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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Its Importance in the Player Trade Cannot Be Too Strongly Emphasized-
Knowledge Essential To-day to Provide for the Inventors and Superin-
tendents of the Future—What Has Been Achieved in that Connection.
So rapid has been the development of American
industry, particularly during the past few decades,
that there has been but little time to develop a
practical basis and method of practise for the doing
of certain things in certain ways. In other words,
developing the theoretical as well as the practical
features of business. In the past too many manu-
facturers in the United States have been prone to
the hit-or-miss method. For the most part it
worked out very successfully, and there was no
time and apparently little need for the theory. In
short, it was often felt that the only way to work
out practical problems was at the bench and not at
the desk; that the theorist was unpractical and a
nuisance; that his efforts to supply the reason for
the effect in order to standardize the effect were
unnecessary and wasteful.
Now it is just beginning to be seen by manu-
facturing interests all over the country that this
happy-go-lucky sort of way is no longer to be
depended on. The increased complexity of modern
life and the insistent clamor for improvement in
all sorts of manufactured articles, not to mention
the rising prices and increasing scarcity of raw
materials, are together causing anxious thought as
to the technical position of American industrial
enterprise. We are too much inclined to the com-
fortable belief that we are all just natural-born
mechanics and can figure out ways and means for
doing anything, for meeting any sort of emer-
gency. But the truth is penetrating our conscious-
ness that the pioneer days are over and that other
nations have been learning our lessons, and learn-
ing them intensively. In many great industries,
such as the electrical, the problem of finding a
supply of trained mechanics is becoming ever more
serious, and it is seen clearly that we must have
technically trained men in an ever increasing sup-
ply. In consequence, there are two ideas being set
forth now with considerable vehemence. One is
that the schools should undertake education in me-
chanical and technical work, so that children may
go out into the world equipped to use their hands,
to understand tools and to think mechanically, in-
stead of coming forth from school with minds
untaught in thinking, unco-ordinated in action, in-
capable of concentration and quite hopelessly bored
at the prospect of hard work. The other plan is
for the great employing corporations to have their
own apprentice schools and in a way to revive the
old apprenticeship system, giving the boys that enter
its employ so many hours weekly of school, partly
general and partly technical.
Time Has Arrived for Action.
Now, in our business the time has not yet seri-
ously come, one must begin by admitting, for the
generality of the trade to concern themselves about
the technical situation. This, however, simply
means that the conditions have not yet assumed a
serious shape. That they will assume this shape
sooner or later cannot be questioned, for the piano
and player business is just the same as any other,
fundamentally. The point is that without adequate
technical knowledge on the part of superintending
officers and a supply of technically trained me-
chanics to work under them, the industry will begin
to slip back at no late date. The reason is simple.
Without technical training throughout a factory
the time comes when all the possible improvements
have been made, and yet the product may need
further improvement. Where is this to be had?
Of course, in,our business all the "inventors" and
the rest of the tribe of mystery-makers will assure
us that in their own gigantic intellects alone rest
all necessary supplies of future knowledge. But
this is sheer nonsense. The majority of the "in-
ventors" are mere putterers, gifted with some me-
chanical facility, who "putter around" in an
experimental room trying out first this and then
that, occasionally striking something good, but al-
ways consuming a vast amount of energy in mere
friction. Apart from working out definite prob-
lems put up to them by the sales department, most
of the inventors and experimental men may be
accurately classified as more or less ingenious "put-
terers." A putterer is one who putters; that is,
who works energetically without a clear idea of
the direction in which he desires to travel.
Now, the player business is coming to a stage
where improvement in design is the next and most
important problem arising before the manufactur-
ers. Factory production has been pretty well stand-
ardized. The one great American contribution to
industrial progress—the process of organizing
quantity output by incessant duplication of standard
parts—has been carried out admirably in player
factories. We have the output process in hand and
mastered. It is not a question of improvement in
design; not of making more players in a given
time or space, but of making some real advance in
the constructional practise; in short, of producing
something that will perform its functions more
satisfactorily and efficiently. We have now arrived
at that place in this business.
Again, the player-piano requires maintenance.
We must have a race of mechanics able to care for
player mechanism under use, just as we have
garage mechanics to care for automobiles in use.
The necessities of the situation compel us to trust
this work to tuners; and tuners as a body are hope-
lessly ignorant of all that pertains to the player
mechanism. Hence they must be educated into
better knowledge or the player-piano trade will
suffer.
Case for Technical Education Is Clear.
Thus the case for technical education in the
trade is clear. What is being done to meet the
situation? We have on the one hand the Danquard
Player Action School in New York, which, as
everybody knows, is supported by the Kohler &
Campbell industries, with the co-operation of most
of the other manufacturers of player actions,
who have furnished specimens of their player ac-
tions for exhibition, demonstration and teaching.
Then we have the work being done in the Murray
Hill High School in New York City as part of the
evening trade school system of that city, whereby
a course of lessons in player action construction
and operation is given free to eligible students.
Again, we have the larger attempt along the same
lines in Chicago, where the local dealers and manu-
facturers have obtained the co-operation of the
Board of Education, which has organized a class
in the same subject, limited to residents of Chi-
cago, at the Carter Harrison Technical High
School. Tn this latter case manufacturers of
player actions from all over the country have been
ready and generous in sending material, parts and
complete instruments to the school. This latter
work has been as successful as the Danquard
School, though on a smaller scale, and already
more than 200 Chicago tuners and player mechanics
have taken advantage of its opportunities.
So far, in fact, there is no doubt whatever that
the attempts which have been made to meet the
situation are admirable and to be encouraged. But
what is needed is not merely that one great manu-
facturing corporation shall be public spirited, or
that a number of manufacturers and dealers in
some one city shall be broad enough to see a need
and co-operate to fill it. What is needed is that
the trade as a whole, dealers, manufacturers and
mechanics alike, shall understand the prime neces-
sity for putting the player business on a firm
foundation. Such a foundation cannot be laid save
on a basis of technically exact knowledge. Such
knowledge is the heritage of training, and of
naught else. There is available all needed engi-
neering talent for the purpose of teaching, and
the equipment required is easy to obtain. All that
is needed is that the trade shall wake up.
Co-operation to Achieve Ends.
We are asleep. There are men still silly enough
to believe that their employes should not "know
too much," for fear they will go off into business
for themselves, one supposes, or for other similar
reasons. The notion that trade secrets exist to be
stolen, or that anybody has any secret process
which the rank and file must not know, is in our
business, whatever it may be in others, mere non-
sense. It is not that we have secrets that the
employes must not know; it is that we ourselves
don't know enough to know whether there can be
any secrets to have. Technical education is the
salvation of any industry that is beginning to feel
the grip of public attention relaxing. When that
grip relaxes, the sign is that improvements must
be made. To make improvement we need and must
have knowledge.
The plain fact is that in this business of ours we
need to organize training methods so that every
tuner in the land and every bright young man in a
player factory can have the opportunity of attend-
ing classes in the pneumatics and mechanics of the
player. This means more than expecting the man
to give his own time and some of his own money
even. It means that the trade must co-operate in
making it easy for the men who need to be trained
in player work to get that training. If we neglect
our duty we shall neglect the opportunity to put
the player business on a firm and permanent foun-
dation ; and the public will not be slow to let us
know about it.
3,000 PLAYER ACTIONS IN A MONTH.
Great Record of Standard Pneumatic Action
Co.—84,000 in Use in Little Over Five Years.
The large demand for Standard player actions,
manufactured by the Standard Pneumatic Action
Co., Fifty-first street and Twelfth avenue, New
York, has continued since the first of the year, and
the outlook for 1916 is very promising, according
to officials of the company.
The orders which are now being received, it is
stated, are coming from every section of the
country.
Some time ago the company announced that it
had shipped 80,000 Standard player actions. To
date there have been 4,000 player actions added to
this, which makes a total of 84,000. In December,
1915, 3,000 Standard player actions were shipped in
thirty days, which was the biggest month which the
company has had since it was started, a little over
five years ago.
STARR PLAYERjVT EXPOSITION.
(Special to The Review.)
SAN DIEGO, CM.., January 24.—The managers of
the Salt Lake Route and Union Pacific Railroad
exhibit at the Panama-California Exposition have
adopted the Starr player-piano as the official in-
strument for use in connection with their exhibit.
J. C. Purdy, manager of the Starr store here, has
sold the Trayser piano which was used in the Sac-
ramento Valley Building at the exposition all of
last year.