“Please deny for me, emphatically, the statement that I ‘hesitate to give offence to the Theatrical Trust.’ My position regarding the Theatrical Trust is too well known, I hope, for anyone to believe that!” Mr. Lee Shubert, who controlled theatres competing with Syndicate houses in which Belasco productions were presented for a long time after the Syndicate agreed to book for him, made the following comment on the understanding: “So far as myself and my associates are concerned we cannot disapprove of a development which shows advancement of the policy of the ‘open door,’ for which we have fought. It is gratifying to us to note that the tendency toward a general letting down of the bars, which were up so long and so unjustly against independent producers, is so emphatically in evidence in the change of attitude both on the part of Erlanger and Belasco and Fiske. We have produced and procured our own attractions, and will continue to do so with such measure of success as may be ours. _I have contended always that the time would come when the bars must be let down and successful producers welcomed wherever they were willing to play their attractions...._ We are independents, and Messrs. Belasco and Fiske are independents. Whatever steps they may take in an independent way we cannot with consistency disapprove. It is really of little moment to the public, which cares little about whose attractions it may pay to see and in what theatre it may see them so long as the attractions are worth the money.” One immediate result of the Fiske-Belasco arrangement with the Syndicate was the settlement out of court of the lawsuits over “The Auctioneer,” implicating Klaw & Erlanger, Belasco, and Joseph Brooks, and the withdrawal of the appeal by Belasco, in that matter, which had been filed April 13, 1906.