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THE;
MUSIC TRADE
fflEW
EDWARD LYMAN BILL, - Editor and Proprietor
J. B. SPILLANE, Managing Editor
Executive and Reportorial Staff:
Gno. B. KELLER.
h. K. HOWKUS.
\V. N. TYLER.
\V.\r. B. WHITE.
J7HA Trenidiit
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NINA
PUGH-SMITH.
Published Every Saturday at 1 Madison Avenue, New York
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Lyiniiu
Mill.
Directory ol Piano
Manufacturers
The directory of piano manufacturing tinns and corporations
found on another page will be of great value, as a referenct
for dealers and others.
Exposition Honors Won by The Review
Grand Prix
I'aris Exposition, 1900
Silver .l/t'2
Diploma. Pan-American Exposition, 1901
(told Medal. .St. Louis Exposition, 1S104
Gold Medal.Lewis-Clark
Exposition, 1J)O5
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE—NUMBER 1745 GRAMERCY
NE W
YORK, APRIL 28, I 9 0 6
EDITORIAL
Supreme Pacific "wonder, fair Goddess of the Gate,
The world has paid you homage, the world bemoans your fate.
We loved you in your beauty, as you reigned beside the seas;
We love you, scorched and stricken, as you plead upon your knees.
In days of pride and glory you were generous and broad;
You were like an earth-expression of the opulence of God.
—Ella Wheeler W i l c x .
'"I'M IF one absorbing topic in music trade circles for the past ten
A
days has been the discussion of the terrible catastrophe which
has befallen San Francisco. Each hour, as the news slowly silted
in from the West, made the story of the affair more and mon*
dreadful. Sympathy for San Francisco deepened as the news of the
extinction of the city accumulated. The fearful results of the earth-
quake, followed by the fire, left only smoking ruins and ashes and a
few unsteady bare walls on the spot where for years and years the
cumulative work of man built monuments to civilization, and to
American enterprise. For two or three minutes the unchained
forces of nature made a plaything of the strongly reared works of
man and tumbled them down like a house of cards. Then the llames
swept through the city and devoured what the quaking earth had left
standing. Vesuvius uttered warnings of her deadly activity, and for
centuries it had been known as a treacherous neighbor, but warning
was always given of her angry moods, and there was time for flight,
but the earthquake which shook the beautiful city on the hills by the
Golden (late came like a stroke from the blue.
W
l'ut 'tis indeed a heart-rending sight which confronts her resi-
dents, because the shock of earthquake and fire was followed by des-
titution and sickness. It is fortunate that the loss of life was not
larger, and. as compared with the earthquakes in ether countries, the
fatalities are slight, for within recent years more human beings have
perished in a single earthquake in |apan and India. Hut the fate
which has overtaken San Francisco comes home to us with peculiar
lorce. Its people are our people; we have known their homes, their
business men. their streets and public places, as they have known
ours. They are members of the same family—blood relations, whose
affairs are bound to be our personal concern, as those of foreign
peoples never can be.
F. II. THOMPSON.
EMILIE FIUKCES BAUER.
L. J. CHAMBEKLIN.
A. J. NICKLIN.
BOSTON OFFICE:
KKNENT L. WAITT,
REVIEW
1IILF the seismic zone was known to extend from Central
America to Alaska, yet in the fifty-odd years of San Fran-
cisco life it had suffered no serious harm from any of these convul-
sions. Many of the residents had experienced earthquake shocks,
and there is hardly a piano man who has been doing business in that
city who is not familiar with them. Still there was no reason to sus-
pect such a'terrible convulsion of nature. The loss of life has been
appalling, and the destruction of property is still incalculable, but out
of the ashes and ruins, the blasted hopes, the broken fortunes, there
will rise a new San Francisco, more beautiful than ever before, and
a tribute to the indomitable pluck of the Anglo-Saxon.
T
11F calamity spared neither the rich nor the poor, and the land
weeps with them. The national impulse which turned at
once to aid the suffering and stricken city sheds an inspiring ray into
the gloom of disaster. There is no difference in the masses and
classes—for, Mr. Rockefeller who donates $100,000, and the laborer
who gives from his scant earnings, twenty-five cents—all are moved
by that ennobling spirit of brotherhood and humanity which binds
all classes when a great castastrophe befalls a community.
Can this happen again? Can such destruction be repeated?
Scientists say yes, and that Los Angeles is in the danger zone.
( )n the other hand, the Charleston shock has had no repetition
in twenty years. What bearings will this destruction of life and
property have on the future of the Pacific Coast is asked in trade
and financial circles?
The same indomitable spirit which rebuilt Hoston and Chicago,
and reclaimed Galveston, will rear a new and greater city on the
ruins of San Francisco. The spirit of '49—of those men who blazed
the way through the forest and over the deserts to found a beautiful
city, still lives in California to-day. The same courage that changed
a wilderness into a great State, and the stretch of land by the sea
into a beautiful city, will do that work again, and do it better.
I
T is true the survivors are confronted by tremendous obstacles,
because the ruin is deeper than in (ialveston, or in Chicago, or
in St. Louis, or Baltimore. In addition to the wreck above ground
the underground system has been violently disturbed. Water pipes
and sewer mains have been broken, wire conduits disrupted, and all
the subterranean utilities disarranged. The verv foundation of the
city is rent, necessitating something more than the reconstruction
from the ground up. lint the encouraging features of the situation
is that the nation has never been so well equipped with organized
facilities for coping with an emergency of this character. All the
sanitary resources of the Government are at the service of the
stricken city, and millions are pouring in to aid the sick and needy.
I
N common with all the other business interests, the piano and
music trade merchants were great sufferers—in fact, all of
their establishments were swept from earth, and where once stood
magnificent music trade emporiums are now charred ruins. Includ-
ing the great and small establishments there were about fifty con-
cerns occupied in selling pianos, and lines closely allied, in the city
of San Francisco. Iktsiness had been unusually good, and they
were all prepared for a busy season—in fact, some of the leading
men during the week of the disaster had placed large orders in the
Fast for immediate shipment. There is one good feature, however,
about the situation, and that is that most of the leases and books
were saved. Thus, out of the wreckage something is saved and at
least a business chart from which a new course may be planned.
L
FAXDFR S. SHFRMAX, president of the great house of
Sherman, Clay & Co., was in New York last week when the
news of the fearful loss to his home city reached him. The first
report which reached him here was somewhat reassuring, as the
establishment had been damaged by earthquake only, and not
severely, but later on the information was received that the beaut'ful
establishment of Sherman, Clay & Co. so recently decorated h:ul
been reduced to a pile of ashes.
Mr. Sherman, who was m The Review offices last Fridav,
appeared in the calmest mood, lie surveyed the field philosophic-
ally, and remarked that he should leave that night for California and
would at once make his business headquarters in Oakland, from
which point their business would be carried on. lie did not figure