m*- w - Clpdigital.org

NEW USE FOR THE
MOVIES
By WALTER LEE
I T does not always take the health department
and the pure food agitators
to make us go up in the air over
sanitation and the prevention of disease.
A large Eastern furniture
dealer recently showed an exciting moving-picture
scenario to large groups of
furniture salesmen from all over the
country. The usual dime admission fee
was omitted, yet every man who left the
exhibition looked as firmly resolute as if
he had seen a real vampire picture.
The theme of the scenario is "Feather
pillows, and where they come from." Of
course in the furniture line the health
appeal to the public is not as strong as
in the food line. One kind of piano or
chair is about as healthful as another.
But since one-third of our life is spent
in bed, and the child's more than that,
we can't say that one bed is as safe as
another. Children usually sleep with
their faces half buried in pillows.
What's in the pillow? The mother
doesn't know. She has her bed clothes
washed regularly and thoroughly. She
encases her pillows in spick-and-span
slips. But as to the contents of the
pillows, she doesn't know and neither
does the clerk who sold the pillows to her.
The first scene in the sanitary movie
shows a pillow being sold as "new" in a
large department store, and upon this
incident is based the story of the film. It
pictures scenes in a city's slums. The
pillows and feather beds are leaking
feathers at every pore and exposed to all
the dirt, filth, and germ life imaginable;
garbage cans become the receptacles for
pillows too worn out to be used any
longer.
Garbage can to rag-picker, to junkdealer,
to pillow factory—such is the
route traveled by the decayed, contami­
nated, and abominable mass of feathers.
Of course this material "cleaned" and
"washed" is re-sold to the trade and to
the trusting public as "new" pillows.
Enlarged pictures are shown to these
furniture salesmen of worms, bugs, decayed
quills, broken feathers, and dirty
foreign matter.
The salesman does not forget this picture.
When he comes to sell pillows he
is going to warn the customers about
insanitary pillows. So this wise furniture
man proceeds to make a sequel to
the film, with the story based on how
pillows should be made—how his pillows
are made.
Thousands of pure white ducks and
geese are seen cavorting on the banks
of rivers in China, where the feathers
come from that are used in this dealer's
pillows. Then there is the unloading in
New York, and other features, following
one another across the screen in rapid
and entertaining order. Next comes the
weighing of the new feathers, mixed as
they are with dirt. After this the scenes
are laid in the modern factory and show
how the feathers are treated—how the
foreign matter is separated front them,
by the dry process, the swishing, swirling
bath among the churning mill-wheels and
the air current separating device, the
white-clad employes finishing the pillows.
The film does not show the secret electrical
process which destroys the animal
matter inside the quill, but it does show
the result, and by magnification of six or
seven times, the inside of the quill is
plainly shown—clean, sweet, and sterilized.
Already several States have passed
sanitary feather laws compelling the
labeling of pillows to show the contents,
whether new or second hand.
123