The Organized Musicians (Part I)

Abstract

Trade-unionism, which found little favor among most other white-collar employments until the period of the last depression, got a substantial start among those employed in the entertainment industry a half century earlier. One of the oldest and strongest of the labor unions in that industry is the American Federation of Musicians. Yet, despite its long and active history, little was known of this organization outside its own trade circles until very recently. The man in the street had never heard of the Federation, and standard treatises on labor relations, keyed to the factory pattern, gave it scant acknowledgment." Within the past few years, however, six congressional investigations and a considerable amount of other publicity have given us more information about the AFM-we now know that its President is James Caesar Petrillo, that he does not like phonograph records, and that the pundits of the press are quite uniformly agreed that his middle name is most appropriate. And on the basis of this information, many have reached the conclusion that Congress should "do something" about Petrillo and his organization.