It was not a commercial manager of the Syndicate type who first urged the efficient management of the Theatre; it was an idealistic critic and a great poet. Many years ago that ripe scholar and accomplished man-of-letters Matthew Arnold exclaimed, in one of his Essays, “The Theatre is irresistible--_organize_ the Theatre!” Arnold, as a youth, had been entranced by the acting of Mlle. Rachel, and as a man had naturally been charmed by the acting and greatly influenced by the propulsive reformatory and constructive theatrical administration of that great actor and theatrical manager Henry Irving. It is from such sources of thought and of intellectual energy as Arnold and Irving, in England, and as Wallack, Booth, and Daly, in America,[1] that the impulse properly to organize the Theatre has proceeded; not from the mere money-grubbing schemes of monopolistic cliques or speculators in public amusement. Members of such cliques,--of which the Theatrical Syndicate is one,--are, at times, frank enough to admit that (as they are fond of expressing it) they are not engaged in theatrical business “for their health,” and undoubtedly they are within their rights when they seek, _by fair means_, to make their business profitable. So much is understood and conceded: who would deny it? Monopolies, however, frequently pose as public benefactors, and such, as already shown, is the pose assumed by the Theatrical Syndicate. Many persons have, in one way or another, been deceived by it, or brought to approve it. In 1898, beginning to be conscious, in my critical and editorial work on “The New York Tribune,” of an oppugnant influence emanant, apparently, from that source, I determined to have a clear understanding with the late Donald G. Nicholson, then the editor of that paper, and I formally asked him whether “The Tribune” favored or opposed the Syndicate. In reply I received from him the assurance that “of course ‘The Tribune’ _opposed_ it,” and also I received a printed list of newspapers which, Mr. Nicholson informed me, had explicitly declared their opposition to the Syndicate as being an unjust organization, hurtful to the Theatre and adverse to the public interest. That list contained the names of most of the leading journals of our country. But--“There are no birds in last year’s nest.” Most of the opposers of the Syndicate seem, like the _Witches_ in “Macbeth,” to have “made themselves air, into which they vanished.” Active opposition to that incubus in the press is, at present, conspicuous chiefly by its absence.