. 7
An American censorship would damn t
them irretrievably. They offer Mr.. a
Hays in lieu of censor. They use ,
mis- name as a guarantee He may be r
useful in this matter; time alone will Y
tell. g
And then, Mr.. Hays is much inter- o
ssted in the continuous success of the
Republican administration. The tens I
Of thousands of screens with their f
hundreds of millions of spectators G
would be very useful adjunct in q h
The movie men would C
gladly promise, and could deliver, the
movie screen to any party granting I
sariff and preventing censorship, and
hey would also agree to the appoint
nent of man to see that the movie
mems side Of the promise was carried e
)ut.
These are the forms public thought l.
1as taken. One thing is certain: in d
eaving the cabinet, Mr.. Hays lost his v
pest opportunity to make the movies o
better. We wish him luck. but it C
ooks might unlucky just now.-Ford's p
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