non-artistic promoters to produce something that can be dressed up with
sufficient attractiveness to draw the public’s money. But even
plagiarism requires a little brains mixed with it, and when the rush of
demand overwhelms the available brains, the lack is covered up by an
elaborate covering of sensualism.
Men who are on the inside of the popular song business, and certain
court records, all testify to the exact truth of these statements.
“But how do the Jews do it?” is a question often asked. The answer is,
not public demand, nor artistic merit, nor musical ingenuity, nor poetic
worth—no; the answer is simple salesmanship. The public doesn’t choose,
the public simply takes what is persistently thrust upon it. It is a
system impossible to any other race but the Jews, for there is no other
race that centers its whole interest on the sale. There is no other race
that makes so startling a choice in favor of “getting” money to the
exclusion of “making” money. Who for a moment would think seriously of
using the terms “production” and “service” with reference to popular
songs or motion pictures? Motion pictures in their higher reaches might
have some claim on those terms—not the typical Jewish pictures, however;
but the modern crop of popular songs, never! The terms “production” and
“service” do not belong to the popular song industry at all, but the
term “salesmanship” does, as the reader will presently see. It is well
to remember that where there is only “salesmanship” without the other
two qualities, the public is always the sufferer.
“Popularity,” when interpreted by the Jews who manufacture jazz for the
United States, means “familiarity,” that’s all. The theory is that a
song need not possess merit as regards words or music to be successful.
_It can be “popularized” artificially by constant repetition_, until it
becomes familiarized to the public ear, and thus familiarized it becomes
“successful.”
The principle is expressed in the words of the song, “Everybody’s Doin’
It.” You go to the theater and hear a song. Next day at lunch the café
singer is singing the same song. Blaring phonographs used for
advertising purposes blat out the same song at you as you pass on the
street. You walk past an afternoon band concert in the park—the band is
playing the same song. If you are a normal person you have a feeling
that perhaps something has been going on in the world while you were
engaged with your own affairs. The song—you say to yourself frankly—is
silly and the music trivial; but you keep your opinion a secret,
because, after all, “everybody’s singin’ it.” Not long after you find
yourself humming it. You go home, and your daughter is “practicing up”
on the piece. It yells its way through your home and through your
neighborhood and through your city and through your state until in sheer
disgust, and in one day, the people pitch it bodily out-of-doors. But,
behold, another song is waiting to take its place—a song fresh from
Yiddish Tin Pan Alley. And the agony is repeated. _This occurs from 30
to 50 times a year._
That is the principle—repeat it until it becomes familiar; that gives it
the veneer of popularity.
Now, there is a method by which all this is done. Nothing “happens.” It
is like the “mob risings” which have been practiced in some of our
cities—there is always a well-organized center that knows the technology
of riot and knows exactly what it is doing. There is a way of making
“revolution” as common and as familiar a thought as the movies and
popular songs have made “vamps” and “harems” and “hooch” and “Hula
Hula.” The principle is the same—constant repetition for the purpose of
familiarization.
More than one tune has been deliberately rejected by the public, has not
been “liked,” but the song-tinkers did not allow that little fact to
intimidate them; they simply hammered it into the ears and memories of
the public, knowing that “familiarization” was obtainable some time.
“Whispering,” for example, did not catch on for a long time. Long ago it
used to be known as “Johnnie’s Melody” because John Schoenberger wrote
it—but finally it was driven home to its present popularity. There is
this to say about it, it is far more deserving of its popularity than is
98 per cent of the so-called “popular” music.
Having the principle, then, that _any song can be popularized by
constant repetition_, the Yiddish music purveyors go about their
business very systematically.
The song is procured—by what means, it is not always possible to say.
Perhaps one of the “staff” originates a catchy tune, or a girl who plays
the church organ in a distant village sends in a pretty little melody.
The girl’s melody is, of course, sent back as unsuitable, but if it
really had a heart of melody in it, a copy is kept and “adapted.” In
such ways are “ideas” procured.
Then there are plenty of Jewish musical comedies and vaudeville teams. A
study of the vaudeville and musical comedy business will show it to be
as distinctively Yiddish as are the movies and the popular song
industry. So, the Jewish song publisher makes an arrangement with the
Jewish manager of the musical comedy show. This arrangement provides
that one or more of the song publisher’s songs should be sung several
times at every performance, in response to the applause and encores of a
professional song boosters’ claque which is always on hand for such
purposes. This claque is paid for just as any other service might be
paid for.
The night comes. The song is sung. Persistent applause. Sung again. More
applause. Apparently the song is a “hit.” As the audience files out the
lobby is echoing with the cries of Yiddish song vendors proclaiming the
song of the evening to be “the big hit of the season,” hundreds of
copies being sold in the meanwhile.
That is the usual Broadway introduction.
The next step is to capture the “provinces”—the musical comedies and
vaudeville acts playing within 100 miles of the metropolitan centers.
Actors called “song pluggers” are engaged. The arrangement with them is
that they will sing a particular song exclusively—give no other song a
chance. The public pays to hear the actor sing; the manager pays to have
him sing; the song publisher pays him to sing a certain song.
From theater to theater, from company to company, from artist to artist,
the publishers’ agents wend their way, making what terms they can to
single artists, vaudeville teams or comedy companies for boosting a new
song by giving it prominent place in the program.
There are also the “stag entertainers,” the young men who go about to
“parties” of one kind or another, offering amusement to the guests. This
is a class of entertainers known only to the rich, but numerous enough.
For instance, when the Prince of Wales toured America he was accompanied
by a young man nicknamed “Rosie,” of whose racial origin there need be
no doubt. “Rosie” played the piano and by songs and antics beguiled the
tedium of the royal journey. Well, young men of “Rosie’s” sort are quite
useful in advertising to select circles the latest product of the
Yiddish song factories and they are, of course, regularly utilized for
that purpose.
Orchestras, especially those of restaurants and dance halls, are worked
in the same way.
Get as many people singing and playing introductory renditions as you
can: that is the method of gaining an _artificial popularity by constant
repetition_.
The chances are that the song you are humming today is being hummed by
you simply because you have perforce heard it so often that it beats
unconsciously within your brain.
These methods are subject to variation, of course. There was a great
deal of “cutting” until the right Hebrew group survived, and then there
was a great deal of “trust” method adopted. The Music Publishers’
Association was organized by “Sime” Silberman and Maurice Goodman, and
now all the Jewish song manufacturers are included in it. The
organization has not changed any of the methods before used but has
curtailed the expense. Moreover, it has served to relieve the public to
this extent, that, instead of clinging to the one song paid for until
the public positively gags on it, the vaudeville or movie performers now
sing impartially the various songs of the various publishers forming the
trust. More variety has been introduced, that is all. The same old
commercialization continues.
As readers of the studies of Jewish theatrical control, which appeared
in this paper, will readily understand, the Jewish control of the
popular song field means that all non-Jews are barred out. It would be
next to impossible for the song of a non-Jew, however meritorious, to
reach the public by the usual channels. The musical magazines, the
musical critics, the musical managers, the music publishers, the
music-hall owners, the majority of the performers are not only all Jews,
but are Jews consciously banded together to keep out all others.
The dishonest methods practiced by the Yiddish controllers of this field
have been such as to move the _Billboard_, the leading vaudeville
publication, to refuse to print advertisements calling for song poems.
Perhaps the reader has seen such advertisements, suggesting that someone
has a tune or a song-poem that will probably make a fortune if only sent
to an address on Broadway or in the region of Tin Pan Alley. The
_Billboard_ says:
“No More Song Poem Ads Accepted.
“After investigating the business methods practiced by some Song
Poem advertisers, the _Billboard_ believes it to be to the best
interest of its readers to eliminate the heading, ‘Music and Words’
under which Song Poem advertisements appeared, and hereafter, or
until existing conditions are changed, the _Billboard_ will not
accept any more Song Poem advertising from any concern or
person....”
Everywhere the “popular song” has been attacked by keen observers of
social tendencies—but the attack has not been made intelligently. No
public menace like this can be abolished without showing the public the
source of it. Newspapers are now beginning to attack “jazz,” “the
vicious movies,” “the disgraceful dance.” Others attack the young folk
who sing jazz, the people who patronize the objectionable movies, the
throngs who indulge in indecent dancing. But all the time a small group
of men are deliberately and systematically forcing jazz and movies and
dances upon the country, spending hundreds of thousands in the effort
and reaping millions of profits.
If these men were non-Jews, a multitude of fingers would be pointed
toward them in identification and denunciation.
Because these men are Jews, they are allowed to go free.
You will stop these abuses when you point out the Jewish group behind
them!
People sometimes say, “Well, if you went after any other nationality,
you could find just as much fault as with the Jews.” Is there any other
nationality on which you can fasten the responsibility for vile movies?
Is there any other on which you can fasten the responsibility for the
illicit liquor traffic? Has any other nationality control of the
theater? In the beginning action against the popular song trust, could
the United States find anyone to indict besides Jewish song publishers,
and could the United States Government lay less than 80 per cent of song
control to one New York group alone?
If these things were not strictly Jewish in their origin, method and
purpose, how could such statements be made?
Jews say, “Clean up among the Gentiles first, and then turn attention to
us.” Will the Jews charge Gentile control of movies, popular songs,
horse-racing, baseball gambling, theaters, the illicit liquor
traffic—will the Jews charge Gentile predominance in any line recognized
by moralists today as dangerously menacing the public welfare?
The question is too big to be explained by prejudice. The facts are too
challenging to be thrust aside as universal. It is a Jewish question,
made such by a series of Jewish facts.
Not content with hedging life about on every side, from the gold that is
used in business to the grain that is used in bread, Jewish influence
enters your parlor and determines what you shall sing at your piano or
hear upon your music reproducing machine. If you could put a tag marked
“Jewish” on every part of your life that is Jew-controlled, you would be
astonished at the showing.
——
Issue of August 13, 1921.
XLIX.
Jewish Hot-Beds of Bolshevism in the U.S.
Bolshevism is working in the United States through precisely the same
channels it used in Russia and through the same agents—Revolutionary and
Predatory Unionism, as distinct from Business and Uplift Unionism, and
Jewish agitators. When Martens, the so-called Soviet ambassador, “left”
the United States after being deported, he appointed as the
representative of Bolshevik sovietism in the United States one Charles
Recht, a Jew, a lawyer by profession, who maintained an office in New
York. This office is the rendezvous of all the Jewish union leaders in
New York, some of the labor leaders throughout the country, and
occasionally of one or two American government officials known to be
henchmen of Jewish aspirations in the United States and sympathizers
with predatory radicalism.
The situation in New York is important because from that center lines of
authority and action radiate to all the cities of the United States. New
York is the laboratory in which the emissaries of the revolution learn
their lesson, and their knowledge is being daily increased by the
counsel and experience of traveling delegates straight out of Russia.
The American does not realize that all the public disturbances of which
he reads are not mere sudden outbreaks, but the deliberately planned
movements of leaders who know exactly what they are doing. Mobs are
methodical; there is always an intelligent core which gets done under
the appearance of excitement what had been planned beforehand. Up
through the German revolution, up through the French revolution, up
through the Russian revolution came the previously chosen men, and to
this day in all three countries the groups thus raised to power have not
lessened their hold—and they are Jewish groups, Russia is not more
Jew-controlled than is France; and Germany, with all her so-called
anti-Semitism, tries in vain to loosen the grip of Judah from her
throat.
It is this fact of prepared disorder which makes the New York situation
of interest today, because its lines of influence and authority reach
everywhere throughout the country.
For that reason, and before showing how the Jewish organizations advance
Bolshevism and revolution in the United States, the first step will be
to describe the condition and extent of the Hebrew labor movement.
Most New Yorkers remember the “Save Fifth Avenue” movement. That avenue,
from Fourteenth to Thirty-fourth street, with sections of Broadway, is
historic ground. It is wrought into the history of America in a
peculiarly intimate way. A little more than 15 years ago it contained
the homes of the older families, the establishments of famous
publishers, the stores of art dealers, and the famous shopping center.
It was a district known throughout the United States as typifying
American substance and good taste.
But presently, Americans who thought they were secure in their own city,
were aware of an advancing shadow. A subtle atmosphere of deterioration
became evident. In the top lofts of buildings, sweatshops had been
installed, which noon and night poured into the streets an alien
stream—not a glad, hopeful-eyed immigrant rejoicing to be in America and
at work, but something darker.
It was the Russian and Polish Jew. He swarmed into this district, the
most typically American of any outside of Boston and Philadelphia, from
the first. Nowhere else would the sweatshops go except in the very heart
of Goy respectability. There were protests and organizations; Jews were
appealed to in the name of the city; they smiled and promised, but like
a tide coming in, the invasion swept farther and stronger every week.
New Yorkers hesitated to go down into the district to trade, and
merchants lost their business. Real estate values dropped in
consequence, the Jews bought valuable properties at low figures.
Today, at noontime, Fifth Avenue is packed from wall to curb with dark,
squat figures in masses of thousands. They parade in dense throngs and
make the street impassable. They make a strange, un-American atmosphere,
Slavonic with some Oriental admixture. Their tongue is alien, their
attitude is one of sullenness mingled with a sense of power. You leave
the New York of American meaning whenever you approach that alien
throng. They have taken over the district as completely as if they had
invaded it with the bayonet.
All this would be very hopeful, of course, if we could take and sustain
the attitude of the unsophisticated young reader of fiction, and regard
these people as “new Americans.” There is a mass of moving stories
(mostly written by Jews, by the way) pretending to describe the glowing
hearts with which these throngs look out upon America, their intense
longing to be American, their love of our people and our institutions.
Most unfortunately, the actions of these people and the utterances of
their leaders give the lie to this fair picture which, as Americans, we
would fain believe. The resistance offered to Americanization,
consisting in the limitations put upon the Americanization program, has
been sufficient to convince all observers that, so far as the Jewish
invasion is concerned, it is not their desire to go the way America is
going, but to influence America to go the way they are going. They talk
a great deal of what they bring to America, hardly anything at all of
what they found here. America is presented to them as a big piece of
putty to be molded as they desire, not as a benign mother who is able
and willing to make these aliens to be like her own children. The
doctrine that the United States is nothing definite as yet, that it is
only a free-for-all opportunity to make it what you will, is one of the
most distinctive of Jewish political teachings. If it be provincialism
to insist that our alien guests become American and cease their
endeavors to make America something alien, then there are hundreds of
thousands of Americans to plead guilty to provincialism.
“The Melting Pot,” a term to which Mr. Zangwill gave currency, is not a
very dignified name for our Republic, but aside from that, it is being
more and more challenged as descriptive of the process that goes on
here. There are some substances in the pot that will not melt. But more
significant still, there are rapidly increasing interests _who want to
melt the pot_.
So far as Fifth Avenue was concerned, it was the pot that melted. At
least, not the most intrepid Jewish leader will shout much about the
American characteristics of the most conspicuous Jewish colony in the
world, that of New York.
The lofty buildings in this district are filled with clothing workshops,
of which the Jew has a monopoly in the United States. Coatmakers,
pantmakers, buttonhole workers, ladies’ garment workers, these men are
engaged in the “needle trades” in which adult men of no other race
participate.
Why the tendency of the Jew to the “needle trades”? It is explained by
his aversion to manual labor, his abhorrence of agricultural life, and
his desire to arrange his own affairs. Arriving in the city of his
destination, the Jew would rather not leave it except for other cities.
There is one Hebrew society whose charter would indicate that its work
is the placing of Jews in the rural districts, but it does next to
nothing in this respect. On the other hand, there is testimony that city
colonization goes on apace. Widespread Jewish associations are on the
lookout for likely towns in which to settle a few Jews, who in time
become a larger colony, and in a little longer time run the place. There
is nothing haphazard about it. The Jew is not an adventurer, he does not
cut himself off from his base, but all his movements are made under
consultation and direction. New York is the great training school in
which the newly arrived immigrant receives his instructions as to the
method of handling the American goyim.
Thus, preferring any kind of a life in the city, and not taking to the
trades which involve much bodily effort, the Jew gravitates to the
needle, not in the capacity of a creative artist, as is the commercial
tailor, but in the production of quantities of ready-to-wear goods.
Aside from the “white collar quality of the job,” the “needle trades”
appeal to the Jew because at such work he can practically arrange his
own hours. For this reason, the Jew generally prefers piece work to day
work, domestic industries to factories—he can arrange his own time. Many
people wonder how the Jews of New York have so much time for
revolutionary consultation, parades, meetings, demonstrations,
restaurant debates and radical authorship. No other class of working
people can get the time; other people work pretty steadily. The
explanation is at hand: extreme Socialism and Bolshevism have a great
deal of “time off.”
Trotsky, the present head of Russia, lived that way in New York. His
main arrangement was for leisure to work up his scheme. All the East
Side leaders knew that Trotsky was to “take the Czar’s job,” even though
he never had an extra dollar to spend. There was nothing haphazard about
it. It was prearranged, and the appointed men went directly to their
preappointed places. The East Side has other rulers ready now, and they
live in the midst of the revolutionary “needle trades.”
One point that should not be overlooked in all this, of course, is that
the “needle trades” being exclusively Jewish, all their abuses are
Jewish too. This is said for the benefit of those apologists for Russian
Bolshevism who explain that the reason for it all is the way the poor
“Russian” was treated in America. If Americans will ever learn to
remember that the Russian is not a Jew, and that Bolshevism is not
Russian but Jewish, and if in addition to that the American will ever
learn to remember that every Russian-Jewish laborer in New York comes
into contact with a Russian-Jewish employer, and every Russian Jew
tenant pays his exorbitant rent to a Russian Jew landlord, it will then
be clear that once more has the United States been made to bear a
slander that does not belong to it.
It may be well to remember also that it was on account of these Russian
and Polish Jews, while they yet resided in Russia, that the United
States broke off her trade treaty with that country—broke off with the
Russia that was a country and a government before America was
discovered; and, having by that act contributed to the Jewish throttle
on Russia through Germany, it is now proposed that the United States, on
account of these same Jews, enter into trade agreements with the present
Russian tyranny. Verily, the diplomacy of Judah has come very near
determining our foreign policy. If they were strong enough, in spite of
President Taft’s refusal, to make us break with Russia, they may also be
strong enough to make us shake hands with Bolshevism.
The Jewish trade union is exclusively Jewish for the reason that the
trades affected are exclusively Jewish. That is, the Jewish trade union
is not an American trade union, it is not a mixed trade union, it is
Jewish. Like all other Jewish activities the purpose of the trade union
is to advance Jewish interests alone. These unions are one aspect of
United Israel.
This should be borne in mind with reference to the widespread strikes in
the clothing trade and the rapid increase in the price of clothing to
the 99,000,000 non-Jews in the United States. In spite of all the
strikes, the profits advanced enormously; it may be said that the
strikes were essential to the advance of profits; and the country as a
whole paid.