and branches in other cities. When the General Film Company and its closely allied Motion Picture Patents Company began to tighten its grip on the young industry about 1911, the Western cast its lot with the independents.
The first move of the independents was a defensive union remembered as the old Sales Company. It was a loose federation, full of civil wars, and ended quickly. Whereupon Freuler and Aitken organized the Mutual Film Corporation on the model of the General, and Carl Laemmle formed the Universal. Freuler took care of the operating machinery while Aitken went to Wall Street, opened an office at Number 60, interested Crawford Livingston, an investment banker, and through him the portentous firm of Kuhn, Loeb and Company. Big money had discovered the films for the first time, and Aitken was the evangelist.
Mutual began as a program producer, making the slapbang one-reel dramas and comedies that were the staple of the business. But Aitken's vision saw further than that, and as he watched the multi-reel "Quo Vadis", imported from Europe by George Kleine, and Queen "Elizabeth", a French production with Bernhardt in the title rôle, brought over by Adolph
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