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VOL. LXII. No. 8 Published Every Saturday by Estate of Edward Lyman Bill at 373 Fourth Ave., New York, Feb. 19, 1916
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Credit—The Basis of Business Health.
HE larger our knowledge of efficiency and scientific management in business becomes, the
more we realize that it is impossible to steer the business ship to the port of safety without a
proper comprehension of the importance of credit, which is not only a necessity to the con-
tinuance of any enterprise, but is as much a necessity as cash.
This is just as true of the small piano store in the country town as of the great corporation in
a big city doing an immense domestic and foreign trade. Both depend upon credit for their exist-
ence and prosperity. Nevertheless every day we find merchants in the piano trade, as well as other
industries, who treat their credit as if it were their health—they fail to realize its true value until
they have lost it.
Credit men have well been described as physicians of business, and they will tell you that many
a man conducting a sound, healthy business becomes a financial wreck within a few years, simply
because he has abused his credit—just as a man who starts out in life with a sound, healthy body
becomes a physical wreck within a few years by excesses or dissipation.
It is difficult for a man to regain lost physical or business health, because in many cases char-
acter has deteriorated with his business. Character is one of the greatest assets governing the giving
of credit, for a man receives credit in proportion to the amount of confidence that men place in him.
In considering the importance and necessity of credit to every business man, it is remarkable
how careless some are regarding that prime essential to their commercial existence. The nature of
their transgressions would indicate that these are generally the result of thoughtlessness, or a false
conception of the value of credit. It is not so much an active abuse of credit, but is rather a possible
indifference and neglect, which are mental ailments that weaken the will. And be it remarked that as
tiie will is the index of character, the ease or indifference which marks this retrograde step implies
the fact that there exists a moral as well as physical law of gravity.
Too many men overlook the importance of meeting obligations when they fall due, at least with-
out putting themselves to serious inconvenience. They calculate that the manufacturer can well
afford to wait—that is only a trifling matter to him, whereas payment may mean a general disturbance
of the merchant's affairs at the time it becomes due. Sophistry and temporizing supply the general
justification.
There is a prominent business man, a manufacturer in an important branch of the music trade
who looks upon the note as a genuine obligation for the maker of the note to pay a specified amount
at a certain time. The unexpected happens in every business. The maker of the note may meet
with the trials and tribulations of business and be unable to meet it. When the circumstances are
reasonable and are explained to the manufacturer before the note becomes due, he frequently grants
a renewal without question. But for the note to go to protest means that the customer's business
relations with that particular manufacturer are ended for all time.
This is a business practice that is absolutely justifiable.
No business can be safe, or conducted correctly, without giving close attention to the fulfilling
of obligations, and business men, whether in the music trade or elsewhere, should not be indifferent
to the importance of this fact.
With favorable business conditions confronting us in 1916, and with prosperity so diffused
among the masses of the people that an immense demand for musical instruments of air kinds is
possible, it necessarily involves a business expansion that will mean much for the piano manufac-
turer and the piano merchant.
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