Music Trade Review

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THE:
MUSIC TRADE: REIVIEW
A
S might be expected, few failures have occurred either in the
manufacturing or retail departments of trade during 1906.
In the manufacturing field those which have occurred were of in-
consequential concerns that gained credit under false representa-
tions, and who received their just deserts when the sheriff was
admitted to their factory premises.
This newspaper institution has followed the plan for years
not to accept advertising from concerns who were conducting their
business along false lines, and whose only assets consist of a gen-
erous amount of nerve. We have rejected business which has been
proffered by some of these concerns, simply because we believe that
their very existence is a menace to the best interests of the trade.
If credit is given to a class of manufacturers who put out goods at
less than cost in order to raise funds to tide over a pressing emer-
gency then it is placing the men at a disadvantage who pay their
bills, because they never expect to meet theirs. Therefore, they are
conducting a dishonest enterprise, and as far as this newspaper
institution is concerned they can never have its support.
T
HE same might be said of dealers whose credit is not good
enough to buy a suit of clothes in the town where they re-
side, and yet through some sort of hypnotism they secure on credit
pianos worth thousands of dollars. These they put out on all sorts
of prices and terms which have a tendency to demoralize legitimate
trade, for local competitors who are engaged in honest enterprise
cannot meet a kind of competition that pays no heed to maturing
obligations. It is well that this line of competition in both the
manufacturing and retail departments is steadily decreasing and
the quicker it is snuffed entirely out of existence, the better it will
be for the future of the industry.
T
HE campaign which has been conducted by The Review for
the establishment of national retail prices by piano manu-
facturers, has been steadily increasing in interest until to-day many
agree with this publication that it is the one great subject of vital
interest to the trade.
Why should piano manufacturers hesitate to place prices upon
their instruments at which the public can purchase them, when by
such a move they, crush out completely misrepresentation and fraud
which is known to exist in many sections of the country?
When the manufacturers themselves come out boldly and place
retail pricings upon their instruments it will establish at once the
real status of every piano, and a dealer cannot buy a cheap piano
say at wholesale for $90 or $100 and charge $300 for it. A cheap
piano is all right as a cheap piano, but.it should not be sold out of
its class, and when once the move is made to place correct pricings
upon all instruments, the line of demarcation is cleancut between
the cheap, medium and high priced instruments. The question of
grading is settled once for all.
N
O doubt during the next year there will be accentuated in-
terest in this great price issue, and sooner or later its general
adoption must come, for without it in a few years, the medium
priced instruments will have lost their definite position, and the
whole business will be fused into a general business of get what
you can for every piano, save, of course, some of the old and famous
products which must always hold a definite position.
I
T must be admitted that clean business methods have been gen-
erally observed the country over, so far as this trade is con-
cerned. Of course, there have been sporadic cases where correct
business methods have been violated to a certain extent by local
dealers, yet familiar as we are with the trade history for two
decades, w r e can say that there has been no year in which the trade
as a whole has been as free from misrepresentation and fraudulent
acts as the present. There have been few cases of the stool pigeon
advertising; few cases of dealers securing through surreptitious
means, pianos carried by competitors which they have offered at
slaughter prices. It must be admitted that the piano business as a
whole has conformed to better business rules, and as a result the
year closes with few broken reputations and few disgruntled ones
on either side of the trade fence.
T
RADE journalism, too, has on the whole been maintained on
a high plane. W r e have always claimed that unclean jour-
nalism could never long exist in a clean trade, for journalism un-
erringly reflects the inner life of any industry of which it is a
special exponent. Dishonest journalists will fatten upon the weak-
nesses of men, and when that weakness does not exist they must
be forced to conduct business along better lines, of close down.
While enterprise may be lacking in individual cases, the music
trade press as a whole has shown improvement, and this against a
steadily rising tide of cost, because it must be plain that the cost
of publishing has vastly increased during the past twelve months,
so that the publishers have problems of their own to solve as well
as have the manufacturers.
T
HE directing forces of this newspaper institution have en-
deavored to make betterments wherever possible, and to
remedy any defects which may have existed in any of our special
departments. It has been our aim to render to advertisers and sub-
scribers the largest values consistent with the investment placed
with us. Our friends have exhibited great confidence in the influ-
ence of this paper, and it has been our earnest endeavor to see that
that faith was not misplaced, and to make The Review a stronger
power for trade good. Along these lines only can we hope to win
permanent success, and we cannot pennit the curtain to fall on the
old year without expressing our appreciation of the confidence re-
posed in us, and extending a hearty new year's greeting to our
friends everywhere. May the American music trade thrive and
prosper.
I
T is said that California is going to have a fair in 1912 to cele-
brate the opening of the Panama Canal.
We hope that this report is not true, for this fair business is
becoming a trifle overdone.
The Alaska-Yukon-l'acific Exposition—a World's Fair for
1909, to cost ten millions—is now being exploited at Seattle, which
classes itself the Queen City, and is said to have raised $650,000
for the enterprise in one day. It is proposed to open the fair
June 1 and close it October 15, three years hence.
The primary purpose of the fair is to exploit the resources
and possibilities of Alaska, Yukon and the Pacific Northwest.
The question whether world's fairs are more of an advantage
than a detriment has often been discussed, and several civilized
countries decided after the Paris Exposition that the St. Louis
should be the last "international." The United States Govern-
ment made an exception to celebrate the landing of the "colony"
at Jamestown.
Taine, the great philosopher and critic, said: "Nothing is
becoming that is not habitual." We might paraphrase this trite
saying and apply it to world's fairs. We might say nothing is
profitable or permanently advantageous in a business sense that is
too sudden, too overwhelming and too short in duration.
In these days of graft and get-rich-quick concerns world's fair
schemes are perhaps the biggest examples. The place where it is
•held is temporarily overbuilt and overcrowded with visitors who
put up often with miserable accommodations and go away dis-
gusted, having seen little that they remember and nothing perhaps
of any permanent benefit to them. All sorts of schemers and gam-
blers and fakirs and thimbleriggers gather in the town in droves
and often give what was hitherto a respected and honest com-
munity a blight that it takes years to overcome.
While splendid individual exhibits have been maintained by
piano manufacturers at Buffalo and St. Louis, Chicago marks the
last great fair when piano men were strong, numerically.
T
HERE is another side to the Exposition story, and that is its
vast educational influence upon the whole people. That can
hardly be estimated in dollars and cents, because it is lasting and
it benefits the nation. Then, too, great expositions in many cases
work out a direct benefit to the cities where they arc held. Take
in the case of St. Louis, for instance, instead of the predicted stag-
nancy at the close of the Fair, St. Louis has had the biggest boom
in its history. The city has grown tremendously, and its manu-
facturing and wholesale interests have expanded at a rate never
dreamed of by the wildest St. Louis boomers. The influence of
that Fair is felt not only in St. Louis, but in the West and South-
west, where the people had an opportunity of visiting the great
Exposition and feeling its full educational powers. This new ex-
position which is talked of in the Northwest undoubtedly will have
a healthful effect upon that region,