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MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
11
execrable service rendered by the hotel. Many people left the
tables before the speeches began, completely disgusted with the
service.
the same period of the fiscal year 1900, which, as already indicated,
made the highest record of manufactures exported prior to the fiscal
year 1904.
HETHER the two associations will continue in years to come
to hold their annual gatherings in the same city upon the
same dates is a question which many believe will be answered in the
negative. Still if we analyze the make-up of the dealers' organiza-
tion we will find that in its membership roll are included manufac-
turers who are also dealers, managers of manufacturers' branches,
retail salesmen, wholesale travelers and regular piano dealers. So
it will be seen that there is rather an interesting combination repre-
sented in the Dealers' Association.
There are a number of members of both organizations who ex-
pressed their opinions to The Review during the week that the time
was fast approaching when it would be necessary for the good of both
organizations to separate them and hold their meetings at different
times.
T
W
HIS should not be construed as meaning that there is a lack of
sympathy existing between the two organizations, but simply
the fact that the varied interests represented at the meetings render it
impossible almost to carry out work which might be beneficial to the
organizations themselves, and through them to the trade in general.
One thing, too, is certain, and that wherever the organizations
decide to meet in future years it must be in places where there is
goodly hotel accommodations. A city without excellent hotel facili-
ties would be entirely inadequate to take care of the music trade men
convention week.
T
HEN manufacturers meet together to discuss matters from
the viewpoint of manufacturers, they are desirous of taking
up for serious consideration matters which vitally interest the manu-
facturing and distributing departments. There are problems by
which they are daily confronted.
The retailers' problems, while also important, must be considered
separately and much time must necessarily be given to the solutions
of difficult problems, which affect the retailers alone. There are sub-
jects which deal directly with the merchant and his relations with the
public as well as with manufacturers, the very nature of which re-
quires separate treatment.
W
HE splendid crop growing weather throughout the country
has helped to brighten things materially in a business way
during the past week.
The reasons why the outturn of the harvest this year is a matter
of unusual concern are, first, that we need a particularly heavy yield
of grain and cotton to maintain a strong position in the foreign
trade, and, second, that upon the success of the crops more than
upon anything else, depends the length to which the present cycle
of commercial reaction will go. Taking the totals since the first of
last July, we have shipped abroad not two-thirds of the wheat and
corn that we did the previous year.
T
IGHER prices have partly made good the loss in volume, yet the
export grain movement up to the close of April fell off in
value $50,000,000. Whether shipments of manufactures will con-
tinue to make as good a record as they have in the last twelve
months is very doubtful; many good judges are of opinion that
nothing but a considerably further reduction in prices will save our
hold on the foreign markets. To this uncertainty regarding the
trade in manufactured articles, must be added the certainty that ex-
ports of cotton cannot conceivably come near equalling another sea-
son, the extraordinary values of last autumn and winter.
The general outlook, accordingly, may be said to have bright-
ened decidedly with the cheerful accounts which have come from trTe
harvest sections during the week.
H
XPORTS of manufactures in the fiscal year which ends with
next month seem likely to exceed those of any preceding year.
Ten months' figures just presented by the Department of Commerce
and Labor through its Bureau of Statistics exceed those for the cor-
responding period of any preceding year. The fiscal year 1900 was
the banner year in exports of manufactures, but the figures of ten
months' exports of manufactures in the fiscal year 1904 exceed by 19
million dollars those for the corresponding months of the fiscal year
1900. The total value of manufactures exported in the ten months
ending with April, 1904, was $371,712,301, against $352,671,206 in
E
HE fact that the present fiscal year has only two months' record
to make and is 19 millions ahead of the highest figure for the
corresponding period in any preceding year (1900) seems to justify
the prediction that the exports of manufactures in 1904 will be
greater than those of any earlier year. The total value of manu-
factures exported in the full fiscal year 1900 was $433,851,756.
Should the present excess of 1904 over 1900 continue during the
remaining two months of the year it would bring the grand total of
exports of manufactures up to $450,000,000.
Imports of manufacturers' raw materials also made a very sat-
isfactory showing, the grand total of "articles in a crude condition
which enter into the various processes of domestic manufacture" be-
ing in the ten months ending with April, 1904, $267,334,221, against
$275,641,687 in the ten months of last year, and $273,799,650 in the
corresponding months of 1902.
I
T doesn't pay to carve expenses to the danger point. When
this is done the efficiency of an organization is impaired. It
is quite natural for the dealer to pare his expense account when
trade begins to slacken, and while that course is in the main com-
mendable, yet exceeding caution should be used not to carve too
much. It would seem that intelligent effort properly directed
should make wholesale retrenchment unnecessarv.
T
HERE is no good reason why business should not be good
during the summer and during the year. Too many are in-
fluenced by men who talk in a pessimistic vein. Then they are in-
clined to look on the darker side of prospects. They argue too
much that trade is going to be bad, and in tl. e meanwhile omit to be
up and doing. They spend their time in fretting while their more
enterprising and active competitors are diverting the business. The
strange part of it is that many men who will do nothing in a period
of depression are phenomenally active when there is business doing.
There is nothing like activity to sharpen up a man, and to keep him
sharp for that matter, and it is better to do something than to figure
on unwise retrenchment. This isn't the time to sit still and dream.
It is time to work.
T
HE benefits of handling piano players was ably handled at the
convention by John T. Wamelink, the well known dealer of
Cleveland.
Mr. Wamelink maintains that all dealers who have not ma
a success of the piano player business have only themselves to blame.
He related his experience how he first placed in a line of players and
handled them in a very indifferent way. That branch of the busi-
ness did not pay, and finding that it was not developing as it should,
he decided to handle it in a broader way, sent men to the factory
of the player concern which he represented where they obtained
a thorough knowledge of the construction of players. They could
then talk and demonstrate the player intelligently. He fitted up a
player department which has since shown not only a good margin of
profit, but has also been instrumental in increasing his piano sales.
Mr. Wamelink says that the piano player is a decided benefit to the
entire piano business.
EPUTATION counts for everything in the business world.
The strange thing about it is that most men know it, yet few
hold fast to the methods which bring it.
R
J
UDGING from an expression of views by a number of well
known dealers at Atlantic City last week there will be a number
of State Associations formed within the near future.
Iowa has made a spiendid start in this direction, and there is an
unmistakable trend now toward State Associations. These should
not impair the effectiveness of the National Associations in the
slightest, but should largely add to it.
The great gatherings of music trade men in a few years will
have become out of date, for the entire work will be handled by a
few delegates who will be elected to the larger body, and who will be
enabled to deal fittingly with trade problems.
That is but the logical development of associations. It is fol-
lowing out the same rules which are operative in our political system.