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EUBUCLlBRARVi
THE
REVIEW
MUJIC TIRADE
VOL. LXIII. No. 3 Published Every Saturday by the Estate of Edward Lyman Bill at 373 4th Ave., New York, July 15, 1916 Sins gJrXl'
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$2.00 Per Year
National Advert
A MERICAN pianos have been made since the year 1800. For sixty of those years, American pianos
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have attracted the attention of the world, and for forty years have led the world in every technical
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\ aspect, in production, and in the general dimensions of the trade to which they have given rise.
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In the United States reside rather more than 100,000,000 people. The population increase
exceeds 2,000,000 annually. It is plain on the face of things that on the basis of five to a family and of one
family in four, there should be 5,000,000 pianos in the country.
This is not the condition, however. Approximately there are 2,000,000 instruments of all kinds already
in the homes of the people. This means that there are 18,000,000 families in this country which do not
possess a piano.
It is, of course, fallacious to claim that every family can own a piano, but at least one family in four
has the intellectual ability to appreciate, and financial ability to own such an instrument. Now if there are
but 2,000,000 pianos among the 20,000,000 families at present living in this country, there are still 3,000,000
families who can and who should own a piano.
Figuring on the basis outlined above, the population increase of 2,000,000 people annually—or 400,000
families—should offer a ready market for at least 100,000 pianos, and this without attending to the needs of
a single one of the other 3,000,000 families which rightfully should own instruments.
We are producing about 300,000 pianos and player-pianos of all kinds annually—sometimes less.
Allowing but 100,000 pianos for the normal increase in population, and allowing the conservative estimate
of an additional 100,000 for replacements and renewals, it would take ten years, with an annual production
of 500,000 instruments, to supply the 3,000,000 families which at the present time can afford and actually need
pianos.
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These figures show that the existing market has not yet been half sold, and the increase, in population
is automatically furnishing a steady additional demand.
Why are we not filling our market?
The reasons have been debated a thousand times. Fundamentally, all discussions seem to miss the one
essential point, which is simply this: Why, in fact, and apart from any trade consideration, should the
average family buy a piano or player-piano?
We have been busy for a quarter century developing the trade. We have invented, refined and enlarged
production, messed around with efficiency systems, financed the retail end of the game, planned, worked, and
stewed to make a demand for pianos; but we have never yet, as a trade, put before the American people
any convincing arguments to show them why they ou >ht to own pianos.
We have taken it for granted that the desire for a piano is natural, national, and of so healthy a growth
that no assistance from us is needed. We have, in short, assumed what we have no right to assume, and
what is not in fact true, namely, that all Americans are musical.
Potentially no nation is more musical, for none so readily succumbs to the fascination of rhythm, of
melody, of the subtle suggestions conveyed by music. Vet in no other country, save perhaps England, is music
so purely artificial an accomplishment, so merely ornamental, so thoroughly divorced from any connection
with, the active life and thought of the people. And we are even worse than the English in this respect.
Americans have never taken music seriously, and as they have never taken the piano seriously, so also
they decline to take the player-piano seriously.
Yet to-day this people seeks a sign, seeks leaders, earnestly asks of itself, "What of the night?" groping
for light in spiritual darkness.
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(Continued
on page 5)
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