An item in the 24 Jul 1914 Variety reported that Jack Rose had convinced several Boston, MA, clergymen to form with him a Medford, MA, corporation, the Humanology Film Producing Co., to make motion pictures based specifically on the poems of Ella Wheeler Wilcox. According to a later mention in a review in the 28 Nov 1914 Motion Picture News, the organization had “a capitalization of $250,00 and a directorate comprised of foremost Boston business men.”
       There is some question whether Mrs. Wilcox’s picturesque estate at Short Beach, Granite Bay, CT, was used for exterior scenes.
       In the opening paragraph of his 7 Nov 1914 Motion Picture News review, Clifford H. Pangburn wrote, “The producers of this picture describe it as ‘an illustration of the famous poem, “The Price He Paid,” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.’ Aside from the fact that the poem is not famous, and the picture has no particular connection with it, this statement is correct.” Mrs. Wilcox (1850-1919), a then popular writer of homilies such as, “Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone,” had indeed written the lesser known lines, “Folks talk too much of a soul from heavenly joys debarred, and not enough of the babes unborn by the sins of their fathers scarred.” But as Pangburn pointed out, and a reviewer in the 5 Dec 1914 Motography elaborated upon, Louis Reeves Harrison’s film scenario deviated from Mrs. Wilcox’s intent. Rather than a man who made a mistake in his youth and later “suffered because of his great and repentant love for his wife,” the film presented a loathsome syphilitic who betrayed everyone and then went insane after being denounced for what he was. “Different stories,” said Motography.
       The 21 Nov 1914 Variety opined that the film may have been too “uncompromising” with its “terrifying detail.” The syphilitic artist “dies of paresis in a padded cell, and that there may be no detail of realism to drive the lesson home, he writhes about the floor in a straightjacket [sic]. This is not the only sample of realism gone mad. A child is born to the sinner’s victim, whereat Mrs. Wilcox needs must introduce an obstetrical clinic with relentless circumstances….The body of the dead child, mercifully hidden in a small casket, is paraded interminably and time and again the little grave comes into view. The whole feature is a succession of horrors.”