The Moving Picture World/Volume 1/Number 2/"Nothing succeeds like success"
"NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS."
By One Who Has Proved It.
Editor Moving Picture World:
Dear Sir—In reply to your favor of recent date, relative to items of growth and improvement and notes of general progress pertaining to this business, I desire to say that it has been phenomenal. Fancy, beginning less than three years ago with a desk chair and to-day controlling the largest retail business of its kind in this city and carrying a stock twice as large as all others collectively.
Of course, hard work has been a prime factor in the case, but the fact remains that after an almost total collapse the motion picture industry took a turn for the better and those interested sat up and took notice.
To-day the industry is on a footing that means permanency, and now that a flickerless and perfect machine is on the market, at a price within the reach of all, it is up to the film manufacturer. If he has not overdrawn the account known as "imagination," his field is large and financially inviting to a marked degree.
This applies to the legitimate, of course, and not to the plagiarist, who, lying in wait like a murderer in the dark, pounces on everything good, the emanations of a man of brains, and deliberately counterfeits the idea. It will be a happy day for responsible dealers when counterfeiters of machines and films will subject themselves to fine and imprisonment for so doing.
Then there is the same class who originate (?) startling, blood-and-thunder pictures, in which vault doors are made fully one inch thick and burglar's dark lantern painted on the wall; where a noted park is used because it costs nothing and a pad dog introduced in the same pictures for the same reason.
The public is gradually becoming educated, especially since the Nickelodeons have become a fad, and when one of these very fake pictures is shown, we hear the well-worn expressions, "Git the hook," etc., etc.
It is well. More power to the voices until they shall drive out every faker and counterfeiter, every falsifier and he who misrepresents for the same of a few paltry dollars, when legitimate dealers will realize a fair per cent. of profit and operators again receive a fair wage.
This industry is bound to grow, and if by concerted action the pirates can be driven out (and I believe they can), then let the leading makers lead and every honest dealer lend a helping hand.
Your publication is deserving of success and I wish for it better things as time progresses.
Cordially yours,
Lewis M. Swaab.