ten cents. He confined his advertising, as he always had done, to posters in front of the theater. The first day the Royal played to one paid spectator. When the lone customer was leaving the theater, Loew stopped him, told him that the performance was a dress rehearsal, that the box office had taken his money by mistake, and offered to refund the dime. The second day the gross jumped to twelve dollars, the third it went to seventeen dollars, where it might have stayed had the business agent of the stage hands' union not called with an ultimation. He demanded that Loew put a crew of five union men on the stage instanter, although the house was playing pictures only. Loew, who had no more experience with unions than he had with advertising, opened his books to the business agent, even offered to sell the union a half interest and let it run the stage, but the agent was not interested in hard-luck stories and left with a warning.
Two days later a regiment of sandwich men appeared on the streets of the Borough Hall district of Brooklyn each carrying the placard:
Loew's Royal Theater
Is Unfair to Union Labor
Do Not Patronize It
[144]
