CLEANING THE SCREEN.

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 171, 7 April 1923, Page 17

CLEANING THE SCREEN.

MR. WILL HAYS DISCUSSES THE PROBLEM.

Mr. Will Hays, who is pioneering in America the cause of a “clean screen,” asserts that great progress has been made. It has been a big job. “Just look,” he says, “at the problem which faces the public as a result of the development of motion pictures. The moving-picture business is younger than our young folks. It began to grow while they were children. It has sprung up like a gold-mining industry. The tumult and the rush, and all th© cutting and slashing that you find in a new goldfield, have all appeared in the motion-picture industry. ‘Get the gold! Get the gold!’ That may have been the idea. Many rushed into the field, seeing its chances. It was not worried about as an industry. It was a means of getting the money. These pioneers didn’t care what happened to the goldfield in those early days. Pioneers never, never look that far ahead. Why, you might as well have expected the early timber merchants to have worried about the conservation of timber as to have expected the early motion-picture makers to' worry about what was going to happen in the future in the motion-picture business. Pioneers do not know law and order until they have settled down and perceive that they belong to a community of interest. Then law and order become important.”