JEWISH JAZZ BECOMES OUR NATIONAL MUSIC 73
even so, the best way to abolish the illicit traffic is to identify the groups that carry it on.
The entire population of the United States could be turned into narcotic addicts if the same freedom was given the illicit narcotic ring as is now given the Yiddish popular song manufacturers. But in such a condition it would be stupid to attack the addicts; common sense would urge the exposure of the panderers. .
A dreadful narcotizing of moral modesty and the application of powerful aphrodisiacs have been involved in the present craze for popular songs—a stimulated craze. ,The victims are everywhere. But ministers, educators, reformers, parents, and publicspirited citizens are beginning to see the futility of scolding the young people thus diseased. Common sense dictates a cleaning out of the source of disease. The source is in the Yiddish group of song manufacturers who control the whole output and who are responsible for the whole matter from poetry to profits.
Next to the moral indictment against the so- called “popular” song is the indictment that it is not popular. Everybody hears it, perhaps the majority sing it; it makes its way from coast to coast; it is flung into the people’s minds at every movie and from every stage; it is advertised in flaring posters; phonograph records shriek it forth day and night, dance orchestras seem enamored of it, player pianos roll it out by the yard. And by sheer dint of repetition and suggestion the song catches on—as a burr thistle catches on; until it is displaced by another. There is no spontaneous popularity.
It is a mere mechanical drumming on the minds of the public. There is often not a single atom of sentiment or spiritual appeal in the whole loudly trumpeted “success”; men and women, boys and girls have simply taken to humming words and tunes which they cannot escape, night or day.
The deadly anxiety of “keeping up with the times” drives the army of piano-owners to the music stores to see what)is “going”? now, and of course it
