s--many of these
future men and women are finding their entertainment and their
relaxation (and mind you, at the close of a day in school or in the
evening after a day spent in the poorly ventilated office or store) in
the moving-picture show or at the vaudeville. And in these places the
air is apt to be both hot and impure, and all the physical conditions
enervating. The emotional atmosphere, too, is sure to be abnormal,
unnatural, and spiritually deadening. We find here, and in too large
quantity to be a negligible factor, the atmosphere, the conditions, the
associations, that help greatly to breed incorrigibles, truants, and
laggards in our schools; that develop juvenile delinquents, hasty
marriages, and early divorces; that send into the world paupers,
grafters, and criminals. Not all the conditions are such in all such
places, it is true, but as affecting young life these are usually the
dominating ones.

I am not condemning the theater. It has its legitimate place, and a
large place it is, in normal, healthy, American life. I am merely
declaiming against these lower forms as usually conducted for commercial
gain--these perversions of the true theater idea--these institutions
that deal so largely in the sensational elements and appeal so strongly
to the passions. I am told that the cheap theater is the poor man's
club. I very much doubt if that is its chief function or, rather, that
its chief result is a wholesome quickening of the better nature of this
poor man--that its chief accomplishment is to send him back to his home
kinder, truer, and stronger, thru either the relaxation or the
instruction, to grapple with the difficulties of life. I greatly fear
that, as usually conducted, its influence upon the adult is at best but
the temporary slaking of an unhealthy and never-satisfied thirst, and
that upon the child and the adolescent it is a distinct blunting of all
the finer sensibilities and elements of character. But even these lower
forms are not all bad. There is enough of good in them to warrant an
attempt at improvement rather than elimination. They can be improved,
made clean, and wholesome, and thus become a positive factor in the
development of right character. I doubt if it will be done, however,
until some other motive than personal gain shall be responsible for
their management. Still, as they are, they might be very greatly
bettered if in some way those most deeply interested in the outcome
could have