it.

Captain PULESTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. OLIVER. They thought enough of it to contribute as much as $322,000 to

Captain PULESTON. Yes, sir.

Mr. TYDINGS. Those pictures were shown on the vessels at night? Mrs. GILMAN. Yes.

Mr. TYDINGS. As entertainment for the sailors?

Mrs. GILMAN. Yes.

Mr TYDINGS. I am rather surprised-I do not want to cast any reflection on the Navy, but I am rather surprised that they would complain because the pictures were immoral or something of that sort. I really thought the complaint was that they were so poorly constructed that they did not contain a good plot or did not have any merit.

Mrs. GILMAN. I could read to you the report.

Mrs. KAHN. She said it was four Members of the House of Representatives that went on the ship.

Mr. TYDINGS. The sailors themselves did not indicate any dissatisfaction?

Mr. UPSHAW. You had better read the report.

Mrs. GILMAN. My copy of the report itself is not here.

Mrs. KAHN. I think you said the congressional committee that accompanied the fleet complained, as I understood it.

Mrs. KAHN. No, that is what I understand.

Mr. TYDINGS. What committee was that?

Mrs. KAHN. The House Committee on Naval Affairs, I think it was, and the senatorial committee on Naval Affairs.

Mrs. GILMAN. Yes.

Mrs. KAHN. I remember the fleet stopped at San Francisco.

Mrs. GILMAN. Those things come relatively in order to get to the next point. Some one has asked here and I only put this in because they asked-about the number of cities having censorshipcities and States. There is no exact registration of that. I have sent out two different questionnaires to officials, State librarians, and attorneys general and to city attorneys and to the presidents of women's clubs, to try to get a complete list of all the regulatory measures. Up to 1920 we had a list with the regulations all printed of 175 cities an 35 States that had passed some type of legislation, not all censorship but some type of regulatory measure or of censorship. There are seven States only that have real State censorship laws.

Mrs. KAHN. What States are those? Can you name them?

Mrs. GILMAN. Yes; they are in these little pamphlets that you will find in front of you--Maryland, Kansas, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York. And then Florida has a law which provides that no picture can be shown in the State of Florida except those that are passed by the National Board of Review. A number of the cities have that same provision, and Connecticut, as you know, has a tax law, not considered a censorship law. Then there are also regulations in Illinois, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, Texas, and South Dakota. These are not censorship laws, however, but they are regulatory.

I thought first of reviewing the legislation in all these places, but the task promised to be so tremendous that I gave it up as a bad idea, but I will say that they range all the way from regulations

that have been upheld by the Supreme Court or the superior courts of the State, from regulating how large a lady's hat shall be in the motion-picture theaters up to the strictest kind of censorship law. and these have been upheld by the superior courts, therefore we presume they are proper regulations.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not want to foreclose you at all. Will you be in the city to-morrow?

Mrs. GILMAN. Yes; I will be here.

The CHAIRMAN. We will have to go to the House to answer a roll call. Is there any objection on the part of the committee to hearing this lady from Baltimore for five minutes?

Canon CHASE. Mr. Chairman, she ought to have half an hour more, if possible.

The CHAIRMAN. She is going to have it; but the only point is that the committee absolutely has to stop for this roll call in the House.

Mr. TYDINGS. I move that we hear the lady from Baltimore for five minutes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then later you may resume, Mrs. Gilman. Mrs. KAHN. May I ask Mrs. Gilman if you could designate the State which in your opinion has the best regulatory measures?

Mrs. GILMAN. No; I do not think I can, because they are all uniformly bad. [Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. We will now hear Miss Connolly, of Baltimore, for five minutes, after which we will adjourn, to resume here at 2 o'clock.

STATEMENT OF MISS LOUISE CONNOLLY, EDUCATIONAL EXPERT OF THE NEWARK PUBLIC LIBRARY MUSEUM

Miss CONNOLLY. Gentlemen of the committee and ladies, I wish I were from Baltimore. [Laughter.] I am going to speak for a few minutes very briefly on the only thing that I am competent to speak on; there are so many people here who know detailedly all sorts of things that I do not know, though I have spent a great many years on the subject; but I think I had better get down to fundamental principles.

The only thing I want to do is to throw in here one statement that has been handed to me, an article that has evidently been reprinted, though it has no date, in which a Chinese gentleman is represented as having come over here and visiting New York City goes to the motion-picture producers and wants more American pictures in China, because they are influencing the women of China to change their dress and improving their manner of living and furnishing their homes, etc. So here you have it, ladies and gentlemen-please pardon my speaking to the ladies first-the truth of the matter is that this thing, as I have come to view it, has so stimulated a person who has followed it up and is deeply interested in this subject that I realize that I look over the preaching from our pulpit of accepted things that people come to hear and of teaching in our schools of accepted things that are standardized.

When I compare the deep and fervid interest and get the good spirit between the two sides of this room and the righteous parent effort of the committee itself to arrive at a righteous conclusion;

when I compare the conditions of the standardized, officialized instruction of the country, I do not think we want to see, Mr. Chairman-I want to see year after year a committee of people like this coming up with suggestions, a committee like this coming up to oppose suggestions, a committee from the Congress of the United States taking its valuable time and putting its brains and statesmanship onto a consideration of the two sides in order that we may not be standardized or officialized in a human product of the human soul. Railroads, yes, by all means. They are machinery. There are all sorts of institutions in which we are becoming so efficient because we create standardization; but we can not do that with the outflow of the artist who speaks to humanity through the film. It is the artist who makes the picture. It is the expression of the people who come together and produce that picture; it is the judgment of the man who is the manager of that dramatic presentation; it is the coming together of the people in the little towns, the big towns, and the listenings and the discussions that come from it; and, as much as possible, for pity's sake, let us not set a lot of people in offices with their names along here, and a lot of committees and all that kind of thing that goes on when people get a big appropriation and go into great minutia and make decisions beforehand as to what shall be poured out for the people to see.

Where would Shakespeare have been, where would the Bible have been, where would Jesus have been, where would all the great souls that try to express themselves through the forms of their various arts that have been in the history of mankind have been if good people had gotten together and decided to put the stamp of approval on those things before they came out? No; we do not want that. And as to ever suiting anything that that darling lady from Georgia, that lady who stood up here and so frankly told what she did not know and what she thought and her reasons for what she wanted, I went through Georgia for a month; I spoke seventy times in the State; I met all sorts of people, and I can assure you that there is nothing in New York State or in New York City or in New Jersey to compare with the traditional righteousness of the people in the small towns of Georgia. You could not get through a Federal committee on censorship a regulation that would suit the good Presbyteriansand I am a Presbyterian-who meet together in the little towns of the State of Georgia, no more could you put through a Federal board here and anything that would suit my friend, Mr. Charlevoix. Mr. Charlevoix was so disgusted when a man kissed his wife in the station that it made him sick. [Laughter.]

Mr. TYDINGS. You believe the people are pretty hardy individuals and pretty well able to take care of themselves without being wards of the Government?

Miss CONNOLLY. Sir, I believe that only by discussion and consideration and attempts at regulation and the doubting of them, and more attempts at other kinds of regulation and the stir of public opinion, can you get a general interest in these things which will make for ultimate righteousness, and the reason I think that is that I believe in God.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you. We will now adjourn until 2.30 this afternoon.

(Whereupon, at 12.35 o'clock p. m., the committee adjourned until 2.30 o'clock p. m. this day.)

AFTER RECESS

The committee reassembled at 2.30 o'clock

p. m.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order and we will proceed.

STATEMENT OF MRS. ROBINS GILMAN-Resumed

Mrs. GILMAN. There were several people who spoke to me after the hearing this morning in reference to points in the reference I made to the Budget hearing of the Navy, and still there seem to be some points not clear. The hearing was here in Washington quite recently. Congressman B. L. French, Congressman Taber, | Congressman Oliver, and Congressman Hardy were the men who had been on the Pacific cruise with the Navy last year. At that time they had noted that the entertainment given the boys of the Navy was of a character which they objected to, and when the appropriation for $120,000 was placed in the Navy budget they opposed the appropriation, although they had been previously in favor of the appropriation. They opposed it on the ground of what they themselves had seen. Their own words are something like this: That while there was educational material and also instructional material, it was principally immoral and filth-" immoral and filth " are their words.

Mrs. KAHN. Is that from the record?

Mrs. GILMAN. Yes, and that is the reason I did not read it this morning, and because my own record was not here. I had given it to another hearing and it is not here, and that is the reason I hesitated this morning, because I appreciated the fact that it is newspaper clippings, and I am only taking out now the quotations, and I really apologize and would like to have the privilege of entering in the record the real report, because that can be obtained.

The CHAIRMAN. In order to have our record perfectly straight, I think it would perhaps be better to embody the exact words from the record than to take extracts from newspapers.

Mrs. GILMAN. I will be very glad to do that, because I hesitated this morning, and I will see that the record is gotten from the records here, because it is a matter which ought to be very clear and not taken from a clipping like that.

Then I was talking at the time of the interruption in reference to the legalizing of some form of regulation or censorship throughout the States and cities and had made the statement that 175 cities and 35 States had some form of regulation through legislation, such as ordinances or satutes. These regulations range all the way from, in two States, the size of a woman's hat in the theater, up to the strictest kind of censorship and taxation for the use of films. I named this morning in the record the States that had the regulations and will not take the time to name the 175 cities that we used at that time.

I wanted to review just a bit then the national legislation, to form a basis for the arguments for our Federal regulation. In 1915 Congressman Hughes and Senator Smith introduced legislation to create a Federal Motion Picture Commission to be appointed by the President. The commission was to be in the Bureau of Educa

tion in the Department of the Interior. This bill provided for a six-year term of office and a salary of $3,500 for the members and $4,000 for the chairman. This bill did not contain standards for the production of films. Now there is a bill that has been introduced, Congressman Swoope's bill, which is a renewal of the old SmithHughes bill, very similar to it. There are a few changes which he has made after consultation with the Upshaw bill.

In 1920 Congressman Harreld presented a bill in the House to prohibit shipment or exhibition of motion picture films purporting to show acts of ex-convicts, desperadoes, bandits, train robbers, bank robbers, outlaws, and to prohibit the use of the mails in carrying the same, and provide punishment therefor. And may I beg to digress from the record for just a moment to show why we can not successfully use the law that was pointed out this morning. In the State of Montana we had a case of a fight which was rather Nation-wide in its influence. That was passed from Montana into the Dakotas and into Minnesota. All along the line we had attempted to use this very law. When it came to Minnesota, in Ramsay County it was first attacked. The district attorney was appealed to and he brought action. In Hennepin County again the district attorney was appealed to and he started action, but in the meantime it had been showing all across the State. It continued to show in our own city. We consulted not only attorneys there but also our newspapers. The newspapers claimed the best thing we could do would be to ignore it and let the action come. The action was very long, in fact, it has been 22 years and decision has not yet been reached as to whether it is illegal to show those pictures in the State of Minnesota or whether the carrier, whom nobody could locate, was really a carrier against which the law had provided. That is as far as we have been able to get, and we still have our decision to hear. (See 10415 of U. S. Comp. Stat., Importing and transporting obscene books. Criminal Code 245, amended June 5, 1920, by insert ing "motion-picture film.") It prohibits It prohibits "any obscene, lewd, or lascivious, or any filthy book, pamphlet, picture, motion-picture film, paper, letter writing, print, or other matter of indecent character." But it should be noted that while importation from foreign lands is effectively forbidden, that the law is so loosely drawn as not to punish those who carry evil films in private conveyances from one State to another.

This bill that I was speaking of was referred to the Judiciary Committee. Senator Borah at the same time introduced a similar bill, dealing simply with the importation and transportation of films depicting crimes and criminals. It was referred to the Committee on Interstate Commerce.

Congressman Swoope, of Pennsylvania, has introduced in the Sixty-ninth Congress a bill incorporating the principles of the Smith-Hughes bill. That is good so far as it goes, but our opposition to that bill is that it does not provide standards for the production and leaves the appointment of the commission politically con

trolled.

The most comprehensive and far-reaching measure that has yet been proposed, in my judgment, is the Upshaw bill, introduced in 1923 and referred to the Committee on Education. It has been reintroduced in this session of Congress as H. R. 6233, a bill to create a