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THE MUSIC TRADE
DFX EMBER 27, 1919
REVIEW
Wherein the Editor of This Player Section, Being a Philosopher of Parts,
Makes His Contribution to the Gayety of Nations by Setting Forth His Cog-
itations on Matters Grave and Gay, Wise and Otherwise, in a Kindly Vein
business. The player'came along and gave the
piano trade an opportunity to reform. One fre-
quently heard in those days that the advent of
The worst of the December Player Section is the player-piano meant the chance to establish
that it always comes to publication just after one line at least that could be sold at a fair
Christmas, but must always be written just be- price, and for cash or on really short time. The
fore. Now here we are, filled with the most trade within a very short time had drifted into
generous thoughts, and feeling like an entire a condition where the player-piano, involving
"Christmas carol" from Ebenezer Scrooge to Tiny a much larger investment per unit, was being
Tim all rolled into one, sitting down to write sold on terms as long as ever and even longer.
witty and pertinent paragraphs on all the topics The trade was getting itself into a state of
which our readers are likely to approve: here we financial entanglement similar to its condition
are, filled with lovely ideas and bursting to let ten years previously, when' the great war came
them out, and not daring to do it, not so much on. The seller's market began to develop, a
as a spoonful. Why not? Simply because Re- scarcity of goods and an excessive retail de-
view readers will read this stuff the days after mand entered simultaneously. The merchant can
Christmas, when they are all in the midst of the get his own terms now and a lair price. In
regular post-Christmas grouch and in a state fact, if the trade would only stick together—
of mind which would refuse to laugh at Charlie which it won't—it could name its own price.
Chaplin. Why folks should be so delightful on As it is, the trade is in a sounder shape on its
December 24 and so hateful on December 26 credits than it has experienced in twenty-five
is a mystery, but everybody knows it's so
years. Shall we neglect the lesson? Shall we
Guesses a-plenty can be made, but the present fall back into the old habits just as soon as the
guess is that it's Santa Claus' fault. Anyway, production balances the consumption and prices
this page must be desperately decorous this fall to a normal level? Shall we really ever give
week. Jt shall be.
them away again? One wonders.
Vain. Regrets
Fair Price and Wise Price
Bring Them Back
Everybody is yelling for goods. Give us play-
ers, they yell, never mind the expense, never
mind what they look like, just give us players.
Well, that's the way we all feel, but what good
does it do us? We all want a lot of players to
sell, and the dear public besieges us for them
day and night. We are surely out of luck.
There is only one consolation—we are selling
to whom we please and we are beginning to
get something like fair prices. There is the
crux of the whole matter. How many men
realize that before the player was put on the
market the piano trade was slowly committing
suicide? The cheap piano, made to sell at any
price and on the smallest possible margin, held
the boards. The manufacturer and the mer-
chant seemed to be in a competition for the
most frenzied and impossible ways of doing
That history repeats itself is one of those
half-truths which are more dangerous than lies.
That history ought to repeat itself is very often
a complete truth. Those who remember the
early days of this industry remember how the
makers and sellers of piano players spent time,
money and skill lavishly in the effort to popu-
larize the new instrument by means of the pub-
lic demonstration. The memory of those days
comes as a fragrance and a joy. To-day the
public demonstration is dead; dead almost, it
should seem, beyond resurrection. And what
a pity! What killed that very fine and sensi-
ble idea? Mainly, one thinks, it was ordinary
stupidity. Stupidity could not see that there
should be some fair relation between the claims
made for the player-piano and the technical
limitations it then showed. Stupidity could not
INTRODUCED I N
$iano!Plq$ers
Made by the pioneers and
leaders in the player-piano
industry
Have wonderful patented
devices and exclusive
features.
r
Jhe WILCOX © WHITE Co.
Business Established 1877
MERIDEN CONN.
J
Agencies all over die Ubrid.
see that in the process of converting a people
the appeal should be neither to the prejudices
of the musicians nor to the folly of the night
livers, but to the innocent and pathetic aspira-
tions of the mass of middle class for some magic
which may brighten life and bring joy into it.
The player demonstration as a weapon was
dropped, and with it all chance of making the
player-piano a real force in music. Now one
can begin to wish that history may, indeed, be
induced to repeat herself and that we may see
once more a revival of the good old method of
advertising by public demonstration. But it
will have to be something different from its
discredited ancestor. It will have to be some-
thing neither high-brow nor cheap. The demon-
strator is neither an artist exhibiting his per-
sonality nor a machine pumping another ma-
chine for the delectation of the mob. He is
exactly what his name implies, one who shows
how it is done. His business is to show the peo-
ple how the player-piano may be played by any
intelligent person so as to produce effects musi-
cally satisfying. We need another race of these
experts at this moment. When the present sit-
uation as to supply and demand has eased up
we shall have a distribution problem on our
hands again. That problem will demand per-
sistently the adoption of wise and calculated
methods. No such methods now exist. The
system of public demonstration will have to
be revived. But it will have to be revived skil-
fully.
Benedicite
But the Old Year passes out and the New
Year knocks for admission to the room of con~
sciousness. We pause for a moment and look
forward down the echoing corridors of time
to come, striving to pierce the gloom of those
interminable distances. Can we glimpse the
future? A little bit of it, perhaps, and that most
imperfectly. But the wise and brave man is he
who turns back from the survey, knowing that
to the wise the important things are not in
the future, but in the present, that it matters
not what fear or foreboding may whisper. The
wise man knows that in being true to himself
he is true to the demands of the God of
Truth, and that into His hands he may confi-
dently and well commend his spirit. There and
there alone he shall find strength and success.
May the New Year bring this understanding to
every man who has before him the big problems
which the present state of the world is con-
juring up.
Of course we live and learn, but this is one
case where speed in living doesn't mean a world
of knowledge overnight.
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