HON. MARSHALL NEILAN,

Somewheres on the Lot.

M

Y DEAR SIR: Well, Mickey, we have finished shooting "We Must Have Love!" my latest six-reel reflection on the adult intelligence, and we are now on a visit to New York City, a slab you may of heard mentioned a couple of times in the newspapers in connection with the census reports. As you know, all us stars of the noiseless drama must make the dread voyage to New York every now and then so's to keep polished up on the latest wrinkles in art and all this sort of thing. Of course, Mr. Neilan, what we really dash to New York for every now and again is to raise the sugar to make the next picture with, but it would never do to let the m ob know that part of it, hey, Mickey?

Back in dear old Hollywood the cheaper help is cutting and titling "We Must Have Love!" which as only got to be chopped from thirty-two miles to reels.

ha

si

The titles is being created by one of the greatest humorists at large in the country, Mickey, and it's a odd thing to me that once them great humorists is turned loose to title a picture and gave all the clean white paper and pencils in the world to work with, why, the only thing comical they can

The Shooting Stars-Eighth Reel

By H. C. Witwer
Illustrated by C. D. Williams

ballyhoo myself, Mickey, but here's a picture which will make you and Mr. D. Griffith bite your nails and likewise it will smack the exhibitors for a row of mock turtles!

You may remember that the last picture we perpetrated was "Oh, What a Night!" suggested by "The Last Days of Pompeii." Well, Marshall, no more was that baby. released when it begin to sell like hot dogs at a ball park, and the results is that our facsimile of a director, Latrobe Oliver, decides that our next imitation will be another costume picture. So out of the morning mail he picks a scenario called, in round numbers, "Alexander the Great," by Lucifer Van Ginsburg, a well-known writer-of insurance policies.

in the first place.

Well, anyways, Mister Neilan, it's all fun, as Nero used to tell the martyrs, and now that Will Hays has blushingly took the billet of grand goblin of the movies, as he is sick of looking at nothing but postage stamps all day long, why, undoubtlessly they will be a change for the better.

I see where they have insured Will's life for a paltry two million bucks. I suppose they are afraid Mr. Hays will die laughing every time he gets his je pay check, hey, Mickey?

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But to get to the reasons for this telegram to you, Mister Neilan. I would like to tell you of a little coincidence which come to the pass whilst we are shooting "We Must Have Love!" I don't like to

for that matter, Mister Neilan, but, in a word, the story is about a imaginary picadillo in the life of the said Alexander the Great. I am due to toy with the exacting part of Alex, whilst my fair young bride Jeanne is slated for the portfolio of "Octavia, a slave girl," which goals Alexander the first time the jovial Al claps a eye on her.

Having decided that they is no way out of it, Oliver sends for the author to pay him off for his scenario and likewise to suggest the usual radical changes in his opera. Lucifer Van Ginsburg arrived on the lot so fast, Mickey, that you can't tell me he didn't steal Oliver's letter to him out of the studio mail box.

Van Ginsburg sets the modest price of $10,000 on his masterpiece, and after Oliver has stopped

laughing, Mickey, why, a gentleman's agreement was finally reached at $1,500, or just enough to drive Mr. Van Ginsburg out of the steady job of insurance agent into the foodless art of committing scenarios-unless you get a reputation which would make Edison seem unknown.

Well, Mickey, having got the price of the story all settled to the satisfaction of everybody but the guy which wrote it, Oliver takes up the scenario, tries out a few sneers, and says to the blushing Mr. Van Ginsburg:

"Of course they is no-eh, what we call action to this story at all. Personally, it don't give me no more kick than a trolley ride gives a motorman. I'll have to make plenty changes in it. In the first place, that main title, 'Alexander the Great,' has got to go. It don't mean nothin'!"

"But-eh-why, everybody knows who Alexander the Great was, Mister Oliver!" says Van Ginsburg, a bit startled. "I-"

"Well, the title's out!" butts in Oliver. "They's too many people liable to think it's a baseball picture, on the account they's a apple tosser in the National League called Alexander. This picture will be called 'We Must Have Love!' There's a main title with some stuff to it! How 'bout it?"

"Well-I-really, Mister Oliver, I don't think it would be wise to " begins Van Ginsburg, kind of weak.

"Sure!" Oliver cuts him off. "Now the next thing is this leadin' character's name-eh-Alexander. Not so good-not so good. You make this bozo a emperor and then you call him by the shippin' clerk's name of Alexander! How is it none of you guys got no imagination? Let's see- -we'll call the lead 'King Montagu.' There's a name which will goal the womenfolk, and that's who we got to please in this game! King Montagu-how's that for a romantical handle?"

Van Ginsburg looks like he's three inches from a

swoon.

"Oh, really, you can't do that, Mister Oliver!" he

says frantically. "Why, Alexander is a historical character, a-"

"As for this girl's name, Octavia," goes on Oliver, not giving the charming author a tumble, "that might be a wow of a label for a Pullman car or a collar, but for a female lead it's apple sauce! We'll call the slave girl 'Molly'-a good, honest, old-fashioned name which will get right under their skins!"

By this time, Mickey, Van Ginsburg is so steamed up he's fit to be tied. Reaching for his hat, he stands up and gulps a couple of times. It's easy to see that the young man has took about all the punishment he can tolerate.

"There's just one thing I'd like to know, Mister Oliver," he says, with the greatest of sarcasm. "Now that you have seen fit to change the name of my story and the names of the principal characters, may I ask if my own name is satisfactory to you to appear on the screen as the author?"

I let forth a grin, Mickey, but Oliver scratches his head seriously and taps a pencil on his desk.

"Well, I don't know," he says. "Eh-it seems to me that name of yours is a bit long-eh-suppose we call you-"

With a wild yell, Mister Neilan, Lucifer Van Ginsburg fled out of the door and likewise out of our lives! Well, Mickey, about a

a

month later we commence to shoot "We Must Have Love!" and then begins a daytime nightmare for me! Many's and many's the time before we got through with that picture, Mister Neilan, I wished to heavens above that I had fell into a nice, soft job like, let us say, Duke of York, for the example, instead of successfully dedicating my life to making the moving-picture game artistic triumph. Kane Halliday, which is our general manager, reads the scenario, says it's the kitten's whiskers and he won't stand for changing Alexander the Great's name to King Montagu or the slave girl's name from Octavia to Molly. Halliday claims they really was a guy named Alex the Great which once smacked the universe for a set of Manchurian pie plates and he will have no trifling with history. Oliver courteously agreed with Halliday, Marshall, after a few words-lasting two hours. but he insists on calling the film "We Must Have Love!" because he says that's a title which would sell the picture to the blind men's home. Oliver win this debate, Mickey, but not till both him and Halliday was unable to speak above a whisper. Then, Mister Neilan, Oliver turns his attentions to me.

couple of Seidlitz powders in a glass of water. If that bozo is a director, I'm a Korean Duke! He gets past because he's so lucky that if he slipped off the top of Washington's Monument he'd fall up! I'm satisfied he learned his trade from a correspondence school and at that the majority of the lessons must of failed to reach him.

Nevers the less, I been letting him do his stuff on the account Halliday seems to think he's a master mind because he has yet to click off a picture which ain't brought in $6.75 for every Russian in Petrograd. As the matter and fact, Marshall, our pictures has been wows because in Ethel Smith we have got a girl which types a cruel continuity and thinks of something else now and then instead of a ballroom scene to put in a picture as a indication that the characters is rich millionaires. Likewise, I have got my own personal following, Mickey, which! when they see my name in the lights outside a picture emporium would go in for a look if I was playing a bloodhound in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

But when we commence shooting "We Must Have

appear in a world's series. Outside of when I was a second lieutenant in the war, I have never put on the dog in my life, always having a kind word and a bewitching smile for one and all, and here I am suddenly supposed to Ritz everybody for six reels. Fawncy that, as the Chinese say, hey, Marshall?

Well, the first day we are working on "We Must Have Love!" we come near having a pogrom on the lot. If the accident insurance company which went crazy and issued Oliver a policy ever knew the liberties our alleged director was taking with it, Mickey, why, they would be highly entitled to cancel it, and that's a fact! I personally come near rubbing out this dizzy dumbell either fifteen or twenty-eight times, as the results of him trying to show me the imperial dignity and regal manners which Alexander the Great would of had should he of been in pictures.

Love!" with me in the roll of Alexander the Great, things comes to the point between your correspondent and this Oliver chump where bloodshed and violence is only prevented every minute by dum luck. In the first place, Mickey, here I am called on to take off Alexander the Great, a king which lived about 350 D. C., and that's a part as far from anything I ever done before as Hollywood Boulevard is from Naples. I have got to wear a brass Kelly on my head which weighs at the least ten pounds, I have to carry a shield which tips the beam at about sixteen more, and the rest of the layout is a twelve-pound sword, a twenty-pound brass breastplate, a little short skirt, and sandals. That's my street clothes for this opera, Mister Neilan. When I am at home on my throne I wear a long flowing purple bathrobe and a crown and hold in my hand a little swagger stick which is known as a scepter.

How the so ever, Mickey, the worst part of it for me is trying to change overnight from a slashing, dashing, two-fisted, up-to-date, and nobby serial star into a 350 D. C. king. As the matter and fact, that's as unreasonable as expecting St. Looey to

first scene the continuity calls for me having a muss Iwith the captain of my royal bodyguard. Well, Marshall, by a odd coincidence, I knock this baby for a crab apple with my manly fist and Oliver goes into E convulsions, stopping the cameras. Whilst the entire cast, extras, and guilty bystanders looks on and grins, Mickey, Oliver yells that kings don't fight with their hands and what do I think the sword I am packing is supposed to be for? I says I thought the sword was throwed in for comedy. touch and the next minute I thought Oliver had fell the victim of apoplexy. Unfortunately he recovered, Mister Neilan, and we proceed with the frolic till along comes a scene where, garbed in the imperial crown, majestical scepter, and royal robes, I am supposed to mount the glittering throne. Mickey, this crown weighed a baker's dozen pounds if it weighed a ounce, and as I am enjoying a headache, why, I tucked the scepter under my arm and pushed the crown back on the side of

my head, with the praiseworthy objects of getting some relief. At this innocent act, Mister Neilan, Oliver lets forth another yell.

"Straighten that crown up, git that goofy grin off your pan and look dignified!" he bawls at me. "What d'ye mean. clownin' this, you big dumbell? This here's one of the most dramatic spots in the picture and you got that crown on the side of your dome like a low comedian! You're carryin' that scepter like a copper carries a nightstick! Snap into it-you're supposed to be a king, not no stevedore!"

Well, Mickey, that's a bit too much, and it burnt me up. They ain't nobody going to push me around like that in front of company-not Oliver, not Pres. Harding! I got up on the throne and quailed him with a look. "Be yourself, Stupid!" I says-and let go the scepter. It cracked Oliver on the ear and he yelled murder, hopping around gayly and holding the injured member whilst a epidemic of the hystericals attacks the rest of 'em. As the camera guys has not been told to the contrary, Mister Neilan, they shot every bit of the above action, and the only thing needed to make it a standard Sennett was the bathing girls.

How the so ever, Mickey, Oliver more than evened matters up in the first mob scene. It is supposed to be no less than the Battle of Thebes, which was staged in the year 335, or only a mere 2,257 years ago, so no doubt you remember it well. Besides the long shots of the 2,000,000 (Continued on page 18)

What Makes

Prices

Too High

Why doesn't the cost of living come down faster? The easy answer isthe profiteer. But it's the wrong answer; profiteers are outnumbered, a hundred to one, by men who are trying to make things cheaper and to sell more and not less. The great fortunes have been made by ment who made things easier to buy. It is waste, not profits, that increases prices

By William R. Basset
Illustrated by Herbert M., Stoops

W

HY should I, the consumer, have to pay such high prices when, according to the newspapers, most raw commodities are selling for less than the cost of production? Why doesn't the cost of living come down faster? It has come down, of course, but nobody would call it low. Is there profiteering? Ought not somebody to be jailed?

It does seem most extraordinary that the farmers, the miners, the cotton growers, the cattle raisers, and, in fact, nearly everyone of the strictly raw material end of supply, should be stony broke and selling for what anybody will offer, while at the other end the consumer should be righteously complaining that, whenever he wants to buy anything, he finds it costs too much. The easy answer to the question is the profiteer.

The profiteer is a great monster, licking its chops as it devours the common people. I hate to destroy the profiteer ogre, for chasing and cursing profiteers is excellent sport, but I am compelled to remark that, although business has a fair and active proportion of crooks, staging holdups whenever they get the chance, a real and successful profiteer is exceedingly difficult to find.

Almost any sort of swindler could take exorbitant profits from the Government during war time and a considerable number of until then quite respected gentlemen hastened to do so. Most of them to-day are bankrupt. But it requires a very different equipment of genius to get anyone to buy at war prices to-day. It is one thing to ask a high price and something else again to get it ask any suburban lot holder about that. Although I do not doubt that hopeful souls the country round are trying to talk people into paying more for goods than they are worth, they are most undoubtedly not getting away with it.

Pursuing profiteers and expecting that, by catching a few specimens, certain fundamental economic facts will be altered must be classed purely as a recreation; and similarly must be classed the rather numerous investigations into prices and price-fixing combinations.

These post-mortems are interesting; they most extraordinarily reveal the extent of human gullibility. It is truly amazing to learn of the silly schemes which very stupid men with the desire to be criminals, but without the nerve, concoct to hold ap prices.

The childish faith. they have in these devices might ander some circumstances be pathetic. But perhaps oddest of all is the common acceptance of the state

ment that we, the public, are at the mercy of price fixers.

We confuse the desire to charge too much with the actual charging. If you or I go into a store and the price asked for an article is too high, we simply do not buy. We may go out grumbling at the price and calling the storekeeper names, but at that we do not know whether he has asked an undue profit.

The Buyer Is Never Helpless Long

S a matter of fact, we do not give a hang what his

price. If the clerk says a price is $10 and I think it ought to be $5, I am no better satisfied by the storekeeper opening his books to show me that at the $10 price he is losing a dollar. The situations in which one has to buy regardless of price are rare. The situations in which we think we have to buy are more frequent. For instance, during the period of extraordinarily high food prices you would imagine from the talk that fate had settled the diet of every human being.

A man complains that he cannot get through luncheon under two dollars and a half. It never occurs to him that probably he would be a great deal better off if he took sandwiches from home and that there is no deception about the hotel or restaurant charges.

But no, he keeps right on going to that hotel and kicking about its charges until the time comes when he simply has not the money to spend. Then he removes the cause of complaint by going somewhere else.

This same attitude extends through every part of society, and it is a new and curious attitude. We never used to bother a great deal about high prices. A man generally knew what he could afford. He did not grumble about some tailors charging $100 or more for making a suit of clothes. He bought a suit for $25 and wondered why it was people could be such fools as to pay more.

When most foods were very high, a New York citizen in a half-official capacity started to relieve the high cost of living by buying great quantities of soy beans and rice, and he had them put on sale at ridiculously low prices. The lower East Side of New York, which was hardest hit by the food prices, was expected to welcome this inexpensive food. It did nothing of the kind. It held parades and had some near riots.

Opposition to the beans was bitter enough, but just one more shipload of rice and there would have been a revolution. Somebody stenciled on a big banner "We are Americans, not Chinamen," and that was the end of the rice.

Yet on the other side of the globe the Japanese were rioting because of the high price of rice and,

while our Southern States were calmly eating corn pone, many sections of Europe left off bitterly complaining of starvation to complain just as bitterly that the Americans were setting out to poison them with corn meal.

Profiteering cannot take place unless the buyer is helpless, and the buyer is rarely helpless for even a short time, and never for a long time. A man may intensely dislike-may indeed think it is impossible to change his habits and buy something different from what he has been buying, but in the end, under the pressure of necessity, he makes a change.

the distributors are personally to blame that butchers, grocery men, clothing dealers, and coal men are devils preying upon a saintly world. It does no good to try to persuade an irate would-be buyer that the man who asks a high price is not in a condition of moral turpitude.

This delusion is much beloved by Federal and State attorneys. When prices get high, they always summon their faithful yeomanry and, with an immense blare of trumpets, go out to arrest some one. Then they try the cases in the newspapers. The idea will not down that there are degenerate mortals who regard the public as grapes in a wine press. Of course this is true to a degree. We have such people. We are marvelously well supplied with economic idiots. We have coal barons and milk barons and other sorts of barons-for a little while. The moment they begin to believe themselves barons, they start to put themselves out of business. The electrical interests could well afford to grant annuities to the coal barons and the mine union leaders, for they are forcing the development of electricity from water power. Wherever you go through industry and distribution, you will find here and there chunks of solid ivory trying to keep up prices.

But you find them outnumbered a hundred to one by clear-headed men who are trying to devise ways and means to make things cheaper and to sell more, rather than less. Bear in mind, in thinking over this whole problem of prices and distribution, that wise men the world over know that money is never made continuously by selling a small volume at high prices. It is made by selling a large volume at comparatively low prices. The great fortunes of this country have been made by making it easier, not harder, to buy..

C

out of the chain stores. In fact, the only great amounts of money made by anyone concerned in distribution in recent years have been made out of some kind of chain-store system. The small store, or even fair-sized store, does not

in the ordinary year give more than a fair wage to the proprietor. He really makes out well only if he has a keen merchandising sense, stays on the job morning, noon, and night, and uses his family as clerks.

Yet scarcely any article that you buy at retail is as cheap as it ought to be. Food products-those which undergo no transformation, except packing, between the time they leave the farm and the time you get them-increase, according

to the product and the season, anywhere from 60 to 300 or 400 per cent over the price the farmer gets. Of this percentage the retailer is responsible for more than one-half-but he, as a rule, comes out of the transaction even worse off than the farmer.

Should We Cut Out Middlemen?

NOW

TOW, what is the trouble? It is a fact that no one gets as much out of the distributing process as he ought, yet the article comes to the consumer so loaded down with charges that a man in moderate circumstances can buy much less than he ought to be able to buy.

You can find a dozen answers, none of which is right. One crank will tell you that the trouble is all due to speculation; another that there is too much service that cash and carry is the. solution; another that everything will be well when the cooperative plan is extended; and another that we must eliminate the middleman, and supply directly from the producer to the consumer, or, if not quite directly, by way of the mailorder houses or chain stores.

Quite a number of large employers of labor, when the prices of food products went up, opened stores for their employees. I was talking to one the other day. He said:

"I have had my eyes opened by the company's store that we wound up some time ago. I started it to cut out profiteering. I ran it on a no-profit basis. The company paid the services of the clerks and did not charge rent for the big room that we gave over to the store. We bought for cash and tried to sell as nearly as we could at the price we had bought for. I thought it was a great idea. For the first couple of weeks we did a big business. After that some of the lines we had stocked went well enough, but others did not move at all,, and the kicks began to come in. Some of the workmen began to ask if the company was profiteering-for the company's store was charging more for some articles than were the local chain stores. They wanted to know what was this bunk about selling at no profit. I kept the store going about six months. Then I found that, while we thought we were selling without profit, we were actually selling at a loss, and that we had some goods on hand that probably we should have to give away. That was bad enough, but the worst part was that, comparing our prices, item for item, with the local stores, I found that, although a workman's wife could not in any one store buy everything lower than we sold it, she could, by shopping around, beat our prices in nearly every instance."

Carnegie cheapened steel. Armour made fresh meat possible throughout the whole country. Rockefeller expended some energy trying to control oil, but he made his money distributing it more cheaply than competitors. Marshall Field and A. T. Stewart made it easier to buy dry goods. Ford made it easy to own an automobile. Harriman and Hill made money by improving the railways.

No one has ever really made any money by cornering anything or by establishing a monopoly. Of course, at the end of a boom period, a few misguided souls do try to form working agreements to hold up prices, but the fool catcher always gets them.

In chasing the cause of high prices you will never come across the personal controllers-you won't find a dictator at a big desk. You may get a nut here or there who thinks he is one-but he is really only a little boy making waves in a bathtub and pretending it is the ocean.

In distribution this is notably the case. There are no personal devils who really have the slightest effect upon prices.

The extraordinary fact remains that while it costs probably two or three times as much as it ought to put the average article into the hands of the consumer, there is no one anywhere along the line who over a period of years makes more

than a fair profit. Instead of the individuals concerned in distribution profiting inordinately, they do not profit enough. That is why they are often so greedy for extra profits.

Is Ordinary Retailing a Gold Mine?

F you would take, in an average year, the bankclothing, millinery, and furnishings, and compare their losses with the whole profits of the industry, you would be astounded-and you would be further astounded to learn that in these lines the solvent distributor considers himself lucky if he makes a profit on one-half of all the articles he sells. Grocery shops, butcher shops, and general stores together in any year furnish about one-third of all the bankruptcies in the country. When their liabilities are deducted from the profits of the whole trade, we discover that the net profit in the whole field, compared with the business done, is remarkably low.

This is a not unfamiliar tale; I have heard many similar ones. That man learned through experience -which is about the only way we ever learn any thing that the whole problem of the high cost of distribution was not to be settled merely by opening. a store and cutting out profit. Distribution is exceedingly complex, and there is apparently a great waste due to excessive handling and perhaps to excessive organization, but if you think that every thing will be solved by cutting out organization and establishing a direct contact between the producer and the consumer, (Continued on page 20)

T

NE month after Richard Maclane was invalided' home from his relief work in Russia-one month after he brought her the little images -he broke his engagement to Hilda Swayn.

t was an inexcusable thing from most viewpoints. They had been friends and lovers since childhood;. Hilda was beautiful, charming, and good.

It was because of that little devil of a Mary Belamy, of course. Richard had the grace to be honest vith Hilda about that: though, indeed, it was hard to e otherwise than honest with Hilda at any time. he was like that; still, strong, quiet, like Brunhild look at, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, and crowned rith yellow hair. The Swayns were Norse before. hey were English, and they were English for

ome centuries before they became Quakers

Jorse strain showed strongly in them still. Hilda ras named, indeed, for a Hilde, one of those Norse Jalas-wise women-who, their tradition said, had me from Norway as some wild chief's counselor. ccording to the tradition, the prophetess strain had me down from mother to daughter-woman after oman who, yellow-haired and white-armed, had riden by their chiefs in battle and prophesied to them peace. Hilda was like what they must have been. ou could not think of her as being broken like other omen, even by a grief like this.

Perhaps that was the trouble. If she could have t go and wept and shuddered and implored, Richard 2 ight have dragged himself free of Mary's feverish hysical fascination. But as it was, he had no way knowing that, as Hilda sat facing him steady-eyed, le felt as if she were going through a hard death. He saw only her stillness, and heard the height of elflessness that was in her answer.

sciously the current of her power.

her voice

Then another spell came back to his sick mindthe physical pull of Mary Bellamy's strong little bold arms and scarlet, easy lips and sweeping, insolent gayety.

He never remembered how the scene ended, except that he went, still hungry to be with Mary as a drunkard is hungry for brandy, and that as he turned at the door he saw Hilda, for one betraying moment, with her yellow head bowed on the tall mantel, and her outflung hands unconsciously clutching the wooden images that had been his last gift to her, the thick-lipped, ill-carved little women with staring eyes and gilt chess-queen crowns, and faint blue stains still half crossing the worm-pierced wood of their flat breasts; the Little Queens of Death. He did not know their names, or call them so to himself then, as he went away to find forgetfulness in Mary Bellamy. It was Andrey Kerkoff, weeks

later, who named them so to Hilda; who named them. so months later to more than Hilda.

Kerkoff was an exotic personality for that little Pennsylvania town; more exotic than Mary Bellamy, also an outlander. He had escaped from Russia after suffering things that the normal Americans about him felt secretly were rather indecent to have done to you too like that melodrama which normal people forget is occasionally as real as normality. Richard, with that impulsive generosity and lovableness of his, financed Kerkoff, helped him away, accredited him to friends in the town, and even took him to live in his own house after he returned himself. Richard was Kerkoff's only tie in America.

Kerkoff arrived two months before Richard returned. In the interval he had been fascinated by Mary Bellamy, who was making a six months' stay with a cousin. There was something in the girl, extremely young as she was, that drew and was drawn by the overwrought, the abnormal. When she met Kerkoff she flung to the winds her court of college lads. Soon she had promised to marry him.

To be sure, Kerkoff, with his tall, drilled slimness, and his slanting green eyes below the crest of curly. hair, and his Imperial Guard manners, had moved most of Mary's friends the same way at first. But his nerve-shattered condition, the curious little jerky or tragic words and ways which had peeped out presently, had repelled most of the others. He was "queer." Mary apparently liked him the more for it. Their engagement was announced. Then Richard came home.

The fact that Kerkoff had been through enough tragedy for two lifetimes already, and had pinned every remnant of hope and faith and belief he had left to her and Richard, may not have occurred to