The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-09-04

March King, strikes from the shoulder at automatic music. He says, in part:
 sweeping across the country with the speed of a transient fashion in slang or Panama hats, political war cries or popular novels, comes now the mechanical device to sing for us song or play for us piano, in substitute for human skill, intelligence and soul.
 There are more pianos, violins, gui- tars, mandoline and banjos among the working classes of America than in all the rest of the world, and the presence or these Instruments in the homes has gwen employment to enormous num- pers of teachers who have patiently taught the children and inculcated a love for music throughout the various communities.
 Right here is the menace in ma chlnery music! The first rift in the ute has appeared. The cheaper of theselnstruments of the home are no longer being purchased as, formerly, and all because the automatic music devices are usurping their places.
 And what Is the result? The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard In the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow pro- cess Of acquiring technic, 1t will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with hlm host of vocal and instrumental teachers, Who will be without field or calling.
 A recent writer in the London Spec tator believes that the exclamation of the little boy who rushed into his mothers room with the appeal: 70, mamma, come into the drawing room; there Is man in there playing the pi ano with his hands, is far less extrav- asant than many similar excursions into the domain of humorous prophecy. He states from observation that music has been steadily declinink in Great Britain as factor in domestic life, and that the introduction of machine made music into the household is largely helping to assist in the change.
 Under such conditions the tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant. Singing will no longer be a fine accom- plishment; vocal exercises, so impor- tant a factor in the curriculum of | physical culture, will be out of vogue
 Then what of the national throat? Will it not weaken? What of the na- tional chest7 Will it not shrink? When mother can turn on the | phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery? The country band, with it's energet- ic renditions, it's oval support by local merchants, its benefit concerts, band l wagon uniforms, state tournaments and the attendant pride and gayety, is apparently doomed to vanish in the general assault on personality in mu- | si.. Tn the prospective scheme of me- chanleal music we shall see man and | maiden In light canoe under the sum- mer moon unpon an Adirondack lake with a gramaphone caroling love songs l from amidships The Spanish cavalier | must abandon his guitar and serenade his beloved with photograph under ! his arm,
 Shall we not expect that when the | nation Once more sounds its call to arms and the ballant regiment march, es forth, there will be no majestic drum major, no glittering array of brass, no rolling of drums? In their stead will be huge phonograph | mounted on a one hundred horse pow CT automobile, grinding out "The Girl l Left Behind Me- Dixie and The Stars and Stripes Forever
 How the soldiers sosons will swell at the thought that they are being led into the strife by machne And when in camp at night they are gath cred about the cheery fire, 1t will not | be:
 "'They sang of love, and not of fame, Forget was Britains glory
 Each heart recalled different name,
 But all sang Annie Laurie" l But 1t will be.
 'Whir-whir-w -whlr-song by the Bungtown Quartet; "Your Name Is | DenniS"'
 Shades of Alexander, of Washing ton, of Napoleon, of Wellington, of Grant, and of the other immortal he-