loss of Sunday advertising! But here and there courageous writers on the Stage held to the honor of their profession and refused to be bribed or intimidated.
Writers like James S. Metcalfe, of Life; Hillery Bell, of the New York Press; Frederick F. Schrader, of the Washington Post; Norman Hapgood, on the New York Evening Globe; James O’Donnell Bennett, of the Chicago Record-Herald, stood out against the Trust and made their fight. Metcalfe went so far as to bring suit against the Trust for unlawful exclusion from a place of public amusement. The courts were kind to the Trust. They decided that a theater may pick its patrons. Even in very recent years the Trust has followed blacklisted dramatic critics in an effort to prevent their employment by newspapers.
The Theatrical Trust does not exist in the form it did ten years ago. It grew arrogant and bred secret enemies among its own people. A new force arose, but it also was Jewish, as it originated in the Shubert brothers with David Belasco. Instead of one, the American have now a dual dictatorship of the stage. The rage of the day is not plays, but playhouses. With not three plays of any character to distinguish them from the dregs of the stage, there are now building in New York alone a dozen new playhouses. The theatrical business has entered upon its real estate phase. There is money in renting chairs at the rate of $1 to $3 an hour. The renting of the chairs is a reality. The Stage is rapidly becoming an illusion.
