Music Trade Review

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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
V O L . L X . N o . 20
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, May 15, 1915
A
SING
£O C PER ES VEAR CENTS
MOST every division of commercial life has suffered to a certain extent by reason of the
existence of certain traditions which have had a clogging influence upon the trade
machinery. Business traditions are oftentimes sand in the bearings. We see this evi-
denced in some of the absurd principles of making allowances for traded-in instruments
far beyond their actual worth.
Many a dealer has grounded on the rocks of financial disaster through the existence of this
old-time tradition of making extraordinarily large estimates for used pianos.
However, the piano trade is not the only one which suffers through traditions which have a
tendency to hamper rather than accelerate business; but the time has come when every business
should be studied from an up-to-the-minute viewpoint, so that if unwise methods have hampered
its growth they should be eliminated.
Some of the most successful men have abandoned the tradition plan in business, and they
say that the man with the tradition idea is the man with whom they do not wish to be associated.
A business idea that may be of tremendous value is often met by the tradition-bound man
with the solemn statement: "Such a plan is entirely against the traditions of my house. We
cannot accept it."
A man of that kind can do more harm in a day than he can undo in a year. He has mis-
understood experience, and of what value is experience unless it be used intelligently?
The men who cast traditions to the winds and work upon original lines are the ones who
succeed, and the man who has brains, ability and energy enough to think for himself about his
own ideas or the ideas that are given him is looked upon seriously and viewed by some as dan-
gerous to business society.
It is not wise to condemn a thing because it has never been done before.
That theory applied broadly would stagnate business.
Then again, it never pays to frown upon a plan which has been tried once and has not been
found satisfactory. It may not have been properly managed, the right element and force may
not have been back of it. While the kernel of right may have been there, it may not have been
properly nurtured.
So far as traditions go, all of us are more or less hampered by them, and the onlv traditions
that should act as a miide and that we need to follow are those of honesty and a willingness to
perform our duty whatever it may be. All others may be classed as clogging more or less the
delicately adjusted machinery of our lives.
The world is moving at a very rapid pace. Some of the things which were considered abso-
lutely necessary yesterday are cut out of the business uses to-morrow.
For mv part I believe that it pays to study commercial history of all kinds, particularly the
industrial history of the trade with which we may be associated, but I believe it also pays to
profit by that study—not merely to follow it because others have followed it. If we did that
very little progress would be made.
We must move ahead. The pathway leads up—not back and we should take the higher
route.
We should not be slaves to traditions.
Simply because we may not have succeeded may be due to the fact that we have been ham-
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{Continued on page 5.)