When Edison recently made a visit to the General Electric Company’s plant at Schenectady, N.Y., to recall old memories and to forecast the future possibilities of electrical devices, he found there still standing two insignificant old sheds by the river bank, the modest plant of the original Edison Machine Works of 1886. In amazing contrast to this relic of the past there stretched away in every direction factory after factory, covering an area of 523 acres, and vouchsafing to the Wizard of Menlo Park a concrete manifestation of the fact that in this age of progress even the wildest dream may eventually come true. But the contrast between Edison’s work-shop of 1886 and the General Electric plant of to-day, astounding as it is, is, in its outward aspects, a local phenomenon. To visualize it, you must go to Schenectady, N.Y. The difference between Edison’s kinetoscope of thirty years ago and the moving picture of the moment can be appreciated, on the other hand, by a mere effort of the memory and the imagination combined. The kinetoscope has been relegated to the attic but the moving picture has acquired as its domain not merely the earth but the starry heavens and the realms of space. Eventually the very outer edge of the physical universe is destined to be screened. Before recounting presently the amazing and romantic story of the evolution of the motion picture from a plaything to a medium unrivalled for the promulgation of both good and evil, a Frankenstein created by Man’s ingenuity that must be given a soul to make it safe for the world, it may be well to pause at the outset to answer the query, frequently put to the writer, as to why what seems to be merely a popular form of amusement should be taken seriously as a factor in the struggle modern civilization is undergoing to save itself from destruction. Perhaps no better answer to this question can be given than is furnished by certain facts and figures presented by Will H. Hays to the National Education Association in session at Boston, Mass., in July, 1922, in the following illuminating words: In a little over fifteen years the motion picture has grown from a naked idea until to-day it is the principal amusement of millions. It has become one of the greatest industries in America, having an investment of $1,250,000,000, with $75,000,000 paid annually in salaries and wages, and $520,000,000 taken in annually for admissions. In the United States, in the big cities and in those ample-shaded towns and villages which comprise America, there are perhaps fifteen thousand motion picture theatres and in those theatres more than seven million seats. Taking into account at least two performances a day, and applying the collected statistics, we estimate that every seven days between Maine and California, fifty million men, women and children look for an hour or two at the motion picture screen.