o
admit light into his mind, whatever he puts to his lips. Let us look for
the day, be it a puritan triumph or not, when the sons and the daughters
of the slums shall prophesy, the young men shall see visions, the old men
dream dreams.

CHAPTER XVI

CALIFORNIA AND AMERICA

The moving picture captains of industry, like the California gold finders
of 1849, making colossal fortunes in two or three years, have the same
glorious irresponsibility and occasional need of the sheriff. They are
Californians more literally than this. Around Los Angeles the greatest
and most characteristic moving picture colonies are being built. Each
photoplay magazine has its California letter, telling of the
putting-up of new studios, and the transfer of actors, with much
slap-you-on-the-back personal gossip. This is the outgrowth of the fact
that every type of the photoplay but the intimate is founded on some
phase of the out-of-doors. Being thus dependent, the plant can best be
set up where there is no winter. Besides this, the Los Angeles region has
the sea, the mountains, the desert, and many kinds of grove and field.
Landscape and architecture are sub-tropical. But for a description of
California, ask any traveller or study the background of almost any
photoplay.

If the photoplay is the consistent utterance of its scenes, if the actors
are incarnations of the land they walk upon, as they should be,
California indeed stands a chance to achieve through the films an
utterance of her own. Will this land furthest west be the first to
capture the inner spirit of this newest and most curious of the arts? It
certainly has the opportunity that comes with the actors, producers, and
equipment. Let us hope that every region will develop the silent
photographic pageant in a local form as outlined in the chapter on
Progress and Endowment. Already the California sort, in the commercial
channels, has become the broadly accepted if mediocre national form.
People who revere the Pilgrim Fathers of 1620 have often wished those
gentlemen had moored their bark in the region of Los Angeles rather than
Plymouth Rock, that Boston had been founded there. At last that landing
is achieved.

Patriotic art students have discussed with mingled irony and admiration
the Boston domination of the only American culture of the nineteenth
century, namely, literature. Indianapolis has had her day since then,
Chicago is lifting her head. Nevertheless Boston still