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Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
VOL. LXVII. No. 6
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
August 10, 1918
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Agricultural Prosperity and the Piano Trade
A REPRESENTATIVE of The Music Trade Review has just returned from a trip through a typical
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mid-west agricultural state. What he has seen may not be indicative of conditions existing quite
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\ universally; it is, however, certainly indicative of what is just now occurring throughout an enormous
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^ and extremely important part of the country.
Those who have seen the extraordinary condition of the present corn crop are unanimous in declaring that
nothing like it has been observed for years. It has been a common experience to ride for a whole morning at
twenty miles an hour along roads bounded on each side by fields of corn twelve feet high, with hardly a break
save for the occasional stretches of wheat and oats, now all gathered and threshed.
The country roads are filled with automobiles. It is nothing unusual to see not mere cheap Fords, but fine
expensive cars, one after another, bowling along the roads driven by young girls in beautiful clothes, or by
bearded patriarchs, the fathers of the aforesaid girls, in overalls, looking as if they had just stepped away from
the thresher. The houses, the barns, the cattle, the automobiles, and the marvelous crops, all point to a pros-
perity as astounding as it is overflowing.
How many pianos or player-pianos are there in this magnificent area of prosperity and cash? Personal
observation convinced The Review's representative that two out of three farmhouses in the area gone over
by him possess something in the nature of one of these instruments. The proportion is fair, but it does not
represent so favorable a condition as might be supposed.
In days when even the renter, once despised by all farmers, can make a small fortune in a few years if
he be a good farmer himself, there is not much excuse for the remaining third being without pianos, is there?
The word "piano," too, covers, a multitude of musical sins. The most astonishing feature of all the
features of an astonishing journey was the almost uniform badness, if the term may be permitted, of the
pianos to be found in farmers' houses. The representative of this paper made a personal canvass lasting for
more than a week through a large area, visiting every farmhouse he could get to, and finding out the style,
age and condition of the piano, if any existed. He found some remarkable facts, too.
It is safe to say that a large majority of the instruments were from five to fifteen years old. It is safe
to say that most of these were of indifferent or cheap makes. It is equally safe to say that the owners, in most
cases, had literally no notion of any obligation, moral or otherwise, to keep their pianos in tune. It is, lastly,
not the slightest exaggeration to state that the player-pianos stood to the others in number as one to ten, and
that a majority—yes, a majority—of these were suffering from some more or less serious defect, besides being
mainly of the less expensive grades.
Yet the same farmers spend from $500 to $2,500 upon an automobile!
There is always a reason for things. Here we have two facts and several reasons.
The first fact is general public ignorance as to the piano and as to music. The second is general public
indifference on the whole subject.
The reasons are mainly, it is submitted, (1) failure of the dealer to work the agricultural territories
intensively, (2) consequent, almost complete ignorance as to the player-piano's value and as to maintenance of
the piano, (3) the shortage, acute in many States, of technically competent piano tuners, (4) the tendency of
the farmer to buy "bargains" always.
The farmer does not buy "bargain" automobiles, however; because their prices are nationally advertised
and nationally maintained.
He has been, however, educated into the "bargain" thought by the piano dealer. That is the big difference.
(Continued on page 5)