Federal Council v. Hays

When, in 1922, Will H. Hays was made president of a representative organization which called itself Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc., the religious bodies which had previously been alarmed by the pernicious moral influences exerted by the cinema industry were vastly relieved. To them, it seemed that the scabrous ideals of the ignorant money grubbers who were producing moving pictures could be effectively counteracted by the efforts of an able, high-minded Presbyterian elder and ex-Postmaster General.

In June 1929, the Episcopal liberal weekly The Churchman published an attack on Tsar Hays, called him a "window-dresser," suggested that he was an "office-boy" rather than "tsar." Most pertinently, The Churchman made the assertion which has since been the focal point of attacks on Cinema Tsar Hays: that in effect, he acted as a smokescreen.

The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America brought pressure to bear upon The Churchman to discontinue its attacks on Tsar Hays. Nonetheless, The Churchman continued and was presently aided by other religious publications. Most notable was the influential Christian Century which published a series of five articles by Dr. Fred Eastman of Chicago Theological Seminary, roundly flaying Cinema Tsar Hays. Stirred to imagine that where there was much Hays, there might really be a smokescreen, Bishop Francis John McConnell announced that the Federal Council's research department would study the activities & effects of Tsar Hays' Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc.

Then Dr. Charles Stedman MacFarland resigned from the Federal Council, after admitting that he had been paid by Tsar Hays to lecture on and recommend cinemas. Similar cases followed. Mrs. Jeannette Emmerich, hard working Federal Councilwoman, resigned, admitting that she too had been on the Hays payroll. Meanwhile, The Churchman asserted that Tsar Hays had no influence on cinema producers, pointed out that "block booking" of a producer's products by exhibitors made it impossible for exhibitors to obey anyone's wishes in selecting the pictures shown at their theatres. Tsar Hays threatened to sue The Churchman for libel, but did not sue.

Last week the Federal Council v. Hays controversy was brought into the open when the Federal Council published, in 151 pages, at 50-c- a copy, its report on the activities of Tsar Hays and his Motion Picture Producers & Distributors, Inc. Tsar Hays simultaneously published his reply to the council's report in the form of a letter to Bishop McConnell. Just before the publication of both reports, the most painful evidence of the divergence between the Federal Council and the Hays organization was provided when Carl Elias Milliken, onetime Republican (1917-21) Governor of Maine, resigned from the ad- ministrative committee of the Federal Council. Impressive, 53-year-old Baptist Milliken, onetime president of the Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, has been secretary of the Hays organization since 1926.

Less sensational than Secretary Milliken's resignation had lead observers to expect it might be, the Federal Council report: 1) lauded the Hays intentions;

2) stated that Hays methods of furthering them had been ethically vague (in hiring Council members) as well as ineffective;

3) suggested that, if Tsar Hays did function as a smokescreen, it was partly because the public had been lead to expect too much of him. Tsar Hays replied by

1) offering to help distribute the Council's report if its price discouraged circulation;

2) citing the vague ethics of clergymen who accepted pay for "exposing the movies"; 3) pointing out that an organization as large as the cinema offered "a problem in self-regulation large enough to challenge the co-operation of every social, religious and educational agency."

Observers felt that the Council's report at least served the purpose of calling attention to the fact that the cinema is now more influential and definitely more immoral than when Tsar Hays became President of the Motion Picture Producers & Distributors of America, Inc.

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