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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
Now That the United States Is Embroiled in the European Struggle, It Be-
hooves Every Member of the Music Industry to Do His Bit in Overcoming
the Erroneous Idea That Music Is a Luxury and Is Therefore Unnecessary
When the U. S. A. entered the war the pro-
fessional nation-savers began to get in their
fine work. They started in from the first day;
and they have continued, with more or less per-
sistency, ever since.
Now the characteristic of the nation-saver is
that he is always warning the "sovereign peepul"
against something. He never proposes any-
thing positive.
He always tries to prevent
something being done. His specialty is Fear,
with a capital F. He spends his time viewing
with alarm and shuddering at the prospect of
the horrible doom which he sees o'ershadow-
ing the nation. He is a peculiarity of American
politics, whose little day is done, whose bleat
does not belong in stern and stirring times, and
who should be suppressed.
"Don't Spend a Cent"
One of the specialties of the Congressional
nation-saver is to warn the people of the U.
S. A. to be "economical." He shudders with
horror at the notion that the common people
may make so much money in the munition or
other Government works that they will want to
"spend" any of it. His attacks are always di-
rected towards anything that may appear as a
"luxury," which, from his point of view, means
whatever his personal constituents may be ex-
pected not to care much for. If his constit-
uents, as is usually the case, are agricultural
persons engaged in growing rich from the prices
of their produce, the nation-saver says not a
word about the sin of buying automobiles, for
the agrarians would not stand for it; so he
kicks about pianos and player-pianos, for he
thinks it is only the girls who care about them,
and they do not (always) have a vote.
Of course, the nation-saver is always a quar-
ter-century behind the times. Therefore, he
forgets that even the rock-ribbed, dyed-in-the-
wool American farmer is pumping out the music
these days and that in Iowa and Kansas the
tuners report almost as many players as Fords.
Our Liberty Loan
The day on which these words appear in print
is the last day for accepting applications for the
second series of the Liberty Loan. The suc-
cess of that loan seems already, as these words
are written a week ahead, to be certain. Prob-
ably there will be an oversubscription. The
American people, doing their own quiet think-
ing and utterly refusing to be swayed by the
shrieks of the blatter, in and out of Congress,
have determined to go through to the end.
Therefore we shall, all of us, do our best, in
our own business, to encourage our public in the
legitimate and wholly proper purchase of what
we make and offer for sale; namely, player-
pianos and music rolls of all sorts.
But we ought not to remain unconscious of
the fact that although we hear less openly the
silly talk about wholly ceasing from buying
anything at all, part at least of the damage may
have been done, in the minds of those weak
persons who are always ready to go into fits
about something or other, and who spend their
entire lives either getting over a fright or get-
ting into one. It is not so much that there are
any present indications of a subnormal busi-
ness. On the contrary, to hear men like Paul
P>. Klugh, or J. A. LeCato, or Otto Schulz, or
any of the others, talk, you would suppose that
every man, woman and child in the U. S. A. was
demanding player-pianos in what our orators
love to call "no uncertain tones!"
Indeed,
dealers' orders have been pouring in upon the
manufacturers veritably as a flood. Certainly
from now to Christmas we shall do a record
business. But there are less immediate con-
siderations which are equally important.
A Trouble of Democracy
The point is that the whole trade—all of us—
manufacturers, dealers, salesmen, tuners, ought
to realize that when a Government like ours
has to make decisions of the far-reaching kind
that come up in war-times, the job is vastly
different from that of the German General Staff
regulating civil life in a Germany of which
every square foot has been under martial law
since August, 1914. Our Government is the
expression of the people, howsoever halting and
imperfect; and our governors can only, in the
end, go so far as our opinions permit and our
convictions persuade. Therefore, when huge
sums of money must be raised, when taxation
projects are up, let us not forget that the natural
tendency is to single out for attention industries
that look, at first sight, to be relatively unim-
portant and non-essential. The music business
is a bright shining mark, let us remember, on
all such occasions, because it always looks like
a business that can be jumped on without the
people caring much. We are not complaining
at the fact; we are simply acknowledging it.
We are not criticizing a Government which is
doing, literally, wonders; we are merely stating
facts that affect our bread and butter and that
of every man who reads this page.
Coming Experiences
It is perfectly certain that the experiences
our British brethren in the music trades have
had to endure will, to some degree, be Imposed
on us. Now, the British workman and his
sister, the British munition girl, are making
more money than they ever supposed they
would earn. They are earning the highest
wages; and they are buying, with those
wages, pianos and player-pianos. The British
Government is not objecting to all this now;
although they have had their period of "luxury
bleating"; and had to get over it. But raw ma-
terials are hard to get and one of the London
trade papers complains in its latest issue of a
manufacturer who has withdrawn his advertis-
ing because he wants to stop the flow of orders
which he cannot at present fill! We shall prob-
ably never be so badly off; but in one sense we
shall be worse off; for we shall have more irre-
sponsible talk to deal with and more political
vaporing about waste and extravagance, uttered
for political effect by men who are so perfectly
neutral that they do not care who gets licked;
so long as it is Uncle Sam. Therefore, and
for all the other reasons, we, in the piano and
player-piano trades, ought to busy ourselves in
putting our industry, its claims on the people.
and its rights to an honorable place in this war-
time, before the American people in a manner
reasonable and effective.
Suggestions
We are not advisers in ordinary, but we
venture to suggest certain lines of thought,
gathered from the opinions of a number of im-
portant men in the trade with whom we have
made a point of discussing this subject:
1. Why can we not adopt, from now onward,
a tone in our advertising intended to correct
and wholly set straight the absurd idea that the
natural love of the people for music should be
stifled, through any pseudo-patriotic notion?
2. Why not, from now onward, make a reso-
lution never to publish an advertisement that
does not say something about the remarkable
fact that the first demand of the soldier is for
music, and that music is the best wartime medi-
cine there is; that an ounce of music is 'better
than a pound of belliake?
3. Why not withhold advertising from news-
papers that talk nonsense about "waste" and
"extravagance," when the real waste and ex-
travagance are not in the things of the spirit,
such as music, but in the things of the flesh,
such as. overeating and overdrinking?
4. Why not key ourselves to a policy of stand-
ing up, in our advertising, in our talks to pros-
pects, and in the atmosphere of our factories
and stores, to the straight-cut idea that, in
strenuous times like these, the discipline the peo-
ple need is not to be realized in ostentatiously
avoiding the easily noticed things, but in put-
ting order and system into lives that never have
known aught save their own sweet will? Why
not, in short, buckle down to tackling the lazy
stupidity that would try to win the war by
giving up intellectual pleasures that strengthen,
while stubbornly refusing to curb the extrava-
gant appetites that weaken? A war that would
stop the habit of excessive drinking would be,
in itself, the greatest of blessings to the Ameri-
can people. A war that would put an end to the
cultivation of music would be the greatest; of
curses. Our war will not be won that way.
These suggestions are here set fortli be-
cause we believe they contain within them the
spirit of truth. We know from the experience
of the past few months that wars, while they
bring to the front the noblest instincts of a free
people, yet give play likewise to the meanest
passions and pettiest prejudices. This war is
going to be won, let there be no mistake about
it, by the United States and our Allies; but
each of us must do his individual part. An es-
sential to that doing is a general healthy state
of national industry. We piano men are a not
an important department of that great organism.
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