the movies, and have heard many reasons—most of them bad—but one answer recurs like a refrain: "There isn't any thing else to do." It reminds me of John Russel's reason why Eliza (of Uncle Tom's Cabin) crossed the river on the ice. "The poor girl had no other place to go—all the saloons were closed."
Today all the saloons are closed, and professional philanthropy prides itself on the fact that more men go now to the movies. The saloon was an evil institution, but the prostitution of the mind is worse than any poisoning of the nerves.
The priests of the temple of the Movie Momus do not know that they are offering a form of amusement which stifles the mind and hardens the heart. Doubtless they believe the contrary, but it is a case of the blind led by the blind: Neither know where they are going, and each depends upon the other to lead the way. Producers, impressarios, scenario-writers have always their ears to the ground to catch the first faint rumble of condemnation or approval. Their business is frankly to assimilate the popular taste in order to reproduce it. But this taste is fickle, being that of a child with a digestion impaired by too much of the wrong kind of food. The movie public is like the Athenian populace always eager for "some new thing," and like the Roman mob it shows an insatiable greed for danger (to others) cruelty and destruction. Of daring it demands more daring; of beauty more nudity; of wickedness a deeper depth of wickedness; scenery must be ever more sumptuous, orgies more orgiastic, violence more violent. Lacking anything to turn its imagination away from these things, into some new channel, the public can only build high and higher this particular house of cards.
There is a great deal talked and written about the "educational value" of the movies, and this acts as a deterrent to many persons who are minded, as I am, to denounce this evil in the market place. But such deceive themselves with the
