The Temple of Moloch

Tuberculosis is looked upon as a solved problem in the first world, although I came down with it 35 years ago; stress and the New York Subway system were the probable causes. At the time, my doctor told me, to my surprise, it was common in the poorer parts of the City. However, a year's worth of pills seem to have cured me. How much deadlier the malady was in bygone times, when half the heroines of operas died from it, and as recently as 1960, 10,000 Americans died from it every year!

The Edison Film Company was aware of this and among their film catalogue were the occasional social tracts. This one, made in cooperation with the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis. It starts out with a doctor visiting a family where the father is ill with the disease. He demonstrates a few simple techniques for preventing its spread: not letting others drink from his glass, keeping the windows open so fresh air can circulate, and not sweeping to raise dust to induce coughing. these may seem like simple and easily achieved matters, but ignorance in such things was and remains wider spread than we can believe. Neither can it hurt anyone to hear repeated what we already know.

The rest of the movie is a drama about the family that owns the pottery business whose factory is a breeding ground for the disease, shocked and angry to hear it denounced in the papers, until one of their members comes down with the disease. The cast is the Edison stock company of the era, directed by one of their house directors. I't's a competent piece of work, most notable for its strong and practical social utility.

Reading this title, "The Temple of Moloch," my mind instantly went to memories of one of the most lavish spectacles of the 1914 Italian epic "Cabiria," but in this one-reeler (although the Blackhawk copy I saw seems as though it may be slightly abridged) we get sensationalism of another kind, to advertise in time for the Christmas charitable season donations to the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis (now known as the American Lung Association) via the Red Cross and Edison's film company. This seems to have been an annual tradition begun in 1910. Two other such films available today include "Hope" (1912), available from the website for the National Film Preservation Foundation, and "The Lone Game" (1915), included in the home-video set "Edison: The Invention of the Movies."

As in the others, this is a melodrama with a contrived comeuppance plot to lecture on the perils of consumption, which in the case of this film is seemingly connected with potter's rot (silicosis), as the infection is traced back to a badly ventilated and dusty pottery. Viewing this in 2020, during another pandemic, it seems as though not much has changed. The doctor lectures a poor family on how to protect themselves, to which advice they ignore--although, granted, the guy did try to steal their baby away to a "preventarium." And the owner of the potteries equally ignores the dangers he puts his employees in until the disease boomerangs back onto his family. (It might be worth noting that this is told in flashback by the worker to the boss, which is rather unexpectedly non-straightforward plotting for such a film. There, noted.) Maybe they should start making these films again, because it doesn't seem we quite learned our lesson. As the doc colorfully says here, "The place is a modern Temple of Moloch. Children are fed to disease as they were fed to the ancient god."