Mrs. Fiske herself had said: “The incompetent men who have seized upon the affairs of the stage in this country have all but killed art, ambition and decency.”
Her husband wrote in his paper: “What then should be expected of a band of adventurers of in¬ famous origin, of no breeding and utterly without artistic taste? * * * Let it be kept in mind that the ruling number of these men who compose the RISE OF THE FIRST JEWISH THEATRICAL TRUST 105 Theatrical Trust are absolutely unfit to serve in any but the most subordinate places in the economy of the stage and that they ought not to be tolerated even in these places except under a discipline, active, vigorous and uncompromising. Their records are disreputable and in some cases criminal, and their methods are in keeping with their records.’1 (First printed in the Dramatic Mirror, December 25,1897; reprinted March 19,1898.) This attack was regarded, foolishly and wrongfully of course, as an attack on the whole House of Israel and, as is always the case when one Jew is censured for wrongdoing, all the Jews in