Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
HMIW
fflJJIC TIRADE
VOL.
LXXIV. No. 14
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman BUI, Inc., at 373 4th Aye., New York.
April 8, 1922
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Reaction or Reconstruction?
T
H E piano trade has been preached at busily during several past months, with a fervor of conviction
which has never been surpassed. Retailers, manufacturers, salesmen, tuners, trade papers—all have
come in for a course of lectures. And perhaps the most remarkable fact is that the lecturing has been
mutual. Each branch of the trade has blamed every other for any and all the troubles, real or imaginary,
which it believes itself to have suffered, or to be likely to suffer, during the months to come. It is all very inter-
esting. It indicates a heart-searching which can only be healthy and a conviction of sin which ought to lead to
repentance and reform.
The fact is that when trade is not as easy as it might be, when sales are had only after much effort, men
begin to ask themselves whether there is anything wrong with the ideas in which they have been trusting, with
the traditions which have grown up during years of normality, with the various idols of custom and prescrip-
tion which they have been so confidently worshiping. When men begin to inquire they begin to see. When
they begin to see they begin to mend. The process of mending sometimes involves some preliminary breaking up.
But it is a very healthy process nevertheless.
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Now, in our trade during this healthy, if irritating, process of heart-searching which we see going on
all around us, what should a sane thinking man be expected to discover in the way of needed reform and what
should be his ideas about the future?
The old physical axiom that action and reaction are equal and opposite is excellent in the limited world
of physics, but it is a very poor axiom in the world of social relations. As a matter of fact, men commonly argue
that every period of good times must be succeeded by a corresponding period of bad times. Therefore, when
bad times come they tend to throw up their hands and quit.
Good and bad times do succeed, but there is nothing to show that there is any periodicity. Wherefore, it is
absurd to argue that the piano trade had the present condition "coming to it," as the saying is.
Of course, when a nation goes on a spree that nation must awake in the cold gray dawn of the morning
after. But the piano trade of this country has never gone on a spree, either of buying or of selling. Tt is
ridiculous to talk of a reaction from an immense period of prosperity for the piano trade, for no such period
has ever existed. It did not even exist in the years 1916-1920, when the rest of the country was going mad
on war-time earnings, profits and expenditures. The piano trade in those years tagged along in the rear just
as it always has done. It had its little share, but that share was the smallest of shares, for there was no effori
made to realize war-time profits.
At the present time the sane thinker will recognize that the piano trade is suffering a slackness of sales
which needs some better explanation than any yet current, and the explanation will probably be found in Ihe
fact that the trade has been offering little of sufficient new interest to maintain the strongest grip on the public
mind and heart. It is true that there is a more general appreciation of music in the land, but it is to be
admitted that the piano men, in an effort to realize upon this appreciation, have to offer only instruments that
in general form, design and possibilities have been familiar to the public for a long period.
There may be, possibly, some definite technical improvements that may be sufficiently radical to again
stimulate public enthusiasm, provided, of course, that the trade ceases to be satisfied with simply going ahead
naturally and waiting for something to happen. It may be, too, that other means will be discovered for lending
new interest to pianos and players, either in their present or in a new form. One thing is certain, public en-
thusiasm needs stimulating. Much can be done. Factories, stores, offices are filled with ideas. Trade apathy
has kept them concealed. Let them be brought out. We ought to be in for a great period of trade rethinking.
With its coming a new era will dawn at once.
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