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THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
THE DAY OF RANDOM EFFORT IS PASSED.
(Continued from page 3.)
They do not realize the necessity of concentrated effort, hence they become only mediocre
salesmen, just as there are mediocre lawyers and business men; in fact, men in all of the various
departments of human energy.
But more and more the necessity of specialization becomes appar-
ent to the thinking men, and the men who have given intelligent
thought to the great problems of life are the ones who are rapidly
advancing.
How The Player-Piano May Be Made Unpopular.
T
HE player-piano has been receiving much free, but every un-
desirable advertising recently in New York newspapers as
the result of a suit for an injunction brought in the Supreme Court
in Brooklyn by Mrs. Frances Lawrence against a neighbor for the
unreasonable and unnecessary use of a player-piano.
.In her complaint, Mrs. Lawrence charged that her neighbor's
daughter started playing it at 6 or 7 p. m., played for an hour
or so, and was then superseded by the father, who kept the instru-
ment working with control lever over to fortissimo and sustaining
pedal down, until 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, interrupted only
by a noisy supper party at midnight. As a result of the application
for the injunction the humorists and cartoonists of the daily papers
took a strong grip on their tools of trade and apparently took much
delight in taking a slam at the player-piano with the term "canned
music" used in every paragraph.
Providing the charges of the plaintiff were warranted, it is not
hard to imagine that several possible sales of player-pianos to suf-
fering, but silent, neighbors of the player-piano fiend have been
effectually killed. Certainly between the nuisance itself and the
publicity attending the attack on it, the cause of the player-piano has
not had its support strengthened.
Strange as it may seem at first glance, piano dealers should
welcome regulations that would confine the operation of pianos and
especially player-pianos to reasonable hours, except on special occa-
sions. Many apartment house owners insist that playing stop at
10:30 or 11 p. m. on the theory that some people want sleep and
rest, and in certain communities a curfew on pianos and other musi-
cal instruments has been established and enforced.
A player-piano used sanely and with a certain degree of under-
standing offers no room for objections and is generally a source of
pleasure to those neighbors who enjoy good music. To operate a
player-piano for eight or nine hours at a stretch and in the night
hours, naturally, develops an attitude of antagonism that
proves an actual deterrent to possible customers. To regulate by
ordinance or injunction those who will not be regulated by the rule
of leason should be an object appreciated by piano dealers who be-.,
lieve and realize that even a good thing can be overdone to such an
extent that it becomes a pest. y\nd meanwhile court actions to control
the inconsiderate, afford the newspapers an opportunity to take a
fling at "canned music" that may well discourage a player-piano
prospect, for every attack on the player-piano delays the effect of
the campaign of education.
Strenuousness and Efficiency Contrasted.
D
INSCRIBING the movement for greater efficiency in the opera-
tions of daily business, Harrington Emerson, who is recog-
nized as a specialist in this field, says that efficiency is confounded
by many with strenuousness, which is not efficiency, for strenuous-
ness is the accomplishment of a slightly greater result by a very
much greater effort, while efficiency is the accomplishment of a verj
much greater result by very much less effort.
Neither should efficiency, he said, be confounded with system,
which not only is not efficiency, but often is an obstacle to efficiency,
nor can efficiency presume to rest upon the intensified use of such
crude instruments as land, labor and capital. The point to be re-
membered, said Mr. Emerson, is that efficiency rests upon ideas and
the use of imagination, and therefore is imaginative, not mere stren-
uousness and not mere system, but rather the gift which enables us,
by intensified thinking, to accomplish a maximum with least effort.
He said efficiency requires ideals, common sense, competent
counsel, discipline, a square deal, reliability, planning, scheduling
of operations, standardized conditions, standardized operation and
system of awards in order to reach its highest point.
As illustrative of the fact that system is not efficiency, he told
of a young doctor who during the Spanish-American war was sent
to Cuba, where he found in the hospital men dying of wounds, of
typhoid and of yellow fever. There was no quinine or other medi-
cines and no dressings, and in a frenzy of anxiety he hurried a de-
mand to Washington. He waited with impatience for the return
of the vessel with the supplies which he had ordered to save the
lives of dying soldiers. When the vessel came he found this letter:
''What you ordered requires "Form 23,' and you have written the
requisition on 'Form 25.' Please make order out again on the cor-
rect form and send it to us, so we can fill order.
Affording Protection to Piano Merchants.
O
N various occasions members of the retail trade have come to
the front with complaints against fraudulent salesmen.
Salesmen who, while ostensibly in the employ of one house and
drawing a salary from that particular house, have on the sly been
working for the interest of competing concerns, by turning over
prospects for stated commissions and through other means. As a
matter of fact, E. Paul Hamilton, manager of the piano department
of Frederick Loeser & Co., Brooklyn, considered the matter of
sufficient importance at the last convention of Piano Merchants in
Cleveland to read a paper on the subject.
One of the few cases of alleged dishonesty on the part of sales-
men that have reached the courts, however, came to the front re-
cently in a Pennsylvania city, where it was shown to the satisfac-
tion of the court that while the salesman was drawing a fixed salary
from one concern, he also remained in the active employ of a com-
peting house with whom he agreed to sever relations.
The salesman in question faces a prison sentence or a heavy
fine following his conviction on a charge of false pretenses, and
although he has applied for a new trial, nevertheless the fact that
he was convicted at the first trial indicates that the courts are will-
ing to afford protection to piano merchants and others from the
fraudulent salesman.