Going back a little in point of time from the close of the preceding chapter, the final years of the last century found Frohman geared up to a myriad of activities. He had already assumed the role of Star-Maker, for Drew and Gillette were on his roster, and Maude Adams was about to be launched; the Empire Stock Company was an accredited institution with a national influence; he had started a chain of theaters; his booking interests in the West had assumed the proportions of an immense business; he had begun to make his presence felt in London. Yet no event of these middle 'nineties was more momentous in its relation to the future of the whole American theater than one which was about to transpire--one in which Charles Frohman had an important hand. Despite the efforts made by the booking offices conducted by Charles Frohman and Klaw & Erlanger, the making of routes for theatrical attractions in the United States was in a most disorganized and economically unsound condition. The local manager was still more or less at the mercy of the booking free-lance in New York. The booking agent himself only represented a comparatively few theaters and could not book a complete season for a traveling attraction. In New York the manager was an autocrat who frequently dictated unbelievable terms to the traveling companies. Immense losses resulted from small traveling companies being pitted against one another in provincial towns that could only support one first-class attraction. Most theatrical contracts were not worth the paper they were written on. Charles Frohman had first counted the cost of this theatrical demoralization when his great "Shenandoah" run at the old Star Theater had to be interrupted while playing to capacity because another attraction had been booked into that theater. He and all his representative colleagues in the business realized that some steps must be taken to rectify the situation. Piled on this was the general business depression that had followed the panic of 1893. One day in 1896 a notable group of theatrical magnates met by chance at a luncheon at the Holland House in New York. They included Charles Frohman, whose offices booked attractions for a chain of Western theaters extending to the coast; A. L. Erlanger and Marc Klaw, who, as Klaw & Erlanger, controlled attractions for practically the entire South; Nixon & Zimmerman, of Philadelphia, who were conducting a group of the leading theaters of that city, and Al Hayman, one of the owners of the Empire Theater.