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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW.
In the West
Solar Activity Not Business Activity,
—Suppose Orover had Remained in
Seclusion ?—Fisher a t Fort Wayne
—A Review of the Situation—
An Unwise Attack by the
Local Trade Methods
, ,
of Retaliation—
The Fight.
Music Dealers do not Make Large Profits—
An Unpleasant Reflection Upon the
Trade—Comparative Costs of Con-
ducting Business — A Piano
Coming to the Front—A
Popular Member of
the Trade.
Leonard, the Blue Felt Man—A Peaseful
Lunch—An Arkansas Story.
f
OU can find an explanation for almost any-
thing if you look in the right place for it.
Scientists are now explaining that the extraordi-
nary cold wave, hail storms in Ohio and Indiana,
and heavy falls of snow in Michigan and Wiscon-
sin are due to unusual solar activity. That may
be true, but most of us are more deeply interested
in business activity than we are in solar activity
just at the present time. There are many con-
jectures and theories as to the best possible way
in which to produce the activity, but the cold
fact, along with the cold wave, remains, that
there are conditions which could be vastly im-
proved if we would only locate the right place
and follow up with the correct doses of medicine.
There are plenty of us who believe that the
country would have been vastly better off if
Cleveland had determined, early in '92, never
again to have emerged from the privacy of Gray
Gables ! His first administration had secured
for him an enviable place on the scroll of fame,
in his second he has been busy, while not en-
gaged in fishing, in covering that scroll with
Hawaiian splotches, with splotches of the income
tax and personal quarrels, and then again, the
supreme indifference of the man ! Well, we
have other men who have been ruined by self-
inflation, whose cranial development has been
so rapid and so expansive that they really be-
lieved that they were specially ordained—that
they were not of the common mold. Sub-
sequent results have proven that while they
might have imagined themselves as best com-
pared with Napoleon the Great, the comparison
would be better when made with Napoleon the
Little.
* * *
You will hear some people affirm that the
retail trade has been seriously affected in Chicago
by reason of the so-called slaughter prices which
have prevailed here in the piano line. I do not
place ihe slightest credence in such an affirma-
tion. It seems to me an illogical argument to
state that cut prices should retard business in
Such a great city as Chicago. On the contrary,
it should act as a stimulant to trade. The more
the people are interested in any certain line of
goods, the greater the sale of the lines to which
their attention is called by the unusual display
announcements in the columns of the daily press.
I say emphatically no, cut prices do not produce
business stagnation. The current of business is
best quickened by such announcements. It acts
as a tonic upon the purchasing public.
Fisher methods at Fort Wayne still continue
to be a subject of trade talk. I have refrained
iroin entering into this controversy, because I
believed that in a sense it was a local affair.
The matter of placing a stock of goods—-pianos
and organs—upon the market in a town of the
size of Fort Wayne is calculated to have rather
an alarming effect upon the local dealers. Still
Mr. Fisher claims that that was not his original
intention, that it was brought about by the
action of the landlord in raising his rent—which
in a three years' lease would have amounted to
an excess of one thousand dollars over the
original contract. It should be borne in mind
that in his opening article, that he made a full
statement of the reasons which induced him to
commence the sale. It should also be borne in
mind that he made no reference of any nature
whatsoever to the instruments sold by the local
dealers. He made a statement—a lengthy one—
giving reasons why he should commence the
sale. When the local dealers combined and
published a statement which was a direct attack
upon Mr. Fisher and the instruments which he
represented, they acted unwisely, and I doubt
very much if any of the principals whom they
represented would have counseled such a course.
The article was lurid in its denunciations of Mr.
Fisher and the Kimball pianos. The article also
contained the statement that the pianos were
second hand instruments, which was not true,
and their original value was slight. It was a
most bitter attack upon Mr. Fisher and the
Kimball instruments, and was signed "The
Fort Wayne Music Dealers.'' Had the members
of the music trade of Fort Wayne ignored the
existence of Mr. Fisher, and utilized the
columns of the local press to present their own
wares to the public as extensively as did Mr.
Fisher, they could have undoubtedly made his
tarry in their city a short and an unprofitable
one. But they pursued an opposite course, and
after striking such a blow it would have been
indeed strange had not Mr. Fisher retaliated.
He resigned his position from the Kimball Co.,
and began on his own account a system of
retaliation for the attack upon him. He pur-
chased or caused to be purchased a number of
pianos of the same make as sold by the local
dealers. These instruments were purchased in
Chicago and in Cincinnati. The purchases were
made and the prices were given under the repre-
sentations that the instruments were for a dealer
in Xenia, Ohio. They were at once reshipped
to Fort Wayne. Then Mr. Fisher called upon
the local dealers to retract their former publish-
ed statements regarding his pianos. His letter
to them was in effect that he had purchased in-
struments of the make which they represented,
and unless they made public retraction within
twenty-four hours, that he should offer the
makes which they represented as near the cash
cost to him as he had offered his own make.
Some of the firms responded with an apology in
which they stated they were unaware that the
article was so strong, that they had only read a
part of it. Then Mr. Fisher published a state-
ment in which he offered at ridiculously low
figures instruments of the makes sold by the
non-retracting dealers. He wrote of the several
profits which he made on these instruments, but
he neglected to state the misrepresentations
made when the purchases were made.
His articles were calculated to show to the
public of Fort Wayne that the local dealers had
been making enormous profits upon the sales of
instruments. The whole trend of his argument
was to destroy the confidence which presumably
the purchasing public had reposed in the local
dealers. His whole articles, if widely read,
would tend to throw discredit upon the entire
piano business. It would cause the people to
think that they were systematically robbed in
their dealings with piano men. I can not, nor
do I see how any one interested in the success
of the piano trade can endorse such statements
and such methods which indirectly cast an un-
pleasant reflection upon the entire music trade
of the country. The impression that Mr.
Fischer would seem to convey in his articles is
erroneous. Dealers' profits are not abnormal
profits. The piano business is conducted upon
different lines than any other trade in this
country. The first profit is always reduced by
subsequent expenses, and then there is always a
long period elapsing between the sale and the
time when the first cost of the instrument is
covered, when sold upon the installment basis.
Look at the clerical force which piano men are
compelled to maintain to conduct their business !
In no other industry is it necessary to keep at
all times such a staff of employees to conduct
the sales and collections as is the case in the piano
trade. Take the gross sales for the year in the
the retail piano business, and compare the cost
of conducting same with a like volume of busi-
ness in the dry goods, the boot and shoe, the
hat, the furnishing trade, and note the differ-
ence of expense in the different lines. Again, if
the music business is so profitable, why is it not
more prolific in wealthy members ?
Take it State by State, note the number of
men who are engaged in selling pianos, organs
and musical merchandise. Many of them have
been in business for years.
What per cent, of the entire number can
you term wealthy men, or even moderately
wealthy ? Just give this matter a little
thoughtful consideration. The fact of the whole
matter is, the music business does not repay
adequately for the amount of tireless energy,
ability and enterprise necessary to conduct it.
Then it is wrong to give the public the im-
pression that the music dealer makes enormous
profits.
,
.
He does not.
History proves that.
The music trade papers which have printed
the prices quoted by Mr. Fisher on the instru-
ments offered for sale by him have acted foolish-
ly. They have placed an instrument in the
hands of unscrupulous agents which they can
use when brought into competition with one of
the makes named to great advantage, and in
justice to Mr. Fisher I wish to say that I have
a personal letter from him in which he states :
" I consider the fight a local one, and so far as
I am concerned these published figures shall not
pass out of the limits of F'ort Wayne." They
never should have.
There is much to criticise in the Fort Wayne
affair.
* * *
One of the pianos of the West which is rapidly
assuming prominence is the Steger. The Steger
piano is already handled by some of the largest
dealers and I have heard many words of praise
for the Steger instruments on my trip through
the West. J. V. Steger is a successful business
man and he is concentrating his energies upon
the extension of his wholesale trade, and with
good results too.
W. E. Dodge—who in the trade does not
know genial, handsome " Billy " Dodge, of the
Chickering-Chase warerooms ? Always affable,
always entertaining, is it any wonder that he is
constantly augmenting his circle of friends and
customers ? Assuredly it is not, and day by
day he is busy piling up a big record of sales.
Herman Leonard, I fear, is almost ready to
renounce his allegiance to New York and claim
Chicago as his abiding place, so strong has be-
come his love for the big Western metropolis.