Better All the Time

A lot of things had happened in the 16 months since James Caesar Petrillo last negotiated a big union contract. Congress had sent the President a bill calculated to curb his "coercive practices" in radio. Walter Reuther, John L. Lewis and other labor leaders had stolen his tricks or invented new ones. Were others taking James Caesar's place? Did the booing bother him? Last week in Manhattan, representatives of eight major motion-picture studios got the answer: Petrillo was improving all the time.

Caesar's demands were clear and simple. He merely wanted studios to give musicians a 100% salary increase, thus guaranteeing an annual salary of $10,400 for a ten-hour week. He also wanted them to hire 720 musicians instead of the 235 regularly employed under the terms of his old contract. If a sound track was transferred from 35 mm. film to 16 mm. film, the musicians were to be paid all over again.

There were other minor points. If any man had to bring more than one instrument or more than one suit of clothes to the job, he was to get 30% more pay. No musicians were to record more than two minutes in any hour. Pay of arrangers, copyists, librarians and other technicians was to be doubled.

The producers reached for aspirin, and did some figuring. They groaned that Petrillo wanted a 1,200% increase. The new demands, they cried, would raise the cost of motion-picture music by $15,000,000. Blandly Caesar demurred. The cost, he said, would increase by only $12,000,000.

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