In Washington last summer, before a House Labor subcommittee, James Caesar Petrillo was asked if he thought that Thomas A. Edison had done a disservice to humanity by inventing the phonograph. "Not to humanity," piped Petrillo, "but to musicians."
Last week Caesar Petrillo, whose power over U.S. musicians extends from Toscanini to Harry James, decided that it was time to call a halt on the progress of Edison's handiwork. He ordered the 216,000 members of his American Federation of Musicians to stop making all recordings and radio transcriptions after Dec. 31. He was...
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