The age-herald., 1901-06-05
WHY IT DRAWS.

From the Chicago Inter-Ocean CRep.).
 For tho last week Chicago's largest theatre has been filled with intent audi ences Thousands of men and women were there moved to unresrained tears and laughter and anger and rejoicing. Hundreds of these professed to have come there out of the idlest curiosity. yet found themselves unable to resist the emotions of the place. Yet the play which so fills one of the worlds largest theatres and so moves great numbers of men and women, from all technicle and "artistic" viewpoints, is one of the poorest ever put upon the stage. The dramatic critics, the connosseurs of literature, the actors themselves, concur in that Judgment
 Even the best acting and the most in- genious stage mechanism" cry the be- wildered dramatic pundits, should not be able to save such a piece!" Why, then, do people continue to flock to see Uncle Toms Cabn?" As a rule they answer .he question by lamenting the ''lowness of popular taste.'' To accept that answer would be to deny any progress In educa- tion, any advance in culture for half a century. It woule be to impute to thou sands of admitted refinement in other ways persistent vulgarity of dramatic taste. The popularity of this play. never greater or steadier than now. evidently cannot be accounted for on such grounds.
 Why, then, does Uncle Toms Cabin" continue to draw great audiences in ev- cry community and to move them to un- restrained emotion? Is 1t not because this r,ia nit 1afo ~.-tt n, substantial truth the actual experience of race? That this experience was not of the spectators own race makes the play interesting without becoming too painfully vivid. Few colored people, we believe, care about this play. Perhaps their reason Is that which makes the Athenians punish a dramatist who rep- resented too accurately their country mems sufferings at Miietus. So Uncle Toms Cabin is not especially popular with the race whose experience it de- picts, but 1t Is with the race which caused. and made great sacrifices to end, that experience.
 That the satisfaction of him who rights a wrong and confers favor Is much more lively and vivid than that of him who receives the favor and whose wrong Is lighted has long been observed. This fact of human nature probably accounts for the Caucasian American's perennial interest In this play. He sees In 1t how his forbears oppressed the African. He knows at what mighty, cost that oppres- sion was ended. He feels natural pity for the oppressed and an inherited com punction for their wrongs He is also filled with pride that his race had the manly resolution and self-sacrifice to end those evils.
 By these emotions he is for the hour lifted out of himself and life's common places. He experiences on the one hand that cleansing of pity and terror" which Aristotle defined as the service of tragedy to the soul. He experiences on the other the exaltation of gratified raci- al pride. From these considerations it may be concluded that the continuous popularity of "Uncle Toms Cabin," un- paralleled in dramatic annals. is not a manifestation of persistent low taste, but the result of its direct appeal to the fun damentals of human nature.