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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
cal societies of the whole earth, but too far for those
who are conscious of possessing powers enough to
enable them to take part in so brilliant a competition.
'"Still more, we know there is already a great num-
ber of adhering societies."
Great is thy bean, thy codfish ball,
My Boston town, my Boston town;
Thy good brown bread, thy Faneuil Hall,
My Boston town, my Boston town;
Thy trade conventions, editors and all,
My Boston town, my Boston town;
Thy crooked streets we oft have strode,
Thy trolley wires—oh, they be bio wed!
In Boston town! Great Boston town !
Some dealers have been content to ac-
cept results, and not to go into detail as to
the cost of selling. But it is unquestion-
ably true that in times of sharp competi-
tion, as well as in times of comparative
prosperity a good many goods have been
put upon the market at prices lower than
they should have been because the makers
of them did not really know their exact
cost. And how often the mistaken cost
of goods is the rock on which manufactur-
ing enterprises have split? The history
of the piano making industry is strewn
with the wrecks of factories that made
goods and sold them below the cost of pro-
duction because the man who made them
did not know how to estimate cost. At
the end of the year, or at the end of sev-
eral years, when the balance was struck,
the apparent profit had not materialized.
*
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*
•
The Marseillaise, sung to Russian words
set to the music by a Russian censor, was
a feature of a recent St. Petersburg recep-
tion to French sailors. There is liberty in
the swing of this glorious song of revolu-
tion. Perhaps the Czar's " children " may
learn the real words of the song and sing
them by and by, whether Nicholas likes it
or not.
*
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*
*
During the Hispano-American war every-
thing Spanish is read with avidity. Dur-
ing the recent fair at Barcelona there was
held a series of musical competitions con-
cerning which the Trait-d' Union et Moni-
teur de l'Exposition Universelle de Bar-
celorie had the following to say; also they
may be taken as an illustration of the
Spanish idea of English and how it is
" wrotten."
" If the art of amusing other people is sometimes
very difficult, we are happy to may state that worthy
men are careful in everything, do neglect nothing
and sacrifice totally themselves to such a task.
" The competitions which shall take place on the
month October, have been an aim for censure; the
prizes, which shall be appointed to the most skilful
societies, are very high and go farther than anything
done till the present day.
"The feast-commission, leaving the methods gen-
erally adopted in competitions, wished to allure in
the beginning to Barcelona the best societies, but we
are told that after the most important prizes, ]that
will be allowed to the most deserving societies, there
shall be granted a number of medals to those socie-
ties who will excel in the performance of the compe-
tition-pieces. In that way there is fixed for each ser-
ies a certain number of acctssit with medals like those
which shall be allowed to the exhibitors.
" How it may be perceived, the new method, em-
ployed by the Feast-Commission of Barcelona, shall
prove a great attraction, not only for the best musi-
The beautiful paragraphs explained the
object and scope of the competitions.
*
*
*
*
The laborer is worthy of his hire, just as
much if his labor be with the pen, #s with
a spade.
Few people can, or will devote their
lives to the preparations necessary to
become writers, and then cater to the
public taste, without recompense. Writing
is hard work and deserves pay accordingly.
And on this very point swings the ques-
tion of responsibility of the writer.
No matter what one does, what he
produces, he must produce something that
the public wishes to buy, or his wares will
go a-begging. If the writer wishes to
produce salable goods he must write such
matter as the public will read or be obliged
to store his articles in the depth of his own
desk.
This being the case, is not the responsi-
bility of what he puts out about evenly
divided between the writer and the reading
public ?
It is certain that only good matter would
be sent out, if there was no call for any
other.
Still, if we could induce all writers to
refuse to produce any except pure and
elevating literature, a long stride would
be taken toward the elevating of the race.
A great many characters are made, or
reared, by the class of reading matter put
before them during the formative years of
their lives.
*
*
*
*
An exchange says: "We have a com-
positor in this office, the great friction of
whose movements over the types in his
stick fuses them solid like a stereo plate.
The only way to prevent this is to have his
case submerged in water; and the rapidity
of his motions keeps the water boiling and
bubbling, so that eggs have been frequently
boiled in the space-box. Pipes lead from
the bottom of his case to the boiler in the
press-room, and the steam generated by
our compositor's motions runs the power
press. In one day ' he set ' so much type
that it took all hands, from the editor to
the devil, two weeks to read the proofs,
and it was not his best day for setting
type, either."
*
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*
*
The more advertising you do, the more
power what you do do has.
Roughly, but forcibly stated, that is
what it means. But not all.
It means more.
It is retroactive. The more advertising
you do, the more power what you have
done has.
The first insertion of pn advertisement
in a medium makes but little impression.
The second insertion makes a deeper
impression than the first, and also helps to
deepen the impression of the first.
The third insertion goes still deeper,
and also helps the two before it.
And so on, ad infinitum.
I well remember, in boyhood days, the
advertisement of an insurance agent. It
always occupied the same place in the
county paper. It always remained the
same; revised yearly, perhaps to drop out
the name of a company represented or add
a new one.
Poor advertising, according to modern
usage.
Yet it did its work. Each insertion of
the advertisement had but little power in
itself, yet it was helped by all that had
gone before, and helped in return each
previous and each subsequent insertion.
Thus, the constant reader of the paper
learned effectually the business and the
name of the agent, and .knew where to go
in time of need.
*
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*
*
If there was ever a more skillful adept
in the art of advertising than was the late
P. T. Barnum, it might not be easy to
name him.
There was a strong element of secre-
tiveness in the great showman, as there
must be in all crafty men. Fond as he
seemed to be of telling, long afterwards,
and less from vanity than for advertising,
just how any of his many feats were per-
formed, he was impenetrable while they
were going on. He did not explain Joyce
Heth, for instance, nor the Feejee Mer-
maid, while those apocryphal wonders
were on exhibition. His nearest friends
hardly knew, at any time, precisely what
he was doing, and still less what he was
going to do next.
The men in charge of his posters had
their own work to do, and so did his news-
paper agents; but a great deal was ac-
complished, with "malice prepense and
aforethought," the particulars of which
were not confided to any of them. They
did not know, for instance, who wrote his
several books or to whom he confided the
instruction of the public, through the maga-
zines, as to the inside workings of the
show, circus and menagerie business, with
illustrative references which called in the
name of Barnum.
Perhaps no better piece of work was
ever done, in his line of advertising, than
that which preceded the advent in this
country of the " White Elephant." Long,
long before anybody could have guessed
that he had great expectations from the
far East, the periodical press began to
teem with neatly written expositions of
the extreme reverence with which the sa-
cred animal was regarded in Siam. It was
a kind of quadruped idol. It was a sym-
bol. It was a mystery. It "lived to a
great and uncertain age. It was never
publicly known to die. Its death was
publicly lamented. It was buried with
great pomp. It was embalmed. It was a
gift from the king to any man whom he
wished to ruin by putting upon him the
cost of maintaining the magnificence of
the sacred beast. In fact there was no
feature of Eastern superstition which an
elephant could carry in his trunk, with
some that he could not carry and much
that he never dreamed of carrying, that in
some way or other did not get into print.
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