Go West, Young Women!

by Hilary Hallett

  27. On the response to the “Peace Ship,” see “The Ford Peace Party,” in Revolutionary Radicalism: Being the Report of the Joint Legislative Committee Investigating Seditious Activities, Vol. 1 (Albany: J.B. Lyon Co., 1920), 988–999.

  28. Ford quoted in Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001), 77. On Ford’s attempt to win public office, see Revolutionary Radicalism, 68–70.

  29. Joseph Jefferson O’Neill, quoted in Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 91.

  30. Madison Grant, Passing of the Great Race (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 15–16, 80–81. On Grant’s influence and the book’s sales, see Carey McWilliams, A Mask for Privilege (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1948), 56–60; Higham, Strangers in the Land, 271–272.

  31. “The Jew in Character and Business” (originally published May 22, 1920), in The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem, 10 (hereinafter, International Jew).

  32. “The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy?” (June 12, 1920), in International Jew, 53, 46–47.

  33. “The Jew in Character and Business,” in International Jew, 12. See also “The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy?” in ibid., 52–53.

  34. Discussions of Ford’s attack have ignored its focus on the cultural power of Jews. Articles in later volumes circled back to these particular “regions,” examining baseball, jazz music, and publishing. “Preface,” Jewish Activities in the United States, vol. 2 of International Jew, 6.

  35. “ ‘Jewish’ Plan to Split Society by ‘Ideas’ ” (Aug. 14, 1920), International Jew, 2:143.

  36. “Jewish Supremacy in Motion Picture World” (Feb. 19, 1921), in International Jew, 2:134.

  37. “Rise of the First Theatrical Trust” (Jan. 8, 1921) International Jew, 2:102.

  38. Henry Ford, Edison: As I Know Him (New York: Cosmopolitan Book Corp., 1930), 102. On Ford and Edison, see Lee, Henry Ford and the Jews, 7, 13, 42, 67–68; Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 11–12, 43, 53–54, 89–90, 322–324.

  39. The MPPC pooled sixteen patents and included Edison, Biograph, Vitagraph, Essanay, Kalem, Selig, Lubin, Pathé Frères and Méliès, and the importer George Kleine. An excellent discussion of Edison’s strategy is found in Sklar, Movie-Made America, ch. 3. By 1912 the patents share of film production and importation had fallen from 100 percent to slightly more than half. Sklar estimates the patents served only half to two-thirds of U.S. theaters. For the patents’ focus on the middle class, see Nancy Rosenbloom, “Progressive Reform, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Industry, 1909–1917,” in Ronald Edsforth and Larry Bennett, eds., Popular Culture and Political Change (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 45–47.

  40. “Jewish Supremacy in Motion Picture World,” 2:128–130.

  41. “Jewish Control of the American Theater,” in International Jew, 2:89, 92.

  42. “The Jewish Aspect of the Movie Problem,” in ibid., 2:117.

  43. “Jewish Supremacy in Motion Picture World,” 2:125.

  44. “The Jewish Aspect of the Movie Problem,” 2:117, 94, 126.

  45. “Rise of the First Theatrical Trust,” 2:104.

  46. “Aryan”: “The Jewish Aspect of the Movie Problem,” 2:119. “Gullibles”: “How Jews Capitalized a Protest Against Jews” (Jan. 22, 1921), in International Jew, 2:109.

  47. Andreas Huyssen, “Modernism’s Other: Mass Culture as Woman,” in After the Great Divide (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), ch. 4. The author describes transatlantic elites’ views of mass culture as the rise of a feminized, degraded commercial mass society.

  48. “Jewish Supremacy in Motion Picture World,” 2:128.

  49. “The Jewish Aspect of the Movie Problem,” 131–133.

  50. “Jewish Control of the American Theater,” 89.

  51. “Trailing the New Anti-Semitism to Its Russian Lair,” Current Opinion (April 1921): 501. After addressing Ford’s investigation, the article attempted to establish the Protocols as forgeries.

  52. Crane, “The Jew.”

  53. “A Protest against Anti-Semitism,” New York Times (hereinafter NYT), Jan. 16, 1921, pp. 30–31.

  54. Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews, 192–217.

  55. For two examples of this view, see Louis Weitzenkorn, “A Jew among the Fords,” The Nation (May 4, 1921): 652–653; Ralph Philip Boas, “Jew-Baiting in America,” Atlantic Monthly (May 1921): 658–665.

  56. La Guardia quoted in Thomas Kessner, Fiorello H. La Guardia (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1989), 125–126. For an indication of how little the campaign affected Ford’s stature, see “The Formidability of Ford,” Literary Digest, June 16, 1923, pp. 8–9. On the central place that “Fordism” occupied in the postwar international reform imagination, see Daniel T. Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), 371–381.

  57. James R Quirk, “Oh, Henry!” Photoplay (June 1921): 44. One editorial suggested that some industry insiders shared Ford’s views. “Family quarrels should be fought in public—a principle which obviously is not being subscribed to by certain persons in the industry who are supplying information for Henry Ford’s attack upon the business. These persons may think they are operating secretly, but they are wrong.” See Exhibitors Herald (Dec. 1921): 30.

  58. My view of the Klan owes the most to Nancy MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). MacLean characterizes the organization as part of the broader reactionary populist movements that erupted after World War I and used nationalism, racism, and calls to restore traditional gender roles to heal society’s ills. Most current work on the Klan focuses on its role as “a popular social movement, not an extremist organization,” addressing “real social problems”; see Leonard J. Moore, “Historical Interpretations of the 1920s Klan,” Journal of Social History 24.2 (1990): 352, 348.

  59. Quotes are from MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 90, 136, 113. MacLean calls Ford a Klansman but offers no evidence for the charge. On the persistent rumors of Ford’s involvement, see also Kenneth T. Jackson, The Ku Klux Klan and the City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 274n21. Because the Klan destroyed most of its records, it is impossible to say how many joined. Here, I follow estimates in MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 5; and Jackson, Klan and the City, 4–8. After 1923, women were organized in the Women’s KKK. On the original Ku Klux Klan, see Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 454–459.

  60. Klan advertising quoted in MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 98. See also ibid., 5–7, 104, 98–124. On Klan publicists’ use of Birth in recruitment drives, see Jackson, Klan and the City, 70, 81, 118, 131, 200.

  61. MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 35–38, 144, 138.

  62. John Sumner, “Are American Morals Disintegrating?” Current Opinion (May 1921): 608–611.

  63. New York governor Miller quoted in “Are Women a Menace?” The Nation (Feb. 9, 1921): 198. Fredrick Boyd Stevenson, “Marriage and Divorce Equally Easy under the New Law in Red Russia,” BDE, March 27, 1921, “Women” sec., 1; “Absolute Equality for Women,” BDE, Feb. 17, 1921, p. 6.

  64. “Will the Next World War Be Woman against Men?” San Francisco Chronicle, May 9, 1920, Magazine sec., 1.

  65. Sumner, “Are American Morals Disintegrating?” 608.

  66. Lee Grieveson, “Not Harmless Entertainment,” in Charles Keil and Shelley Stamp, eds., American Cinema’s Transitional Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 272.

  67. Four states had censorship laws at the start of 1921: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kansas, and Maryland. Pennsylvania was the first state to pass a state censorship law, in 1911, but problems with the act and lack of funds prevented its enforcement until 1915. William Sheafe Chase, “Catechism on Motion Pictures in Inter-state Commerce,” pamphlet published by the New York Civic League, Oct. 1922, 3rd ed., 38–39; Ruth Inglis, Freedom of the Movies (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1947)
, 70–71.

  68. All four state boards required women members; see Oberholtzer, The Morals of the Movie, 70–71.

  69. Donald Ramsaye Young, “Motion Pictures: A Study in Social Legislation” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1922), 16–18, 65. A copy of the “Standards of the Pennsylvania Board of Censors” is included in appendix C, 94–99, 212–215.

  70. Oberholtzer, quoted in Raymond J. Haberski Jr., It’s Only a Movie! Films and Critics in American Culture (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2001), 42.

  71. Oberholtzer, The Morals of the Movie, 6. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, A History of the United States since the Civil War, Vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan, 1917).

  72. “Women Join Fight for Clean Movies,” BDE, March 3, 1921, p. 7. On the response to Old Wives for New, see Sumiko Higashi, “The New Woman and Consumer Culture,” in Jennifer M. Bean and Diane Negra, eds., A Feminist Reader in Early Cinema (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 316.

  73. Haberski, It’s Only A Movie! 43.

  74. See Ellis Oberholtzer, “Censor and the ‘Movie Menace,’” North American Review 212 (Nov. 1920): 641–647; Ellis Oberholtzer, “What Are the Movies Making of Our Children?” World’s Work 41 (Jan. 1921): 249–253. On these journals’ importance, see Rodgers, Atlantic Crossings, 66–67. On press reaction to Oberholtzer, see Chase, “Catechism of Motion Pictures in Inter-state Commerce,” 14, 63.

  75. Oberholtzer, The Morals of the Movie, 31, 6–7, 15, 18, 29, 59.

  76. Ibid., 27, 28–29, 173, 41, 55, 98–99. On clubwomen, see particularly chs. 4 and 5.

  77. Addams quoted in William Chafe, The American Woman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 257n16.

  78. Works that treat the centrality of motherhood as an important organizing principle in Progressive-era policy include Molly Ladd-Taylor, Mother-Work: Women, Child Welfare, and the State, 1890–1930 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Linda Gordon, Pitied but Not Entitled (New York: Free Press, 1994).

  79. GFWC president Alice Ames Winter quoted in Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868–1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980), 98–99. After a controversy over admitting black women, the GFWC decided in 1902 that each state or territorial federation could decide, but then adopted a provision that made this impossible. Blair also notes the club’s class snobbery and nativism. On the cresting of its influence after the war, see Rothman, Women’s Proper Place, 65–66.

  80. Young, “Motion Pictures,” 19.

  81. “Twenty States Have Censorship Bills,” Moving Picture World (Feb. 10, 1917): 861. On the importance of the GFWC to the NBR, see Charles Matthew Feldman, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 1909–1922 (Windsor, UK: Arno Press Cinema Program, 1977), 132–154.

  82. Between 1907 and 1908, the People’s Institute and the Women’s Municipal League conducted an investigation of movie theaters and their content that judged films to be basically wholesome entertainment. After New York City’s mayor closed the city’s movie theaters in 1908, local exhibitors asked the two organizations to evaluate films before release, leading to the creation of the National Board of Censorship. When producers agreed to voluntarily submit films and follow the committee’s recommendations, the board’s work became national in scope. To emphasize its free speech stance, the organization changed its name in 1916. See Inglis, Freedom of the Movies, 73–82; Rosenbloom, “Progressive Reform, Censorship, and the Motion Picture Industry”; Feldman, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 4–26.

  83. Peck quoted in Betty Shannon, “Club Women Discuss Pictures,” Moving Picture World (June 10, 1916): 1855.

  84. Feldman, The National Board of Censorship (Review) of Motion Pictures, 139.

  85. The survey by the Chicago Political Equality League found that only 20 percent of 1,765 films were “good,” while 21 percent were “bad” and 49 percent “not worth while”; reprinted in Young, “Motion Pictures,” 22–24.

  86. See Florence Butler Blanchard, Censorship of Motion Pictures (Chicago: Englewood Print Shop, 1919), 4–6, 12, 15. State branches of the GFWC that conducted studies included South Dakota, Arkansas, New York, Michigan, Rhode Island, Virginia, and the four with existing boards.

  87. “One Standard Favored by Women,” San Francisco Bulletin, June 9, 1920, p. 9.

  88. Of the 67 films rejected in Ohio between July 1919 and June 1921, 35 fell within the category of sex pictures. This number was nearly three times the number of comedies rejected, which was the next largest category. See Wid’s Year Book 1921, 217. Cuts made by New York’s board between Aug. 1 and Dec. 31, 1921, also mostly involved sexual vice. There were 146 cuts made on such grounds; 54 on the grounds of criminality; 40 on others. Cuts to the films were made on the following grounds: a: 85, “Immoral”; 35, “Inhuman”; 54, Tending to Incite Crime”; 61, “Immoral or Tending to Corrupt Morals”; 5, “Sacrilegious.” From the Report of Education Department, State of New York, Motion Picture Division, James Wingate, Director, reprinted in William H. Short, A Generation of Motion Pictures (New York: National Committee for the Study of Social Values in Motion Pictures, 1978 [1928]), 13, Censorship Collection, MHL. A report by the Chicago Motion Picture Commission revealed that most excisions between Nov. 1917 and Dec. 1920 were for sexual immorality; see Young, “Motion Pictures,” 21. For the Pennsylvania board’s focus on sexual immorality, see Report of Pennsylvania State Board of Censors (Philadelphia: J.L.L. Kuhn, 1917), 8.

  89. J.J. Phelan, Motion Pictures as a Phase of Commercialized Amusement in Toledo, Ohio (Toledo: Little Book Press, 1919), 9, Censorship Collection, MHL.

  90. Quoted in Kunzel, Fallen Women, Problem Girls, 55. Kunzel offers a rich exploration of the gendered nature of sex delinquency.

  91. Fredrick Boyd Stevenson, “How Brooklyn Is Getting into Action for a Campaign against Unclean Movies,” BDE, Feb. 13, 1921, “Women” sec., p. 1. “Womanhood”: Brooklyn assemblyman W.F. Clayton, who introduced what would become the Clayton-Lusk censorship bill to the legislature on Feb. 16, 1921, quoted in “Censor Bill Passes New York Assembly: Governor Is Expected to Sign It Soon,” Moving Picture World (April 30, 1921): 936. See also “Censorship Bill Is at Last Introduced in the New York Legislature,” Moving Picture World (Feb. 26, 1921): 1025.

  92. Stevenson, “How Brooklyn Is Getting into Action,” 1.

  93. Miller quoted in “The Nation-Wide Battle over Movie Purification,” Literary Digest, May 14, 1921, p. 32; “Miller Joins Fight to Bar Exhibition of Indecent Movies,” BDE, March 3, 1921, p. 18. On the mayor, see Fredrick Boyd Stevenson, “Hylan to Take Action on the Movies That Are Depicting Crime and Vice,” BDE, Jan. 16, 1921, “Women” sec., p. 3.

  94. “Miller Joins Fight to Bar Exhibition of Indecent Movies.”

  95. NBR called a “farce” in Fredrick Boyd Stevenson, “Who Reviewed Photoplay ‘The Penalty’?” BDE, Feb. 6, 1921, “Women” sec., p. 1; “Dirty and Vicious Films,” editorial, BDE, Feb. 8, 1921, p. 6.

  96. “Await Answer to Immoral Films,” April 14, 1919; “Mrs. O’Grady’s Attack Illogical, Says Goldwyn,” April 15, 1919, both unsourced clippings, Parsons Scrapbook no. 3, MHL. “Mrs. O’Grady Raps Indecent Movies,” BDE, March 3, 1921, p. 9. “Uncensored Movies Lead Young Astray, Says Mrs. O’Grady,” BDE, Feb. 8, 1921, p. 9.

  97. Stevenson, “Who Reviewed Photoplay ‘The Penalty’?”

  98. The Penalty (Eminent Authors Pictures, 1920). Quotes are from the film.

  99. “Clean Movie Fight Gets New Support,” BDE, March 18, 1921, p. 11.

  100. “Catholic Society Backs Clayton Bill,” BDE, March 21, 1921, p. 5.

  101. “Flatbush Meeting Approves Law for Clean ‘Movies,’ ” BDE, March 8, 1921, p. 9.

  102. Fredrick Boyd Stevenson quoted in BDE, Jan. 1, 1921, “Women” sec., p. 1.

  103. “Clean Movie Fight Gets New Support”; Stevenson, “Who Reviewed Photoplay ‘The Penalty’?”

  104. “G.Y. Janes” quoted in Fredrick Boyd
Stevenson, “Forty Four State Legislatures Ready to Act on ‘Movie’ Censorship Bills,” BDE, Feb. 27, 1921, p. 1.

  105. Fredrick Boyd Stevenson, “Members of the Motion Picture Board Will Demand Thorough Investigation,” BDE, Feb. 20, 1921, p. 1.

  106. “Brooklyn Club Women Disapprove ‘Woman Pays Club’ Doctrine,” BDE, Feb. 3, 1921, p. 18.

  107. “The Woman Pays Party,” Jan. 8, 1921, Parsons Scrapbook no. 6, MHL. See also “Earning Her Rights,” May 20, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 4, MHL; “The Woman Pays Club,” April 18, 1920, Parsons Scrapbook no. 6, MHL.

  108. “Brooklyn Club Women Disapprove ‘Woman Pays Club’ Doctrine.”

  109. “A ‘Home Woman’ Victory,” BDE, Feb. 5, 1921, p. 6; “Absolute Equality for Women,” BDE, Feb. 17, 1921, p. 6; “Good Advice to Women,” BDE, Feb. 18, 1921, p. 6; “Out of the Suffrage Camp,” BDE, Feb. 21, 1921, p. 6.

  110. “Should Moving Pictures Be Censored?” 652.

  111. NYT, March 6, 1921, p. 7.

  112. The Thirteen Points, reprinted in “Should Moving Pictures Be Censored?” 652.

  113. “Producers Agree to Reform Films,” NYT, March 15, 1921, 11. See also “Should Motion Pictures Be Censored?” 652. On Waterman’s role, see “Miller Joins Fight to Bar Exhibition of Indecent Movies.”

  114. “Proposed Federal Censorship,” NYT, March 18, 1921, 2.

  115. “Sex War On in Films.” The article likened Crafts to a “red rag to a bull so far as the picture people are concerned.”

  116. Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph. D., National Perils and Hopes (Cleveland: F.M. Barton Co., 1910), iii.

  117. Rev. Wilbur F. Crafts, Ph.D., ed., Patriotic Studies of a Quarter Century of Moral Legislation in Congress (Washington, DC: International Reform Bureau, 1911), 2, 15, 23, 7–8, 10–11, 24.

  118. “Quarter Century of Manifold Reforming,” 20th Century Quarterly 18.3 (1919): 5, 126, 128.

  119. Seaborn Rodenberry, quoted in Grieveson, Policing Cinema, 130. For more on prizefight films, see ibid., ch. 4.

  120. “Extracts from Hearings before the Committee on Education, House of Representatives, on Bills to Establish a Federal Motion Picture Commission,” 63rd Congress, 2nd sess. (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914), 1, 6–8.