Voting the saloon out of the slums by voting America dry, does not, as of old, promise to be a successful operation that kills the patient.  In the past some of the photoplay magazines have contained denunciations of the temperance people for refusing to say anything in behalf of the greatest practical enemy of the saloon.  But it is not too late for the dry forces to repent.  The Anti-Saloon League officers and the photoplay men should ask each other to dinner.  More moving picture theatres in doubtful territory will help make dry voters.  And wet territory voted dry will bring about a greatly accelerated patronage of the photoplay houses.  There is every strategic reason why these two forces should patch up a truce.

Meanwhile, the cave-man, reader of picture-writing, is given a chance to 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.