Films of industrial pursuits are also being used by the schools. Last spring class-day exercises at one of the Wisconsin schools consisted of an afternoon and night show, at each of which two different reels were shown.

In the afternoon, Fruit Growing in Washington, Raising Bulb Flowers; and at night, The Bee and Bee Keeping, Milk and Its Products.

"Say, Dad, I'll take that farm up the country you offered me the other day; I'm going to try my hand at fruit growing," one of the boys said to his father, while the fruit was growing in lusciousness, as well as dollars and cents, before their eyes.

As the bulbs burst into bloom, a slender, delicate-looking girl clasped her hands contentedly and breathed out, more to herself than any one else:

"Now I know what I'm going to do with the $50 Uncle John gave me."

When the bees made their honey, two boys, evidently chums, winked understandingly across the hall. Their acquiescent nods meant,

"We'll do that this summer."

"How much will you pay me to take charge of the dairy?" a long, lanky lad, inspired by the milk story, asked a worn little mother who had feared her only son was going to yield to the lure of the city.

"We'll see if we can't make it pay even more than when father was living," he said, after her happy promise to give him "$15 a week with the prospect of a raise."

Was there any better way to precede the "commencement" of life than that—to suggest to those boys and girls, blindly groping around for "something to do," a field for their energies?

Charles W. Eliot, president emeritus of Harvard University, spoke understandingly when he wrote to the Bureau of Commercial Economics, recently established in Philadelphia for the purpose of lending industrial films gratis, with the single stipulation that no admission fee be charged: "It seems to me that your new scheme for giving indus

trial education by moving pictures is a highly promising

one.

"You are proposing to do on a large scale what Benjamin Franklin's father did for his son, who was deciding on the choice of a trade. The father took the boy about Boston and showed him work going on in as many trades as were then represented in the little town. It was only after having seen the work done in the various trades that Benjamin decided to be a printer."

The need which gave rise to the industrial films in the school motion picture was recognized by the Honorable Miles Poindexter, senator from Washington, when he said:

"To my mind one of the great educational problems of the day is fitting the boy for the job. Too many of our young men are being graduated from schools and colleges, educated for a work they will never follow because they are not suited to it and uneducated in the lines where they might have made a great success."

"A person can be taught thru his eyes the exact processes required in the manufacture of goods made by our great industrial institutions that otherwise would require years of application to learn and understand," was the endorsement of Senator Smoot of Utah to the work planned by the bureau in Philadelphia.

One of the first schools to discover the value of motion pictures in technical training was the Sheffield Scientific School in Connecticut. So successful was its initial film, The Story of Pig Iron, that the authorities immediately began negotiations with other firms in the scientific lines to obtain the story of their industry.

The varying face of a clock, by which the time of every movement of a workman is recorded, has been added to some of the industrial films by Frank B. Gilbreth.

Our own country, however, is not to be the only beneficiary of the industrial film.

"By China, especially, whose industrial activities are scarcely started, the influence of this wonderful work will

be most noticeably felt," declared H. W. Ip, of the University of Pennsylvania.

Forty universities have already signified their intention of using the films, slides and lecture material of the Bureau of Commercial Economics. In addition, it is expected that high schools, social centers, Sunday schools, Y. M. C. A.s and Y. W. C. A.s, scattered all over the country, will avail themselves of the privileges offered.

As a drawing card for social centers, the school motion picture is proving its third claim to attention. In an isolated Wisconsin town, last year, a reel sent from the university was the first the audience had ever seen.

In the words of John Collier, Secretary of the National Board of Censorship:

"The social center has to study the commercialized amusements, and be as gracious as the saloon, as lively and rythmic as the dance hall, and as profound as the motion picture hall."

Anything that will bring 4,000,000 people a day-the number that attend moving picture shows in the United States-under wholesome and inspiring influence should most certainly be utilized. The development of "the capacity to have fun without doing wrong" means, thru the leavening of the masses, the rejuvenation of the nation.

In waging campaigns, local and national, the school motion picture has been particularly useful to social centers. The Fly Pest was sent out more than any other film from the University of Wisconsin during the last six months. The reel exhibited fly specks on meat which developed into a crawling, disgusting mass of maggots, and these in turn into the detested fly. The flies flew to a cuspidor used by a tubercular person, and from that to a nipple in the mouth of an unconscious baby victim.

Finally, a fourth phase of the school motion picture has made itself evident-a means of giving religious and moral instruction.

The pitiful ignorance of the twentieth-century child in the beautiful Old Testament Bible stories has been

helplessly deplored for some time. A few years of concerted action with motion films on biblical lore would entirely dissipate this ignorance.

In missionary work the value of motion pictures has been found incalculable, not only in teaching Bible truths, but also in bringing to the Orient the civilization of the Occident. Of the good done by the motion picture in India, Behari Lal, special missioner in Lucknow, tells in quaint language:

"The Maharajah Gaikwar, of Baroda, the only most sensible prince India has today, has in his estate established the traveling moving picture shows and to educate the people is the only ultimate object. The system is appreciated by the people of all ages, young and old. The demand is increasing immensely. This is the best missionary work that can be thought of."

On the other hand, showing on the motion picture the work and the need of the work in missionary fields has proved an inspiring source of information to those far from the scene of action.

While some schools, notably in Massachusetts and Kansas, have devoted almost the entire use of the motion picture machine to the teaching of morals, more care is necessary in that line than in any other, for it is dangerous to depict the evil effects of any habit. The moral disgust resulting is often not as potential as the unconscious fascination of imitation.

As a recognized factor in the education of the world at large the motion picture has made rapid strides. The United States has been using motion pictures for almost two years to show its officers and congressional committees the status of affairs in Panama, the Philippines, and Alaska. It is also sending out Rubes' Theatres, as the demonstrating cars of the Department of Agriculture have been dubbed, to farmers all over the country, to teach in twenty minutes on the screen what formerly took weeks and months at the experimental stations. Orange, New Jersey, the home of Mr. Edison, has the distinction of being the first city

to have motion picture machines installed in all its schools. A four-year course in the art and science of cinematography is offered at the University of Rochester. Members of the Académie Française voted more than a year ago in favor of living photography. Prussian authorities have been using motion pictures for several years in the Berlin schools, which are said to represent one of the most advanced educational systems in the world. Street railway officials in Vienna and Düsseldorf are showing in the town motion picture the right and wrong way of getting on and off cars.

If it is true, as has been recently said, that Americans are an "eye-minded" people, surely it looks as if there is going to be "a royal road to learning"-the old proverb to the contrary, notwithstanding; at least, the road will be so well lighted on the screen that there will no longer be any stumbling.

As W. H. Ives has said: "The motion picture probably offers the greatest opportunity educators have ever had to eliminate waste effort and to reach by easier and more agreeable paths the same results which are now attained with difficulty."

Moreover, if "the bitterest foe of crime is knowledge," evil as well as ignorance will tend to disappear with the school motion picture.

Therefore, for educational, industrial, social, religious, and moral purposes, it behooves every school to have a motion picture machine, and every portion of the country to have a centralized distributing agency from which a weekly delivery of films and slides is made to every school. "It is easier to undervalue than to overvalue moving picture shows as a means of giving instruction in school or out."

WASHINGTON, D. C.

ALICE JOUVEAU DU BREUIL