"All perfectly true but it doesn't affect my statement that - The word "folk" was being applied to newly written songs twenty years before 1954"
All of which has nothing to do with your claim that Folk was applied to a more general definition in 1954.
What Charles Seeger chose to define as "progressive folk" may or may not be valid considering the social system prevailing in the U.S. at the time he was referring to, when song became an essential part of the situation there
My point has been that at the present time there is no "significant number of people" who have any understanding of or interest in folk song, certainly not enough to redefine it the way people who are trying to here.
A small number of folkies on a dwindling folk scene are in no way a "significant number" - the rest of the world doesn't really gve a toss one way or the other.
There is no re-definition going on here, just an insistence that no definition is necessary.
Jim CarrollA