There is another point to consider. These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy--I was born in this town--in front of every house in the summer evenings you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or the old songs. To-day you hear these infernal machines going night and day. [Laughter.] We will not have a vocal chord left. [Laughter.] The vocal chords will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape. The vocal chords will go because no one will have a chance to sing, the phonograph supplying a mechanical imitation of the voice, accompaniment, and effort.
On this river, when I was a young man, we went out boating and the music of young voices filled the air.
Last summer and the summer before I was in one of the biggest yacht harbors of the world, and I did not hear a voice the whole summer. Every yacht had a gramophone, a phonograph, an æolian, or something of the kind. They were playing Sousa marches, and that was all right, as to the artistic side of it [laughter], but they were not paying for them, and, furthermore, they were not helping the technical development of music. Go to the men that manufacture the instruments that are nearest the people--the banjo, the guitar, and the mandolin--and every one of them will tell you that the sale of those instruments has fallen off greatly. You can not develop music without these instruments, the country singing school, and the country brass band. Music develops from the people, the "folk songs," and if you do not make the people executants, you make them depend on the machines.
Mr. CURRIER. Since the time you speak of, when they used to be singing in the streets----
Mr. SOUSA. Well, Mr. Currier, I am 50 years old----
Mr. CURRIER. I was just going to ask you: Since that time, the law has been passed to protect the authors of musical compositions, which would prohibit that. Is not that so?
Mr. SOUSA. No, sir; you could always do it.
Mr. CURRIER. Any public performance is prohibited, is it not, by that law?
Mr. SOUSA. You would not call that a public performance.
Mr. CURRIER. But any public performance is prohibited by the law of 1897?