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REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXVII. No. 11
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
Piano Prices
Sept. 14, 1918
gle Copies 10 Cents
$2.00 Per Year
Water Mark
P
IAXO merchants who contemplate placing orders with the factories for new stock within the next
few months must he prepared to pay much higher prices for their instruments, for to accept the
statements of those actually making pianos, new instruments for the next six months are not only
going" to he scarce, hut are going to he offered at the highest wholesale prices in the history of the trade.
Fortunate indeed is the merchant who, heeding the advice to order early and liberally, has now sufficient stock
to take care of his requirements until the first of the year. He is going to save a large amount of money.
There will he some piano merchants who will raise the cry of profiteering, and in fact piano merchants
have already been quoted as saying that certain manufacturers have been endeavoring to gouge the dealers.
But cold, hard facts face the manufacturers and force them to demand prices for their products that will
at least enable them to keep their businesses on a safe footing.
It has already been announced in The Review that the War Industries Board has allotted to the piano
trade for the coming six months an amount of steel and iron approximately one-third of the amount of those
metals used during the corresponding period of 1916-K) 17. when it was estimated that pianos and players were
being manufactured at the rate of 350,000 a year. In other words, a retail trade that has absorbed in
normal times before the war something between 150,000 and 175,000 pianos—some say 200,000—during the
period from September 1 to March 1, which includes the holiday season, must now limit itself to an output of
between 55,000 and 60,000 pianos and players.
The manufacturer has a definite overhead. He has an organization that he is endeavoring to keep in
workable shape, not only for the present but for the reconstruction period after the war. That overhead
goes on whether he makes one or a thousand pianos, and its cost must be divided proportionately so that each
instrument leaving the factory carries its share. That is one reason for higher prices.
Both the steel and labor curtailment have had, and will have, a serious effect on piano production, and the
labor question is going to grow worse when the new draft law gets into operation. Not only are factory forces
greatly reduced, but those employes who remain are constantly demanding increased wages to enable them to
keep step with the mounting cost of living. Manufacturers have no recourse but to meet these demands for
higher wages, for otherwise the men are going to seek employment in plants handling war contracts, where
wages have reached a point that the piano man cannot meet and stay in business. In addition to this the
materials, besides the iron and steel, entering into pianos, including lumber, brass, felt, varnish and other
finishing materials, etc., have increased from 100 per cent, to 500 per cent, or more. These percentages are
not simply estimates, but are open to the investigation of anyone who cares to look into them.
On top of all these manufacturing costs and problems tending towards higher production costs comes the
new Revenue bill, which in its present form places a tax of TO per cent, not only on piano players, which were
already subjected to a tax of 3 per cent, in the old bill, but on pianos and organs. This tax may perhaps be
reduced during the hearings before the Senate Finance Committee, but there is no question but that the excise
tax on musical instruments is going to be higher than in the last bill. The tax will be levied on the
manufacturer's price, and will be added to the wholesale cost of instruments. Those retailers who would fain
raise the cry of ''wolf," perhaps sarcastically, will bear in mind that some piano manufacturers have already
announced, or are prepared to announce, substantial increases in their entire range of wholesale prices, while
the more cautious of the manufacturers, who seemingly are in the majority, have simply withdrawn wholesale
price lists entirely, and are offering individual quotations on individual orders. In other words, they are
basing their prices on conditions as they exist at the time the order is received, and the upward trend will be
steady and constant, until the reaction comes.
(Continued on page 5)