Letters from readers (1-10-41)

The Pittsburgh Press (January 10, 1941)

ASCAP’s willingness to negotiate cited

Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:

I have read with a great deal of interest your editorial comment on the controversy which the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is having at the present time with the radio networks. It does seem that the broadcasters have definitely decided to continue with their plans to boycott the music of our members, and it seems as though no one can induce them to change their mind.

The Society has offered to meet with the representatives of the network industry at any place to negotiate and settle whatever differences there are, but all of these efforts so far have been to no avail. We still are willing to meet with them at anytime and any place to try to work out an amicable adjustment, so that the people of the country can again hear the music that they want.

WILLIAM J. O’BRIEN JR.
District Manager, American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers

War provides some music to her ears

Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:

Oh, Suzanna, Don’t You Cry For Me,” or for “Jeanie With the Light Brown Hair,” for “There I Go” with a “South American Rhumba” (blankety, blank, blank for the love of ASCAP and BMI). The English capture 25,000 Fascists. That’s music to our ears.

LEAH T. TURETS
4009 Beechwood Blvd.

United States entry into war opposed

Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:

Liberalism in the internal affairs of our nation, with a broad social betterment program, is something to gladden the heart and receive the approval of a large cross-section of our people. But to be liberal with America and her destiny, to hazard our national life, or to be wasteful with our young people’s lives and our national treasury receives the hard opposition of every true loyal and courageous American.

We Americans have no ties with any country outside the Western Hemisphere and can extend only sympathy beyond this limit. Our high standard of living, higher than that of any other nation on earth, has come from fancy into fact because we wisely followed the sober wisdom of George Washington and divorced ourselves from the hatreds and frequent “bloodbaths” of Europe. Our energies were not spent in the waste and sin of a foreign battlefield. We must not follow the precedent established in the war that is called “the First World War” and join in this struggle only to send each generation one after the other to their Armageddon.

We must not establish a new form of participation in Europe’s wars. We cannot accept the propagandist theory that a European war is our war, nor can we guarantee any warring nation that they are going to be victorious. To do so is the same as saying if you fall we will win the war for you. It is assuring them of our ultimate participation if need be that they may win. This new propaganda of material help through lease on gift will be the same avenue to war. If the side receiving our fullest moral and material aid does not make proper and successful use of it, then we must enter the conflict to save our face. To lease presupposes a return of the materials after a term of months or years. How could destroyed or captured war materials be returned? It could not. Then it would be a gift.

Labor creates wealth by forging raw materials into a finished and desirable product. War materials fall into this category. If we are to make a gift of war materials to a warring nation, because these materials are wealth produced by labor, and when they have passed from us, we have lost in real wealth. A loss in real wealth means a loss in wealth that would have passed to the labor that created it. To compensate for this loss in real wealth, we are asked to forgo luxuries – anything that ministers to comfort or pleasure, but is not necessary to life, health and subsistence, “a lean, ragged existence.”

We cannot indulge in war without paying the gods of war their due, therefore, America must return to the nationaistic spirit of our grandfathers and be truly again American. We must arm totally for our own defense and be plain Americans again.

DONALD P. BRAHM
Connellsville, PA

Praises letters opposing married women working

Editor, The Pittsburgh Press:

In your Jan. 4 issue, Justin Allison and Mrs. C. W. St. Clair have written good common sense letters regarding married women being employed at the same time their husbands are drawing good salaries or in businesses of their own, thus keeping needy people on relief.

I will say this is not the only way people are being kept out of much needed jobs. What about the ones who are in pension grabbing jobs and keeping some old fellow out of a living? Some men, who worked all their lives when there was no pension fund and saved a little, probably have modest homes. Others who are too old to work longer at their jobs are sitting around having to live with married sons or daughters who are struggling to keep roofs over their own heads.

How much better the old people would feel if they were able to get a part-time job probably in a hotel where they could eat a meal and have a few dollars at the end of the week. But no, some retired postal employee or policeman who had a chance while working to round up a nice job to get just as soon as he retires, is given this easy work.

I don’t put the blame entirely on the ones who take the jobs but why don’t the employers look into this problem?

L. E. KINZLER
1325 Orangewood Ave.

2 Likes