It was only in the last third of the nineteenth century that this type of theatrical organization slowly disappeared. When the Bancrofts had firmly established themselves in London in the little Prince of Wales’s Theater, they began to engage actors not for the whole of a single theatrical season, but only for the run of the piece. It is true that half-a-dozen of the more important performers remained with them and were provided with parts in play after play; but there was no longer any permanence in the membership of the company. The example of the Bancrofts was followed by the Kendals, by Wyndham and by Hare, and even by Henry Irving. These managers all engaged special performers to suit the characters of the successive plays that they produced; and they were thus relieved of the increasing expense of maintaining a stock-company capable of presenting any kind of play, comedy or tragedy or melodrama. As England is only a comparatively small island and as the multiplying railroads made it easily accessible from all parts of the kingdom, people from the provinces flocked to the capital and the plays presented in London ran for constantly increasing periods, from a hundred to even a thousand nights. And during these runs the manager was not paying salaries to actors whose names were absent from the program. So it came about that the stock-companies ceased to be and that the leading performers became part-time workers, appearing now in one playhouse and now in another, and yet fairly familiar with the methods of the other performers likely to be engaged with them for any new play or for any revival of an old play. III The abandonment of the permanent stock-companies and the practice of engagements only for the run of the piece, was brought about in Great Britain by economic pressure due in part to geographic conditions. And it was brought about in the United States almost simultaneously by a similar economic pressure due to widely different geographic conditions. The organization of the American theater prior to 1870 was very much what the organization of the British theater had been a century earlier. In every town of any importance there was at least one theater, occasionally owned by the manager but more generally leased by him. It was his private enterprize; he engaged the actors and the actresses, who were likely to remain with him season after season; he accumulated his own scenery, his own costumes and his own properties; he stood ready always and at forty-eight hours’ notice to put up ‘Hamlet’ or the ‘School for Scandal,’ the ‘Lady of Lyons’ or ‘Camille,’ ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ or ‘Ten Nights in a Bar-room,’ ‘Mazeppa’ or the ‘Naiad Queen,’ without invoking any outside assistance.