IT WOULD flatter writer's ego if he could give impression that he was arguing inductively and with complete freedom from emotional bias. But he has lived in, or rather on edge of, Hollywood for more than twenty years. He cannot, therefore, be objective. He has seen too much harm done by suburb of Los Angeles which is also a planetary institution to be casual or scientifically detached about it. He has preached sermons in which this or that picture has been gladly commended for humor or humaneness that flashed through it. But all while there has been a mounting suspicion that net result of Hollywood's impact upon character was negative, not educative. This little piece would bring that suspicion into open. There will be no pretense of documenting each generalization accurately, fully, and impartially with notarized instances. The writer is not equipped to do that, either with resources of space or of special competence. He does, however, have at least a rudimentary conscience. It is Hollywood's lack of conscience we will now face. Mammon is behind movies. One does not have to be a Marxist to suspect that ultimate reason for putting on a picture or adding a little more synthetic dirt to such and such a scene is purely and ultrapurely economic. Of course it is necessary if you are a producer to appease church, which is not always to be sneered at financially -at least certain branches of it. And it is smart to end with chimes resounding. But you can be sure that the bitch goddess Success, against which William James warned, is not going to be challenged in her kennel as Amos challenged ecclesiastical sale of men for a pair of shoes. Granted exceptions, noble exceptions such as OxBow Incident of several years back, success in Hollywood has one simple criterion: box-office returns.