Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
REVIEW
THE
flU J1C T^ADE
V O L . L X . N o . 15
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bili at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, April 10, 1915
Business Stability and Price Maintenance.
RICE fixity vitally concerns men in all trades. In fact, the maintenance of prices means that
uncertainty and haggling are eliminated—likewise unjust discrimination among customers.
In the piano trade, save in a few limited instances, there has been no standardization
of prices, and because those conditions have existed is to my mind one of the reasons why
influences have crept in which have more or less of a deterring effect upon piano selling everywhere.
Price stability has been of the elastic-rubberized variety.
The Steinway pianos, and some few of the other leading makes, have been sold at standard
prices, and surely where Steinway leads it should be safe for others to follow.
Some years ago in a series of articles I advocated the standardization of prices by the piano
manufacturers, and it has always seemed to me that if a cigar or hat manufacturer could fix the
price at which-his product should be sold, surely the manufacturer of a product representing the de-
gree of human skill and intelligence which is concentrated in the piano ought to be able to fix his
prices so that he would be protected against rubberized pricings by piano merchants.
The Suprem? Court has stated that the contract by which a manufacturer binds a retailer to
establish or maintain a selling price on his patented article is void, because it prevents
competition between retailers of an article and acts as a restraint of trade, and the Court has held
that in the ease of a proprietary article covered by letters of patent the interest of the manufacturer
ceases when he got his money for the commodity.
There has been in this connection an interesting recent decision by a Federal court concerning
a suit brought by the Victor Talking Machine Co. against a local department store for alleged in-
fringement upon the rights of the patentee. The Court refused to interfere on.the ground that the
Supreme Court had covered the whole subject. But does not this in a way work hardship
to inventors?
There are so many points to consider in the price fixity proposition that there is perhaps a dif-
ference between the recent decision and what we may term the views of business men.
It would seem, in the first place, that the patent laws of the country should grant adequate pro-
tection to the patentee.
The time which a patent runs is not long. In fact, it is years before some patents get beyond
an initial stage and are complete in all details so that the patentee can make money out of them.
There is but little time elapsing between the date of actual money-earning powers and the expiration
of the patent.
Then, again, there is still another side. The corporation controlling the basic patent of an ar-
ticle spends years of time and vast sums of money, perhaps millions, annually in acquainting the
public with the particular merits of its product. Naturally, unless the value were given in a prod-
uct no advertising or exploitation could long bolster up an inferior article. This has been demon-
strated in a number of instances, but when a manufacturer has vast sums invested in his product
he, himself, is vitally interested in maintaining it to the highest standard possible.
It seems but reasonable to suppose that a manufacturer should expect protection for his prod-
uct, that he might be able to control it so that the retail purchaser is also protected.
By the establishment of this one-price system the cut rate merchant is forced to abandon his
P
~
•
(Continued on Page 5.)