Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MUJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXIII. No. 15 Published Every Saturday by the Estate of Edward Lyman Bill at 373 4th Ave., New York, Oct. 7, 1916
slnB l c I e 8
ent8
$ 2 % 0 T e r year
Safety Signals for Ideals
LIVER TWIST'S demand for "more" is but the reflection of the common human craving for things
beyond those of which we are in possession, whether it be dollars, honor, or the thousand and one
things that go to make up the run of fads.
The man with a five-thousand-dollar business wants to make it twenty-five .thousand dollars.
When he reaches the twenty-five thousand stage, he sets a new mark at one hundred thousand. It is right and
proper that he should do these things. It is a stimulus that makes for earnestness and business growth.
It is the setting up of ideals, and then the setting up of new ideals afresh, when the first appear to have
been reached, that serves to keep the active and aggressive man going upward and onward.
But there should be a check to this campaign.. There should be a safety signal to accompany the ideal—
a brake to work when the limit of safety has been reached, all of which brings us back to the man who wants
to grow—who wants to have his business grow—who wants money and more money and the things that
it brings.
In these days "war babies," fortunes from munition stocks, the rising price of supplies and the profits
that this increased price brings to the suppliers, have all had their effect on business in general.
The average business, including the piano business, at the present time is good—in fact, much better than
normal. It marks a healthy growth—a growth that is not dependent upon unusual conditions that may con-
tinue for an indefinite period, or end over night.
Stories of men who have run a few dollars up into fortunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars through
fortunate stock manipulations; stories of those who have gotten in "on the ground floor"; of industrial
enterprises that have developed marvelously, if but temporarily, as a result of the European demands; stories
of r o n who have, in the parlance of the race track, "run a toothpick into a lumber yard," have all had their
effect upon the man who is engaged in a stable business—a business that produces results and profits only after
earnest work, that measures its expansion on the basis of 5 per cent, or 10 per cent., instead of 500 per cent,
or 1,000 per cent.
The result of all this is that even the conservative business man, or piano merchant, for instance, who
is doing very well in his own way, becomes ambitious to grow all at once without adequate preparation or
without building on a solid foundation.
He sees the profits of his business increase enormously if he can manufacture. He sees the profits of
one store magnified many times if he can open a half dozen or dozen branch stores. He sees the money that
should ordinarily go back into his business, to make for its future growth and protection, grow into an
independent fortune over night through investment in channels with which he is for the most part unfamiliar.
In other words, the conservative becomes the radical, and often becomes reckless.
The safety of the battleship depends upon the solidity of its armor at every vulnerable point. If the
armor of a 5;OOO-ton gunboat is spread out over a 30,000-ton battleship, it does not mean additional protec-
tion—it doesn't mean a gain in armament. It simply means that armor twelve inches thick has been rolled
out to a two-inch thickness to cover more surface, and instead of being strong and able to withstand shocks,
simply becomes a shell and useless. The first shot penetrates it and does irreparable damage.
It is so with business. A man with a substantial business, satisfactory assets back of it, and a good
foundation to build upon, does not strengthen himself by dividing his capital through other channels, or
expanding suddenly through a chain of stores. He simply opens his whole business to the danger of attack.
The solidity as represented in one store vanishes.
The assets that made the organized business a good and safe ont, when divided into a dozen parts simply
O
(Continued on page 5)