of the source of disease. The source is in the Yiddish group of song manufacturers who control the whole output and who are responsible for the whole matter from poetry to profits.
Next to the moral indictment against the so-called “popular” song is the indictment that it is not popular. Everybody hears it, perhaps the majority sing it; it makes its way from coast to coast; it is flung into the people’s minds at every movie and from every stage; it is advertised in flaring posters; phonograph records shriek it forth day and night, dance orchestras seem enamored of it, player pianos roll it out by the yard. And by sheer dint of repetition and suggestion the song catches on—as a burr thistle catches on; until it is displaced by another. There is no spontaneous popularity.
It is a mere mechanical drumming on the minds of the public. There is often not a single atom of sentiment or spiritual appeal in the whole loudly trumpeted “success”; men and women, boys and girls have simply taken to humming words and tunes which they cannot escape, night or day.