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102 A HISTORY OF THE MOVIES
pendent leaders continued to be Mutual and Universal with their groups of producers, and William Fox.
For several years Mutual, managed by Harry E. Aitken, John R. Freuler, and Samuel Hutchinson, was active, progressive and prosperous. Mutual had vision, courage, financial resources, energy and ability, and General Film keenly felt its competition. Aitken, gifted with unusual personal persuasiveness, was an exceptional promoter and business builder, with rare talent for persuading directors, players, bankers, and exhibitors to conform to his plans. Frueler was a substantial business man and careful executive. Hutchinson built and supervised operation of the American studios at Santa Barbara, California. Crawford Livingston, Wall Street banker and patron of the arts, became interested in financing the Mutual corporations and enlisted the assistance of Otto Kahn, of Kuhn, Loeb and Company, Wall Street bankers.
William Fox was the first movie man successfully to embrace in one organization all branches of the industry. If trust officials did not foresee the future importance of Fox, other men had confidence in his ability and backed him with their money. The first was a group of capitalists in Newark, New Jersey, prominent among whom was John F. Dryden, president of the Prudential Life Insurance Company; but although Fox obtained the support of capital the voting-power of Fox corporations always remained in his own hands.
Universal, starting business life as a cooperative or mutual organization of exhibitors, exchanges, and manufacturers, soon became a sprawling, quarrelsome democracy, its owners dissipating their energies fighting among themselves. It possessed, however, along with its squabbles, a faculty of clever showmanship, and Universal films were successfully made and distributed despite all the hubbub of the internal rows. When Laemmle bought out Powers and his other partners, he followed William Fox in creating an unlimited monarchy, with himself as king and Robert Cochrane as prime minister. Laemmle established his