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THE
MUSIC TIRADE
VOL. LXIV. No. 11
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York, March 17, 1917
Single Copies 10 Cents
|2.00 Per Year
Is There Qver-Production ?
W
ISE-APPEARING talk is often impressive; but to confine oneself to talk that springs only from
knowledge of facts is usually difficult and sometimes unpopular.
Suppose we said that the 1916 production of players and straight pianos, although probably the
largest in trade history, nevertheless is not less than 20 per cent, short of the most conservative
estimate that would be made by any business man figuring on the sort of basis that does for any other industry!
Would the statement sound sensational ? Perhaps! But it is strictly—nay, painfully—true. Here is proof.
The population of the country is increasing at the rate of nearly 2,500,000 per annum. Soon the annual
increase will have passed this two and a half million mark. Is it realized that this annual addition to a population
already numbering more than 105,000,000, represents six times the numerical production of pianos and player-
pianos during our busiest year—1916?
So; we are producing only one piano or player-piano to every six persons born into the nation annually.
Think it over carefully, for it is a statement of vast import.
It means that even if we allow that this population pairs off evenly, so that only one-half as many house-
holds are the eventual result of this great annual addition; even then, two out of three of the added households
do without either piano or player-piano.
# Even if we go back to 1896, when were born those American boys and girls, whom we now suppose to be
eligible for marriage this year, we shall find that the population increase was 1,750,000 per annum, which, added
to the arriving immigrant children, gives us certainly 2,500,000 persons now at the age of 21 in this country,
who should share a piano between each two of them.
Is this fantastic? Then let us be conservative.- Suppose one-half of these million and a quarter couples
to be too poor, in this prosperous year of this prosperous and great country, to buy a piano or player-piano!
Even so, the production of piano and player-pianos to takexare of the other half ought to be 625,000 per annum!
Actually, it is a little more than half of that! And then some people have been talking about over-produc-
tion of pianos in the U. S. A.!
Let us even go further. Let us suppose that estimates based on the apparent increase during the last seven
years, and on the noted increase since 1900, are all wrong, to the extent of 25 per cent. Even then there ought
to be 500,000 pianos and player-pianos produced ^ach year to make up a total that shall take care only of growth
annually; without considering the new business arising from the already existing population.
Allow that last statement—as we must, willy-nilly, on the face of the facts—and we see that we are not
at all over-producing. The normal absorptive capacity of the nation is half a million instruments per annum.
It is that much now—it will be more than that next year, and still more in five years from now!
It-is not over-production that is the matter with us; it is under-distribution!
To put it more gravely, though not much more accurately, the piano business is a sub-normal business. It
does not produce up to the normal, prospective, to-be-naturally-anticipated demand. That is plain language, but
it cannot be denied.
What is the trouble? To answer the question in a paragraph is beyond our power; but one thing is sure,
the production is not to blame.
The distributing machinery is out-of-date. In these five words, one can find the kernel of the situation.
There, and there above all, reform must be started.
Independent thinkers in every branch of the trade know this already. Our only excuse for repeating
what ought to be an old tale by now, is that the rank and file, especially in the retail branch of the business, do
not know it.
(Continued on page 5)