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THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
HARMONY A VITAL NECESSITY.
(Continued from page 3.)
It is just the same in business. If you enter an office or wareroom where there is harmony,
satisfaction and content you sense it immediately upon your arrival, but if there is bitterness,
jealousy and discord you sense it just as quickly. No one tells you, but you feel it. You know
that it is there!
Now, if you are anxious to develop your strength—if you are desirous of accomplishing better
results, then harmony should be studied. You cannot depend upon
others to create the atmosphere—you must do your part in creating
it; not only in creating it, but in maintaining it, for in that way only
the best results can be obtained.
Winning Success Through Organization.
S
OME remarkably interesting facts were brought to light
when James A. Farrell, president of the United States
Steel Corporation, gave his testimony in the suit of the Gov-
ernment for the dissolution of the corporation. It not only
revealed the wonderful memory, the comprehensive grasp of the
entire iron and steel business of the world which Mr. Farrell
possesses, but it furnished a lesson of what can be achieved in
the export field by producing goods of recognized merit in com-
petition with the entire world. No business man can afford to
overlook the figures and facts set forth by Mr. Farrell—and set
forth, by the way, free of error or correction, without notes or
data of any kind—regarding the wonderful business of this cor-
poration for the past ten years.
At this hearing the remarkable fact was revealed that the
exports of the steel corporation have increased from a value of
$1,380,138 in 1904 to $o,2,ooo,coo in 1912. The latter figure is
one-third of the total export trade of the country in iron and
steel last year, and according to authorities is approximately
equal to the total exports of iron and steel from this country ten
years ago.
Mr. Farrell stated that the policy of the steel corporation
has been one of constant attention to the export business, and
this had been the case even when domestic business was at the
highest—that the corporation does ninety per cent, of the export
business of the country in the lines it is making—-that four mills
are kept busy almost entirely on foreign business—that at the
present time forty thousand of the men at its various plants are
employed in manufacturing goods for foreign markets.
Within the past ten years the corporation has arranged
for 268 agencies in upwards of 60 countries, and owns about 40
large warehouses abroad. Tn this connection Mr. Farrell gave
this interesting testimony : "We have warehouses in such places
as Antwerp, Johannesburg, Sydney, Barcelona, Copenhagen,
Singapore, Valparaiso, Rio de Janeiro, etc., and we carry stocks
of nearly all the products we manufacture in these Avarehouses,
with the exception of rails for steam railroads. We have a large
office in London, in which are some thirty-five men, for London
is the great clearing house for the world's products and buyers
gather there. We sell South America and other tropical coun-
tries. We have our own erecting forces in Brazil, and in other
countries at times. We have built every steel structure in Buenos
Aires, because our material is lighter and not as cumbersome as
the European. In Paris we sell principally to French buyers
whose interests are elsewhere and to foreign companies whose
home offices are in Paris. We are at times obliged to charter
ships to send over $60,000,000 worth of material to Japan a year,
as we sometimes have orders for several thousand tons at a time
and the regular ships can only take about 3,000 tons apiece. Our
Cuban trade amounts to $5,000,000 annually. The Chinese take
large qualities of defective materials, such as sheets and bars.
We have secured orders for 44,000 tons of rails for the Austra-
lian transcontinental railroad."
It was the opinion of the witness that it would have been
impracticable, and even impossible, for a firm having a limited
line of products to have organized successfully any such export
business as the United States Steel Corporation. The diversity
of lines and the financial strength of the corporation have made
it possible to organize an all-comprehensive export sales system,
to pick up some business all the time and to search intelligently
for new markets and for new demands to supply.
Nobody can doubt the correctness of these conclusions.
The secret of the success of the United States Steel Corporation
has not been due to the frequently uttered statement of critics
that it sells cheaper abroad than at home, but rather to the per-
fected organization that has catered to the needs of each
country—by the inauguration of modern export sales depart-
ments, by placing the respective departments in charge of men
of recognized ability keenly alive to every opportunity in the
business world.
And more especially to the fact that this wonderful de-
velopment of foreign trade is due very much to Mr. Farrell him-
self, who is head of the United States Steel Products Co., a
subsidiary organized to conduct the foreign business of the steel
corporation, so masterfully perfected this selling organization
abroad that since his election as president of the corporation it
has been running so smoothly and so successfully as to display
the wisdom, skill and wonderful foresight of Mr. Farrell, who
in many respects ranks as one of the remarkable men of the
century.
It is easy to criticise, but difficult to accomplish, things,
and we sometimes forget that each gigantic corporation cannot
win out without the utilization of those qualities which must
underlie all success in business, aided by the ability and enthu-
siasm of the men engaged in the enterprise.
W
maximum of effective production and to maintain it there; to de-
velop methods of manufacture; to preserve discipline among his
men ; to watch constantly that the product of their labor is up to the
required standard; to keep down the idle hours resulting from
absences.
"He is an important part of the industrial machine. His rela-
tions to the clerical department should be confined to suggestions
on methods as they affect manufacturing. In a number of cases
where foremen have been relieved of clerical labor it has been
found that an astonishing amount of time was wasted, the in-
crease in the effectiveness, of supervision after the change being
immediate and large."
E noticed in the Iron Age recently some remarks which
are so applicable to conditions in some factories in the
music trade that we reproduce them herewith. They are right
to the point and well worthy of consideration and adoption in
many piano plants:
"Many shop foremen are compelled to devote too great a share
of their time to clerical work, which could be done just as well
by low salaried clerks. The condition is wholly natural: it comes
on almost insidiously, so far as realization by the management is
concerned, in the establishment of improved methods of keeping
costs and increasing the efficiency of the establishment in other ways.
The foreman's essential functions are to bring his department to a,