heatre-going population, but in defiance of the limits imposed by that
demand.

A theatre-building is a great expense to its owners. It always occupies
land in one of the most costly sections of a city; and in New York this
consideration is of especial importance. The building itself represents a
large investment. These two items alone make it ruinous for the owners to
let the building stand idle for any lengthy period. They must keep it open
as many weeks as possible throughout the year; and if play after play fails
upon its stage, they must still seek other entertainments to attract
sufficient money to cover the otherwise dead loss of the rent. Hence there
exists at present in America a false demand for plays,--a demand, that is
to say, which is occasioned not by the natural need of the theatre-going
population but by the frantic need on the part of warring managers to keep
their theatres open. It is, of course, impossible to find enough
first-class plays to meet this fictitious demand; and the managers are
therefore obliged to buy up quantities of second-class plays, which they
know to be inferior and which they hardly expect the public to approve,
because it will cost them less to present these inferior attractions to a
small business than it would cost them to shut down some of their
superfluous theatres.

We are thus confronted with the anomalous condition of a business man
offering for sale, at the regular price, goods which he knows to be
inferior, because he thinks that there are just enough customers available
who are sufficiently uncritical not to detect the cheat. Thereby he hopes
to cover the rent of an edifice which he has built, in defiance of sound
economic principles, in a community that is not prepared to support it
throughout the year. No very deep knowledge of economics is necessary to
perceive that this must become, in the long run, a ruinous business policy.
Too many theatres showing too many plays too many months in the year cannot
finally make money; and this falsity in the economic situation reacts
against the dramatic art itself and against the public's appreciation of
that art. Good work suffers by the constant accompaniment of bad work which
is advertised in exactly the same phrases; and the public, which is forced
to see five bad plays in order to find one good one, grows weary and loses
faith. The way to improve our dramatic art is to reform the economics of
our theatre business. We should