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FEBRUARY 16,
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
1924
THE POINT OF REVIEW
T
HE campaign which is being undertaken by the National Asso-
ciation of Music Merchants, under the direction of President
Watkin, for the spread of local, State and sectional organizations
within the national body, is one that should receive the support
of every member of the trade. As a matter of fact, the retail
music trade, as to-day constituted, is not well organized. True, the
National Association functions well, but its scope is too broad and
its burden too heavy to handle adequately all the local • questions
which are constantly confronting the average music merchant in
the daily conduct of his business. What is needed is State or
local associations, familiar with the conditions that confront its
members and in direct touch with them, so that such problems,
which are susceptible of solution through co-operative action, should
have immediate attention and therefore proper handling.
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N all that is said here, there is no intention to disparage the
National Association. It does as well as it is humanly possible
for it to do, but much that is expected of it is beyond achievement
with the facilities it possesses and with the difficulties with which,
due to its present state of organization, it is confronted. The
National Association, as a matter of fact, should not be an indi-
vidual membership body; it should be an organization formed of
other bodies of limited scope. This would make its annual meeting,
not a gathering of a comparatively few individual members of the
trade, but, on the contrary, a meeting of delegates from many local
associations, each sent by those organizations, charged to present
their opinions and ideas on the floor of the convention and bearing
the responsibility of representing their fellow-merchants and secur-
ing the action which the latter desire. Such a meeting would inevit-
ably result in greater benefits than have ever been drawn from these
gatherings in the past and would bring the Association to 100 per
cent efficiency for perhaps the first time in its history. Unques-
tionably President Watkin's idea should be carried out, and the
action taken at the recent mid-Winter meeting, where it was
decided to put a paid organizer in the field to form just such bodies,
was a long step in its achievement.
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HE Field Editor of The Review has been visiting the retail
music trade in Washington and Baltimore. It is a radical
departure in music trade journalism for any paper covering this
field to keep a man constantly among the retail dealers, visiting them
regularly in their warerooms and studying their problems on the
ground. But, with the growing scope of the trade and the multi-
plicity of problems with which it is confronted, it is a necessity if
a publication is to give adequate editorial service to the field it
represents. The time when a trade journal that gives real service
to its readers could be edited entirely from a desk is past and done
for. The time when paste-pot and scissors, plus a clipping service,
served as the editor's entire equipment has entirely passed away.
What is needed to-day is intimate and constant contact with its
readers, so that it may place at their disposal direct and authorita-
tive information, the result of careful investigation by men who
know the industry. That is what The Review is achieving through
keeping a man constantly among the dealers, and, since this has long
passed the experimental stage, the results have already marked it
as an unqualified success.
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IANO making seems to be a family occupation. There are a
number of well-known families of piano makers in the industry,
all worthy of note, but none perhaps goes so far back as does the
Mehlin family. The first record of that family of the piano industry
dates to 1748, when Johann Frederick Mehlin was born. The next
generation was represented by Ferdinand Mehlin, born in 1782.
Following him came Gottlieb Bernhardt Mehlin, born in 1804, who
was the father of Paul G. Mehlin remembered with a great deal
of affection in the piano industry of the present day. He was suc-
ceeded by his sons, H. Paul Mehlin, Charles Mehlin and Otto F.
Mehlin, and to-day there is a representative of the coming genera-
tion in the family, Paul G. Mehlin 2nd. Paul G. Mehlin himself
was a typical representative of the high-grade piano maker. The
Reviewer wonders to-day how many piano men remember him in
his factory where he was most at his ease and where he could
best be seen for the man he was. At his bench and with his apron
on, he was a shining example of that type of artistic craftsmanship
with which the progress of the American piano industry has always
been closely intertwined. To him the piano was a labor of love, and
perfection of tone was a thing to be sought for with an entire life.
The Mehlin piano was something to be cherished beyond all other
things and to make it better the highest of aims. Such a life is one
well lived, and one that left behind a concrete monument in the
form of an art product, which his sons, trained by him, have steadily
maintained.
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' I ^HERE is one side to this question of tax reduction which is
* rarely mentioned and which probably will be the most important
of all so far as the piano industry is concerned. That is the effect
it is going to have on the buying trend of the people at large.
Especially is this true of those in the lower brackets who constitute
the greatest outlet for the production of the country's piano fac-
tories. There is not a doubt in the world that, once the reduction
becomes effective, we are going to see a heavy increase in buying,
far above what the amount of the reduction at first glance would
seem to warrant. For the average man is going to figure that what
he has saved in taxes he can afford to spend for something that he
has wanted, but which up to that time he did not feel he could
quite afford. As a matter of fact, he is going to spend far more
than the reduction, and there is no reason why the piano dealer
should not receive his due share of that.
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NE of the big developments in piano merchandising during the
past decade or so is the way in which the manufacturers have
sought to co-operate with their retail representatives. To-day there
is scarcely a manufacturer of a name-value piano who does not
place at his retail dealers' disposal the entire facilities of his adver-
tising department, a condition which has been reflected in the con-
stant improvement which retail piano advertising in the daily press
has shown for some years. Take, for instance, the recent portfolio
of retailers' advertisements issued by the Aeolian Co. for the Duo
Art. Every possible avenue of selling approach for this reproduc-
ing piano was utilized by the men who were responsible for the
copy, with the result that each dealer received a full-fledged adver-
tising campaign that, if properly utilized by him, could not fail to
increase his volume of sales. The remarkable thing about this
Aeolian series was the way in which the advertisements were written
to appeal to every class of prospect. One group, for instance,
traced the history of the mechanical reproduction of music; another
made its appeal to those who desire to hear the great pianists of
the world when and where they want to; and still another to those
whose taste runs to popular music. All told, the Aeolian dealers
are to be congratulated at having such publicity placed at their
service, for, in most cases, it is better than that which they could
prepare themselves, limited as many of them are in their ability
to build up and support an advertising department, headed by a
specialist in this work.
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VI
C A N FRANCISCO advertising men recently debated whether or
^ not the saxophone was a musical instrument. One group
upheld the affirmative and one the negative. After a long discussion
the bright idea came that those participating in the argument had
best hear the instrument properly played. When this was done, the
affirmative was voted the victor hands down. Which only goes to
prove the truth of the old adage: "The proof of the pudding is the
eating thereof." If some of those who at first took the negative side
had listened to the concert of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra in New
York this week, and had heard the wonderful orchestral color which
these instruments made possible, the argument would never have
even taken place.
T H E REVIEWER.