In saloons, roadhouses, poolrooms, drugstores throughout the U. S. are 300,000 coin-in-slot phonographs which play a record once for 5¢. Having sold 175,000 of these in the past three years, phonograph manufacturers estimate that the boom will continue for 18 months, during which they will market 100,000 more. Because a saloonkeeper with a record machine does not require the services of even a beery "professor" at a piano, Chicago Musicians' Boss James C. ("Mussolini") Petrillo, in order to manufacture work for musicians, forbade his unionists to make any more recordings (TIME, Jan. 4). And haggard President Joseph N. Weber of the...
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