’When the gift was made there was much discussion among the citizens as to the advisability of accepting it as well as to the propriety of the city’s ownership of a theater.  This latter doubt was set at rest when people realized that the city had already a hall for kindred purposes in the city hall.  As to the first question, it soon came to be recognized that such a theater could not but be of advantage to the city, though many felt it would involve too heavy a drain on the city’s financial resources, a fear which has never yet been realized.  Discussion was again started when a bill was before the state legislature, providing for the incorporation of the trustees, but the necessity for such a step was so evident that opposition died away.  For many years the academy has been taken as a matter of course and ranks as an important and desirable municipal institution.  No one now ever thinks of the objections formerly urged against it.

’Financially, the academy has about held its own.  Practically, it has done much better, for the City Council has insisted that all licenses—­fees for shows, amounting on the average to some $400 per annum—­be paid directly into the city treasury.  Still the academy is not run as a money-making institution, for the trustees strive to provide a liberal variety of entertainment and to have everything the best of its kind.  Occasionally they have brought to town some high-class attraction that was not likely even to pay expenses—­a venture in which few theaters can afford to engage.  At one time large profits were made from so-called “10, 20, 30-cent stock companies” that spent a week in town and gave two performances daily, but the class of patronage attracted by such shows is now supporting the new vaudeville theater and the moving picture houses.  So the academy is becoming more and more a purely first-class theater.

’One great difficulty with which the trustees have had to contend is how to steer a course between the Syndicate and the Shuberts.  The Syndicate refuses to book in a house open to other agencies, and the Shuberts can offer few but musical shows.  In fact, neither side seems prepared to supply enough attractions.  So altogether this matter seems at present almost hopeless of solution as long as the prevailing dearth of plays and actors and surfeit of theaters make it well-nigh impossible for one-night stands to fare well.  In practice both sides to the controversy have been tried and found wanting.’

This Northampton fact of the possession of a town theater tells us at once that the measure of financial support of a civic theater involved in the ownership of a theater building is the least vital and efficient step toward the end in view.  It is an effort that looks out for the mere shell.  It puts the town in the position of a benevolent landlord toward a real estate investment that happens to fall in the artistic class.  And such a class of investment requires further equipment to cope with the equipment