The year 1904 was one of peculiar perplexity and vexation for Belasco—of incessant strenuous labor and (as I deem) of most malicious harassment which might well have broken both his health and his spirit had he not been sustained by vital enthusiasm and a steadfast, invincible will. In that year he had not only to bear the heavy expense of producing “Sweet Kitty Bellairs,” together with the loss and anxieties incident to theatrical management amid generally disturbed business conditions and the distraction and annoyance of Miss Montagu’s monstrous lawsuit, but, also, he had to provide new plays and new productions for Mrs. Carter and for Warfield, to make his plans for the future of Blanche Bates, and to encounter at last the open and unrestricted animosity of the Theatrical Syndicate. “I am,” Belasco has truly said about himself (1903), “a patient and peaceful man: I don’t want to fight with anybody. I want to attend to my business in my own way—to do my work unmolested and to interfere with nobody. But neither will I permit anybody to interfere with me, or to dictate to me, if I am able to resist.” And speaking of Belasco’s course in theatrical management, his general representative, B. F. Roeder, publicly declared at about the same time (June, 1903): “Mr. Belasco’s policy will remain exactly what it has always been. He will be independent of all factions and [will] place his companies wherever he can get the best terms and time.” Such a policy, indisputably right as it is, was not one which the Theatrical Syndicate would brook, and it soon brought that oppressive monopoly into direct and open conflict with Belasco in the conduct of his business. Foreseeing an immense popular interest in the World’s Fair (Louisiana Purchase Exposition) at St. Louis, in 1904, Belasco resolved that his superb production of “The Darling of the Gods” should concurrently be presented there. He felt great and wholly natural and frank pride in that production: he knew that he could not much longer hold together the company acting in it, and he desired that as many persons as possible should see his tragedy to the best advantage. When, however, he applied to the Syndicate booking agency, presided over by Mr. A. L. Erlanger, to arrange for an engagement in St. Louis, during “the Fair,” he was informed that it could not be done. He thereupon instructed his own booking agent, an experienced manager, William G. Smyth, to arrange for presentment of “The Darling of the Gods” at an independent theatre there, the Imperial, and his order was at once obeyed. It is not worth while to relate in detail the story of the attempt to coerce Belasco into cancelling that engagement: it is enough to state that (as he told me at the time) when it had proved impossible to intimidate him the uncouth Erlanger destroyed the contracts previously executed through his agency, between Belasco and theatre managers in various cities,—and, in profane and insulting language, sent him notice that he could not thereafter present his productions in any Syndicate theatre.