Page:The Brass Check (Sinclair 1919).djvu/77

 co-operation. Even the genial O. Henry—who, being an American, got his ideas about life from the newspapers. "Say, do I look like I'd climbed down one of them missing fire-escapes at Helicon Hall?" inquires the sarcastic James Turner, cleaner of hats, in the story, "What you Want."

On my desk there lies a copy of the "Moving Picture World" for April 19, 1919. Somebody has produced a moving picture film out of a book by the Irreverend Thomas Dixon, and the magazine tells the managers of moving picture theaters how to work up interest and make a "clean-up" on this film. "Put up red flags about the town and hire soldiers to tear them down, if necessary," advises the "Moving Picture World." This picture, "Bolshevism on Trial," has a sublime patriotic motive. "Columbia's sword is unsheathed to keep Bolshevism from the Land of the Free," proclaims the article. And it furthermore informs us that the picture "promises to be one of the clean-up pictures of the season." The "Moving Picture World" thinks that it "might profitably be given Government support, for it is a powerful argument in controverting the dream-talk of the Socialists." It advises you to "get local patriotic societies to help." "Work all of the crowd stunts," it urges; and in giving elaborate details of a press campaign, it says:

Work gradually to the contention that Socialism will not be possible in this or the succeeding generation because people are not yet prepared for liberty such as Socialism aims at. Later work in allusion to the feature of the limited experiment made by Upton Sinclair some years ago at Halycon Hall, where the community idea fell because all wanted to live without working. All of this should be worked under a pseudonym.

The above, you must understand, is not an advertisement, but is reading matter in the country's leading motion picture journal. It gives you a fair idea of the intellectual attainments and moral standards of the men who supply the material by which our children's imaginations are stimulated and developed.