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THE
MUSIC TRADE
being- imported free of duty under the McKinley tariff law, and
the total value of merchandise entering- free of duty was larger
than in any year in the history of our trade.
The figures of the Bureau of Statistics show total imports of
$1,527,985,088, against $[,556,947430 in 1910, the former high
record year of imports. The total exports were $2,048,691,392,
against $1,744,984,720 in 1910 and $1,880,851,078 in 1907, the
former high year.
The value of imports free of duty was $777,988,452, against
$755,311,396 in 1910, the former high year. The imports of
dutiable merchandise were $740,996,636, against $801,636,034 in
1910, the high year. The value of foreign merchandise exported
was $35,771,474, against $34,900,722 in 1910, making the total
exports of domestic merchandise for 1911 $2,012,919,918, against
$1,710,083,998 in 1910 and $1,853,718,034 in 1907, the former high
year.
UncLerTHE
In practically every city or town with an estab-
lished chamber of commerce or other local busines
and commercial bodies, the piano men will be
found in the van of those who desire to build up
their cities commercially and accomplish the great-
est good for the greatest number. On the various
boosting excursions there have generally been in-
cluded one or more piano men or someone con-
nected in an active capacity with the music trade.
All this is as it should be, for the piano merchant
of to-day occupies a position in the business world
the importance of which cannot be denied. As a
business proposition the piano merchant cannot be-
come too prominent among the merchants in other
lines in his territory, for the real profit in pianos
lies in those that go into the homes of business
men in a position to appreciate the advantages of
cash transactions and to profit by them. Another
reaon is that every move for the advancement
of the town and tending toward its growth means
the increase of population commensurate with the
industrial growth. This increased population puts
a large number of new prospects within reach of
the piano merchant, and anything of a nature
tending toward their prosperity tends also toward
the increase in piano sales.
Debussy's music, with its rich coloring and
strange harmonies, typifying what is popularly
termed the French "impressionist school," was the
subject of a very interesting paper read by Ferdi-
nand Sinzig at the recent convention of the New
York State Music Teachers' Association at Buf-
falo. His remarks on Debussy's free use of the
whole-tone scale will prove interesting to many
members of the trade. He said: The reproaches
and sarcastic comments of the opponents of De-
bussy's music have been various, violent, vicious—
they have even called him names of a not very
complimentary nature. Let us consider for a
moment their principal objection—the free use of
the whole-tone scale. It is recognized that our
music, the music of the present day, dates from
the time when the well-tempered scale, our dia-
tonic major scale, came into general use and that
it is based upon this scale; this not longer than
three to four hundred years ago; hence musical
art is looked upon as a very young art, compared
with others, perhaps the youngest. The well-tem-
pered scale, with its half intervals between the
3 and 4 and 7 and 8 tones, we know is not based
on science. If we should permit the men of
science to construct and furnish our scale for us
we would have to change our ears (the very tem-
perament of the scale is an unscientific compro-
mise), and the result would be that our pianos
and organs would be out of tune when they are
in tune, and vice versa, according to our unscien-
tific sense of hearing. No doubt it would be a
great relief to our present day piano tuners, whose
constant endeavor is "musically to square the
circle." Might we, then, not be justified in as-
suming that our ear is partially at fault and that
lack of cultivation of the sense of hearing has
kept us slaves to the diatonic scale? When a
singer sings or a violinist plays "off the key,"
as we say, we perceive it at once, though the
divergence is always, or almost always, less than
half an interval, which proves that we do not
REVIEW
TALL TOWER.
give to our sense of hearing the credit it deserves
and that it is capable of cultivation. Have not
such eminent men as Pythagoras and Dydimos
arrived at the same tone through careful mathe-
matical calculations and still found a divergence
of a fraction 81-80?
Much has been written and said to prove that
the diatonic scale is the natural result of one tone,
ihe well-known process being to bring the first
two overtones, fifth and third, in opposition, the
result being the triad; then building just such a
triad on the top of the first triad upward and on
the bottom tone downward, these three triads
containing the seven tones of our diatonic scale.
But why stop at the first two overtones ? There
are many more; only our untrained ear fails to
perceive them. Does it then appear fair that we
should accept the diatonic scale as final, although
it has taken time and thought to formulate it?
The chromatic scale has been treated with much
hospitality and has been utilized by all composers
ever since Bach; and Richard Wagner seems to
have gone to the limit of its harmonic possibili-
ties. Then, if we accept with the chromatic scale
such gusto, why this strange aversion to the whole
tone scale, since this appears simply as a doubled-
up chromatic scale or ladder? So far the modern
French school has proved by its music that the
diatonic scale has no monopoly on musical expres-
sion. A false accusation should at once be re-
futed ; the modern French composers have no idea
of abolishing the diatonic scale, but they have
merely added a new means of musical expression,
far from negligible.
16
16 *
Widely advertised "scientific management" has
already resulted in the United States in the de-
velopment of a class of men who call themselves
"business doctors." Obviously an opportunity is
offered for many a quack to pass himself off under
the new title, but the opportunities for improve-
ment and for economies in almost any manufactur-
ing plant are not always appreciated by the owner
or the managers who have perhaps grown up with
it from very small beginnings to monster size. An
acquaintance of ours, who in many respects is well
qualified for the new work, recently took hold of a
large factory, and before he had spent four days
in the plant was able to show the owners where
a waste of 4 cents per gross of artcles was taking
place. As about one million gross of the goods in
question are annually manufactured, a saving of
approximately $40,000 a year was therefore in-
dicated. In another instance the business doctor
demonstrated that by a rearrangement of ma-
chinery, benches, etc., in a certain department, labor
could be saved amounting in twelve months' time
to about $1,500. The business doctor was able also
to point out that by the investment of less than
$100 in certain new apparatus the services of three
employes could be dispensed with. There is, then,
evidently the basis here for the business doctor's
existence, and there can be little doubt that "scien-
tific management," of which current magazines
have for months past been so full, is actually a
requirement of the times. The great trouble, as a
writer in the American Exporter says, is going to
be that the whole subject will be grossly exag-
gerated, its need and its accomplishments over-
emphasized, to the detriment of the policy as a
whole. It seems to be a case where the experts
in this line may well pray to be delivered from
their friends.
^V
^t
^ ^
Dr. Forbes Winslow, the famous specialist in
insanity and nervous troubles, in speaking recently
of victims of overworked artistic temperament and
some of their strange delusions, said: "I am not
ashamed to say that I find food for laughter oc-
casionally in the recollection of musical cranks
who have been driven crazy by their imaginary
genius for invention. Some years ago a young
man who had been in my professional care for
some time, and had recovered, lost his mental bal-
ance again through worrying himself with an idea
for an automatic contrivance to turn over the
pages of music books. Other people refusing to
listen to him, I suppose, he hit upon me as a target
for his suggestions, and he pestered me every day
for weeks. One day a hare-brained idea for an
automatic piano-player came to him. Hastily
making a sketch, he brought it along to me, and
begged me to lay down the amount necessary—a
few hundred pounds—to manufacture the contriv-
ance and place it on the market. Needless to say,
I declined. Then his visits became rarer and rarer,
and at length, thank heaven! they ceased alto-
gether. He wrote me some time after his last
call, regretting that I could not see my way to
assist him, and added a postscript that he w r as
about to commit suicide. 1 have not heard, how-
ever, that he has carried his threat into effect."
Motor trucks are generally being adopted by
piano manufacturers as a means for obtaining the
best and quickest system of local delivery. As a
consequence manufacturers and piano merchants,
if of sufficient magnitude, as well, are very much
interested in the most efficient car for the service.
A case that may be illuminating to others in-
terested in this matter is furnished by the ex-
perience of Jacob Bros., of New York, who re-
cently acquired a motor truck. After a fairly good
trial, the difference in the cost and speed of de-
livering goods between the auto and horse loco-
motion was so marked and satisfactory that they
wrote the makers regarding its performance as
follows: "Our driver advises that last week the
mileage recorder on our truck registered 290 miles
on a consumption of thirty-five gallons of gaso-
line." This was a very handsome endorsement of
an auto-truck, and its manufacturers made the
response complimentary by reproducing the letter-
head and letter of the Jacob Bros, in fac-simile,
and publishing it in a six-inch, three-column "ad"
in all the New York dailies. Another illustration
of ii pays to be polite and accommodating.
K «6 *,'
The courts are handing down some very inter-
es;ing decisions these days, particularly as far as
they refer to the affairs of a disreputable trade
sheet, which has been trying to evade responsibility
for its scurrilous attacks by at times not mention-
ing the name of the person, or concern it attacks,
or by commingling matters of a complimentary na-
ture with defamatory words in an endeavor to
render them the less actionable.