e losses resulted
from small traveling companies being pitted against one another in
provincial towns that could only support one first-class attraction.
Most theatrical contracts were not worth the paper they were written on.

Charles Frohman had first counted the cost of this theatrical
demoralization when his great "Shenandoah" run at the old Star Theater
had to be interrupted while playing to capacity because another
attraction had been booked into that theater. He and all his
representative colleagues in the business realized that some steps must
be taken to rectify the situation. Piled on this was the general
business depression that had followed the panic of 1893.

One day in 1896 a notable group of theatrical magnates met by chance at
a luncheon at the Holland House in New York. They included Charles
Frohman, whose offices booked attractions for a chain of Western
theaters extending to the coast; A. L. Erlanger and Marc Klaw, who, as
Klaw & Erlanger, controlled attractions for practically the entire
South; Nixon & Zimmerman, of Philadelphia, who were conducting a group
of the leading theaters of that city, and Al Hayman, one of the owners
of the Empire Theater.

These men naturally discussed the chaos in the theatrical business.
They decided that its only economic hope was in a centralization of
booking interests, and they acted immediately on this decision. Within a
few weeks they had organized all the theaters they controlled or
represented into one national chain, and the open time was placed on
file in the offices of Klaw & Erlanger. It now became possible for the
manager of a traveling company to book a consecutive tour at the least
possible expense. In a word, booking suddenly became standardized.

This was the beginning of the famous Theatrical Syndicate which, in a
brief time, dominated the theatrical business of the whole country. It
marked a real epoch in the history of the American theater because
within a year a complete revolution had been effected in the business.
The booking of attractions was emancipated from curb and cafe; a
theatrical contract became an accredited and licensed instrument. The
Syndicate became a clearing-house for the theatrical manager and the
play-producer, and the medium through which they did business with each
other. Charles Frohman contributed his growing chain of theaters to the
organization and secured a one-sixth interest in it which he retained up
to the time of hi