One of the longest struggles in U.S. labor history last week came to an end. Sergei Koussevitzky's superb Boston Symphony, only surviving major non-union orchestra in the U.S., finally knuckled under to Boss James Caesar Petrillo's Federation of Musicians.
Ever since it was founded in 1881 by aristocratic, union-hating Major Henry Lee Higginson, the Boston Symphony had rebuffed all efforts at unionization. A strike over the issue in 1920 was quelled by the management at great expense to U.S. symphonic music when some 31 strikers left. Conductor Koussevitzky managed to rebuild the orchestra...
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