He charged that the Trust as a whole advertised in various cities that “the original New York company” would play, charging exorbitant admission fees on the strength of this advertisement, when in truth these were secondary companies and not the one advertised.
A strange court hearing was held in which the magistrate did not wish to hear any of Fiske’s testi¬ mony, even forbidding him to enter official records of the criminal proceedings had against a certain member of the Trust. The magistrate did not seem to want to hear what Fiske based his statements upon. There was a serious shooting scrape involving a woman, but the magistrate did not want to hear about it. There was even considerable difficulty on the part of Fiske’s lawyer in procuring the attendance of Abraham L. Erlanger at court, although he was one of the complainants.
All the important questions asked of Klaw were overruled.
As to A1 Hayman, the court overruled all questions relating to his real name and the circumstances under which he left Australia.
The facts were not brought out in this hearing, but the whole character of the hearing was made known to the public. Fiske was bound over to the Grand Jury, with $300 bail in every allegation of libel.
The Grand Jury lost no time in dismissing all the complaints against Fiske. The Trust members had come off badly because of their evident unwillingness to meet the case. They were revealed to be a much lower type of men than the American public had sup¬ posed was in charge of the American theater. They were shown to be a type that would not even stop at demanding the discharge of a local newspaper reporter whose critique of their plays did not please them.