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WESTERN COMMENT
"Neither Solemn Nor Asinine"
REVIEW OFFICE, REPUBLIC BUILDING, CHICAGO, I I I . , JAN. 30,
industry had prepared the way for the electric suction cleaner,
and the gas industry, with its ranges and heaters, for electric
refrigeration and electric washing of clothes and dishes. These
newcomers, Mr. Platt justly observed, are aggressive because they
are new and because they realize that they must be aggressive,
extremely aggressive, if they are to obtain what they consider an
adequate share of the public spending-money. They have thus
temporarily pushed into the background other industries, older,
equally if not more essential, but less aggressive because really
more firmly founded. Among these industries thus temporarily
pushed into the background is the piano industry. For this reason,
concluded Mr. Platt, and for this reason only, it is necessary that
the piano industry should have temporary special support, which
may hold it up until it has once more brought itself back into
desired prominence by aligning itself and its methods with the
new and peculiar merchandising needs of the day.
1928
T H E Chicago Herald-Examiner is a powerful morning newspaper,
sharing with the noisy Tribune the suffrages of Chicago's three
millions of men, women and children, not to
Word
mention a large suburban and rural circle of
readers. As a newspaper which illustrates in its
daily career the principles on which William Ran-
dolph Hearst has built his immense journalistic properties, it is
a huge success. Whether or no one likes the Hearst principles,
one is obliged to admit that they have been very successful indeed.
And the Chicago Herald-Examiner is run by men who know
their city and its people, who thoroughly understand the needs
and the desires of those millions of average men, women and
children, and fill these with extraordinary and constantly increasing
success. The advertising manager of a paper like this certainly
ought to know what does and what does not interest his readers.
So when the gentleman who holds down this position with the
Chicago Herald-Examiner rose to speak to the assembled members
of the Chicago Piano & Organ Association at the twenty-ninth
annual dinner the other night, the listeners very properly expected
to hear something worth hearing. Nor were they disappointed.
Mr. Platt said what he had to say briefly and lucidly, he said a
great deal in a very few words; and as soon as he had finished
he sat down. Perhaps one speaker in five knows when to sit down.
Mr. Platt is one of that select company. Disclaiming from the start
any pretense to knowledge of the peculiar problems of the piano
industry, he nevertheless managed in the course of ten minutes
to show that he had come to conclusions about it which have been
reached by virtually every so-called trade expert who has talked
during the last year or so on trade problems. That this should
have happened is interesting enough; but that the diagnosis offered
by this outsider should reproduce, almost word for word, the
opinions of all the recognized trade physicians is more than merely
coincidental. It is salutarily shocking.
w
.
few words sprang from a wealth of observation, and they
ring with truth and certainty, as well as with sincerity. It is not
that Mr. Platt gave utterance to any new truth.
Is
It is simply that his is an outside opinion, the
Simple
detached observation of a man who looks on from
True?
a position which gives him vision both clear and
impartial. And the point of all this comment is simply that the
very obviousness of the facts appears to blind men to the need
of action upon them. To a certain type of mind no explanation
can be true which is at the same time simple. The expert, to be
heard, must then hide his thought under a multitude of wordy
wrappings and embroider it with glittering technical terminology.
He must talk of "sales resistance," of "consumer demand," of
"trends," of a hundred and one mysterious things which seem
to carry conviction with them because of their very mistiness and
their vague grandeur. Whereas, the man who states bluntly and
simply, in a very few words and those of one syllable, what the
trouble is, usually finds his advice neglected. It cannot, to the
general mind, be true because it can all be expressed in language
which any school child can understand. The great Disraeli is
credited with saying to a young aspirant: "My boy, if you wish
to succeed, be a solemn ass." Mr. Platt's words were neither
asinine nor solemn. They were true and simple. But they ex-
pressed only what has been shouted forth by every clear-sighted
observer these five years past.
THESE
MR. PLATT wasted no time. He recalled to the members of the
Piano & Organ Association the achievement of 1927, when more
than 14,000 children entered for a piano-playing
New
tournament without other prompting than was
But
furnished by coupons run daily in the Herald-
Old
Examiner and periodical editorial treatment of
the subject by way of stories, articles and discussions on music.
He then went on to say that what had happened once could happen
again, but before undertaking to develop a plan for the coming
year h€ digressed to say a few pungent words about the present
position of the piano industry and its need of large-scale exploita-
tion. For a moment one might have thought that something very
obscure, technical and confusing was about to come forth; but
when the words fell upon the ears of the listeners, lo! they were
words which over and over again have been used, not alone in the
columns of this paper but by everyone whose opinion on the sub-
ject is generally deemed worthy of attention. He said, in effect,
that within the last few years there have come into being several
new and extremely aggressive industries, based upon new dis-
coveries in physical science, and imbued with all the mysterious
attractiveness which novelty in a popularly scientific form always
possesses. These industries, radio, electric refrigeration, cheap
and wonderfully efficient motor cars, came into a field already,
as it were, prepared for them by older and more conservative
industries. Thus, the piano industry, all unwittingly, had prepared
the way for the expansion of the motor car industry, by develop-
ing instalment selling, and for the phonograph and for radio by
familiarizing the public with music. Thus the carpet sweeper
on the part of a new and untried industry is not
merely something to be expected, it actually represents the only
possible strategy. To introduce to a public al-
Old
ready surfeited with novelties still one more
But
novelty, and a costly novelty at that, demands
Seaworthy
much shouting with a voice of brass, much
wheedling with a tongue of honey, much adroit suggestion, much
skilful appeal to every human weakness. Old and established
industries, which have come to learn that their products are an
essential and taken-for-granted part of civilized life, are naturally
long past the stage of ballyhoo; but they should not fall into the
disastrous error of supposing that noise necessarily means triumph.
The aggressive industries are aggressive because, if they let down
theii» output of merchandising energy for a moment, they are lost
So the business of an established industry is by no means to at-
tempt to bawl even louder than its neighbors, still more completely
deafening a public ear already hopelessly confused by the mul-
titude of outcries. The task of an established industry is to see
that its own foundations are being maintained in their pristine
strength and excellence, that it is not losing its hold on the affec-
AGGRESSIVENESS
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