Royal. And the critic who considers the drama
of to-day must often turn from problems of art to problems of economics,
and seek for the root of certain evils not in the technical methods of the
dramatists but in the business methods of the managers.

At the present time, for instance, the dramatic art in America is suffering
from a very unusual economic condition, which is unsound from the business
standpoint, and which is likely, in the long run, to weary and to alienate
the more thoughtful class of theatre-goers. This condition may be indicated
by the one word,--_over-production_. Some years ago, when the theatre trust
was organised, its leaders perceived that the surest way to win a monopoly
of the theatre business was to get control of the leading theatre-buildings
throughout the country and then refuse to house in them the productions of
any independent manager who opposed them. By this procedure on the part of
the theatre trust, the few managers who maintained their independence were
forced to build theatres in those cities where they wished their
attractions to appear. When, a few years later, the organised opposition to
the original theatre trust grew to such dimensions as to become in fact a
second trust, it could carry on its campaign only by building a new chain
of theatres to house its productions in those cities whose already existing
theatres were in the hands of the original syndicate. As a result of this
warfare between the two trusts, nearly all the chief cities of the country
are now saddled with more theatre-buildings than they can naturally and
easily support. Two theatres stand side by side in a town whose
theatre-going population warrants only one; and there are three theatres in
a city whose inhabitants desire only two. In New York itself this condition
is even more exaggerated. Nearly every season some of the minor producing
managers shift their allegiance from one trust to the other; and since they
seldom seem to know very far in advance just where they will stand when
they may wish to make their next production in New York, the only way in
which they can assure themselves of a Broadway booking is to build and hold
a theatre of their own. Hence, in the last few years, there has been an
epidemic of theatre building in New York. And this, it should be carefully
observed, has resulted from a false economic condition; for new theatres
have been built, not in order to supply a natural demand from the
t