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THE:
MUSIC TRADE
posed of cliques of gamblers or wreckers, who sometimes raid the
exchanges and send quotations up or down sharply, without any
regard for basic values; the other the point to which a large part
of^ the country's surplus cash gravitates for employment when it
fails to find profitable work to do at home; the place from which
most of the country's larger enterprises are financed; the locality
which talks and acts for the United States in all its great financial
transactions with Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. This,
the real and greater Wall Street, Mr. Van Cleave reminds us, while
urging caution in the extension of crops and telling speculators for
a rise to go slow, is not saying that any business collapse is near
and is not predicting that any is likely to come within the next few
years.
A great number of favorable conditions, such as the great in-
crease in bank transactions in all the great centers, except New
York, in railroad earnings, in our foreign trade, in the traffic on
the Great Lakes and in our manufacturing output, are cited by Mr.
Van Cleave as among the indications of prosperity.
He also reminds the readers of the Circle that the great mass
of- the country's wageworkers are experiencing prosperity's effects
in an especially striking degree, and that although the population
has grown only fifteen per cent, since 1900, savings banks' de-
posits have increased more than fifty per cent, in that period.
EDWARD LYMAN BILL • Editor and Proprietor
.
J. B. SPILLANE, Managing Editor
Executive and Reportorlal Staff:
Gwx B. KELLER,
W. H. DYKES,
F. H. THOMPSON.
EMILIE FRANCES BATHOS,
L. B. BOWERS, B. BBITTAIN WILSON, WM. B. WHITE, L. J. CHAMBEBLIN, A. J. NICKLIN.
BOSTON OFFICE:
CHICAGO OFFICE:
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ERNEST L. WAITT, 278A Tremont S t
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SAN FRANCISCO:
CHAS. N. VAN BUBEN.
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CINCINNATI. O.: NINA PUGH-SMITH.
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Directory ot P I M O
The directory of piano manufacturing firms and corporations
-I
~ I
found on another page will be of great value, as a reference
Minnuclnrtrt
f o r dealers and others.
Exposition Honors Won by The Review
Grand Prix.
Paris Exposition, 1900
Stiver Medal.Charleston Exposition 1902
Diploma.Pan-American Exposition, 1901
Gold Medal.. . S t Louis Exposition, 1904
Gold Medal
Lewis-Clark Exposition, 1905.
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONES-NUMBERS 4677 and 4678 GRAMERCY
Connecting all Departments.
-
Cable addresa; "Elblll New York."
NEW YORK,
OCTOBER
12, 1907
EDITORIAL
T
RADE conditions have materially improved during the past
ten days. Reports which come from our representatives in
the various cities all refer to business in a more optimistic tone
than in previous communications. During the past few weeks we
have visited hundreds of dealers in various sections of the country
and everywhere we have observed a growing tendency towards
taking a cheery view of the business outlook. The crops which
are now secured while not up to the average of some years are
nevertheless bountiful and will command good prices. In this
industry there have been few failures and those which have oc-
curred may be directly attributed to poor business management
rather than to depressed trade conditions.
.
I
N this connection it may be well to scan the figures shown by
one of the mercantile agencies. This agency attributes the
recent failures of many of the general merchants not to any great
depression nor to any falling off in the general business of the
country, but to the present scarcity of money created by the won-
derful growth in the volume of business throughout the world.
Some of the concerns engaged in manufacturing enterprises have
been unable to obtain extensions on which they might reasonably
be counted under normal financial conditions.
J. W. Van Cleave, president of the National Association of
Manufacturers, an organization which has two thousand seven
hundred members representing a combined capitalization of fifteen
billion dollars, has written an article on the business outlook which
appears in the Circle for October. Mr. Van Cleave is in close
touch with all of the great industrial developments of this country
and what he says therefore should be taken as coming from one
in authority and his statement should go far to strengthen and
encourage those who are inclined to view the future with appre-
hension or timidity.
M
R. VAN CLEAVE pooh-poohs the predictions as to a set-
back for general trade made from time to time by Wall
Street He declares that there are two "Wall Streets"—one com-
REVIEW
as others have done, calls attention to the estimate of
A ND the he, Secretary
of Agriculture as to the value of the products
of the country's farm for the present year, viz.: nearly seven billions
of dollars, a sum which equals the wealth of the entire United
States in 1850. The coal output of this country for 1907, adds
Mr. Van Cleave, will reach at least $110,000,000, the gold produc-
tion will amount to $550,000,000, the output of pig iron to $450,-
000,000, and of copper to more than $200,000,000. In fact, when
a few months hence the books are balanced for the year it will be
found that the entire mineral product of the United States for the
year 1907 has amounted to much more than two billions of dollars,
or fully half of the whole mineral product of the globe.
Mr. Van Cleave further points out that while the United States
has only five per cent, of the world's population, it produces twenty
per cent, of the world's wheat, twenty-five per cent, of its gold,
thirty-three per cent, of its coal, thirty-five per cent, of its manu-
factures, thirty-eight per cent, of its silver, forty per cent, of its
iron, forty-two per cent, of its steel, fifty-two per cent, of its
petroleum, fifty-five per cent, of its copper, seventy per cent, of its
cotton and eighty per cent, of its corn.
T ^ H E views which are printed above should be read by every
J- business man in every trade in this country because it is
confidence which we need throughout the land to keep business
where it should be.
While trade in this industry for the next two or three months
may be unusually large, yet it is not probable that the total will
reach the output of last year, inasmuch as there has been a ma-
terial shortage during the preceding nine months, and a good many
piano dealers all over the country have been using conservatism in
their business and exercising caution in making sales. It has been
quality sales instead of quantity sales and it is a mighty good thing
at all times to have such conservatism evidenced in business.
r
T^HERE is a desire in all trades to conduct business on cleaner
-L and better lines. This same spirit is evidenced in municipal,
State and National affairs. In this industry we see perhaps the
same feeling finding expression in scores of different ways chiefly
in opposition to the exploitation of the special brand or stencil
pianos. Because the special brand has been used as an open door
to fraudulent piano selling it is condemned, but this condemnation
has not reached a point yet where decisive action will be taken,
with the object in view of suppressing the number of pianos sold
under other names than those of the manufacturers.
In the first place, while there has been opposition against this
traffic yet so peculiar are the conditions existing in the industry
that it will be impossible at the present time to curb this business
unless the majority of the manufacturers combine and sign an
agreement which will contain a penalty clause so that absolute rules
covering the manufacture of pianos with a definite origin will be
enforced.