PAGE 4 Tit‘e$lon« S3SWI FEBRUARY, 1957 VOICE OF FIRESTONE CONDUCTOR Good-Music Tastes Growing: Howard Barlow Miss Janet Woolley, daughter of Mrs. Lois Woolley, First Aid, has joined the Payroll Department. Miss Shelva McSwain is a new employee in the Shipping Department. Mr. and Mrs. Howard McCarter attended the wedding of their niece, Miss Shirley White, and George Wilson Bristol at the Grand View Baptist Church, Lenoir, N. C., last December 28. Mr. and Mrs. Carl James and son Bobby, visited relatives in Liberty, S. C., recently. Mr. and Mrs. Homer Hall have moved into their new home on West Seventh avenue. Miss Sue Shepard, Shipping, and family spent a recent week end in Columbia, S. C., visiting relatives. Shirley Bolding, plant guard, and Mrs. Lois Bolding recently at tended a football game in Charlotte, N. C., played as a benefit for a crippled children’s hospital operated by the Shriners. They were accompanied by Benny Robinson, John Smith and Steve Smith. Mr. and Mrs. M. H. Rowland of Marble, N. C., spent several weeks with Mrs. Lela Mitchell, warper tender, and Lonnie of the Twisting Department. Eslie Dills, spooler tender, was a patient at Gaston Memorial Hospital in January. Ed Meeks, yarn hauler, has returned to work after having been a patient at a local hospital. Hilary Smith of Akron, Ohio, joined his family in Gastonia for the^ recent holidays. Mrs. Smith (his wife Mildred), is a^warper tender here. Miss Billie Jean Wellmon, a student of the School of Nursing, Berksville, Va., spent the recent holidays with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Wellmon, Bessemer City. Mr. and Mrs. Harold Robinson and son Barry, spent the holi days visiting Mr. and Mrs. Robert Johnson in Draper, N, C. Fonzo Feemster of New York, spent the holidays with his uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt Rainey. Thelma Hardy, tie-in hand, underwent an operation recently. Mrs. Florence Stiles, respooler, had as a recent guest her sister, Claudie Chastine of Pickens, S. C. Ruth Carpenter, reclaimer, and her daughter and sbn visited in Atlanta, Ga., a few days ago. Mrs. Dorothy Baber, respooler, and husband Yates, visited friends in Lumberton, N. C., on a recent week end. Mr. and Mrs. Bill Tino and son, Travis visited with Mr. Tino’s sister, Margaret Robinson, respooler. Ruth Hardee, respooler, visited her son, Carson Hutchins at Fort Wayne, Ind. Hubert Taylor, tape man, and Mrs. Taylor visited their nephew, Delmer Taylor in Knoxville, Tenn. —More on page 5 Salary Has Its Origin In Salt Would you care to have your wages paid in salt? Once such was a common practice. In fact, the word salary had its origin in salt. Some ancient peoples believed salt to be most essential of the things required for support of human life. Thus, it was regarded as a rather valuable commodity. The Romans of long ago called it sal. History books reveal the interesting footnote that when a Roman soldier was dispatched to a foreign country, he was given—besides his regular pay—an allow ance of money for the purchase of salt. This they called his salarium —salt money. In some countries salt might be hard to find while in others, plentiful and easy to obtain. Because of this, the soldier’s salt money was not always the same amount. Came the days of Augustus, and salarium was applied simply to the money a military officer, governor of a province or a similar official was paid at intervals, in addition to his various supplies in kind. At the beginning of the Fourth Century, all connection with the original idea of “salt money” disappeared. Thus salarium, or salary got its present meaning: “Monetary payment at stated intervals.” Did someone say America is losing its taste for good music? Anyone living on a steady diet of outpourings from the juke boxes and disc jockeys might con clude that good music is losing ground rapidly. But we should remember that we have always had strange musical fads to contend with. Not too long ago it was bebop, boogie-woogie and the black bottom. Now it’s rock ’n roll. But it is my opinion that for genuine popu larity, the classics and light classics still are leading in public acceptance, and that by a com fortable margin. True, as conductor of The Voice of Firestone Orchestra, I have never been mobbed by bobby- soxers or threatened by rioting teenagers. But for what our listeners lack in violence, they more than make up in loyalty and mature interest. MUSICAL TASTES are changing, to be sure. But not for the worse. Even though it may seem like a rash statement to make in the face of all the current ballyhoo about frenzied young male singers, it is easy to point out that musical tastes are improving. There are fan letters. During the more than 28 years that The Voice of Firestone has been produced on radio and television, letters from listeners have been steadily increasing. About five years ago the Wall Street Journal published that Americans are buying more tickets to concerts than to baseball games. In the past 10 years, according to the Journal, concert au diences had doubled in size, and in the previous five years audiences had increased 30 per cent. An estimated 30 million people were attending concerts in 1951 and spending $45 million for tickets. Only $40 million was spent for pro fessional baseball games that year. And, too, take the sale of phonograph records. The individual profit on each disc sold is so small that it is necessary to sell a great many in order for a company to survive. LOOK AT CATALOGS of long-playing records. Over the past 10 years, dozens of small com panies recording only classics have come into existence. Since beginning publication in June, 1952, one such catalog, “The Long Player,” has tripled its pages listing classical records. Of its 30,000 releases listed in late 1956, about two- thirds were classical. Not long ago, the music lover had only three or four versions of Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite” from which to choose. Now there are around 26. There are 21 versions of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and 46 different collections of Johann Strauss waltzes. The 41 Mozart sym phonies are available in 162 different recordings. More Americans hear these symphonies each year than all the people who heard them during Mozart’s lifetime. Further proof of the increased popularity of classical music is in the large number of some what obscure composers now being offered to the public on records—men like Arriaga, Bala- kireff, Casella, Dittersdorf and Sweelinck. A record company interested in profits would not likely make the music of these little-known composers available if it didn’t believe a fairly large group of appreciative music lovers existed. THIS INCREASED interest in good music — v/hat accounts for it? Those who heretofore wouldn’t be caught dead in a concert hall are investing now in hi-fi equip ment and recordings of classics and light classics. Do you suppose the average hi-fi fan would go to all that trouble and expense just to enjoy the subtle nuances of “Nothing But a Houn’ Dawg”? But for increased interest in good music, most of the credit goes to the radio and TV networks for their broadcasts of concerts and operas and the many high-minded commercial and educa tional stations around the nation which have devoted so many hours of programming to the classics. And just so I won’t be accused of false modesty, I like to think that perhaps for the past 28 years The Voice of Firestone has done its part in 'acquainting-people with "goOdrtnuStC'anti ‘hfeljiiiTg to improve the musical tastes of the nation in general. New Look At An Old Lesson Remember the Aesop fable about the Crow and the Pitcher? He was so thirsty he couldn’t even caw. Worse still, there was an abundance of water in the bottom of the pitcher, but try as he might he just couldn’t reach it. Almost in despair, he spied some pebbles and they sparked the idea that proved to be his salvation. One by one, he began dropping the pebbles into the pitcher, and ere long, he was drinking away to his heart’s content. That was Aesop’s way, many years ago, of saying that necessity fosters invention, that “know-how” can go a long way toward making a person successful. If Aesop were alive today, he might have a lesson for us on keeping up with life—of keeping pace with changing ways. Life each day calls for revision of our ways and means of yesterday. Of no little importance are the changing ways in our jobs. Working methods may need a checkup for ☆ ☆ ☆ Hand wheels served the needs of the spinning art for centuries. Because they of fered limited production and lack of control on quality, these antiquated pieces of equipment were destined to give way to modern ma chinery such as is in opera tion in the Spinning Depart ment here. Lillie A. Brown poses with two pieces of ancient vintage, to recall the revolutionary change that has taken place within even the past few decades. These outmoded tools of the spin ning art serve as a reminder that keeping up with change means keeping pace with progress. improvements. Job skills change. The alert worker knows that he must constantly learn more in order to do his best for himself and his family, and for his employer. Industrial changes mean more and better production. More and better production means more satisfied customers, more jobs, more economic security. To meet the challenge of change in our jobs, we need to keep abreast of the times. This means that we must be informed today on the job we knew well yesterday.
