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THE
MU5IC TRADE
r* T T P ~0 A P "V
..• '.i i) a A K i
61443
?, TLENOX AND
INUNDATION:
VOL. LXVIII. No. 14
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Are., New York. April 5, 1919
Assure Prosper
W
E of the music trades are facing at the moment conditions wholly abnormal. Our manufacturers
no longer ask for business. They allot orders in rotation and proportion. They do their best to
make ten pianos do for twenty orders. It is a situation wholly unprecedented, to care for which
no previous preparation has, in the nature of the case, been possible. The physical signs are all
for a continuance of extraordinary prosperity in every branch of the trade. Yet there is uneasiness in some
quarters. For this feeling there are causes definite and formidable. The labor world is in a condition of morbid
unrest. The workman wants, all of a sudden, a great deal more than he has ever avowedly wanted before.
And he wants it all at once.
The industrial situation, in a word, is extremely uncertain. The voices of those who wish, not to
reform, but completely to destroy, the fabric of modern civilization are heard more loudly in Germany, in
Russia and in Italy than in France, in Britain or in America. Yet they are heard in all of these lands; and
to-day heard unmistakably.
It may be taken for granted that the good sense of the English-speaking peoples will pull them through.
The political experience which arises from centuries of political freedom, ever growing into a finer fealty, cannot
be put aside by any outburst of fanaticism. Yet the outburst will not be suppressed merely by appeals to
reason. While it is true that the workers have not always had a square deal, still that does not mean that
they must now be made dictators.
The favorite cry of the superficial worker is that all wealth is created by labor. It is true; but it is not
all the truth. The trouble begins when it is taken as a completely, not as a partially, true explanation.
Wealth is the creation of labor, under direction. Both the labor and the direction are necessary.
Destroy the director and the laborer cannot produce wealth. That is elementary. But elementary truths are
not always universally perceived. Lenine did not see that a year ago; there are indications that he is beginning
to see it now.
In this country the vast majority are workers, with head, with hand, with both. No one of the great
working majority, no matter what his income, objects to curbing those forces which eventually lead to blind
financial despotism; but no worker who is reasonable would wish to substitute even for that tyranny the far
worse tyranny of a rabble.
The business men of the land will be called on during the coming year to face problems of grave import.
They may safely pin their faith to certain fundamental facts; namely:—
First: the general prosperity of the country is wonderful; and its distribution is as wonderful as its
magnitude.
Second: Industrial unrest is far more chargeable against the machinations of scheming politicians
than against any national inability to absorb returning man-power or maintain the level of wages.
Third: Bolshevism rests on the belief that the proletarians (the hand-workers in the cities, that is) alone
are entitled to share in the wealth they help to create. Resting on a lie about the creation of wealth, it
expresses a lie in its operation. But it is plausible, and it is easily swallowed. There is its great danger. A
plausible lie may be extremely dangerous when a crowd believes it.
Fourth: When business men realize that a square deal to labor and to business are alike and equally
essential, that pressing economic and social questions lie untouched while politicians play their piffling games,
and that our present prosperity cannot continue unless answers are given to every big industrial question now
before us, then perhaps they will take things into their own hands, get together with labor and settle the
matter definitely and satisfactorily to all concerned.
Then we shall have no need to worry either about Bolshevism or about Prosperity.
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