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RENEW
THE
flUJIC TIRADE
V O L . LIX. N o . 14
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, Oct. 3, 1914
SING
$ 2 E OO CO PE I R\EAR BNTS
Fighting For The Bone
ROM time to time this department of The Review is in receipt of communications of various
kinds from readers, and to the following I wish to give publicity on account of the peculiar
sentiments which it contains.
F
"Lancaster, Pa., Sept. 21, 1914.
"Editor The Music Trade Review,
373 Fourth Avenue, New York.
"Dear Sir—I have read your editorial headed 'Spineless Activity,' and I believe I voice the sentiments
of many who would like you to dilate upon the question, Which is better for the individual, meteoric or
plunging business, or spineless inactivity? What protection has the small dealer any more? I add to the
latter query, What encouragement has the small, honest dealer to keep on pegging away when big business
has taken all the stone walls away and there are none left to buck his head against? Would you call such
a condition enforced spineless inactivity?
"You will kindly notice my typewriter has played upon the writer's meaning, and thereby starts a new
line of thought, by misnaming, as 'Spineless Activity,' the heading of your article. If corrected it would
look like 'Spineless IN Activity/ and thus I beg to add another question, to this already overdone com-
munication, What's to be done for spinelessness in activity. Yours respectfully,
"MULFORD B. TAUSIG."
r ...
The editorial to which the writer refers is one in which certain conditions were explained
and the immense resources of this country emphasized as a fundamental for business prosperity.
In the article I urged that an optimistic press was a powerful force in accelerating trade
conditions, and I stated that it was not the lime for spineless inactivity, and that men who were
on the fighting lines of business realize that it is at just such a time when the weak and inefficient
retreat and abandon the field to the stronger and more aggressive forces.
In this article I made no reference to destructive methods, nor did I at any time endorse sen-
sational or illegitimate business plunging. Better spineless inactivity than an activity which comes
through the adoption of illegitimate methods, and which must necessarily in the end break any man
who stands sponsor for them
Mr. Tausig asks: "What protection has the small dealer any more?"
Obviously he, like thousands of others, has become saturated with the belief that the day of
the small dealer is past. That, to my mind, is a wrong conception of the present economic con-
ditions. I should add that the day of the small dealer, if he be a small thinker—if his world is
bounded by the horizon of narrow thoughts and narrow actions—is gone, and gone forever. For
the man who sits down and figures that the world owes him a living there is no future.
Protection! Are we men or are we children?
• The world owes a man nothing. It has no accounts to settle with any human being; but the
individual owes the age in which he lives—owes humanity something.
The day of the "small man," who sees only small things, and whose narrow, attenuated ideas
see nothing but destruction all about him, is gone—it never had life save in the imagination of a
limited few.
The day of the truly "small man" never really existed. He lived because the grind of compe-
petition was not keen, but when it did reach him he succumbed like a wreath of mist before the
morning sun. There was nQthittg behind him, in front of him or on either side of him. His
: (.Confinued on page 5.)