A.F. of M. Campaign

A. F. of M. Campaign

More than 1,000 people crowded into Manhattan's Hotel Astor last week to attend a banquet in honor of a Chiropractor. Otto Hermann Kahn, financier and music patron, lauded the Chiropractor. So did William Green, president of the American Federation of Labor. So did dapper James John Walker, mayor and candidate for mayor of New York City. Finally the Chiropractor himself arose and talked about ''the mechanization of the art." To the art of kneading and pummeling spines he did not refer, but to the art of Music. For the speaker was Joseph N. Weber, who, even more skillfully than he twitches human vertebrae, controls the commercial backbone of U. S. music as president of the American Federation of Musicians.

The banquet celebrated Mr. Weber's election as eighth vice president and executive councilman of the American Federation of Labor. Among the celebrants were printers, upholsterers, teamsters, longshoremen, actors, men who play the oboe, others who play the market. Mr. Weber had news to impart about the ousting of cinema theatre orchestras by the "talkies," which constitutes Organized Music's most pressing problem (TIME, May 27 et seq.).

The number of musicians so ousted numbers only 7,000, instead of the 35,000 estimated earlier. Diminishing receipts have impelled several theatres to re-engage their orchestras. The Federation of Musicians is fighting its battle by a propaganda campaign to persuade the public that "canned" orchestras are never as clear, never as rich as orchestras "in person," that for Music's sweet sake no mechanical device should be permitted to intervene between ear and instrument.*

* Nevertheless, the A. F. of M. heartily approved the formation in Manhattan last week of Judson Radio Program Corp., an organization of six orchestras, small and large, serious and syncopated, which absorbed 200 jobless to play into the public ear via mechanical radio.