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I went to work for John Cort at the Standard Theatre for $15.00 a week and thought that I had a good salary at that time.

In 1880 Beede built the Madison Street Theatre and put in a stock company and offered me $20.00 a week to go up there. I told Mr. Cort that I had a better offer and he raised my salary to $20.00 a week.

In 1892 they built the Seattle Theatre. With the Seattle, the Madison, which was afterward changed to Cordaroy's and then the Third Avenue, The Standard and several variety theatres, Seattle looked like a regular show town.

When the Seattle Theatre opened in 1892, W.A. Clark or Bill Clark as we called him came over from Tacoma and took charge of the stage on a regular salary and employed a big bunch of grips at 75 cents a show. The propertymen got $2.00 a day and thought that was good. As big shows started to come along quite often they carried carpenters and propertymen that carried union cards form New York or Chicago and they were quite a curiosity to us. Eventually more and more men came with cards and then we began to inquire about starting a union. With the information that we gathered from road men and communicating with George W. Glenny, General Secretary of the National Alliance, as it was called then, we decided to try and get enough men together and apply for a charter. The managers heard that we were going to start a union and they did all they could to discourage us, but we were determined and succeeded in getting some members form Tacoma to sign up with us.