Brainard introduced Farson, who knew the “king of the prize ring trust” by sight, for Hollinger had been a celebrated figure on the Coast in the days before the graft trials. The three chatted for a time while the auditorium emptied.
“How did you like our play?” he inquired casually.
“Your play! It’s suspiciously like mine.”
“Perhaps we drew from the same sources.”
“How did you get into the theatrical business?” Brainard inquired.
“I got into it in a rather roundabout way,” the fight-trust magnate explained. “You remember the event at Jalapa? The American papers were full of it at the time. I was interested in the moving picture concession for the States. We expected to make big money out of it. But they had another spasm of virtue in this country about that time, and we were shut out of the best circuits. So from the movies I got into vaudeville and then into the regular show business. Have a couple of circuits on the Coast and interests in the East also. This is one of my companies. They’ve done a tremendous business out West in this thing—did it appeal to you?”
He smiled genially at Brainard, and added: “We couldn’t work in the haçienda scene,—roses, moonlight, Orizaba, pretty Mexican girl, and the rest,—it took too much scenery.”
“We thought it was a trifle overdrawn,” Brainard observed.
“Oh, the theater demands that, you know,—exaggeration. Art is never quite like nature. Even Milton threw it on thick at times, if I recollect. . . . But it stirs the blood—that’s what you want in these dull times. People come to the theater to feel, their lives are so dull. That’s the first thing I learned in the show business. Give the public something to tease the nerves, keep ’em on the jump. And the second thing I learned was that you must always hold up a high moral standard. It never pays in the long run to cater to the small class that can afford to think about morals as freely as they act.” He looked at Brainard meaningly. “I saw your show last week,” he explained. “It’s not really tough, but it don’t pay to do that sort of thing. Most people, of course, are not half as good as they like to think they are. But even the worst want their art and literature better than they know they are and better than they think their neighbors are. That’s the way they square themselves with life,” he concluded sententiously.
This was the second time, Brainard reflected, that he had received a valuable lesson in ethics from the fight-trust magnate. He understood now why Hollinger had been reading Milton when he first made his acquaintance on the Overland Limited. He was a business philosopher.