Now I'll take the commercial side of the question. I'll venture the opinion that Dave Warfield and Maude Adams play each season to double the receipts any play without a star ever earned. The Cincinnati Festival, composed only of stars, in one week played to more than one hundred thousand dollars. Booth and Barrett cleared over six hundred thousand dollars net in one season. Henry Irving took away from America in one season three hundred thousand, Bernhardt averages a quarter of a million net on every farewell tour. The average successful star up to five years ago (before the influx of the so-called producers, the authors who feature themselves and those who "present") counted it a bad year if his profits failed to reach a hundred thousand dollars. I wonder how much Charles Frohman has made with his stars! And now let us face a fact that is indisputable--business is very bad. Ten years ago a ten thousand dollar week was considered only a good one. To-day it is an event. Even poor little I played to over fifteen thousand and no fuss was made about it. Let me hear the name of a single successful play without a star of to-day that averages eight thousand per week. I wonder if people go to see clever George Cohan or George Cohan's play? [Illustration: IN THE GOLD MINE _My get-up in The Gold Mine_] I consider it an insult and audacity for any manager to, assert that the starring system is a menace to the theatre when almost every leading theatre of Europe heads the cast with the name of a conspicuous player. Every first-class theatre in London for the last fifty years, from Kean to Irving, has owed its success to one bright particular star. If any manager in America would like to try the experiment I would be willing to make a wager that I will take the most successful stock play now running in any city in the world, go to any town or city in America and with a star double, yes treble the receipts of the stock organization presenting the same play. Again let me ask the author and those who "present" as to the longevity of a stock play as compared with that of the play in which a star appears. Also how about the returns from a revival of both? In the all star revival of "The Rivals" we averaged five thousand dollars a performance. Did the public go to see the players or the play? I wonder. How many knew the author or Joseph Brooks who presented us? I wonder!