The latter decades of the nineteenth century saw great industrial expansion in America, achieved in no small measure by men of business acumen, men with a vision of the future. If money was being made by two or three or four relatively small businesses competing with one another, how much more could be amassed if these businesses were combined into one, thus eliminating competition! So these years became a period of mergers—mergers of men, money, and materials. Huge industries created huge fortunes, and a few men acquired wealth and power. That the theatre could escape the trend of such mergers was as unlikely as a flood in Death Valley. Oil had its Rockefeller, steel its Carnegie, railroading its Harriman, Vanderbilt, Gould and Hill, finance its Morgan and Cooke, the meat industry its Armour-and the theatre its Klaw and Erlanger.