JULY 1925
THE UNITED AMERICAN
the work, if anything, has deteriorated. On this point
the public is generally quite in accord with the em
ployer for after all the public pays for the products
or the services marketed by the employer of labor
and has a concern in its quality.
There can be no question that there is need of a
return to the principle of “an honest day’s work for
an honest day’s pay.” Any person who takes wages
without an effort to give adequate return should not
profess to consider himself in the class of honest men.
MUSIC AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP
'T'HE MAN who begins and ends his day with a song
1 is the man who does his work well, who never
complains and who always finds time to give you a
lift when you need it. Where the song is in the air,
there is no place for gloom or grief, cross words or
sorrow.
The children of America should be taught how to
sing. For fear that the song is neglected in the home
it should become a part of our child training program.
In every public school in our land the children should
learn to sing, learn the laws of harmony and learn to
distinguish beauty in music.
“The essential purpose of public school music
is the same as that of any other education subject
—the making of good citizens. There is no one
who is not musical.”
The above statement is credited to Osbourne
McConathy, speaking before the annual convention of
the National Music Merchants’ Association at Chicago,
early in July. Scanning this educator’s speech we
find the following two paragraphs in support of
musical education in the public school:
My statement that everybody is musical is based upon
this broad conception of the elements of music, for musical
rhythm is the idealization of our heart beats, melody is
essentially an idealization of those qualities of the voice by
which, entirely apart from the articulation of words, we can
understand the feelings, emotions and thoughts that are actu
ating other people. Harmony is an artistic expression, of
our. social relations.
Unfortunately an old idea prevails that music is a frill
and a fad £nd not a real part of education, and is not an
important thing in’ the life of the average boy and girl.
As a matter of fact, however, the public schools have come
to look upon music as a real educational subject; the school
music teacher is awakening an interest in all forms of musical
expression among the children, and this interest must inevitably
carry over into the home and the community.
Such is the value of training the child’s rhythmic
faculties, creating appreciation, understanding and the
ability to develop its musical talents to a point of
individual expression.
CASHING IN ON OLD MODELS
UISTORY-MAKING models of inventions of every
type and description, dating back to the days of
Abraham Lincoln and numbering into the thousands,
are now to be disposed of by the United States Patent
Office. Those of historic or other value will be
preserved, and the rest, unless previously applied for,
may be destroyed or sold.
From the first days of the Patent Office until 1880
the law required that all applicants for patents must
Fage Eleven
submit a model of the invention with the application.
As a result, 155,000 models or more have accumulated,
including those of such outstanding inventions as the
Bell telephone, the Howe sewing machine, Abraham
Lincoln device for lifting vessels over shoals in the
Mississippi, and many others. It is estimated that
it has cost the Government $200,000 to take care of
this collection since 1884. As some of these models are
obsolete and of no practical value it certainly is good
business to destroy a great deal of such junk and rid
the government of another item of needless expense.
NEW MUSIC TO COME FROM AMERICA
DROMINENT musicians in America contend that
1
the musical genius of recent generations of Europe
is no longer in evidence, while on the other hand the
musical genius of America is forging ahead and gain
ing recognition to an extent that is giving definite
promise of an American musical era.
In support of this contention one may quote a
number of leading artists, among others Nikolai Soko-
loff, conductor of the Cleveland orchestra who has
been abroad in search of new works and recently
returned from London where he conducted the London
Symphony Orchestra in two concerts. Speaking of
this noticeable change he is quoted saying:
European composers seem to have become suddenly inarticu
late. For more than a year not a single worth-while score
has come from the pens of even the most prolific composers.
I searched in vain in music publishing houses and I asked
a number of composers, but again with no results. Even
Stravinsky, usually a dynamo of musical expression, seems
to have gone suddenly ‘dead.’ There is positively no creative
work to be found on the market in Europe today. There
may be some hidden somewhere, but no one seems to know
the hiding place. Of course, such periods of stagnation come
in creative work, but, strangely enough, Americans have
been forging ahead and any worth-while new works this
year will come from American composers.
Several big orchestral works by American com
posers are now being finished in America and will be
published within a short time.
Musical appreciation is more general in America
than in any other country. Eventually the appreciative
people develops its own genius through which it reflects
its own moods and tenses. The quaint American folk
melodies will furnish as rich a background for classical
arrangements, suitable for symphony and orchestral
work, as the quaint folk melodies of any European
country ever did, whenever the American genius,
equal to the'task, emerges.
AMERICA’S DECREASE IN FARM POPULATION
TF THE statistics emanating from the Department
of Agriculture are correct, recent figures from this
branch of our government reveal that the farm popula
tion of the United States decreased last year approxi
mately 182,000. The rural population on January first
numbered 31,134,000 as compared with 31,316,000, said
to have been the figure for the previous year.
The statistics show varied movements. New Eng
land and the South Atlantic States experienced net
increases of farm population, while the other divisions
show losses, with the Mountain States leading in the
decline.
Thus, while 2,075,000 persons left the farms last