Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
WESTERN COMMENT
Words of Weighty Import
REVIEW OFFICE, REPUBLIC BUILDING, CHICAGO, I I I . , MAR. 15, 1928
OF course A. G. Gulbransen gets a lot of publicity in one way or
another during the twelve months of a year, but there is no good
reason to doubt that he deserves all he gets. For
Worker,
j i e n a p p e n s to be one of those men, rare enough
„ , '
in the piano industry, who possess both the im-
agination to foresee and the courage to speak out.
The Gulbransen Co. has probably had to face problems of mer-
chandising and of adaptation, during the last couple of years, as
difficult and complex as have been faced by any other manufac-
turing house in the industry. Perhaps, in some ways, its prob-
lems have been exceptionally difficult, and this for reasons which
will appear quite plain to any one who knows the industry. But
the president of the Gulbransen Co. has never for a moment
shown the slightest hesitation in dealing with its problems. A. G.
Gulbransen is always working, he is always thinking, and in most
cases he thinks correctly. His public utterances have come to be
recognized as spoken by a man who thinks ahead of the crowd
and who sees the course of events clearly and sees them whole.
During the strenuous months through which we have been going
his voice, has been heard more than once, and each time has been
the vehicle for a well-thought-out statement of some really funda-
mental condition or state of affairs. Reflections we have had in
plenty, but we need at this time more than mere philosophizing.
We need very clear thinking and very sharp expression of thought.
Thus, it is easy to lay one's ringer upon many evils and defects,
lbut to pick out the really basic errors and to emphasize them in a
manner which shall ensure the attention and the interest of all
concerned is a feat not within the powers of all men. When, then,
Mr. Gulbransen during recent months has so often shown by his
public utterances his grasp of the entire situation, we may do
worse, much worse, than consider seriously what he has had to
say, in the complete certainty that we shall find this eminently
worth our while.
FOR some time past this paper has been insisting upon the need to
recognize that competition is now among embattled industries, and
that the old system of internecine warfare within
each industry is utterly out of date, and capable
Not
of leading only to disaster. Trade papers are
Co-operation
perhaps more read than followed, although their
editors are usually in the best possible position to know what is
going on and what ought to be done about it. The crowd neverthe-
less insists that a manufacturer or a merchant is better fitted always
to diagnose and to prescribe, although most of these men "on the
firing line," as they are somewhat inaccurately described, find beyond
their abilities the task of seeing beyond the ends of their business
noses. When, however, one does obtain the stated agreement of a
large manufacturer with one's utterances one feels considerably
bucked up; and just that is the feeling one has towards Mr. Gul-
bransen's recent observations on the question of competition versus
co-operation among piano merchants. He has said, very simply and
very plainly, what has been obvious to some of us for a long time,
namely, that the most idiotic of all possible practices is the practice
of fighting one's fellow merchants on points of price, terms and
quality, when in fact the only important point has to do with some-
thing utterly remote from all this, in fact, with the fundamental
question of demand. It is, as Mr. Gulbransen points out, not a
matter of fighting over the one bone which very occasionally is
being thrown to us; it is a question of procuring a steady and full
supply of bones. In other words, the problem is to rebuild demand
for the piano in the home, and decidedly not to see how far the
margin of profit can be reduced on such few individual sales as are
likely to drop in of themselves. Not competition, but co-operation,
is indicated. Piano merchants may play petty trade politics and in-
dulge the luxury of petty personal quarrels as much and as far as
they care to; but the sole result must be a still greater decrease of
public interest in the piano and a still more rapid lessening of pub-
lic demand. Co-operation among the dealers of each community
to push sales of pianos and to rebuild community interest in the
piano as a necessary possession of every cultured home may have
the appearance of something Utopian; but other industries are
doing the same thing. Why should our industry always be the one
striking example of constant quarrel and strife?
IT is easy to preach upon the texts supplied by so clear-eyed an
observer as A. G. Gulbransen. Here is another of his keen and
cuttingly true observations. The industry, says
Undermanned he, is undermanned on the retail side. The num-
Underworkcd ^ e r °^ t r a m e ( * r e t a ^ salesmen is very small, so
that in fact no retail house, with very few excep-
tions, can be said to be working its territory with anything like
the care and the accuracy required, if the list of all possible pros-
pects is to be exhaustively dealt with. No prospect yet ever said
"I should not like to have a piano." No one yet ever said "I do not
like the piano." Plenty of men and women will give any number
of reasons why they have not, or will not buy, a piano; but no one
ever says "I do not like pianos." On the other hand, the objection
is nearly always that no one at home plays; but there is never the
objection that piano music itself is disliked. Latently, in fact, it
is undoubtedly the case that every normal man, woman and child
in the land likes good piano music, in one form or another, and
would take some trouble to have it in the home if only the means
were made plain and the method easy. When, however, the piano
trade, relying upon these undoubted facts, insists that if the people
like pianos they will surely walk in and ask for them, and contrari-
wise, that public neglect to walk in unannounced and uninvited
constitutes evidence that public taste has gone off in another direc-
tion, then we may say that the piano trade is simply making a very
poor and lazy excuse for remaining idle. Piano salesmen are prob-
ably becoming actually scarce, but this only means that those who
remain in the game are having an easier time and can make better
terms for themselves. It might be a very good idea to clean out
entirely some of the existing staffs of salesmen and engage new
people, taking on only men and women of musical inclinations,
able to play the piano a bit and likely to approach the selling of
pianos from the cultural standpoint. The experiment would be
worth trying, if only because it would show how hollow is the pre-
tense that only the old-time professional piano salesmen really
knows the "tricks of the trade." It is precisely these "tricks of
the trade" which need to be unlearned. A well-manned trade would
be, in any case as things stand, a newly-recruited trade; and that
in turn would constitute by no means a disastrous state of affairs.
NOR is this all the fruit one may garner from the observations of
our Chicago manufacturer. He has not failed likewise to discern
the need of better pianos, that is to say, of pianos
A
constructed more scientifically and accurately,
Not
pianos better musically, more adapted to an awak-
Least
ened musical perception. The people of this land
know a great deal more to-day about music and musical tone than
they ever did. W 7 hen once the mass of dealers can be brought to
see that selling pianos must no longer be a semi-fraudulent game of
putting across installment contracts, and that tone and touch, ap-
pearance and construction are hereafter the only possible founda-
tions of the industry, then indeed we may say that all is well.
12