About a year ago the following article appeared in the New York Times, a newspaper that has never been accused of anti-Semitism, and whose proprietor is one of the best-known Jews in the United States:
“Irving Berlin, Leo Feist and other officers of seven music publishing corporations in this city were charged with violating the Sherman anti-trust law in an equity suit begun yesterday in the Federal District Court by the United States Government. The defendants, it was alleged, controlled 80 per cent of the available copyrighted songs used by manufacturers of phonographs, player piano rolls and other musical reproducing instruments, and fixed prices at which the records or rolls were to be sold to the public....
“The corporations involved in the action were the Consolidated Music Corporation, 144 West Thirty-seventh street; Irving Berlin, Inc., 1567 Broadway; Leo Feist, Inc., 231 West Fortieth street; T. B. Harms, Francis, Day and Hunter, Inc., 62 West Forty-fifth street; Shapiro, Bernstein & Company, 218 West Forty-seventh street; Watterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc., 1571 Broadway, and M. Witmark & Sons, Inc., 144 West Thirty-seventh street.
“The agreement which the government seeks to dissolve is alleged to provide that the defendants would make contracts only through the Consolidated Music Corporation which they had organized....”
Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical slush that invade decent parlors and set the young people of this generation imitating the drivel of morons. A clue to the answer is in the