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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
EDWARD LYMAN
Edltor and Proprietor
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY
~
3 East 14th St., New York
SUBSCRIPTION (including postage), United States,
Mexico and Canada, fa.00 per year; all other countries,
$300.
ADVERTlSEflENTS, $2.00 per inch, single column, per
insertion. On quarterly or yearly contracts a special dis-
count is allowed. Advertising Pages $50.00, opposite read-
ing matter $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other than currency form, should
be made payable to Edward Lyman Bill.
Entered at the iVew York Post Office as Second Clast Matter.
NEW YORK, JUNE 10, 1899.
TELEPHONE NUMBER,
1745--EIGHTEENTH STREET
THE KEYNOTE.
The first week of each month, The Review will
contain a supplement embodying the literary
and musical features which have heretofore
appeared in The Keynote. This amalgamation
will be effected without in any way trespassing
on our regular news service. The Review will
continue to remain, as before, essentially a
trade paper.
NATIONAL SENTIMENT NEEDED.
KjOTHING can ever be accomplished in
the way of substantial reductions in
the stencil traffic by stamping the brand of
fraud upon the transactions. Honorable
business men who have been engaged in
the manufacture of pianos for years do not
relish the idea of being branded as piirvey-
ors of fraudulent merchandise.
We may emphasize that the idea of
stamping or manufacturing of stencil
pianos as fraudulent originated in the fer-
tile brain of a discredited contemporary.
It was his intention, by declaring the busi-
ness fraudulent, to terrorize certain indi-
viduals into paying exorbitant sums of
money.
Herein has been the key which he has
held to the piano strong box for some
years past. The stencil has been a conve-
nient club. He cannot point to one logical
argument ever made in an honest effort to
subdue the traffic, but he has been prolific
in phrases about "the fraud stencil," "the
rotten stencil," etc. In the meantime, in
his paper there has been given many an
insinuating rap and many a personal visit
paid some.men who have been engaged in
the stencil business, accompanied invari-
ably by a mild suggestion that it might be
well to increase their advertising appropri-
ations in a certain direction.
Now all this has been changed, swept
away forever, largely by Association in-
fluence, and that is one reason why this in-
dividual has been so particularly antago-
nistic, before the quietus was placed upon
him, to associations in general.
Many will recollect that in 1888 when
The Review was first advocating the for-
mation of a National Piano Manufacturers'
Association, he was doing all that lay in
his power to thoroughly kill the inceptive
movement towards consolidation. He open-
ly declared and even printed that the first
thing that manufacturers would do when
they united would be to work together
against the trade papers. It occurs to us
that this very sentiment was prompted by
a guilty conscience, and not by a desire to
promote the interests of the music trade
press.
The papers which exhibit enterprise, in-
dependence, and fairness seem to be
progressing very fairly, but the noticeable
advertising drought has been in those
papers which have lacked enterprise and
ability and that class of journalism which
has thrived in days past upon the fear and
weakness of piano manufacturers.
To return to the stencil:
Nothing can be accomplished towards the
elimination of the stencil by abuse or by
classing the business as fraudulent. An
educational campaign must be carried on
in argumentative and in logical terms cre-
ating a national sentiment against the
manufacture and sale of stencil pianos.
When manufacturers realize more fully
than they do to-day that the stencil busi-
ness has been injurious to them in a broad
sense, that their work for years has re-
sulted in producing a trade mark of no
particular value; when a plainer realization
comes upon them that every piano which
they manufacture should be stamped with
their own personal brand because it is worth
something to them in an advertising and in
a business sense, from that hour the stencil
traffic will decrease, provided their work is
warmly supplemented by a substantial class
of dealers who realize that their interests
lie in a large sense in selling pianos which
are stamped with a name of a manufactur-
ing organization which alone gives it a
brand of genuineness in the eyes of im-
partial trade critics.
When this sentiment shall have grown to
such an extent that it becomes the one
great vitalizing issue, then we may look
for a decrease in the stencil product. But
this will never come from personal insult,
from vulgar exclamations, from lurid de-
nunciation or from the publication of naked
lies concerning individuals who are still en-
gaged in the manufacture of pianos bearing
other than their individual or corporate
names.
SUCCULENT SYCOPHANCY.
TN this industry we have a peculiar com-
bination of papers. Aside from the
blackmailing element we have had the
small carping line that belong to that
class that are forever dealing in efflorescent
personal eulogy, in loquacious mouthings
of nothingness, papers which never utter
an original thought, or advocate a progres-
sive policy, but immediately fall in line
with a popular movement when it is ap-
parent to all which is the winning side.
To such a coterie belongs the paper
which says the stencil question is absolute-
ly of small importance to the general
trade. As a manufacturer remarked last
week, such an utterance only shows how
entirely unfitted such an institution is to
assist or defeat any particular project.
A trade paper to be forceful should not
wait for an expression of trade approval,
btit it should be entirely in advance of
trade thought, shaping trade lines, mould-
ing trade opinions, in that way exerting a
power and influence. We would rather have
the sentiment of the entire trade opposed
to us in many suggestions and moves which
we make than to be in the position of being
an exponent of soft mouthings and lauda-
tory words — succulent sycophancy for
every project that is floated upon the sea
of our industrial life.
THE ERROR OF SALESMEN.
TT has frequently been said that the truth
is elongated to a greater length in the
selling of pianos than in almost any other
branch of manufacture.
We are unable to verify this, but we have
seen, personally, instances wherein certain
salesmen have not exhibited a marked re-
gard for the rights of others. There are
certain little courtesies which have been at
times deplorably lacking in the vending of
pianos. Sometimes these little lapses from
the straight path have not resulted in
distinct advantages for those who have
departed from the regularly laid down lines
of trade and commerce. A case in point:
Recently, a gentleman who stands high
in social and business circles in one of our
western cities, came to New York and
while here he concluded to purchase a
piano. He visited a number of the im-
portant warerooms among which we may
mention the Weber establishment. He
was much pleased with the appearance of
a Weber grand and was plainly charmed
with its tonal qualities. However, he took
considerable time to investigate, and in
one or two warerooms he was told by
salesmen who had him in charge that while
the Weber instrument was all right years
ago, it had deteriorated greatly in musical
value. Furthermore introducing that old
chestnutty and moss grown statement that
the Weber and Wheelock pianos were