heater rates. The character of the audiences, too,
suggests that inexpensiveness alone cannot be decisive. Six years ago a
keen sociological observer characterized the patrons of the picture
palaces as "the lower middle class and the massive public, youths and
shopgirls between adolescence and maturity, small dealers, pedlars,
laborers, charwomen, besides the small quota of children." This would be
hardly a correct description today. This "lower middle class" has long
been joined by the upper middle class. To be sure, our observer of that
long forgotten past added meekly: "Then there emerges a superior person
or two like yourself attracted by mere curiosity and kept in his seat by
interest until the very end of the performance; this type sneers aloud
to proclaim its superiority and preserve its self-respect, but it never
leaves the theater until it must." Today you and I are seen there quite
often, and we find that our friends have been there, that they have
given up the sneering pose and talk about the new photoplay as a matter
of course.

Above all, even those who are drawn by the cheapness of the performance
would hardly push their dimes under the little window so often if they
did not really enjoy the plays and were not stirred by a pleasure which
holds them for hours. After all, it must be the content of the
performances which is decisive of the incomparable triumph. We have no
right to conclude from this that only the merits and excellences are the
true causes of their success. A caustic critic would probably suggest
that just the opposite traits are responsible. He would say that the
average American is a mixture of business, ragtime, and sentimentality.
He satisfies his business instinct by getting so much for his nickel, he
enjoys his ragtime in the slapstick humor, and gratifies his
sentimentality with the preposterous melodramas which fill the program.
This is quite true, and yet it is not true at all. Success has crowned
every effort to improve the photostage; the better the plays are the
more the audience approves them. The most ambitious companies are the
most flourishing ones. There must be inner values which make the
photoplay so extremely attractive and even fascinating.

To a certain degree the mere technical cleverness of the pictures even
today holds the interest spellbound as in those early days when nothing
but this technical skill could claim the attention. We are still
startled by every original