(5) The large theater interests favor the continuance of the censorship bureau because it gives questionable productions immunity from prosecution by the local authorities.

(6) The great literary lights of England are almost unanimous against prepublicity censorship.

These considerations led the special parliamentary committee to recommend the abolition of prepublicity censorship in Great Britain. The great majority of the motion-picture interests oppose this prepublicity censorship bill because it is in their judgment a bill that will tend to stunt the natural development of the usefulness of the moving-picture art and will tend to confine it, as it has the English drama, to the lighter forms of mere amusement when its potential utility lies in the far wider field of information and propaganda. They believe that they are consulting an enlightened selfishness when they seek to keep the moving-picture film from the stunting influence of arbitrary power, for this development of the potential utility of the art means a tremendous increase of business. They also frankly say that they are unwilling to enter into an inevitable political contest for the control of the censorship commission to be established by this bill. They fear the power of the censorship under a rival's influence, because it is a power over their business of life and death. The elaborate productions which are now being presented represent enormous outlays-sometimes more than a half a million dollarsbefore they can be exhibited to the proposed censors. A censorship commission under the influence of a rival could thus absolutely ruin a producer by exercising corruptly or even with unconscious partiality the arbitrary power vested in this commission to condemn the film.

But we regard the balance of interests between those several small producers catering to high-priced houses who believe in censorship because it will relieve them of the necessity of deferring to local standards of decency, on the one hand, and those large producers who want to leave the industry free to develop still greater fields of usefulness, on the other, as of little moment compared with another and very grave phase of this question.

The most serious objection to this bill lies in the power it seeks to give an executive commission to trammel the moving-picture art, the propagandist power of which is already marvelously developed, and the potential power of which seems limitless.

It is in this rapidly developing power and use for propaganda that the moving-picture film has taken its place beside speech and press as a thing to be kept free from arbitrary control in the interest of free institutions. The essence of free speech and of a free press is the power for propaganda as the media of intelligence. It was this power which reactionary authority in the old days sought to repress and which the guardians of free institutions struggled to keep free. In the beginning the attack was made upon free speech and upon free drama before the development of the printing press gave writing and printing also an effective power of propaganda. Before the influence of the press upon public opinion became effective, and before it was recognized as a possible aid to the discussion of political, economic, and social questions, the drama was largely used as a propagandist instrumentality. Down even to the time of Walpole's ministry in England the drama was a very effective means of stirring public

opinion, and the early laws providing for the censorship of the drama were political devices to muzzle it as an instrument which might be used against those in power. Walpole, whose government was the most corrupt England ever knew, found his power threatened by a popular play exposing the venality of his political followers and he learned that another play was about to be produced. It was to step this second play that he caused to be enacted the present censorship law in England. It was effective. All attempts to arouse the people of England to the shame of Walpole's government through the mediuma of the theater ceased immediately.

Thus, we see that the original and dominating purpose of the censorship of the drama in England was distinctly political, as was demonstrated by the parliamentary investigation of 1909. But the rapid development in the art of printing soon so overshadowed the drama in the effectiveness of its propagandist power that the struggle to free the drama from censorship was forgotten in the more inportant struggle to keep the new power-the power of the pressfree. For the moment that place and privilege recognized the power of the product of the printing press to effect public opinion, they began to seek means to control it by the device of prepublicity censorship. The struggle to keep the media of intelligence free from the restraint of arbitrary power was thenceforward waged around the question of free speech and a free press until these institutions won their final victory and became firmly planted in the unwritten constitution of Great Britain and in all our own written instruments. Our Federal Constitution, in Article I of the amendments, says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If we keep in mind the important fact that the vital thing in speech and press which was sought on the one hand to be restrained and trammeled, and on the other hand to be kept free, was the power of propaganda, we shall understand more clearly the importance of bring ing the moving-picture film within the constitutional guaranty of a free speech and a free press, because the analogy in principle and necessity is complete. Indeed, the history of the attempt to censor moving-picture films bears a close analogy to the history of the attempt to abridge the freedom of speech and of the press.

In Ohio, for instance, one of the four States which has a censorship board, it appeared in evidence before the committee that a motionpicture play depicting a manufacturer bountiful in charities which advertised himself, but hard on his employees, was suppressed on the ground that it tended to excite class feeling.

In Pennsylvania the power of the censor was invoked to suppress The Battle Cry of Peace upon the ground that it tended toward a breach of neutrality and to incite military spirit.

In Massachusetts an organization to ameliorate the conditions of child labor has been exhibiting moving pictures of actual conditions in certain manufacturing plants, and the representatives of these manufacturers attempted to stop these exhibitions. If Massachusetts had had a board of censors, who knows what its action would have been in this case?

In Massachusetts also, moving pictures have been recently used to illustrate the workings of savings bank insurance, an institution very bitterly opposed by the old line insurance companies.

In France the moving-picture films were credited with the tremendous success of the recent French loan, the greatest the world has ever known.

Do we dare to put in the control of an executive board such an extraordinary power-a power to suppress a medium of thought expression which in this country alone speaks to 20,000,000 people every day?

In short, this bill violates the principle of the constitutional guaranty of a free press. It denies to the public the very utility in this wonderful new art which made it so necessary to keep the press free. It gives a few men despotic control over an art which at the very threshold of its development has power to influence more than 20,000,000 people every day. It completes the vicious circle by making it inevitable that the powerful moving-picture industry, already the fourth greatest in the country, will be precipitated into politics and used for political purposes by the party in power.

In our opinion every reasonable protection to the public morals can be secured by the proper exercise of the local police power supplemented by the amendment to the Federal Penal Code already suggested. The extraordinary power vested in the commission proposed to be created by this bill will not only prove ineffective to protect public morals, as experience has shown, but it is utterly unAmerican in its character and in the highest degree dangerous from every point of view.

O

WILLIAM W. RUCKER.

CALEB POWERS.

EDMUND PLATT.

FREDERICK W. DALLINGER.

CONGRESS,

CONGRESS,

METHOD OF DIRECTING THE WORK OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES.

MAY 17, 1916.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Mr. KEATING, from the Committee on Labor, submitted the following

REPORT.

[To accompany H. R. 8665.]

The Committee on Labor, to which was referred H. R. 8665, to regulate the method of directing the work of Government employees, introduced by Mr. Tavenner of Illinois, respectfully report the same back with the following amendments, and recommend that as amended it do pass:

Strike out the preamble; line 7, page 2, after the word "device,' insert the words "or system."

The bill as recommended is as follows:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That it shall be unlawful for any officer, manager. superintendent, foreman, or other person having charge of the work of any employee of the United States Government to make or cause to be made with a stop watch or other timemeasuring device or system a time study of any job of any such employee between the starting and completion thereof, or of the movements of any such employee while engaged upon such work. No premiums or bonus or cash reward shall be paid to any employee in addition to his regular wages, except for suggestions resulting in improvement or economy in the operation of any Government plant.

SEC. 2. That any violations of the provisions of this act shall be deemed a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine of not more than $500 or by imprisonment of not more than six months, at the discretion of the court.

The object of the above bill is to end the use of the "stop watch" and the bonus and premium systems of payment of employees in Government arsenals and workshops.

Your Committee on Labor made a favorable report on a similar bill in the Sixty-third Congress, but owing to the congested condition. of the calendar the House did not have an opportunity to act on it.