and rather strict judge. Judge Landis was one of the few judges who did
not quail before Chicago meat packers and Jewish bootleggers. Judge
Landis always went the limit on the numerous cases of Jewish business
crookedness that came before him—“blue sky” investment companies, and
the like. He was at least one judge who tried Jew and Gentile alike and
whose impartiality and fearless righteousness no one doubted.
Judge Landis was a rather uncomfortable man to have on the bench in
Chicago.
Moreover he was a comparatively poor man. The United States pays its
judges only $7,500 a year. That is less than $150 a week, comparatively
little on which to live as a Federal judge must live. Yet Judge Landis
lived in a modest house and within his income. And no one ever dared
tamper with him. An honest judge on the bench, a frugal man outside.
And he was a fan!
Now, while Ban Johnson was doing his best for baseball, and while Judge
Landis was seeing a game as often as his duties permitted, certain
others were viewing the situation. One of them was Alfred S. Austrian,
the Jewish lawyer referred to in the last article, attorney for several
ball clubs, friend of Replogle and Lasker, attorney for Rothstein the
gambler and several others. Barney Dreyfuss, the Jewish owner of the
Pittsburgh Club, was on the trail of Johnson, on persistent enmity. The
Jewish coterie in Chicago and the Jewish influence throughout American
baseball looked at Johnson and they looked at Judge Landis.
Then the great idea broke! If at one stroke they could rid baseball of
Johnson and rid the bench of Landis, what a good job that would be.
Both these men were dangerous to Jews—not that they intended to be, not
that they were consciously so—and it would be desirable to remove both
from the spheres of their activity.
Then it was that the Jew lawyer, Austrian, came forth with the “Lasker
Plan,” named for his Jewish friend Lasker, member of the American Jewish
Committee, head of Lord & Thomas (Gentile names) and Chairman of the
United States Shipping Board.
The “Lasker Plan” proposed that the National Commission with Ban Johnson
be superseded by a one man government, that one man to be selected from
outside both leagues.
The proposal was not an immediate success. Even the National League was
in no hurry to obey this suggestion against Johnson. Indeed, there was
so much hesitancy on the part of the Nationals in which the Jewish
colleagues expected to find their best support, that the trump card was
played.
What was that trump card? It is said to be the secret testimony of the
grand jury before which Ban Johnson was glad to appear as a witness to
tell the jury everything it would need for a proper prosecution of its
inquiry, and before which Alfred S. Austrian also appeared to save some
of his clients from the consequences of such testimony. The report is
that Austrian was able to reproduce at the National League meeting the
secret testimony which Ban Johnson had given before the grand jury, and
by that means swing the Nationals against Johnson and in favor of the
“Lasker Plan,” because in the grand jury room Johnson told the truth
about certain elements in baseball, which was held to reflect on
National League members. What those elements are may be gathered from a
survey of the people who were interested in “getting” Johnson. Johnson
is anything but anti-Semitic. He probably has never stopped to think
about such a thing. He has never been known to attack Jews as Jews. But
he has stood for straight baseball, and for so standing he has won the
enmity of the Jews in baseball. These facts are sufficient to justify a
conclusion.
So, with Johnson left to head only the American League and not both
leagues, the next task was to select the new autocrat of baseball. Not a
commission this time, but one man! With all his power, Johnson was never
more than one of a commission; but the “Lasker Plan” disposes of such
safeguards and leaves the whole authority in one man’s hands. It will be
interesting to see who becomes the second incumbent of that office, if
indeed the “Lasker Plan” lasts long enough to warrant a second autocrat.
Gentle reader, do you suppose for a moment that the Jews who opposed
Johnson did not know who the new leader would be? Ah, well they knew! He
was to be a man outside both leagues. And he was to be a man whom the
Jews would just as soon have off the bench as on it. He was, indeed,
none other than Judge Landis, who can be trusted to see through a trick
as far as any other living man.
Of course, he would accept a $42,500 job, he who was receiving only
$7,500 a year! And, of course, he would resign from the bench!—thus the
coterie reasoned.
They trooped over to the court to interview the judge. They made so much
commotion on their entry that the gavel was banged for order. The
interview was held. Judge Landis agreed to accept. This news was widely
heralded. The judge tied them down to a seven-year contract. It was
assumed in all the interviews in all the newspapers that the judge would
resign. It was assumed he would devote the rest of his life to baseball.
The baseball magnates signed up under the “Lasker Plan” put across by
Austrian.
Judge Landis also signed.
And then he remained on the bench!
The reader no doubt remembers how quickly enthusiasm for Judge Landis
died down in certain quarters; remembers, too, no doubt, that _a fight
was started immediately afterward in the United States Congress to force
Judge Landis off the bench_—not to make him give up the dictatorship of
baseball, but to make him quit the bench.
And be this said: in spite of all the collusion and conspiracy and
trickery, of which Judge Landis was the unconscious object, baseball
fell into the hands of a man who will be just as jealous for its good
name as Ban Johnson was. The Austrian-Lasker-Dreyfuss plan has so far
failed. And Judge Landis has rendered several decisions which show that
on the bench or off the bench he has the same shrewd eye for the
detection of a fallacy.
Judge Landis is safeguarded by a seven-year contract. He is free to be
absolutely fearless and fair. What his accession means to baseball will
be anxiously awaited.
Judge Landis is probably not empowered to stop the steady falling of
baseball clubs into Jewish hands, and if this cannot be stopped, his
position as supreme dictator becomes little better than that of a police
court judge settling disputes relating to the rules and offenses against
them. The peril of baseball goes deeper than that.
A few years ago the owners of the American League entered into a
gentleman’s agreement not to sell their holdings at any time without
first consulting all the other owners. The name of a prospective
purchaser was to be submitted and considered, and the deal was to wait
upon the approval of all the owners in the league.
In the face of that fact many people wonder how Harry Frazee became
owner of the Boston American club. It is very simply explained: the
agreement was not observed in Boston’s case, and thus another club was
placed under the smothering influences of the “chosen race.” The story
is worth telling:
Frazee, like so many of his kind, was in the “show business,” a manager
of burlesque companies. Then he saw a chance in sport. In partnership
with Jack Curley, another Jew, he put on the notoriously crooked fight
between Jack Johnson and Jess Willard at Havana. Curley has been the
principal influence in killing wrestling, by precisely the kind of
Jewish policy here described.
Jack Johnson, the Negro, was a fugitive from justice, yet he was
champion prize fighter of the world. He was spending money like a wild
sailor, and his funds were running low. He was getting into precisely
the condition where Jews like to find a man, to use him. Unable to fight
in the United States, but still possessing the championship, he was in
need of a way out. At this time Frazee and Curley made a proposition to
Johnson, said to involve the sum of $35,000, if he would “lay down”
before Jess Willard. And thus Jess Willard, “probably the worst fighter
that ever held a title,” was made world champion. Frazee and Curley then
exhibited Willard on the stage and in circuses, and drew rich dividends.
The crooked fight at Havana did not involve Willard, he was too poor a
fighter to need “fixing.” Only Johnson had to be “fixed” not to knock
Willard out, which he could easily have done. But between the time when
Curley and Frazee gave Willard the title, and the time when Dempsey took
it away from him, the Jewish syndicate made a very rich killing out of
the gullible American public.
But Curley is not the subject here, he deserves a separate story. Frazee
concerns this article because he became owner of the Boston baseball
team. He bought a new show—the Boston club, in the best baseball city of
the American League. John J. Lannin, former owner, was a real baseball
man, so much so indeed that the excitement of the games told on his
health and it became necessary for him to relieve himself of the strain.
Frazee was waiting to cut in, and whether Lannin feared that the
proposal of Frazee’s name to the American League would result in
disapproval, or whether Frazee himself, knowing it, contrived to make it
worth while that the agreement between the American League owners should
be ignored, remains an open question.
However that may be, the American League woke up one morning to find the
little burlesque manager and promoter of a crooked prize fight in their
midst. It was a sad shock to the dignity of “the cleanest sport.”
What could they do about it? Nothing. Frazee had bought and paid for
what he held.
Baseball was about as much of a sport to Frazee as selling tickets to a
merry-go-round would be. He wanted to put his team across as if they
were May Watson’s girly girly burlesquers. Baseball was to be “promoted”
as Jewish managers promote Coney Island.
The American League owners rebelled, but let them rebel! What could they
do about it?
Frazee began his next inside work almost immediately. Ban Johnson was
unalterably opposed to the Frazee idea of sport, and Frazee set out to
“get” Johnson. A split occurred in the American League, with Frazee, Til
Huston and Jake Ruppert of the New York Club, and Charles A. Comiskey
and Grabiner, of the Chicago Club, on one side against Johnson, and the
other American owners comprising the other party supporting Johnson.
Frazee got money out of Chicago—the home of Lasker, Austrian, Replogle
and Grabiner—to put through his Boston deal. A bank loaned him a quarter
of a million dollars—one of Frazee’s friends was a director of the bank.
Frazee’s friend died and Frazee had difficulty with the bank about
remaking the notes. He finally was enabled to pay $125,000. Frazee
secured this money from the New York American Club by selling “Babe”
Ruth. Thus the New York and the Boston clubs have become financially
interwoven. Boston is referred to as “New York’s farm” in baseball
circles.
In the meantime, the fans of Boston feel toward Frazee as the fans of
Chicago feel toward Grabiner. The “class” of Boston no longer flows
through the gates. The attendance at Boston park is smaller than at any
other time in the last 15 years.
Now, it is unlikely that Judge Landis could tackle that question. Has he
power, or lacking power, has he daring enough to assume power to drive
the peril away from the ownership and fringes of baseball? It is
probably not his field, but it pertains to the future character of
baseball.
The Chicago American League Club is the most recent to attract the
desire of Jewish capital. The Ascher brothers of that city have offered
$1,500,000 for the club franchise. The Ascher brothers comprise a Jewish
family, Max, Nathan and Harry, who conduct a string of motion picture
theaters in Chicago. They have erected their own theatrical circuit.
Like Frazee, they wish to add baseball to their string of “show
businesses,” and are willing to pay the price. At the time of this
writing, their offer has not been turned down.
But a significant development—and in Chicago also—is the announcements
made by the Chicago _Tribune_ that it will curtail the space heretofore
devoted to baseball on its sport pages. This, more than anything which
has occurred, indicates the new scrutiny with which the game is being
viewed. For a long time many observers have wondered where the “sport”
was found in sitting on a bleacher watching a few men earn their
salaries. Hours thus spent in a ball park “do not take anything off the
waistline of the spectators nor add anything to chest measurement,” says
the _Tribune_; “the majority of spectators get only eye and mouth
exercise.” “Journalism has overfed it with space,” the _Tribune_ rightly
says, referring to professional baseball. In ruining baseball and
securing control, the Jews may be just in time to take a loss. Better no
baseball than every park an afternoon midway filled with the alien and
Red elements of the country.
There is, however, a baseball duty devolving upon the police of every
city, and that is the abolition of the Jew-controlled baseball pool.
Gambling has grown up round the “cleanest game” to the extent of
$20,000,000 a year. It flourishes in 150 cities in the country, and in
many small towns. The “boobs,” of course, are mostly non-Jews, the
owners and profit-takers are Jews. It is as much a part of the national
network of the Jewish gambling fraternity as are booze-running and
horse-racing. The baseball pool runs more openly than the “books”
because the very name “baseball” has seemed to give it the protection of
“the cleanest sport.” However, it has turned cigar-stores, barber shops,
pool rooms, near-beer saloons, and newspaper stands into agencies for
the national and international Jewish gambling forces. The bettor is
entirely at the mercy of the managers of these pools.
These dishonest money-collecting devices are in violation of the law
everywhere. The police could put them out of business easily if they
should decide to give their attention to it. And thereby they would be
taking the hands of a most undesirable alien class out of the pockets of
the American people.
If baseball is to be saved, and there are those who seriously doubt it
ever can be restored, the remedy is plain. The disease is caused by the
Jewish characteristic which spoils everything by ruthless commercial
exploitation. The disease may be too far gone for any cure. There are
those who, like the Chicago _Tribune_, deny that professional baseball
ever was a sport, and who are glad that Jewish exploiters, like
scavengers, have come along to reduce it to garbage. But there is no
doubt anywhere, among either friends or critics of baseball, that the
root cause of the present condition is due to Jewish influence.
——
Issue of September 10, 1921.
XLVII.
Jewish Jazz Becomes Our National Music
About a year ago the following article appeared in the New York _Times_,
a newspaper that has never been accused of anti-Semitism, and whose
proprietor is one of the best-known Jews in the United States:
“Irving Berlin, Leo Feist and other officers of seven music
publishing corporations in this city were charged with violating the
Sherman anti-trust law in an equity suit begun yesterday in the
Federal District Court by the United States Government. The
defendants, it was alleged, controlled 80 per cent of the available
copyrighted songs used by manufacturers of phonographs, player piano
rolls and other musical reproducing instruments, and fixed prices at
which the records or rolls were to be sold to the public....
“The corporations involved in the action were the Consolidated Music
Corporation, 144 West Thirty-seventh street; Irving Berlin, Inc.,
1567 Broadway; Leo Feist, Inc., 231 West Fortieth street; T. B.
Harms, Francis, Day and Hunter, Inc., 62 West Forty-fifth street;
Shapiro, Bernstein & Company, 218 West Forty-seventh street;
Watterson, Berlin & Snyder, Inc., 1571 Broadway, and M. Witmark &
Sons, Inc., 144 West Thirty-seventh street.
“The agreement which the government seeks to dissolve is alleged to
provide that the defendants would make contracts only through the
Consolidated Music Corporation which they had organized....”
Many people have wondered whence come the waves upon waves of musical
slush that invade decent parlors and set the young people of this
generation imitating the drivel of morons. A clue to the answer is in
the above clipping. _Popular Music is a Jewish monopoly._ Jazz is a
Jewish creation. The mush, the slush, the sly suggestion, the abandoned
sensuousness of sliding notes, are of Jewish origin.
Monkey talk, jungle squeals, grunts and squeaks and gasps suggestive of
cave love are camouflaged by a few feverish notes and admitted to homes
where the thing itself, unaided by the piano, would be stamped out in
horror. Girls and boys a little while ago were inquiring who paid Mrs.
Rip Van Winkle’s rent while Mr. Rip Van Winkle was away. In decent
parlors the fluttering music sheets disclosed expressions taken directly
from the cesspools of modern capitals, to be made the daily slang, the
thoughtlessly hummed remarks of high school boys and girls.
The United States Government alleged, in the above complaint, that 80
per cent of these popular songs was under the control of the seven
Jewish houses named above; and the other 20 per cent controlled by other
Jewish music houses not included in that special group.
It is rather surprising, is it not, that whichever way you turn to trace
the harmful streams of influence that flow through society, you come
upon a group of Jews? In baseball corruption—a group of Jews. In
exploitative finance—a group of Jews. In theatrical degeneracy—a group
of Jews. In liquor propaganda—a group of Jews. In control of national
war policies—a group of Jews. Absolutely dominating the wireless
communications of the world—a group of Jews. In the menace of the
Movies—a group of Jews. In control of the Press through business and
financial pressure—a group of Jews. War profiteers, 80 per cent of
them—Jews. Organizers of active opposition to Christian laws and
customs—Jews. And now, in this miasma of so-called popular music, which
combines weak-mindedness with every suggestion of lewdness—again Jews.
The Jewish influence on American music is, without doubt, regarded as
serious by those who know anything about it. Not only is there a growing
protest against the Judaization of our few great orchestras, but there
is a strong reaction from the racial collusion which fills the concert
stage and popular platform with Jewish artists to the exclusion of all
others.
The American people have been urged and chided and shamed into the
beginning of a rather generous popular support of music in this country,
and the first thing they see for their money is that Jewish artists
supplant the non-Jewish artists, and use the prestige of their
membership in symphony orchestras to work various small business schemes
of their own. If they were superior artists, nothing against it could be
said, but they are not superior artists; they are only better known and
racially favored in Jewish musical circles.
That, however, is a big subject. It will receive attention in its turn.
Just now it is the “popular song” that is being considered. However, as
something which true lovers and knowers of music may meditate upon in
view of future studies of Jewish influence in music, this observation is
offered (the italics are ours):
“_Meanwhile the Oriental, especially the Jewish, injection in our
music_, seemingly less widespread than the German was or the French
is, _may prove even more virulent_. Those not temperamentally immune
to it catch it less severely, like Mr. Leo Ornstein; and if they
ever throw it off, as he has given some signs of doing, seem to be
left devoid of energy and, as it were, permanently anemic.
“_The insidiousness of the Jewish menace to our artistic integrity_
is due partly to the speciousness, the superficial charm and
persuasiveness of Hebrew art, its brilliance, its violently
juxtaposed extremes of passion, its poignant eroticism and
pessimism, and partly to the fact that the strain in us which might
make head against it, the deepest, most fundamental strain perhaps
in our mixed nature, is diluted and confused by a hundred other
tendencies.
“The _Anglo-Saxon group of qualities_, the Anglo-Saxon point of
view, even though they are so thoroughly disguised, in a people
descended from every race, that we easily forget them, and it is not
safe to predicate them of any individual American, _are nevertheless
the vital nucleus of the American temper_. _And the Jewish
domination of our music_, even more than the Teutonic and the
Gallic, _threatens to submerge and stultify them at every point_.”
“Let me make a nation’s songs and I care not who makes the laws,” said
one; in this country the Jews have had a very large hand in making both.
It is the purpose of this and the succeeding article to put Americans in
full possession of the truth concerning the moron music which they
habitually hum and sing and shout day by day, and if possible to help
them to see the invisible Jewish baton which is waved above them for
financial and propaganda purposes.
Just as the American stage and the American motion picture have fallen
under the influence and control of the Jews and their art-destroying
commercialism, so the business of handling “popular songs” has become a
Yiddish industry.
Its leaders are for the most part Russian-born Jews, some of whom have
personal pasts which are just as unsavory as THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT
has shown the pasts of certain Jewish theatrical and movie leaders to
be.
The country does not sing what it likes, but what the vaudeville “song
pluggers” popularize by repeated renditions on the stage, until the
flabby mind of the “ten-twent’-thirt’” audiences begin to repeat it on
the streets. These “song pluggers” are the paid agents of the Yiddish
song agencies. Money, and not merit, dominates the spread of the moron
music which is styled “Jewish Jazz.” Of the business details, however,
more later.
Tin Pan Alley, so-called because it constitutes a group of “song shops,”
is populated by the “Abies” and “Izzies” and “Moes” who make up the
composing staffs of the various institutions.
In this business of making the people’s songs, the Jews have shown, as
usual, no originality but very much adaptability—which is a charitable
term used to cover plagiarism, which in its turn politely covers the
crime of mental pocket-picking. The Jews do not create; they take what
others have done, give it a clever twist, and exploit it. They have
bought up all the old hymn books, opera scores and collections of folk
songs, and if you stop to analyze some of the biggest “hits” of the
Yiddish song manufacturers, you will find they are woven on the motif
and the melody of the clean songs of the last generation; the music
jazzed a little, the sentiment sensualized very much, and set upon their
smutty road, across the country.
Because of absolute Jewish control of the song market, both in
publishing and in theatrical performance, it is next to impossible for
anything but a Jewish song to be published in the United States or, if
published, to get a hearing. The proof of this is in the fact that the
Yiddish trust owns the business and the so-called “song hits” all bear
Jewish names.