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THE MUSIC .TRADE REVIEW
What is the difference between a good
citizen of Ohio and New York? They are
both willing to meet all honest indebted-
ness to the full extent of their resources.
Then why should the law of evasion be
placed upon the statute books of the two
states? Why not have them mean one and
the same thing? A criminal in Maine
should be a criminal in New York and is
for that matter.
TONING DOWN OF TRADE.
'T'HERE has been a quieter tone to busi-
ness during the past month than had
been anticipated by many. Piano manu-
facturers do not complain, for thus far
they have been fortunate in having plenty
of orders on hand to keep' their factories
going at a good active pace, but if the re-
tail trade does not show speedy signs of
acceleration the manufacturing department
of the industry will shortly feel the slow-
ing down of trade throughout the country.
It is believed, however, that May will
show a marked improvement over April.
General conditions throughout the country
are excellent, labor being well employed,
the agricultural outlook promising and
trade should move along in fair, if not ex-
ceptionally large volume. Prospects too
for export business are excellent, and on
the whole the business outlook is satisfac-
tory. Textile mills which employ vast
armies of workmen are all running full
time and are crowded with work to get out
the orders placed some time ago. De-
liveries are late and in many cases in-
adequate to meet the requirements of buy-
ers. With the mills in almost every trade
running full time and filled with orders,
enough to keep them employed for many
weeks to come, any temporary quietness is
lacking of serious concern.
The quieter tone to business may be
accounted for in many ways—unsettled
roads, and all of that; then too, in the piano
trade we have nearly reached that date
which marks a general beginning of house-
cleaning and until that is well along, house-
wives are not anxious to place spick and
span new instruments in their parlors
until the rooms shall have undergone the
annual cleaning up, and again May moving
has almost arrived, so that there are a
number of reasons why the retail branch
of the piano business has been somewhat
slow during the past few weeks.
The sudden tumble in the stocks of the
American Steel & Wire Co., too, has had
somewhat of a depressing effect upon busi-
ness, for people are unduly susceptible to
scare head lines in the columns of the daily
papers. Meanwhile there seems to be no
escape from the conclusion, that the clos-
ing of the mills which led to this deprecia-
tion, was engineered or utilized for the
purpose of rigging the stock market. At
the company's last annual meeting in
March its directors assured the stockholdr
ers and the investing public that its net
profits for the year 1899 had been $12,162,-
529, out of which it had paid $2,100,000 in
dividends, leaving a surplus of $10,062,-
529. Out of this surplus it set aside and
paid on April 2, quarterly dividends at the
rate of seven per cent, annually to both its
preferred and common stock holders. Yet
two weeks later, without any previous
warning, mills are closed down, the stock
declines $7 or more dollars a share, other
stocks fall with it, and the inside specu-
lators reap a handsome profit.
The general public, that is, the read-
ing public, do not know that the inde-
pendent wire manufacturers are formida-
ble competitors of the trust, and that new
mills independent of the combination have
been started in no less than ten different
states during the past twelve months. All
of these are now actively producing, they are
not closing up their institutions like the wire
trust. No doubt there will be further ex-
citement regarding the decline in the stocks
of many of these over-capitalized trusts.
This year or next, no doubt, will mark a tre-
mendous decline in this special line of in-
vestments, and when we are well through
with it, the country will be much better
off in every way. There is not the slightest
cause for alarm, for there is a healthy de-
mand for goods of all kinds. The only
cloud at present on the industrial horizon
is the question of strikes. Just how much
that may interfere with business during
the present year is problematical. There
can be no question, however, but that they
will cripple industry to a greater or less
extent.
There is yet a final and intelligent ad-
justment to be made which shall equalize
the existing conditions between capital
and labor.
OPERATING AUXILIARY FACTORIES
'T'HE Review has claimed since the labor
troubles first began in Chicago last
fall that, owing to the peculiar conditions
of the labor "element in that city, with-
in a very short period the leading manu-
facturers of Chicago would operate auxili-
ary factories located at points within easy
distance of Chicago where exceptional ship-
ping facilities could be secured.
Up to the present time our predictions
are proving true. The Smith & Barnes
Co., own and operate an auxiliary factory
at Rockford, 111., and in last week's paper
we announced the building of a new Cable
factory at St. Charles, 111., a town which
is about forty miles west of Chicago, and
the location of the Hamilton Organ Co. 's
plant at Columbia Heights. There will be
more to follow.
CONCERNING EXPORT TRADE.
A MERICAN piano manufacturers, par-
ticularly those who have organized
their factories to produce different grades
of goods, are now turning their attention
towards the development of export trade.
Already their travelers have visited the
important countries on earth. At the out-
set they should understand that exporters
of American manufactures have, in more
than one instance, wasted a great deal of
effort in misdirected enterprise, and have
attributed their inability to establish satis-
factory and profitable trade relations with
countries promising profitable markets, for
which their own errors of judgment were
responsible.
Consul Mahin, resident at Reichenberg,
Germany, in a recent report to the State
Department calls attention to one grave
mistake of many American exporters in
assuming that English is so generally em-
ployed as the language of internation-
al trade that circulars and catalogues
printed in English meet all the require-
ments of a successful trade propaganda.
Having made inquiries on this subject in
Germany, France, Austria and Italy, he
summarizes his conclusions as follows:
It is true that knowledge of the English
language is spreading, and it is possible
that in a generation or so it can be success-
fully used in doing business in any part of
Europe. It is also true that some people
in every town of considerable size have a
smattering of English, but few of these
people will take the trouble to read circu-
lars printed in English. It takes too
much effort. They talk a little, but will
not bother to puzzle out the technical
words in printed business matter, and the
waste basket is made use of by them as
well as by people who do not know a word
of English.
We can very well understand that for the
average American business man it is difficult
to realize that ' 'good straight English" lacks
the power of conveying an intelligible idea
to the average Continental merchant; but
that such is the fact is very well known to
those who have tried the experiment of
supplying their own wants in Continental
shops where window signs give assurance
that English is spoken within—a phrase
which experience teaches one to under-
stand as meaning that English is spoken
within very well defined and in con-
veniently restricted limitations.
Trade literature, to have value, needs
to be printed in the language of the coun-
try to which it is sent—not translated, but
recast so that it shall present the subject
to which it relates from the standpoint of
the merchant to whom it is addressed. In