Re: [ARSCLIST] Chinese copies- slang

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steven Smolian" <smolians@xxxxxxxxx>
> In a letter from Eldridge R. Johnson to a Gramophone Co. executive , Nov.
18, 1901, he says, "The Graphophone competition does not amount to anything
so far but.....They are making Chinese copies of everything that we sell and
are following us as closely as they possibly can."
>
> This being 1901 rather than 2006, does anyone know the slang meining of
Chinese copies as of then?  It could be
>
> They are recording their own versions
>
> They are making there own versions which imitate ours
>
> They are making copies directly from ours
>
> They are electrotyping our copies and issuing them as their own
>
> or......
>
> Anyone have a slang or business dictionary from that period?
>
Intersting...because in that period most cheap merchandise came
from Germany, which seems to have been the cheap-labour equivalent
of Japan before and after WWII, and all sorts of obscure countries
over the last couple of decades! As well, by late 1901 Columbia
(presumably "the Graphophone Company") was recording their own
material (although their corporate ancestor HAD made illicit
copies of Berliner's discs).

I suspect, that even though China had no industry to speak of
in 1901, "Chinese copies" may have referred to the way the
record industry operated before about 1936-7...every record
company issued the same handful of tunes, often performed by
the same free-lance artists (e.g. Henry Burr...)

...stevenc
http://users.interlinks.net/stevenc/