PUBLIC LIBRARY
Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com
-- digitized with support from namm.org
REVIEW
THE
VOL. LV. No. 6.
__ ,
.
1A
l f t n
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, Aug. 10,1912
SINGLE COPIES, 10 CENTS.
$ 2 .oo PER VEAR.
Business Pessimists.
L BOUT
this season of the year a large crop of business pessimists usually show up in perfect work-
ing condition.
They have plenty of idle time on their hands when the mercury is soaring upward, and they
are willing to devote a large portion of it in endeavoring to inoculate with pessimism their fellow
men who come within their zone of influence.
Sometimes they are extraordinarily successful, and, fortunately, sometimes they are not, for the
business pessimist is always sand in the bearings.
He wants a tariff which will grade the temperature downward.
He will insist at about this time that the country is going to the demnition bow-wows—at least until
the Presidential election is over.
He will tell you that business must suffer tremendously until the tariff question is settled.
He will affirm that buying will be limited to the barest necessities until this whole Presidential suc-
cession is adjusted.
He will tell you in deep tones of eloquence that every Presidential election year business is knocked to
smithereens, or something like it, by the iron-handed politicians in such a manner that it won't recover for a
long time.
Yes, we have this time-worn and run-down-at-the-heels statement passed out to us by- certain weak-
spined gentlemen every four years.
Some of them quote statistics, and so great has been the influence of these calamity hosiers that they
have actually compelled a certain percentage of business men to believe in the truth of their predictions.
Now, I can no longer be counted in the spring-chicken or infantile class, for I have lived a few years,
and I have never known any of their dire predictions prove true. Eight years ago we had the same gloomy
forecast. Following the slump in 1907, and with the entire country upset, the croakers worked overtime,
and vapor, indigo colored, ascended everywhere. What really followed?
Why, we had a period of business that was far beyond the most sanguine hopes of the most opti-
mistic.
It has been the same following every Presidential election.
There have been times of business depression, but they were of a temporary nature.
This is too great a country—too full of energetic business men to permit a few pessimists to hamper
them in their onward march.
Every year we hear tales of drought, flood and destruction; but, as a matter of fact, I have noted
that the real progress of the nation has never halted, and in my opinion we are going to do greater busi-
ness this year than last, and I am going to do what I can in my humble way to explode and shatter a
few of these choice pessimistic theories.
The merchant who goes ahead and makes plans, who shows faith in his country and his fellow men,
is the one who will succeed.
He has been at the ginger jar.
He knows on what shelf the ginger jar rests, and he goes there occasionally for inspiring food.
No crop of icicles for him, and no decaying business.
On the contrary, he sees things ahead that are quite worth while.
He is one of the workers—one of the creators—one who does things.
It. is a helpful spirit that we should .cultivate—not the sodden, downcast
and discouraged kind.