Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music 113

prices at which the records or rolls were to be sold to the public. The

corporations involved in the action W!!_re the Consolidated Music

Corporation; Irving Berlin, Inc.; Francis, Day and Hunter, Inc.; Shapiro,

Bernstein & Co.; Watterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc.; and M Witmark &

Sons, Inc. -all of New York. The agreement which the United States

Government sought to dissolve was alleged to provide that the defendants

would make contracts only through the Consolidated Music Corporation

which they had organized. The other 20% of the songs business was

controlled by other Jewish music houses not included in that special

group.

HOW THE JEWISH SONG TRUST

MAKES YOU SING

Jews did not create the popular song; they debased it. The time of the

entry of Jews into control of the popular ·song is the exact time when

the morality of popular songs began to decline. The "popular" song,

before it became a Jewish industry, was really popular. The people sang

it and had no reason to conceal it. The popular song today is often so

questionable a composition that performers with vestige of decency must

appraise their audience before they sing. Citizens of adult age will

remember the stages through which the popular song has passed during

recent decades. War songs persisted after the Civil War and were

gradually intermingled with songs of a later time, picturesque, romantic,

clean. The same and similar songs and ballads had a brief revival during

World War I. These were not the product of song-factories, but the

creations of individuals whose gifts were given natural expression. These

individuals did not work for combines of publishers but for the

satisfaction of their work, for individual artists of the music-hall stage.

There were no great fortunes made out of songs, but there were many

satisfactions in having pleased the public taste. The public taste, like

every other taste, craves what it is given most to feed upon. Public taste

is public habit. The public is blind to the source of that upon which it

lives, and it adjusts itself to the supply. Public taste is raised or lowered

as the quality its pabulum improves or degenerates.

In a quarter of a century, given all the avenues of publicity like

theater, movies, popular song, newspapers and radio-in the meantime