Volume I: Narrative History

Chapter 5 (1912): Little Alice

Of all Thanhouser films released in early 1912, none was more heralded than Cry of the Children, released in two reels on April 30th. Taking its name from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poem of the same title, the scenario told of little Alice, played by Marie Eline, who watches her siblings and parents go to work in the mill each day. Little Alice, the youngest of three children, stays at home, for her parents want to spare her from toil and suffering. The mill owner's wife, childless, thinks it would be nice to have Alice as a pet and offers to adopt her. Alice's parents, realizing that this might mean a life of luxury, tell their daughter that she can decide for herself, but Alice decides to stay right at home.

The mill workers strike for better wages, but soon they are starving and are forced to return. Alice's mother becomes sick, and to help the virtually non-existent family finances, Alice goes to the factory, where she tends a loom from morning until night. Soon her youthful spirit is gone, and she is frail and haggard like the other children. Realizing that she is becoming an even greater burden to her sick mother, Alice decides it would help her family if she would accept the offer of adoption. However, by this time, the factory owner's wife finds the now toil-worn little girl unattractive and, besides, she has a little dog for a pet now, which seems to fill the bill just as well. Day after day, Alice rises early and goes to the factory. One day, tending her loom, Alice collapses and dies. The story ends with the sentiment that Alice's life in the hereafter promises greater joy than her miserable existence on earth.

Thanhouser was especially proud of The Cry of the Children and heralded the film in numerous advertisements and publicity notices for many weeks before its actual release, emphasizing its theme and message. The area of social responsibility was one of concern to film makers in an era in which many do-gooders among the citizenry condemned films as being an evil influence. Various studios created films on such subjects as child labor, white slavery, minorities, immigrants, women's suffrage, drugs, and alcohol, and when such films demanded changes for the better (rather than simply exploiting the topics for their sensational value), the producers could rightly say that they were making important contributions to society.

No doubt the importance of The Cry of the Children was increased by memories of the strike at the American Woolen Company, Lawrence, Massachusetts, which became prominent in national news beginning at its start on January 14, 1912, when 25,000 workers walked off the job. As the strike dragged on, workers' resources became low, and the I.W.W. provided for the transport of Lawrence children to other towns, where they could find food and shelter, but on February 4th, to the horror of the nation, police attacked with clubs a group of children and their parents who were trying to board a train for Philadelphia. On March 12, the American Woolen Company agreed to a wage increase, but even so, the workers lived in virtual poverty.

Thanhouser was by no means the only film maker to take up the issue of child labor, nor was it the first. The month before, in the midst of the Lawrence strike, Edison had released Children Who Labor, which had the endorsement of the United States National Labor Committee. Theodore Roosevelt had spoken out against the evil, and, to remind potential viewers that the sentiments of Roosevelt and Thanhouser were one and the same, certain advertisements for Cry of the Children were embellished with Roosevelt's portrait and quotations.

In an article, "The Social Uses of the Moving Picture," Note W. Stephen Bush told of the excellent work being done by motion picture studios, including Biograph, Selig, Vitagraph, and Edison, and then went on to pinpoint Thanhouser:

The boldest, most timely and most effective appeal for the stamping out of the cruelest of all social abuses has been made in a two-reel production by the Thanhouser Company. The pictures are based on the touching poem of Elizabeth Barrett Browning entitled The Cry of the Children. More than two generations have passed away since the noble poetess told of the "children weeping ere the sorrow comes with years." Since that time great efforts have been made by many good men and women to stop this evil. We are ashamed to say that the agitation against child labor has been far more successful in other civilized countries than in our own. For more than a half of a century all attempts to remedy the evil in the cotton mills of the South, where it appears in its most hideous shape, have been unavailing.

After an agitation lasting from the period of Reconstruction to the present day, the best that has been accomplished was done by the present Congress. A law has now been passed, establishing a federal bureau, which, however, could do nothing but investigate conditions. It has no authority to change hours of labor or order any other restrictions. It cannot even recommend legislation, because Congress, under the Constitution, lacks authority to pass such laws. The best that can be hoped for is a creating of public sentiment through the publication of the results of its inquiries. There is evidence before Congress that boys and girls as young as six and seven years are put into the mills and compelled to work 10 and 11 hours a day. The result of such a state of affairs in degrading and debasing humanity need not be described in detail here.

We are glad to say that the Thanhouser picture will accomplish the same results that are expected from the work of the federal bureau, to wit: arousing public indignation. The pictures are admirably conceived, do not at any time go beyond the line of probability, and bring home their lesson in a forceful, but perfectly natural and convincing way. No dramatic derrick has been used to drag in a counterfeit love story. The makers of the film have kept before their eyes the one idea: the enlightening of the public as to the condition and effects of child labor.

While the picture skillfully paints the extremes of our modern social life, it has steered clear of the fatal error of the old time melodrama in which, instead of human beings, the spectator was compelled to see a set of angels and a set of devils. The Cry of the Children as rendered by the Thanhouser Company makes it plain that the mill owner is as much a creature of circumstances and surroundings and economic conditions as the laborer. The picture shows the common bond of humanity between them and how the touch that makes all the world akin does not lose its magic in the wretched tenement of the laborer or in the mansion of the mill-owner or the whirr of the factory.

A laborer and his family consisting of a wife and some half-grown children tried to live in peace with the world and with themselves in spite of the awful conditions which surround them. They cannot, however, fight off the inevitable. The awful strain begins to tell on the mother, who bears the heaviest burden. When she breaks down, the youngest child in the family, who had been kept at home and treated as a favorite, was compelled to go to work. She could not stand up to her cruel task and live. Nature had not made her little limbs for bearing the burdens of hard toil, and the little girl dies a victim of overwork.

The mill owner's wife had offered to adopt the little child, but her offer had been rejected by the child herself. Later, when the child began to realize the odds against the laborer and the struggle of life, she went to the mill owner's wife and asked to be adopted, thinking in that way to lighten the burdens of her parents and sisters. But the grime of toil had replaced her child-like grace of former days. The bitter hours in the factory had changed the happy laughing child into a haggard-looking waif. In her altered appearance she found no longer favor in the eyes of her employer's wife, and necessity drove her back into the house of torture.

The end of the picture shows the grief of the parents and the sisters of the dead child and the bitter and cutting remorse of the mill owner and his wife. As we look at the latter we feel the awful weight of the poem's words:

But the child's sob in the silence curses deeper

Than the strong man in his wrath.

Wherever these pictures are shown, converts to the necessity of thorough child labor reforms will be made by thousands. Owing to the determined opposition of Southern members of Congress the federal bureau entrusted with the investigation of child labor has had its powers narrowed and limited in many ways. In order to hamper the work of the bureau as much as possible an amendment was tacked on to the law, which prohibits an investigator from entering the laborer's home if the householder objects. This amendment was not dictated by any tender regard for the privacy of the home, but is to be a weapon in the hands of the mill owner, who by threats and intimidation will seek to influence his employee against the investigators. Right here the power of the motion picture asserts itself. They may be able to bar the investigator, but they cannot bar the man with the camera. The camera must create the demand for remedial legislation and second the labors of the federal bureau.

The remedy, of course, lies entirely with the legislators of the individual states. The report of the federal bureau will be read by hundreds at best, while the pictures will be seen by millions. It seems to us that in the near future this fact will be recognized by the people most concerned in the matter, we mean organized labor. It was the labor element which forced the establishment of the bureau from an unwilling Congress. The labor element ought to realize the advantages of the motion picture as a means of agitation and be swift in making use of them. The protection of the minors working in stores and factories is one of the live issues of the coming campaign for the election of the president. The pictures here mentioned are therefore very timely and ought to be welcomed by every intelligent and progressive exhibitor. We will confess ourselves much mistaken if The Cry of the Children in motion pictures will not serve as a valuable campaign long before the votes will be counted in November.

Other reviewers were likewise enthusiastic. The Morning Telegraph considered the picture to be "entirely praiseworthy" and "dramatic, powerful in its depiction of the child-labor evil." Further: "It is acted splendidly by each and every player, and it should be seen by all workers in mill, office, shop or elsewhere, for it awakens a realization of conditions as they are." The New York Dramatic Mirror echoed the sentiment, noting that the film was "tremendously impressive" with excellent acting throughout.