The Luhin directors are priding themselves upon the fact that they have
brought out a story in which two sisters from the country come to the city
and neither goes wrong.
-Mooing Picture World, 2 April 1910, p. 511

Genre may be considered as standardization of the film product. The audience has some idea what to expect from a comedy or a Western, just as consumers know what to expect when they order a specific kind of sausage. Genre films certainly existed before this period, but with the organization of the industry they were incorporated into the system of production, distribution, and exhibition.

The peculiarity of this period of genre-film history is that as long as the program consisted of several films, there was a demand for a balance among them. Exhibitors wanted dramas, comedies, and Westerns represented in equal numbers in the day's program and resented...