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REVIEW
THE
VOL/jLXVIII. No. 1 6 * Published EverylSaturday^y EdwardlLyman BUI, Inc.,:at!373 4th AveJNew York.
April 19, 1919
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*{f. oco °& er "££
Association Work Should Arouse Personal Interest
I
N less than two months the annual conventions of the various and sundry trade organizations, including'
the annual meeting of the Music Industries Chamber of Commerce, will be in session in Chicago, and
in the minds of many real thinkers of the trade the conventions promise to be the most important ever
Held in the industry—important for what they may or may not mean for the future of the various
activities that have been launched by the several divisions of the trade.
Organizations are all right provided they do something. And it must be said that the old organizations
in the piano trade have done something. Their accomplishments are now matters of record. It is the future
plans, however, that are going to make the Chicago meetings worth while. There are certain elements of the
trade who, it may be said with perfect frankness, are not strong for associations. They pay the membership
fees of $io, $25 or $50 a year, and having done so sit back and wait for something to happen that will reim-
burse them for the membership and leave some profit besides. They have paid their money and want to see
the show. They have become a part of the organization and demand action. Fortunately, under present con-
ditions, they are likely to get that action.
It has been said, more or less humorously, of course, that the great war was due primarily to the fact
that the Kaiser and the war lords had spent forty years in building up the great German military machine
and wanted to see if it really worked, and had~"to start the war to make the test. The results are history.
It has not taken forty years to develop our trade organizations, nor will they have to wait indefinitely
to prove their worth. The opportunity has made itself conspicuous on numerous occasions during the last
two years, and no doubt with competent executives—men of ideas in charge of the various organization destinies
—opportunity will come knocking at the door in the future, for the organization heads will look for it.
It is the man with ideas who is going to be worth while at the Chicago meetings—not the fellow who
is content to sit by and find out what somebody else has in mind. The associations are not in any sense one-
man propositions. No one realizes that better than the officers of the association, and this fact is indicated
clearly by the effort being made during the trip of Mr. Pound to interest the local members of the music
trade in national association affairs, to bring them together, to make them factors not only in the national
body and its policies but in carrying on their share of the work in their own districts.
The end of the war, with its restrictions and other industrial handicaps, has not in any sense brought to
an end the usefulness of the Music Industries Chamber of Commerce or its component organizations. Tt
means simply a switching of problems to be handled by those bodies—problems of development taking the
place of problems of protection.
Those who attend the conventions in Chicago will have before them the task of cataloging these problems
and presenting their solutions in tangible form. It is a big work, and there is little enough time in which to
consider it seriously. Fortunately the convention delegates will have a substantial working basis. There is, for
instance, the National Bureau for the Advancement of Music, which has proven its value, and the future of
which must be given consideration, else many months of hard work will have gone for naught.
There is the Better Business Bureau, that is steadily becoming a more important and more thoroughly
appreciated factor in eliminating evils not only in trade advertising but in business methods generally.
With the various trade activities placed under the control of the Music Industries Chamber of Com-
merce, the opportunity is afforded for carrying on the various phases of the work in a businesslike, systematic
way. Simply launching various movements and leaving their operation to those in the Chamber of Com-
merce is not sufficient, however. The big thought is to develop ways arid means for arousing in every
individual in the trade a personal interest in this work, and the desire to help. That in itself is a problem
of problems, and the solution must be found sooner or later.