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14
THE MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
MARCH 9, 1918
[Reprinted from the Detroit Times, February 27, 1918.]
Are Your Economics On Straight?
By E. LeRoy Pelletier
As Given in an Address at the Board of Commerce, Tuesday Noon, February 26, 1918
Are you one of those who preach that our duty at
this time is to skimp and save and deny ourselves all
but the bare necessities of life?
Are you for the "sack cloth and ashes" stuff—or do
you realize that it is just because we are the most
luxury-loving people on earth that we are also the
richest, and therefore have been called upon to finance
and to fight to a finish this most "extravagant" of all
wars: Listen—
No man ever made a fortune by saving. •
No community ever got rich by limiting its people
to the bare necessities of life.
All wealth is derived from the manufacture and
sale of luxuries.
In other words, luxury is a by-product of necessity.
Limit yourself to the use of necessities only, and
you'll stop the production of all but necessities. •
For all progress—all civilization—nil wealth beyond
the bare needs of the moment are the direct result of
the production and sale of luxuries.
Man can get along with just food, raiment and
shelter.
And he can do with these in their crudest, coarsest
forms.
But such a people cannot provide for the future—
cannot guard against periodical famine—could not
finance from their surplus earnings a war between
"cultured" peoples.
That calls for the riches of an "extravagant" nation
—accustomed to regard luxuries as necessities.
We hear a lot nowadays to the effect that we
Americans are a wasteful and extravagant people.
And it is said by way of condemnation, or at least
of reproof!
Yet .when the war which had been precipitated by
the most "frugal" people on earth—except the more
primitive races of savages—we, the "extravagant"
nation, were asked to finance and to prosecute the war
to a successful finish.
And we expect to do this from the surplus left from
our extravagance.
Yes! And it is because of our very "extravagance"
that we have the money to do it.
Being the most luxury-loving, luxury-enjoying, lux-
ury-demanding people on earth, our surplus is the
greater.
Get that -it's the point where most folks go astray.
When your wife tells you the hat she bought three
months ago is "out of style" and that she needs a
new one, she is preaching sound economics, though
hesitatingly and perhaps unconsciously.
Style is luxury—and changes of style create more
wealth than any other single agency.
Civilization—culture—progress—impose on those who
crave them both mental and physical effort.
Stop the effort—and you retrograde to the status of
the Hottentot.
China is wonderfully rich in natural resources—yet
her people are deplorably poor.
Four hundred million people should be sufficient to
develop those resources, shouldn't they?
What's the answer, then?
If China has the resources why are not the Chinese
wealthy?
Why, the Chinese have worn the same styles of
clothing for a thousand years, and have subsisted on
one diet—plain rice!
The Japs trjed the same forms of "frugality" for
centuries and just managed to subsist.
When they began to copy American "extravagance"
they became a world power.
And now we are told the Japanese will develop the
resources of China.
The people of India—93 per cent, of them—wear
breech clouts—and every so often we have to send
them shiploads of food to fend off the famine their
improvidence has brought upon them.
Yet India is a land of almost inexhaustible unde-
veloped riches.
No—you're wrong!
India isn't ignorant—it boasts the oldest civilization
—her philosophies antedate ours.
But their philosophy ran to seed a few centuries
ago—they taught their people to eschew luxuries and
subsist on the plainest food and to wear the coarsest,
or no, clothing.
India's development stopped right there.
And China's stopped at about the same time.
Now consider France:
France originates the fashions for the world—and
wears them first.
And France is, per capita, one of the richest of
nations.
Decadent they said—because of her love of luxury.
Yet France has fought like a wild-cat.
This "degenerate people" have defeated the "super
man" at every point.
Both epithets, by the way, were applied by the
Teutons—before the two nations met in the present
war.
Oatmeal put up in a box with a fancy name and
sold for four times its value as oatmeal is a familiar
form of American "extravagance."
But a box of it would resurrect India, and if you
could persuade the Chinese to eat "Compote de riz"
instead of just rice, tnere'd be hope for them, too.
From the wealth created by their "extravagance"
they would become rich.
There's small profit in the production and sale of
raw materials. One—or at most a few—share in that
profit.
But in the many stages through which the sweetness
passes from the sugar cane to the ?5.00 box of choco-
late bonbons wrapped in oiled paper, tied with a
pink ribbon and delivered to the lady by a motor
truck, much wealth is derived and millions participate
therein.
Save the crude ore if you will—deny yourself the
luxury of a watch or a motor car—but what will you
do with the ore then? Where derive the wherewithal
for even the necessities of life?
You see it is all wrong—this idea that we can go
nhead faster by slipping into "reverse" or applying the
brakes.
This idea that in order to finance a war we must
designate as "non-essentials" those industries from
which our greatest help, both material and financial,
come, shows a deplorable lack of knowledge of the
very fundamentals of economic principles.
For it doesn't matter that the $5,000 Red Racy
Roadster is a "non-essential" to the profligate son of
the rich man, or that the luxurious limousine could be
dispensed with by the rich man himself—
That does not matter.
We are not concerned with that phase of the subject.
The point is, those "luxuries"—those "extrava-
gances," those "non-essentials," if you wHl—are vitally
essential to the millions of men and the families of
the men whose jobs depend on the making of that 20th
century vehicle.
The sewing machine—the Victrola—the electric lights
—the piano—the furniture; yes, the very schools
wherein the workmen's children are educated—are the
direct result of craving on the part of the rich man
for those luxuries.
For, you know, the rich man eats only three times a
day—and his fare could be, and generally is, plainer
than that of the average workingman in his shops.
So if he denied himself the luxuries—if he were not
"extravagant" the great mass would be denied the
very necessities of life.
Broadly speaking, there is no such thing as a
"non-essential" industry.
Nothing that in the progress of mankind from the
status of the savage to that of the civilized man, has
become a part of our daily life, can be considered a
"non-essential."
For the question isn't whether we can do without
certain articles—it is whether the working people of
the world can do without the Job of making those
articles.
The diamond necklace may be a "non-essential" to
the wealthy lady. Of course she could deny herself
the trinket and never notice it. The essential point is
that thousands of men are employed in the making of
such trinkets and if you deprive the lady of her
heart's desire you deprive them of their daily bread.
It doesn't matter that we, as a people, could deny
ourselves the sound of music for a time—forego the
purchase of a piano.
That isn't the point.
Some time ago people with only a meager under-
standing of economics—and the intimate and Intricate
and inseparable relation of one industry to another—
pronounced the piano, among other things, a "non-
essential."
The argument was advanced that it was "unpatriotic"
to buy a piano because pianos used up spruce that
was necessary for aeroplane building.
How much spruce?
Four feet of spruce per piano!
What kind of spruce?
Short lengths unsuited for any other work!
There are 300,000 pianos manufactured In America
every year and the total amount of iron used in them
is only 25,000 tons.
That is not a by-product of one mill.
The amount of wire used for the strings would
amount to practically nothing in our big aeroplane
program.
Neither are the workmen the kind that can be used
in that industry—90 per cent, of them are men too old
to learn any other trade. The other 10 per cent.
Uncle Sam has already taken.
But there are 10,000 piano dealers in the United
States—10,000 men who could not pay their rent and
10,000 landlords who would be unable to buy Liberty
Bonds if the piano industry were declared a "non-
essential" and suppressed.
Tens of thousands of workmen that can do their
best at their own trades and help with their earnings
to finance the active branches of the war, would be
thrown out of jobs and their families suffer untold
privations.
So the piano industry is not a "non-essential," but
in its relation to all the other industries and to the
war itself is a vital essential.
Now consider this remarkable fact.
The Stelnway factory In Hamburg, Germany, which
was a branch of the American company, who make the
best pianos made, last year made and sold more pianos
than In any previous year of Its history.
And we all agree the Germans cannot afford "non-
essential" industries.
When the Allies entered the trenches recently we
read they found pianos in the dugouts—and photo-
graphs and every other adjunct of civilization that
could be toted there to make trench life endurable.
It doesn't matter which American buys the Liberty
Bond—Just so long as Uncle Sam gets the money.
And Uncle Sam will get the money from whomsoever
has it at the moment.
Buy the piano you want; buy the diamond necklace;
buy the automobile—and thereby keep American work-
men busy and enffble them to do their part, which they
are only too eager to do, In helping flnnnce the war.
You can't lift yourself by your own boot straps—
nor finance a war from war industries alone!
It's all wrong—this idea that, In order to finance
the war, we must deprive ourselves all but the bare
necessities of life.
Rank sophistry those phrases "an old suit of clothes
Is a badge of honor," and "a dollar paid for a ball for
a boy to play with Is a traitor dollar."
Rank sophistry—and If taken seriously would result
in the most terrible suffering in a short time.
For, if you deny luxuries to those who can afford
and should buy them, you automatically and surely
deprive the less fortunate and the loss skilled of bread
and raiment and shelter.
Out with a false logic—the motives of men who utter
them are open to suspicion if not worse!
Food conservation—not by short rationing, but
simply by changing our diet so as to use those meats
and grains that cannot be shipped, so as to supply
our allies with those that contain the most nourish-
ment in the most compact form—
That is O. K.—every intelligent, every patriotic
American endorses it and will gladly do his part.
But this preaching that we must don sackcloth,
cover ourselves with ashes; bow down in grief; deny
ourselves the luxuries to which we have been accus-
tomed—and thereby stop their manufacture and sale—
that's contrary to all laws of economics.
And they are Laws—not merely rules.
You can't amend nor repeal them Just because they
don't square with your Ideas.
Let's get down to first principles—let's correct our
angle on economics, for we are missing the mark,
most of us.
The facts are camouflaged and we arc shooting at a
dummy.
Contributed in the Interest of Sound Bu»ine«» by
(Copyright, 1918, by E. LeRoy Pelletier)
VjlTli 1JI l C l l
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