Among the comments of the press involved in stating this item of news at the time, the way the 'Nation' put it, and the way the 'Outlook' put it, are fairly representative of public opinion of the need and value of this civic step.
Said the 'Nation':
'Some of the leading citizens of Pittsfield, Mass., being dissatisfied with the commercial management of the principal theater in the town, have bought the house with the avowed purpose of conducting it upon lines more worthy of intelligent support.'
Under the caption 'A Community Theater' the fact was recorded in the 'Outlook' in a news editorial (Feb. 10, 1912), from which the following sentences are an extract:
'Pittsfield is … a community which represents the best of old and new New England. A very interesting experiment is being tried there by the Pittsfield Theater Company—a company of gentlemen—who believe that in a town like Pittsfield the theater justifies a consideration not dissimilar to that with which we regard our public library or our art museum! These gentlemen are leading the way in a movement which ought to be widespread. They have faced, not a theory, but a condition, and they will discover that, so far as immediate popular use is concerned, the theater is of more importance in a community than either the art museum or the public library. If they give the people what will interest the people, … if they arrange for popular prices, secure good actors, and treat the theater as a community institution in the same sense as an art museum and a library are community institutions, the "Outlook" has small doubt of their success.'
However the Pittsfield experiment turns out, considered, as it should be, as a sign of the times, it tells us emphatically—first, that the present system of meekly taking whatever plays are sent on from New York by a monopolistic commercial management, for its own good, is by intelligent citizens seen to be anti-civic. Again, it tells us that the shortest cut to give the community open access to all the dramas it wants itself or may assimilate for its needed pleasure and development is naturally seen to be the public library method as first established by Boston and since approved and adopted by all public-spirited communities.
This method was devised to give the community free access to all the books it wants for pleasure, profit, and advancement. A similar device to give the community cheap access to all the plays it wants for the same purposes may readily follow by a correspondingly practicable path of administration by a special commission. The same path thus proved good by test of time and utility for the library has since been followed with adaptation to its different purposes by the park commission.
The commission administering the public library and employing experts to operate it in all its departments and fields of activity has for many years accomplished and continued its civic work not merely adequately and thoroughly, but with superiority and distinction. This originally self-appointed group of citizens was fired with the desire not to do an exclusive or sectional work but to put upon its feet for the whole municipality a civic institution. It proceeded toward this goal by so shaping the undertaking that the city should ultimately accept and assume charge of it as its own.
All the facts of experience we have go to prove that this public library method of providing the shortest cut efficiently to give the public proper free access to the world of books, is the method providing the shortest cut efficiently to give the public proper cheap access to the world of drama. By this method financial support for a theater may be attained that shall be pledged to the civic good and adapted to local dramatic requirements and development. This method of administration by a special commission is not alone a proven feasible and simple civic method, but also the only effective way yet broached to secure the dramatic life and growth of a community.
Political corruption is no more to be accepted as a good argument to put us off from the most feasible approach to the end needed than for the public library itself. There may or might be some political corruption in the administration of a public library. Are we, therefore, to give up the library in our cities? There may be political corruption in the administration of our public schools. Was it, therefore, a mistake to establish them? Are we, therefore, to give up the public school? Clearly, no! We are to strengthen and safe-guard them to the utmost.