"The moving picture industry follows the dictates of the people and can never tyrannize them," L. F. Alstock told a CRIMSON reporter yesterday. Mr. Alstock is assisting Professor H. T. Lewis of the Graduate School of Business Administration in collecting material for a volume on the commercial aspects of moving pictures, to be published as one of the series of Harvard Business Reports.

"Few people realize, however, what a highly centralized industry the film business is," Mr. Alstock remarked. "There are just four big companies: Fox, which owns the chain of Loew theatres; Paramount, which controls the Publix theatres; Warner First National; and Radio Keith Orpheum. The latter is under the headship of the Radio Corporation of America. So one great company manufactures the radio sets on which you hear, hires artists to broadcast and to make comedy reels, and owns the theatres in which the reels are shown.

Combination Frowned Upon

Asked if the time might come when one company alone might control the industry. Mr. Alstock replied, "No, just a short while ago the government instituted suits against an attempted merger of the Warner First National combination with the Fox Loew combine, as the merged concerns, the government claimed, would control 65 per cent of the $2,000,000,000 invested in the business, which is the fourth largest in the country. But the big companies themselves realize the need for strenuous competition. Without it their productions would deteriorate, and a small independent band of good actors who produced a first rate film could sell it to the theatre chains."

Movie Houses Will Specialize

Questioned about the problem of catering to the tastes of the vast cinema audiences, Alstock remarked, "30,000,000 people patronize the silver screen every week now, an increase of 10,000,000 in two years, and it is expected that the total will jump to 40,000,000 in the near future. I feel sure that theatres will soon discover the need for specialization, some offering the type of film seen nowadays, some showing comedies exclusively, and others presenting intellectual 'life problem' films.

"As for the producers of talking pictures confronted with the problem of pleasing foreign audiences. I think they will have to collect French and German casts and produce their pictures in three languages."