These circumstances go to show what an immense influence Jack Haverly wielded in the theatrical business of this country at that time. He was almost as potent then as Klaw & Erlanger of the syndicate are today. These conditions did not last very long, as the managers and agents came to learn that the Salt Lake Theatre was the only one that the Mormon people would patronize, and they being so largely in a majority of the theatre-goers, the older theatre gradually won back the great bulk of the traveling combinations, and the Haverly agreement having expired, his flag was hauled down, much to the relief of a great many, to whom it had always seemed a reproach to have _Brigham Young's_ Theatre called Haverly's. Jack Haverly had too many irons in the fire; his numerous theatrical enterprises were managed by a corps of lieutenants, too numerous for Mr. Haverly to keep in line. Some of them proved shrewder, more adroit, and less principled than their general. He trusted them too implicitly, and this was his undoing. Some of them managed his enterprises into their own hands, while he was giving his personal attention very largely to his mining interests. These, too, turned out disastrously, and Haverly's star, which had been so prominent and bright in the theatrical firmament, began to wane and in a very few years was totally eclipsed. After all his great enterprises, he became a bankrupt in 1898, and he died poor in 1901 in a Salt Lake Hospital. He was reduced in health and circumstances to such a degree as to be unable during the last year of his life to manage even a minstrel company, and others paid him for the use of his name. CHAPTER XXIV. Retrospectively considered, the building of the Walker Opera House was premature. There was one good theatre here, and not half enough of business for that one; but it served to enliven things for a little while, and did its share toward liberalizing and metropolitanizing Salt Lake City. The Walker had a brief and rather checkered career; it was destroyed by fire on July 4th, 1891, after a performance of "Held by the Enemy." The audience were all home and the company had left the theatre; the stage hands were lowering a drop, when a gust of wind blew open the front door and sent the drop sailing against a gas jet; in a moment it was all ablaze. The stage hands lost their heads and made for the exit, when a little presence of mind would have saved the building. The house, especially the stage, was well provided with water plugs and hose, and it seems incredible that any effort was made to extinguish the fire. Mr. Will Burgess was manager at the time it burned down. It is a remarkable fact that two other fine theatres burned under this same gentleman's management within a few years afterward. The Farnham Street Theatre of Omaha, where a number of lives were lost, and The Auditorium of Kansas City. Notwithstanding these very serious drawbacks, Mr. Burgess is one of the wealthy managers of the West today.