O

NE of the most interesting figures in the moving picture world to-day is Lois Weber, who in private life is Mrs. Smalley. M nalley is the most distinguisher nighest salaried woman direct he world to-day, and perhaps th yone who has made good, meas up to the severest standards a} ed to men.

Mrs. Sma. is at present with the Universal Fi Company in Los Angeles, and she ..as not only directed, but has written some of the recordbreaking photo plays that have unique distinction of a propaganda slant. But because they never lean backwards with propaganda they have been a box office success. She has set forth in a dignified and dramatic manner some of the complex questions which are challenging intelligent thinkers the world over, who are identifying themselves with one group or another interested in social readjustment. .

Mrs. Smalley lives in a charming house in Hollywood, and there she gave a precious hour to an interviewer, an hour amputated somehow from a day so long that it stretches beyond the imagination of those who punch a time clock. For Mrs. Smalley not only writes and produces the big, serious things put out by the Universal people, but occasionally she acts in them just to fit another bit of work into the mosaic of the days and weeks and months!

She is a pioneer in the moving picture business-which means that she has been in it about ten years. She and her husband were ambitious young people in the legitimate drama with a bride-and-groom determination not

to take separate engagements. But the managers did not look kindly upon their marital resolve not to let the stage separate them, and after a year or two of unsatisfactory engagements they wandered by chance into the moving picture field, then a newly plowed field with few surface showing of the rich soil which has yielded some art and enormous profits.

That Mrs. Smalley has been a large shareholder in holding up the standards of the moving picture industry. goes without dispute in the screen world. She has been a director for a number of the big companies, and is one of the big personalities in the photo-play world.

If one is looking for an adventure in generalities, one must not by any chance interview Mrs. Smalley.

She has a specific creed, an erect and full grown idea about the place and power of the moving picture, and the marvel of it is that she has been able to keep her creed and commercial success moving in the same set!

Mrs. Smalley agrees with educators and propagandists that the screen has more exalted ends than have yet been glimpsed by most producers. She is one of the forward looking directors who has helped make the fight to give intellectual athleticism a place on the screen instead of reserving it entirely for comedy gymnastics and sob. slush.

The person most irrelevantly concerned with the moving picture world. must realize how difficult it is to accomplish anything without the sustaining confidence of the herd. Every time Mrs. Smalley has put over a big idea she has had to first convince the management that the public would stand

generated by shabby feelings and salaciousness.

But Mrs. Smalley is a woman of exquisite feeling and high-minded discrimination, combined with a gift for keeping the preachment in a photoplay so delicately balanced that the dramatic integrity is never seriously threatened.

To be sure, her play on Birth Control, called "Where Are My Children?" has not entirely satisfied the Birth Control League. The members of this organization have no quarrel with the statement that the production is done with force and seriousness, but they would have liked to see the emphasis put in another place.

I expected Mrs. Smalley to rise in wrath when I told her that the propagandists were not at all satisfied with it. But she patiently heard me out, while I expatiated on their objections -that the play puts all the emphasis on abortion and the birth control movement, which is antagonistic to the general practice of abortion is, by inference, put in the position of defending it.

The Birth Control League simply asks the human race not to shirk the study of the human family. It has the civilized creed that instead of accident and natural selection, human selection and reason shall govern the size of families. It makes a stand for better babies, and in the long run that does not even mean fewer babies, for no one can dispute the statistics on child mortality.

Mortality increases as the number of children per family increases, until we have a death rate in families of 8 and more, which is 21⁄2 times as great as that in families of 4 and under. A record case is that which came under the observation of Miss Jane Addams. An Italian woman in the neighborhood of Hull House bore 22 children, and raised two of them. The records of all nations show conclusively that there is a startlingly lower mortality rate in small families than in large ones.

Mrs. Smalley's picture starts in the slums, and shows the dreadful condi

tions under which child bearing and rearing constantly menace the human race. She introduces a doctor, a highminded idealist, who has come to believe in birth control through a study of these conditions. He is sentenced to imprisonment. In contrast to this physician is the abortionist whose clientele is among wealthy women who refuse to accept motherhood.

"The Birth Control League," said Mrs. Smalley, "would have all the emphasis on the first part. Well, say to them that when the National Board of Censorship gets through with a photoplay the beautiful balance which may have been in the original production is apt to be destroyed, and the whole thing wobbles over to one side or the other. Then there are State and city boards of censorship, and by the time they have each taken a fling at a play it may have lost all resemblance to the original. For example, in my native State of Pennsylvania the entire first part of the play was excised by the censors. The scenes in the slums, and all the incidents going to prove that under certain conditions birth control was justifiable, were entirely cut out, and any believers in birth control who happened to see the play in that State would not give me credit for stating their cause at all.

"But I'll admit that the play just as I produced it would not entirely satisfy an ardent propagandist. The propagandist who recognizes the moving picture as a powerful means of putting out a creed, never seems to have any conception of the fact that an idea has to come to terms with the dramatic if it is to be a successful screen drama. Very few propagandists can think in pictures, and they would have us put out a picture that no one in the world but the people already interested in a subject would ever go to see!"

The fact that Mrs. Smalley has made such an enviable and honorable place for herself as a director in the photoplay world opens up vistas for other women who are willing to bring to it constant study and hard work in addition to creative talent.

T

HE light from a dozen fires flickered upon a line of men strung out across a gravel bar. The men faced a boulder strewn clearing at the farther side of which stood an old log cabin; beyond the cabin a wild mountain stream roared upon the frosty night air.

The line wavered and swayed as the men danced and swung their arms, fighting the bitter cold, for in spite of the ice and snow upon the ground the men were very lightly dressed, bare calves showing below some of the overcoats or mackinaws that hung about their shoulders. On the ground before each man, or held in his hands, were a hammer and a small piece of board with a paper tacked upon it; into each board a nail was started ready to be driven.

In the rear shadows a number of warmly clad men talked and laughed among themselves, and forced unwelcome advice upon the shivering ones in front.

Down at the very end of the line a small man with a little pointed cap pushed back upon his close-cropped gray head, rubbed a stinging ear with his knarled hand. Impatiently he reassured a pestering group.

"Sure, I'm all right," he growled. "Now, you boys, just quit worrying about me. It's going to be just as easy."

"Don't you forget big Mell Daskin," cautioned a friend. "He's a tough one if he is a college kid. And he's knocked around this country over a year now. Made his brags, he has, how he's going right away from you."

"Huh!" the little man snorted. "He ain't got a chance. Them kids is all right on a nice level track with a lot

of girls to yell and throw flowers. But when it comes to the real thing like this is going to be No, sir, he'll find this ain't none of his Marathon picnics."

"He says you're too old, Jack—says you can't stand the grind."

"Old!" Iron Jack Ruddy straightened. "Well, I am old. Sixty-one, I am. But I'm still a better man than that big kid. Why, I've hiked these mountains all my life. That's what'll count. Oh, they's nothing to it. He won't last to the summit."

Up near the end of the line a tall man held a watch to the lantern that he carried.

"Five minutes!" he called sharply.

Half way down the rank a lean, boyish giant towered above the heads of an admiring court. He laughed and joked, and refused to give serious attention to warnings or advice.

"Too late," he bantered. "I can't do any more training. It's all right, though, boys. All my life I've run long cross-country races and I've never been beaten."

"You look out for Iron Jack," admonished a pessimist. "He's the real old-timer of this bunch, and he's harder than that name of his. He's been making fun of your chances all the time."

The young man laughed good-naturedly.

"Poor old chap. It would be a joke if it wasn't so pathetic. Why, boys, he's an old man. He may have been an iron man once, and he may have the nerve now, but age will tell. He hasn't a chance. Youth and years of scientific training-that's what he has against him."

"That's all right," admitted the self