The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1913-01-20
Puio Committee Docs Not Investigate
Them Because They Are Not
Accused of Being
Trust.
VAUDEVILLE POPULAR
Stock Companies Again Seem to Have
Taken New Lease on Life and
Attract the Old
Timers.
UNITED Press Special Service

NEW YORK, Jan. 20.-While the
Pujo money trust-busters have been ,
having fun with Morgan, Jawn Dee
and his brother William, they have
entirely overlooked class OF stock
jobbers in New York that Includes
many hundreds Of men and women.
These stockholders never see Wall
Street. 1t might be doubted that
they even know where that highway
Is, with its river at one end and
grave yard at the other. Forty-second
street and the segments of Broad
way contiguous thereto is the haunt
Of these stockholders. But, though
they never invade the financial dis
trict, they have their exchanges and
also their curb markets-you can see
them any afternoon on the sunny
side of Broadway, mostly around the
entry of the Cohan & Harris build
| ing, Miss Packard's, further down
the street, and the various theatre
buildings.
They are not financial stock job
bers, they are recruited from the
Broadway shows that go down into
the limbo of the failures, and from
the road shows that go on the rocks
at Lynn, Mass. or Plainsfield, N. j.,
or perhaps GAINESVILLE, o. Some Of
them are stars, others have held good
Second" and Juvenile positions,
but the exigencies OF the disastrous
season force them into transient
stock work" stock jobbing" being
the term the "profesh" applies to that
sort Of work.
Some fifteen years ago 1t was fire.
quently said in these parts that "the
good old days Of stock were definite
ly over. The last OF the big New
York stock companies were breaking
up. The star system was mounting
towards the zenith; vaudeville was
the boyle that threatened the "legit, !"
and the woman who could not get
/ placed by the agencies, got somebody
to write twenty-minute skit for her,
i or turned monologuist, Or devised a
song-and-dance thing.
Almost unbelievable salaries were
offered and women deserted the
ranks of the legitimate In amazing
! numbers. The vogue of the vaude-
4 vile is a good example of the shifts
4 of fortune and tastes in the theatrical
line. 1t seems hardly credible, look
4 ing back on it all, that so much
could have happened in ten years Re-
4 member the slvorites of 1902, even,
and the houses that then were given
over exclusively to vaudeville, and
then compare those houses of that
. day with the same houses of today,
and note the astonishing difference
in the foyer conversations.
Moving pictures, canned vaudeville,
they might be called, in turn have
put the mark on the skits and
sketches. The combined evolutions
mate, and 1t must be good show in
deed this winter that can withstand
the gaff. Witness all the elaborate
productions that Broadway has seen
since September 1. Fine settings and
all.star casts have not saved them
lDOSC NlShOdb liS oPni vi sCiliuo
have faded quickly, until the Broad
way successes of 1912-1913 can be
counted on one hand.
That is why some OF the cleverest
actors and actresses on the American
stage have gone into stock-become
stock jobbers" while the legtti-
mate has fallen on evil days, stock
seems to have taken q new lease on
life. Popular priced stock companies
are running in almost every city in the
+ United States and there are several
now playing in New York.
. 1T has its compensations," said a
woman stock jobber. People who
have settled down to stock work get
a chance to become more like human
beings than the fly-by-night road folk.
Being more or less permanently To-
Gated they have family life. The men
bring their wives and children around
them in some apartment and the wo-
men, tco have their home life, bring
ing their folk to live with them, their
mothers, sisters or children.
III I'D h-,f 4