us, you must play in every theatre, whenever and wherever we choose to direct you to play, on whatever terms we choose to make for you. If that is not, in effect, blackmail and extortion, compelling the transaction of business under duress, what is it? The theatres owned, leased, controlled by members of the Syndicate _are_ their theatres, and they assert the right to conduct those theatres to suit themselves. Owners of property certainly _are_ entitled to use it for their advantage; but would any well-informed and fair-minded person maintain that the members of the Theatrical Syndicate, using their property in the way I have described, use it according to the dictates of justice? When that kindred beneficence the Standard Oil Company desires to drive a small, independent dealer out of business how does it go about the task? It sets up a contiguous, superbly managed competing oil shop and undersells the independent dealer, till he, lacking money to maintain a hopeless struggle for his [Illustration: THE MEMBERS OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE Al. Hayman Charles Frohman Copyright by Charles Frohman, Inc. Marc Klaw Abraham L. Erlanger Copyright, Rockwood Samuel F. Nixon (Nirdlinger) J. Fred. Zimmermann, Sr. “It is often true, as old _King Duncan_ declares, that ‘There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.’ Nevertheless, study of the faces of the men who compose that sacred institution of beneficence, The Theatrical Syndicate, is worth making. Such study renders it easier to understand the condition of the Theatre in America to-day.”--W. W. ] livelihood, is forced to sell his business and desist from competition. Then the benevolent national octopus gradually advances the price of oil until at last the public in the neighborhood has paid the cost of driving the small competitor out of business, the field is occupied solely by the Standard Company, and it sells oil to the people for “all the traffic will bear.” That method may be as _lawful_ in selling “theatricals” as in selling oil, but--is it _right_? If Belasco desired to present one of his “attractions,” in thirty cities under the Syndicate domination (acceding to the terms imposed upon him), but could, in one other city, present that “attraction” for ten weeks, at an independent theatre, receiving eighty per cent. of the gross receipts, while in the same city the Syndicate would “book” his “attraction” at one of its theatres and graciously exact fifty per cent, of the gross receipts, then Belasco would be necessitated to submit to that predatory dictation, or else lose his “bookings” in the thirty other cities,--in _all_ other cities,--in which the Syndicate controlled the “first-class” theatres. “THOSE SHALL TAKE WHO HAVE THE POWER.”