built round the opening up of the West. It told of men attacked by savages, overwhelmed by the ravages of Nature, but rising up again and laying the railroad foot by foot. The towns which sprang up overnight seemed just like joints of the railway. As the railroad was pushed forward new towns appeared further and futher westward.
All these various trials and hardships were interwoven with the love story of a navvy and the director’s daughter; sometimes the one and sometimes the other was in the foreground. In the last scene the man who showed the picture raised his voice:
“Helped on by the countless sacrifices of these young men, the hundreds of miles of railroad were at last completed and linked together mountain and valley, transforming lands which until yesterday were a wilderness into National Wealth.”
The end showed the director’s daughter and the navvy, now changed miraculously into a gentleman, in the act of embracing.
Between this and the next film was a short Western comic, pure nonsense which made them all laugh.
The Japanese one was a film showing a poor young man who started by peddling beans, then sold newspapers and step by step came to shoe shining; next he entered a factory, became a Model Worker, was made much of and finally became a millionaire.
The lecturer added, though it was not in the titles, “Verily if industry is not the mother of success, what is?” The young hands applauded earnestly.
