Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE: MUSIC
TRADE:
We need all of the names famous in piano history—we need
their influence—and a little sane advice to some of the people who
are shying bricks of abuse is to quit knocking, for every such knock
is bound to injure the one doing it.
This is a little trade when compared with some of the big in-
dustries and we need every influence for its upbuilding.
We may expect a certain form of knocking from characterless
trade newspaper conductors—from men whose entire business life
has been to plan and scheme whereby they could extort money from
their susceptible victims.
We expect all of that sort of thing from men who even at-
tempt to force brothers apart in their business relations.
In fact, we may be surprised at nothing, no matter how low
and contemptible, from such sources, but subtle knocking from men
who really have great interests at stake is beyond our comprehen-
sion.
We have not reached that vantage ground which permits us to
look with complaisance and joy upon such acts, nor do we believe
that the men realize the injury of an abusive act to their own in-
terests.
All of these things react.
T
RADE during the last half of the month has shown consider
able improvement, but conditions are not just right in the
business world.
It is pretty difficult to locate just where the trouble lies, but
collections have been unusually dull for the past month.
Poor collections is a common complaint among business men
and there seems to be no really good reason why that condition
should exist. There is fairly good freedom in buying and condi-
tions are looking better, but March trade has not reached the pre-
dictions which were made by business men concerning it.
There is a universal belief that as the spring advances trade
will improve. We might add, however, that the piano business has
kept up surprisingly well when compared with some other trades.
There are some of the factories which are rushed to their fullest
capacity.
In fact, they are turning out more business than ever before
during their business existence and still they are compelled to ask
some of their customers to wait.
Trade runs sporadic. In some places it is very good and in
others extremely dull, and it would seem as if business was in a
period of stagnation.
Notwithstanding the general activity of productive industry
throughout the country the condition of our foreign trade is far
from satisfactory.
The latest showing with respect to this subject appears in a
bulletin just issued by the Bureau of Statistics of the Department
of Commerce and Labor. According to the figures presented the
imports into the United States in February of this year were greater
by $11,232,474, while our exports were $500,000 less than for the
corresponding month of 1909. Our imports during the eight
months ending with February, 1910, were $200,000,000 more than
those for the corresponding period of the last fiscal year, while our
exports increased only a trifle more than $50,000,000 during the
same period.
These comparisons show plainly enough that our export trade
is in a languishing and disquieting condition. Moreover, they
emphasize the need of the most diligent effort to effect satisfactory
tariff agreements with Canada and France in order that our exports
may be guarded against still further and costlier shrinkage.
W
H A T good purpose can be served by the publication of confi-
dential correspondence between business houses?
If concerns are to hand to the press copies of letters which
have passed between them and corporations with whom they are
doing business, presumably business men will abbreviate their com-
munications in the future, for the less written on paper under such
circumstances the better.
But it is not probable that this plan will prevail and it is to
be regretted that the conductor of any trade publication saw fit
to present in its columns the correspondence which has recently
passed between a great producing interest in the East and a dis-
tributing house in Cincinnati.
Such acts serve no desirable end, and if a trade paper exercises
REIVIEIW
a harmful influence it is not performing its proper functions in the
business world.
It may be all right for yellow journals to rush into print with
any kind of matter, salacious and otherwise, police court news, di-
vorce scandals, et al., but a trade paper occupies an entirely different
sphere.
It is in the truest sense the business man's paper and its con-
ductors should be careful at all times to exclude items which are
calculated to injure rather than advance the general interests of the
trade.
GRADUATED.—"How old are you, my dear?"
"Eight at home; seven and a half when I go by train, and six when
I go out with mamma."
She—So your grandfather lived to be over a hundred, Thomas. What
did he eventually die of?
Thomas—I don't quite remember, miss; but t'was nothing very serious.
HOW HE TOOK THEM.—Doctor—Johnny, I see the pills I gave you
have made you well again. How did you take them—with water or
with cake?
Small Johnny.—I used them in my pop gun to shoot at the cat.
A LOGICAL CONCLUSION.—"The bravest are the tenderest, you
know," said the landlady.
"Oh, what a coward this old rooster must have been!" sighed the
hoarder at the foot of the table as he tried to bite a chunk out of the
wing with which he had been favored.—Chicago Record-Herald.
EMBARRASSING.—"You must have struck it rich, old man. I see
you in this taxicab every day."
"It isn't that. You see, one night I told the chauffeur to drive me
around until I told him to stop. I fell asleep, and when I awoke I did
not have enough money to pay his bill. So I've got to keep on riding
in it until I die."—Life.
AN OBSTRUCTIONIST.*—"Speakin' 'bout large feet," said Mr. Erastus
Pinkley, "I don't know when I was mo' insulted dan I was dis afternoon.
I was standing on de curbstone facin' de house, an' de policeman, he
ccme along an' says I's got to turn around jes' a little."
"What foh?"
"He says pointin' my shoes de same way the street runs is de onlies'
way for me to keep fum obstructin' de sidewalk."—Washington Star.
AN AGREEABLE CHANGE.—"Yes," said the meek little man at the
quick lunch counter, "I take my meals at a restaurant every chance I get."
"Prefer restaurant cooking to the home brand?" queried the big fellow
on the adjoining stool.
"No; can't say I do," replied the meek little man. "But I can give
orders at a restaurant!"
And being a married man himself, the big fellow smiled and said no
more.
PRAYERS IN TWO LANGUAGES.—Wesley's view that it was 1m-
p( ssibl3 to write a fine poem in French did not carry him on to maintain-
ing' that effective prayer in that language was equally out of the qeustion.
For that we must go to a dialogue between two old ladies of Stranraer
drring the long war with France. "Was it no a wonderfu' thing," re-
marked the one, "that the Breetish were aye victorious ower the French
in Battle?" "Not a bit," said the other; "dinna ye ken the Breetish aye
say tneir prayers before ga'in into battle?" "But canna the French say
their prayers as weel?" "Hoot! jabbering bodies, wha could understan'
them?"—London Chronicle.
CONCLUSIVE PROOF.—A certain captain in the army was sum-
moned by his colonel to answer a charge of assault preferred against him
by a sentry, who had stated that the officer had used him pretty roughly
one evening at the gate of the barracks.
A* humorous phase of the affair was that the officer apparently had
no recollection of the alleged assault. The sentry had made so bold as
to declare that the officer was intoxicated.
Among those questioned was the captain's orderly, an Irishman, who
protested vigorously that the allegation of the sentry was a slander—
that he was sure the captain was perfectly sober the evening of the
alleged assault.
"Why are you so sure that Capt. Blank was sober that evening?" he
was asked. "Did he speak to you upon his return to his quarters?"
"He did, sir."
"What did he say?"
"He tould me to be sure an' call him early in the mornin', sir."
"And did the captain say why he wished to be called early?"
"Yis, sir, he did, sir. He said he was goin' to be Queen o' the May,
sir," responded the orderly with convincing gravity.