“Pictures and books are fine for those that have the time to study ’em, but they don’t shoot out on the road and holler ‘This is what little old Zenith can put up in the way of Culture.’ That’s precisely what a Symphony Orchestra does do. Look at the credit that Minneapolis and Cincinnati get. An orchestra with first-class musickers and a swell conductor–and I believe we ought to do the thing up brown and get one of the highest-paid conductors on the market, provding he ain’t a Hun–a it goes right into Beantown and New York and Washington; it plays at the best theaters to the most cultured and moneyed people; it gives such class advertising as a town can get in no other way; and the guy who is so short-sighted as to crab this orchestra proposition is passing up the chance to impress the glorious name of Zenith on some big New York millionaire that–that might establish a branch factory here!”
Sinclair Lewis, Babbitt