The pretensions of the Syndicate are one thing: its proceedings are quite another. Equitable conduct has not been the spring of its prosperity. Not by fair means has it become rich and powerful. Aside from having somewhat facilitated the making possible of economically practical routes over the country for travelling companies and the transaction of business between resident theatrical managers and representatives of travelling companies, it has done, literally, nothing for the good of the Theatre; but it has done everything for the good of itself. It is not to be supposed, for example, that because the making of economical routes is feasible through the booking agency of the Syndicate, once such routes have been booked they are inviolate. “Dates” are cancelled and “routes” are changed, when such change is requisite to the advantage of the Syndicate, with total disregard of any other consideration. “Where,” exclaimed Gladstone, “can you lay a finger on the map of Europe and say, ‘Here Austria did good’?” Where can you lay a finger on the map of progress in the Theatre in America and truthfully say, “Here the Syndicate did good”?
THE RIGHT PRINCIPLE.
That the Theatre, to exist, must be self-sustaining; that its administration “must show a profit,” is a proposition so elementary in its truth and so universally conceded that it would be folly to restate it, if there were not so much stupidity in the generally attempted exposition of Commercialism in Art. But as a matter of right and duty (and this is what, apparently, the Syndicate and congenial managers cannot comprehend), theatrical managers are under distinct obligation to consider the public good before they consider their individual prosperity. In other words, when a man assumes to make use of one of the fine arts as a means of “doing business,” he assumes to wield an indirect educational power; he undertakes,—whether he knows it or not, whether he means to do so or not,—to affect the public taste, the public thought, and the public morals. Therein, accordingly, he assumes a responsibility much broader and much more important than that which is incurred in an ordinary “business” pursuit; and, as it happens, he assumes it under less restriction, by law, as to the possible effect of his conduct than is imposed on the speculator in almost any other “business.”
THE OBLIGATION OF INTELLECT.
Obligation of honesty and honor rests with equal force on all workers in all branches of industry: but it is one thing to sell boots or pickles, and another thing to disseminate thoughts and emotions. The more a man ascends in the scale of labor the more exacting becomes his duty to Society. A writer of novels, for example,—a Scott, a Dickens, a Thackeray, a Cooper, or a Collins,—might, perhaps, find the largest amount of personal emolument in writing stories calculated to vitiate taste, injure public thought and public morals, and thus debase the community, but, if he wrote such books, he would be a criminal, and it would be no defence for him to say that he made money by his crime, or to allege that because he made money the public approved of his actions. Intellectual men have no right to make money by misusing their powers. The same sense of rectitude,—but broader, higher, finer,—that bids an honest tradesman sell nothing that will injure the buyer enjoins upon the worker in the arts that he should consider not merely the payment he is to receive for his work, but the effect of that work upon the lives and destinies of the human beings to whom it is addressed and whom it is likely to influence. Theatrical managers stand in that position toward the public. Thoughts and feelings are the wares in which they deal, and, much as they are bound to consider financial profit (because they have heavy burdens of expense to carry), they are also solemnly bound, first and most of all, to consider the taste, the morals, and the intellectual advancement of the community. The manager who aims at monetary gain as the first and dominant object of his ambition and endeavor, to the exclusion of all higher purpose, is a disgrace to his profession and an enemy to social welfare. To him, as to the Weird Sisters, “fair is foul and foul is fair.”
There are many vocations in which little is to be considered above the till. No person is compelled to assume the management of a theatre or the direction,—invariably of potent force,—of an educational, influential art. If he deliberately chooses such occupation and does assume it, he assumes it with all its inherent responsibilities,—and the greatest of these is moral and intellectual duty. No mistake more foolish or more culpable could be made than to regard this standard of conduct and responsibility as visionary, impracticable, or what this deplorably slang-ridden community flippantly mentions as “highbrow stuff.” No strenuosity of asseveration from theatrical janitors, “Great Moguls,” “Napoleons of the Theatre,” bullies or gamblers, flatulent with the wind of self-complacency and conceit, that conduct of the Theatre justifies itself by mere financial gain can vindicate a theatrical administration which benefits a few individuals at the expense of the public good and by the oppression of honest competitors; and that, practically, is the administration of the Theatre which is provided by the Theatrical Syndicate.
The covenant made by the six members of the Syndicate contains much of that verbiage which customarily encumbers legal documents. Some facts, however, as to the results of its operation are apparent. Under the contract, covering “different cities of the United States and Canada,” independent theatrical companies, seeking to compete for public favor and support, “were not permitted to play against” “other companies of the same or different class,” owned, operated, controlled, or directed, by the Syndicate. According to that covenant, “No attraction [i.e., no company presenting a theatrical entertainment or performance] shall be booked in any of the said theatres or places of amusement [i.e., theatres or places of amusement owned or controlled by the Syndicate] which will [sic] insist on playing in opposition theatres or places of amusement in any of the cities” named in the Syndicate agreement, unless by written permission of a Syndicate member, controlling a theatre or theatres in such or such specific places where an independent manager desired to present his company in an independent theatre. By this arrangement the Syndicate, in effect, could say, and has said, to managers of theatres outside its ownership or direct control: If you wish to “play” any of our “attractions,” at any time, you must play all the attractions we book in your theatre when we book them and on the terms which we specify,—otherwise you cannot have any of the attractions which we book. To persons, whether star actors or managers directing theatrical companies on tours through the country, desirous to secure “bookings” in certain cities in which first-class theatres are controlled by the Syndicate that organization could say, and has said, in effect: If you wish to play in any theatre owned or controlled by us, you must play in every theatre, whenever and wherever we choose to direct you to play, on whatever terms we choose to make for you. If that is not, in effect, blackmail and extortion, compelling the transaction of business under duress, what is it? The theatres owned, leased, controlled by members of the Syndicate are their theatres, and they assert the right to conduct those theatres to suit themselves. Owners of property certainly are entitled to use it for their advantage; but would any well-informed and fair-minded person maintain that the members of the Theatrical Syndicate, using their property in the way I have described, use it according to the dictates of justice? When that kindred beneficence the Standard Oil Company desires to drive a small, independent dealer out of business how does it go about the task? It sets up a contiguous, superbly managed competing oil shop and undersells the independent dealer, till he, lacking money to maintain a hopeless struggle for his
THE MEMBERS OF THE THEATRICAL SYNDICATE