Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW.
A
DETERMINED effort is evidently
being made by the Legislature of
Illinois to drive the department stores out
of existence.
We notice that the Senate
Committee which investigated the depart-
ment stores in Chicago made its report last
week.
The report bitterly condemns department
stores, and declares that stringent regula-
tions will alone save the smaller concerns
in the city from being entirely driven out
of existence.
Bills to this end were pre-
sented, empowering the City Council to
impose cumulative license charges on stores
dealing in more than one class of goods,
and to declare department stores nuisances
and close them.
The penalty is fixed at a
fine of $5 to $200 for each day such illegal
business is maintained.
The bills were
read and ordered to a second reading.
This is certainly a very drastic remedy;
but then the music trade, at least in this
city, have not suffered as seriously from
N
EW YORKERS, at least Harlemites,
are going to have a miniature repre-
sentation of the opening of the great Baltic
North Sea Canal on next Monday, when
the Harlem Canal, which has been under
way for the past six years, will be official-
ly opened to the public. There will be a
great naval as well as land parade in which
the leading industries in the northern part
of the city will be represented. The piano
makers are not going to be behindhand,
and we learn that ten or more manufactur-
ers have already signified their intention of
showing the important place which the
piano industry occupies in that section of
our metropolis known as "over the
bridge." The Estey Piano Co., Wheelock
& Co., Newby & Evans, Muehlfeld &
Haynes Piano Co., Decker & Son, and
Ludwig & Co. are among the-houses going
to utilize floats, artistically gotten up, in
which will be exhibited [pianos in process
of manufacture. Monday will be a great
day for Harlem.
the department store methods as have other
The Vose in Buffalo.
industries. Had we been similarly effected,
the measures proposed by Illinois Legis-
lators would not, perhaps, seem so radical.
While the music trade has not been, nor
stands no chance of being absorbed by
these great semi-socialistic monopolies, yet
the ruinously low prices at which the few
department stores in this city are [selling
music and musical instruments furnish a
forcible
T h e H1 VO : S y s t e m .
Piano Manufacturers will Parade.
illustration of the damage they
might inflict on the trade were their sway
more general.
Fortunately our legislators are not com-
pelled to emulate their Western confreres
at the present time;
and, indeed, there
will be no need at any time if music trade
associations and music publishers' associa-
tions give their attention to the progress of
the times, and take necessary steps to pro-
tect their own interests and those of the
dealers handling their wares.
We cannot close our eyes to the fact that
the department store has come to stay, just
like the trolley car, the bicycle and the
new woman; and like these products of our
advanced civilization it has made such in-
E
DWARD MOELLER, of Buffalo,N. Y.,
will in future represent the Yose
piano in that city. Frank Babcock, form-
erly with C. H. Utley, will have charge of
this establishment. Mr. Babcock visited
Boston last week, and made a selection of
some very handsome Vose pianos for the
Moeller warerooms.
Judge Andrews Decides in the
Surrogate's Favor.
I
T was decided by Judge Andrews in the
Supreme Court last Monday that Surro-
gate Arnold was qualified to pass on the
will of the late Mrs. N. J. Haines, Sr. Ow-
ing to the fact that Surrogate Arnold has
been the lawyer of the Haines famity for
many years, and drew up the will, the con-
testants claim that he should be disqualified
from adjudicating. Judge Andrews, how-
ever, held differently.
On Wednesday Lawyer Neuberger asked
Surrogate Fitzgerald to appoint a tempo-
rary administrator, pending the appeal from
the above decision, and the Surrogate set
the case down for trial on June 20th.
sidious advances in the good graces of the
Southern Prospects.
people that they have come to think them,
one and all, a necessity.
But they must be
curbed—that is, the department stores—
and if moral suasion or boycotting is not
successful, why we will watch with interest
the battle royal between the Legislature of
Illinois and the department stores of Chi-
cago, and profit thereby.
THE front of Chickering Hall was hand-
somely draped with American flags yester-
day in honor of "Flag Day."
S
PECIAL reports to one of our leading
commercial authorities from the South
within the past week show continued im-
provement in all lines of industry in that
section, with a steady increase in railroad
earnings and bank clearings, as compared
with the corresponding period of last year.
There is a very marked improvement also
in the iron trade, while many new indus-
tries have opened up. The outlook for the
future is very hopeful and very encourag-
ing.
AN IMPORTANT CASE DECIDED BY THE HOUSE
OP" LORDS.
A
DECISION of very great importance
to the piano trade in England was
given on May 30th by the House of
Lords. The case has been in litigation for
a long time, and is known as that of Helby
vs. Matthews.
We are in receipt of a
"special" issue of the London and Provin-
cial Music Trades Review, containing the
full text of this decision, which was placed
before the trade with commendable promp-
titude. The editorial comment herewith
on the decision will give an idea of this
much-talked-about suit and may prove of
interest to our readers:
In this special issue we give (of course
for the first time in print) a verbatim re-
port of the judgment in the House of Lords
Appeal of Helby vs. Matthews, delivered
this morning, May 30th. The full judg-
ment is of the utmost value, for it is upon
this that the hire-system business will
henceforward be carried on.
As was an-
ticipated, from the favorable judgment in
another hire-system appeal, which will be
found in "Our Law Reports" of June 15th,
1895, the House of Lords have decided in
favor of the dealer.
They unanimously
have reversed the judgment of the Court
of Appeal, and have held that hire-system
contracts in which the hirer has power at
any time to return the goods do not come
under the Factors Act. Consequently, all
the recent decisions in the inferior courts,
befriending bills-of-sale holders, pawn-
brokers, and others who have unlawfully
secured hired goods from hirers who have
not paid up the purchase money, are upset.
The hired goods now, as heretofore, be-
long to the dealer until all the installments
are paid; money-lenders and pawnbrokers
must lose their loan, and nobody but the
landlord has a right to seize the goods.
Furthermore, goods which have been im-
properly parted with by hirers, either to
pawnbrokers, bills-of-sale holders, or oth-
ers, must now be restored to the dealers,
the dealer, of course, demanding, and, if
necessary, suing for the return of the goods,
or their full value, and quoting the House
of Lords appeal in Helby vs. Matthews,
With our full report before them the trade
will not need us now to make any long
comments upon the terms of the judgment.
It will be observed that^the Law Lords had
no hesitation whatever upon any point.
The Lord Chancellor was the first to brush
aside the contention that an option to buy
connoted an agreement to bu}^. The case
clearly did not come under the decision of
Lee vs. Butler, where there was an absolute
agreement to purchase. In these hire cases
the hirer may give up the instrument at
any time, and he need not purchase at all,
and this is incompatible with a contract to
buy. "A person," said the Lord Chancel-
lor, "who is in possession of a piano under
such an agreement is no more its apparent
owner than if he had merely hired it."
Lord Watson was of precisely the same
opinion, and he declared that the only obli-
gation of the hirer was to pay the stipu-
lated monthly hire so long as he kept the
instrument. Indeed, he went further, and
stated that to constitute an agreement for
sale and purchase there inust be two par-
ties who are bound by it. In short, a hire-
system agreement is nothing more than the
option of buying. Lord Macnaughten was
equally emphatic in pointing out that the