Variety (June 1911)

VARIETY 17 'SALARIES WILL NOT BE CUT," OFFICIA LLY SAY S V. M. P. A. Issues a Strong Statement Direct to the Actor. Ex- plains What the "Liberty" Being Agitated for Means to the Artist A strong statement was given out by the Vaudeville Managers' Protec- tive Association this week. It is ad- dressed directly to the vaudeville ac- tor, and is herewith printed in full: You have been threatened—but only by your own agitators—with a cut in salaries. If you are to believe them, this salary cut is to be a big one—a ruinous one—that will effect your earning powers seventy-five per cent. You are told through the paper that is supposed to represent your inter- ests and in the speeches of those who want to inflame you against the man- agers that salaries are to be slashed right and left. This is a lie—pure and simple. There has been no action taken to- wards cutting salaries and no such ac- tion is contemplated. Much stress is laid on the fact that the managers have an organization. So they have; but organization is noth- ing new among the managers. There has been a combination of managers for more than ten years and this com- bination of managers has done more to Improve the condition of the artist than any artists' organization that was ever formed. There have been times when strong competition arose and many of the artists profited by the in- creased demand for their services; but when this competition died out no at- tempt was made to cut the salaries of the performers. The artists them- selves know that this is so and that the agitator who declared in a public meeting in Chicago recently that sal- aries are to be cut seventy-five per cent deliberately lied; he made the statement knowing that he was lying and he intended, when he said it, to mislead you and to arouse your anger or your fears with that lie. The ab- surdity of such a statement is appar- ent to any of you who have been ac- tive in vaudeville for any length of time. When have salaries been as high as they are to-day, and when have condi- tions been so good for the artist? When in the past ten years have sal- aries been cut, whether there was com- petition or not? If all the managers in the world combined, or if the en- tire vaudeville business of the world «ould come under the control of one man, the market demand would reg- ulate the salaries; it would be impos- sible to reduce them. Performers know well that in the large booking offices where thousands of artists are booked each year, the artists make their own terms with the different managers, and they know this to be true in the face of the fact that these large booking offices are declared by the unionized actors' agitators in pub- lic speeches and by the organ of the White Rats to be preparing to cut your salaries seventy-five per cent. The thinking artist is protesting against the agitators who are using every false argument to inflame you. He knows that the agitator can never be of any benefit to the artist; he knows that he is, on the contrary, a menace to your business interests and to your future earning powers. Just remember that absolutely the only thing that can benefit the artist is the prosperity of the theatres, which must do business in order to meet obliga- tions and maintain the business from which the performers and managers se- cure their living. When that prosper- ity is destroyed or even seriously in- terfered with, the artists and mana- gers are going to meet with disaster. As long as the theatres are able to conduct their own business, the same prosperity for artist and manager that has existed for the past ten years will continue. Some of the artists of to- day have been through every condi- tion for the past twenty years. They know only too well where their pros- perity comes from, who pays them their salaries and where they have re- ceived proper treatment in every re- spect. Has the fact ever been told to you and told to you right that at the end of the Klaw & Erlanger vaudeville ex- perience the managers (East and West) paid over a million dollars of obligations on artists' contracts and there is not one case on record where there was litigation on account of the non-payment of those salaries? Most of you know that in order that those artists should not lose by the deal, every manager East and West loaded two and three extra acts on top of their regular bills in order to keep these contracts and so that the per- formers should not suffer. This fact is a good thing for artists to remem- ber when they are listening to the howls against the very men who were responsible for that fair treatment of contracts. What, then, is all this hurrah and racket about? "Give us an equitable contract," the shouters shout. Well, what is an equitable contract? Who has had occasion to question ninety- nine per cent of the contracts made by the large houses throughout the United States and Canada, and we say the large houses for the reason that about all the talk is against the "big time" managers. You, who are prosperous, beware of the agitator and the conditions he is striving to bring about, because at one other time in the history of vaudeville the savings of the artist dwindled to the point where prosperity gave way to poverty, and that can happen again —and through no fault of th e mana- gers. Ask your agitators where all this agitation is to lead you to. Ask him who is to benefit by antagonism to the theatre. Ask him what will be the result to you if the prosperous con- ditions that now exist are upset! Spread-eagle speeches generally get people into trouble and trouble is the only thing that Inflammatory talk ever procured for anybody. What do you think is one of the great reasons for the continued flood of immigration to this country from all foreign lands? Nothing less than the stories spread abroad that the streets of New York are lined with gold and all one has to do to share the riches of the new world is to buy a steamship ticket and com e here, but we who are here know different. No man ever came to this great and glo- rious country but who had to work and work hard at that for every dollar he got. Nobody hands you riches— you must strive for them yourself and you must work in accord with those whose interests are yours and whose prosperity you have shared and can continue to share, but not if you listen to the demagogues who are serving self interest rather than the interests of those whose paid advisers they are. Therefore, performers, think for yourselves, act for yourselves, preserve your independence and your future prosperity. THK MKAXINO OP ••LIBEKTY." There seems to be a little misun- derstanding of the word "liberty" by many among the members of the White Rats. A notable instanre of this is a hysterical letter passed and apparently approved by the editor of the organ of the Union Actor, in which tin* writer speaks of the White Hat organization as the vast army that is being formed to bring about your freedom and liberty which we so dearly love." If the fussy talk you read in The Player is for the cause of liberty, then the actors' understanding of the word liberty is different from the gen- erally accepted meaning. If the signs are read aright, the destruction of liberty is intended rather than the securing of liberty. At the present writing every artist has the liberty to work for any man- ager who pays him, and he is accus- tomed to take the liberty to himself of quitting work when it pleases him, without consulting the business in- terest of the manager. What he is now arguing for and evidently pre- paring to fight for is a curtailment of the artists' liberty; for instance, if he isn't a Union actor he must not work in any theatre in America that s not Unionized. If he be a Union actor, he must not work in a theatre that is not unionized. If he has an engage- ment that he is to be well paid for and his Union says he must, by or- der of his Union, walk out of the theatre because of a grievance of some other actor on the bill, he must forget his cry of "liberty"—and walk out. He will find himself hedged around in every direction by the kind of liberty which he is now shouting for, but which he will find to be the hardest kind of bondage. That is the queer understanding that most of the White Rat Union ac- tors have of their great cause. They are carried away by the spread eagle oratory of their agitators who con- found and confuse the lesser intelli- gences in their organization with high sounding talk about liberty in their efforts to keep the rank and file of the actor away from getting a common sense view of their relations with the managers, who give them their living. Under the proper circumstances "Give me Liberty or give me Death." is a good patriotic appeal, but when it is likely to be changed into "Give me Liberty and Give me Death," through the destruction of the busi- ness which gives you life, it is time for each individual to think for him- self before he is led into the error of antagonizing the men whose theatres must and will be kept open regardless of actors' affiliations/ When you are listening to the va- porings of those who are endeavoring to mislead you, Just ask yourselves why they do not attempt to refute the arguments so strongly put forth by J. C. Nugent, whose exceptionally strong letter set forth so ably both sides of the controversy. There has been a strange yet eloquent, silence on Nugent's arguments from those who claim to have the cause of the artist so much at heart. iMr. Nugent is a White Hat and an actor who thinks and who knows by experience the injury to the artists' interests that agitation such as is be- ing now carried on brings about.