A valuable look at the effect of the Great Depression on professional musicians, organized and unorganized, and the response to that emergency by labor, the arts community, and government.

‘Music and the Crisis’ by Ashley Pettis from New Masses. Vol. 10 No. 11. March 13, 1934.

PROBABLY no group has been harder hit by the economic catastrophe than the musical profession. Prior to the depression, tremendous inroads had been made in the ranks of professional musicians trained in the “classical” traditions by the advent of “jazz” and jazz players, whose musical accomplishment, from all previously conceived standards, was practically nil. Together with this change in the professional status of the musician, came the synchronization of sound and film, with the disappearance of orchestral players from the theatre. The coming of the depression completed the desolation of the musician. With the crisis came the suspension of bands and orchestras. The problem of the unemployed band and orchestra players was bad enough, but at least they had some semblance of organization in the Musicians’ Union, affiliated with the A.F. of L.

It was to have been expected that the Musicians’ Union would have been in a position, after all the years of its organization, to have adopted practical steps to care for the interests of those members who had been faithful during the years of prosperity. But because of gross mismanagement of the New York Local (802), the majority of whose governing board are appointed by Joseph N. Weber, “czar” of the American Federation of Musicians, and who have held office for thirteen years, the local union is found at this low ebb of the depression to be without funds, although it has had an income of approximately $2,500,000 in the last ten years. To obtain funds in addition to regular dues and entrance fees, to keep up an enormously ex- pensive “swivel-chair” organization which by no means represents the interests or wishes of its members, the super-imposed governing board has levied a one percent tax upon the gross receipts of those working. Funds, supposedly for relief, have been used in many instances to pay dues of delinquent members into the exchequer of the union, for “operating expenses.” Very recently between two and three thousand members, hitherto in good standing, were dropped for non-payment of dues, in addition to a corresponding number dropped for the same reason in the past three years.

The local union (802) has had until the present time a dues-paying membership of 15,500 members. About 2,000 of these pursue other professions such as doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc., and continue to play their instruments as a side profession. Of the remainder, those depending solely upon the playing of their instruments for their livelihood, approximately 1,600 are working, at wages much lower than unskilled workers in other crafts.

With the crisis, the world of our so-independent musicians has collapsed. Attempts were made by the relief organizations to secure part time jobs for those in desperate straits, charitable relief has been given, so that they might prolong their misery until such time as the “prosperity,” lurking “just around the corner,” might appear.

To raise funds for the Musicians’ Emergency Aid of New York, series of concerts have been given by a huge orchestra in Madison Square Garden, with services contributed by Dr. Walter Damrosch and many distinguished artists of world reputation. The funds collected from other sources in addition to those raised by these concerts, have been handled and distributed by this emergency organization. The requests for relief have been so numerous that limitations have been imposed in the choice of recipients of these benefactions. Those not eligible for relief include: students of music, who may possess scholarships but not the wherewithal for living; young, unestablished professionals; members of the union (which is supposed to care for its own); musicians not residing in New York prior to 1929; and those unable to show “good and established” standing in their profession, either through documentary evidence, known standing, or by qualifying before an examining board. The fact that the “Emergency Aid” has assisted between 3,000 and 4,000 cases, in the face of a vast number of applicants who could not be helped, shows to some extent the tremendous need among musicians of New York City alone, the corresponding figures for other parts of the United States not being available. This relief is, of course, of the most temporary, passing nature, and has been in the form of payments for rent, food, medical and dental care, as well as the reclaiming of instruments from pawn, etc. In addition, the Emergency Aid has given 4,570 engagements in settlements, hospitals, etc., 219 concerts employing non-union solo artists and 20,000 days’ work to union musicians. It is undeniable that in many instances, people in affluent circumstances have taken advantage of the fact that musical services during the depression were procurable through a charitable organization, and that these services frequently have been secured for as low a figure as $5 an engagement, although the regular prevailing rate for such services, when procured through the union, has been $14.

Realizing the hopelessness of the condition of some applying for emergency relief, many have been referred to the Readjustment Service Bureau, which endeavors to woo musicians from their profession and train them for new and different work for which there is greater demand.

Every attempt to unearth statistical data in connection with the state of the musical profession in New York City (national statistics being uncompiled) brings to light new and convincing data relative to the woeful state of the profession. For instance, New York University, this year, reduced the salaries of its music department 50 percent, dismissed some teachers, and at the vastly reduced rate increased the teaching hours of the remaining instructors!

Of 11,000 music supervisors in the public schools of the United States working in 1931, 4,800 are reported unemployed in 1933.

The C.W.A., taking over the work of the State relief organization, including the Civic Orchestra, has employed about 450 orchestral players, at very low salaries, in emergency work; in addition to about 100 teachers of music, giving instruction to “adults and children among the unemployed.”

The data quoted herein seem to be quite complete as far as charitable relief is concerned, but the picture of the actual unemployment, distress and starvation among musicians is by no means exhaustive-only a small part is presented.

What the Musicians’ Emergency Aid of New York and other temporary relief organizations have accomplished is merely what one may expect of relief organizations; the exigency is prolonged to such an extent that there is serious danger of the complete disappearance of a large group in our cultural lite, which should be of the utmost and permanent value, and which is not recognized officially by the government. Since, at all times, the welfare of the musician has been largely dependent upon the “patronage” and “benefactions” of the upper strata of society, he is not recognized officially or unofficially as a worker. An official of the N.R.A., upon being asked what, if anything, has been done for the musician, responded: “Nothing!–very sorry–has been done in that very special branch.” Hence not even the N.R.A. attempts to alleviate the distress of the musician. He is not a worker! He cannot, generally speaking, qualify as an intellectual. He is a member of a group unrecognized, without definite plan, abandoned in the midst of its own unsolved and insoluble problems, by the rich who have made possible his existence with their patronage. The government which is “creating a new social order” does not consider him sufficiently important for a code. The musician is a man without a country!

In this period when concert courses throughout America have disappeared, or have been so curtailed in size as to be reduced to an absurdity, the music schools have continued to induce people to become artists for careers for which no demand exists. Not only have they done this upon payment of tuition, but they have even given extensively of partial and complete scholarships to encourage the production of concert “careerists” and teachers with degrees who, when they finally graduate, if among the fortunate ones, succeed–not in their chosen profession into which they have been misled–but at the cosmetic counter at Macy’s or a position of even lesser importance.

Some have hailed the concerts at Madison Square Garden, which have been attended by vast numbers, at popular prices, seldom or never seen at other concerts, as evidence of the masses of the people turning, as a result of “increased leisure” and a “newly awakened interest in culture,” to music. From this manifestation of an interest in “higher” things by the “common” people, as well as from such new developments as popular-priced opera at the Hippodrome, it was predicted a new musical life would evolve! Music was to be on a new basis, the needy musicians would be absorbed in the demands of vast, popular musical enterprises! With the prolongation of the economic crisis, it became evident that these signs of a new evaluation of music in the lives of the masses were not to materialize. The popular interest in these musical offerings was, as a matter of fact, merely indicative of the hunger of the musically uninformed masses for a taste of the best in music. Did they receive that for which they hungered? They flocked to Madison Square Garden, which, considering its vast size, has remarkably good acoustics, to sit and gaze upon world celebrities; but at no time were they enabled. to hear or grasp the complete effect or significance of the musical offerings. The value of the unemployed musicians playing in the orchestra upon these occasions, and the addition of funds to the Musicians’ Emergency Relief, are not to be gainsaid or minimized; nor the interest awakened in new forces for more and better music; yet these concerts offered no permanent solution of the needs of musicians, prolonged far beyond an “emergency,” nor for a revaluation and organization of music for the cultural development of the masses.

Opera at the Hippodrome, while attracting large crowds at popular prices, was not sufficiently high in standard, in spite of appearances of some first rate artists, to constitute anything more than another example of dropping some crumbs of culture in the laps of the masses, for whom anything was good enough, since they possessed no criteria of judgment! With the approach of the Metropolitan Opera season, the popular-priced Hippodrome closed, having gained no root firm enough to continue in the face of New York’s (and America’s) only “permanent” opera. It is not to be regretted that these permanent musical values, only capable of coping with the exigency of a moment, should be short-lived.

In the midst of changes in our musical life and the condition and lives of musicians and of everyone directly or indirectly connected with the musical profession, it is to be expected that attempts should be made to reorganize music upon a different basis. Hence the growth of activities of the Pierre Degeyter Club, with its Composers’ Collective under the direction of that splendid musicologist Charles Louis Seager, which, although practically in its inception, is doing splendid work in the development of composers, proletarian, embryonic and otherwise, into a working force which may, eventually, assume the guidance of American music. The Workers’ Music League, through various activities culminating in a yearly Olympiad, is also doing noble work in the reorganization of the bases of musical development in this country, and above all, in imbuing the masses with a concept of music as a necessity in their lives, both as auditors and participants.

The New Masses was the continuation of Workers Monthly which began publishing in 1924 as a merger of the ‘Liberator’, the Trade Union Educational League magazine ‘Labor Herald’, and Friends of Soviet Russia’s monthly ‘Soviet Russia Pictorial’ as an explicitly Communist Party publication, but drawing in a wide range of contributors and sympathizers. In 1927 Workers Monthly ceased and The New Masses began. A major left cultural magazine of the late 1920s and early 1940s, the early editors of The New Masses included Hugo Gellert, John F. Sloan, Max Eastman, Mike Gold, and Joseph Freeman. Writers included William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Dorothy Parker, Dorothy Day, John Breecher, Langston Hughes, Eugene O’Neill, Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway. Artists included Hugo Gellert, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson, Wanda Gag, William Gropper and Otto Soglow. Over time, the New Masses became narrower politically and the articles more commentary than comment. However, particularly in it first years, New Masses was the epitome of the era’s finest revolutionary cultural and artistic traditions.

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