"The One with the Dough"

The pudgy face of James Caesar Petrillo* was wreathed in smiles. The boss of A.F. of L. Musicians' Union strode through his big office high in Manhattan's General Electric Building, sat down to thumb happily through a neat nine-page contract. His guests--officers of the nation's record companies--were glum.

Boss Petrillo handed out copies of the contract, containing the terms under which his 138,000 members will condescend to make their first records for the U.S. public since August 1942. Representatives of Decca (half of all U.S. records) meekly signed. The rest departed for further study But with the united front broken, they had little choice.

Petrillo chuckled. A newsman asked which paragraph of the contract he liked best. Said he, always explicit: "The one with the dough."

Thus Boss Petrillo won complete victory in the boycott he has enforced against new recordings--despite an anti-trust suit, pleas by OWI Director Elmer Davis and a Senate investigation--for 14 months. The "dough" was royalties ranging from 1/4-c- to 5-c-, a tribute which Decca will pay into the union treasury for every record it sells. If all record companies sign, the union will receive about $500,000 a year, perhaps as much as $3,000,000 a year when the wartime shellac shortage ends.

The money will go into a fund to pay unemployed musicians union rates for giving free concerts. Like all union affairs, it will be administered exclusively by Mr. Petrillo--who also now has the right to examine Decca's books to make sure he is not being gypped. Thus Petrillo gains the greatest power over management ever reached by a U.S. union leader.

Petrillo's loyal members considered the victory no more than their just due. Many a citizen thought otherwise. Editorialized the New York Times:

"It need hardly be pointed out how dangerous the precedent here established would be. Under it Mr. Petrillo levies a private tax on employers. . . . There is no public control whatever of the manner in which he uses these funds. . . . If the bulk of them are used to increase the salary or expense accounts of Mr. Petrillo and other union leaders, neither the record companies nor the consuming public will have anything to say about the matter. . . ."

First record made by Decca under the new contract: Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters in Pistol Packin' Mama.

* Not to be confused with his younger brother, Caesar James Petrillo, of Chicago, leader of a CBS dance band.

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