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WESTERN COMMENT
Common Sense and the Future
REVIEW OFFICE, CHICAGO, I I I . , DECEMBER 31,
NINETEEN HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT has gone, and
1928.
a good
many men will feel that the only farewell they want to utter is a
hearty "Good riddance to bad rubbish." Mean-
Slaves
while there is a general turning towards the new
of
date on the calendar. We begin to betray an
Time
acute desire to foresee the events of the next
twelve months. And so, although the prophet's business is ex-
tremely uncertain, everyone will have a little try at it. On the
other hand, the really wise man, no doubt, would shun what is
really an illogical task. Why go by years at all? Because, no
doubt, we all are slaves of calendars, clocks, instruments for
measuring time, which steal away our lives and make us old before
we know it. There is really not the slightest real reason, apart
from convenience, for supposing that a slice of marked-off time
called the year 1928 should itself mark off a definite state of
business affairs, which must continue as long as it continues and
end when it ends. There is no real reason, save convenience, for
splitting up our plans and our expectations into these artificial
slices. Yet we all do it and most of us have come to invest the
idea of a year with a sort of physical presence, a kind of sub-
stantiality, hard to define but easy enough to recognize, whereby
we may bring ourselves to lay plans and to build business designs
having a certain definite shape and form which they might not
otherwise possess. The practice of doing our life-work by years
is not very logical; but it is pretty firmly established.
VET in the present case one wishes that it were not so firmly
established. For the music industries are going through a period
of transition which cannot be measured off into
Not
nice little equal annual segments.. It is quite
One
certain, I think, that the present series of transi-
Yccir
tions will continue during four or five years, so
that no view of the future can be worth taking which does not
extend over at least so long a time. We can, however, trace the
probabilities of the future through 1929, foreseeing with some
assurance the likelihood of events during that time, and showing
how they will link themselves with the probable events of 1930
and later years to form a continuous chain of development. For
through such a series of developments the music industries of this
country must certainly go.
is a lot of talk going on about the combination music-radio
store of the future. Some of it is sensible and some nonsensical.
It may, indeed, be set down as extremely probable
Sense
that one type of exclusive one-instrument music
and
store will not survive, nay is already moribund.
Nonsense
That is the small, unimportant piano store of the
small community, from which a small merchant has worked among
his friends and neighbors, selling from twelve to fifty pianos a
year and doing little or nothing else. Such a man never could make
a decent profit, for in the nature of his case a decent profit was
impossible. He could bring no dignity to the piano or to the
piano industry. He could exist only because for a long time there
also existed a certain steady public demand for a low-priced piano;
a demand which someone had to fill. The humble task was one
which the small agent in the small community was admirably
adapted to carry^ut. But when the natural demand fell off, owing
to changes in public taste brought about by post-war economic and
social changes, the small, exclusive piano merchant found his occu-
pation gone, or almost gone. To this extent, then, the retailer of
music is likely to be more and more a general music merchant-
But that does not in the least mean that every music merchant is
THERE
to make a vast profit and become a millionaire through rushing
after every latest fad. The future of the radio, for instance, is
decidedly large; but what its final form will be no one can tell.
It is safe to say, however, that there are at this moment greater
possibilities of certain and safe profit in old-established musical
instruments than in even the most dazzling promises of radio de-
velopment. This is simply because the art of radio engineering is
not even yet firmly established. A new discovery may yet upset
the whole of the present structure within a half-year. At the
moment, indeed, nothing much is happening. Yet that fact in
itself should give one pause, since it indicates plainly the impasse
into which haste and greed have run the radio industry. The talk-
ing picture was rushed on the market at least two years too soon
and is not making a great hit. Television is still a laboratory
experiment and likely so to remain for from five to ten years yet.
Meanwhile, the whole great field of musical instrument selling,
musical instrument exploitation, musical instrument development,
lies fallow. Merchants waste their time lamenting that the easy
good old days are gone, and seeking feverishly for some new
self-selling thing which shall bring those days back again. But did
those davs ever exist? One doubts it.
THE whole great field of musical instrument exploitation lies fallow,
I say. Let us just think for a moment. No one will pretend that
there has been any decrease in public liking for
The
music. Everyone admits that public consumption
Fallow
of music is steadily increasing. Radio, of course,
Field
gives music to the passive listener, and demands
no mental effort in return. But who says that radio is thus satis-
fying entirely the musical wants of the nation? Who says so?
It has been taken for granted, indeed, that this should be so. But
is it so? I say that it is not. I decline to listen to a lot of non-
sense, or what experience and reflection tell me to be nonsense.
Talk of that kind is common among music trade men, but it is
absurd, nevertheless. Of course, if the merchant refuses to listen
to reason, preferring blindly to follow the herd, he will do nothing
to encourage the exploitation of musical instruments and will fol-
low along in the wake of the procession, until radio shall have
exhausted its novelty, have settled down into a calm only broken by
competitive retail methods, and have ceased to possess any great
attraction for the business man. Meanwhile the man who shall
be wise enough to think for himself, resolutely refusing to follow
the mass-thinking of the mob, will realize that the musical instru-
ment field is actually newer than the radio field. For the great
present truth of the music business is that musical instruments have
never vet been sold. Musical instruments have always been bought.
THE music business of the future will doubtless be a general music
business; but it will be a music business. The man who plans to re-
main in the music industry during the next year or
Eager
t w o should fasten upon this truth and make it his
and
own. The field of musical instrument exploitation
Waiting
is untouched. It lies fallow. It awaits the plough,
the seeder, the cultivator. Let the music merchant look over his
field, noting its vast extent and its untouched condition. Let him
realize that if musical instruments are henceforth exploited as
other articles of commerce are exploited, musical instruments will
sell, freely, readily, in great quantities. Organs, pianos, violins,
'cellos, wind instruments of every kind, sheet music of every kind,
books on music, accessories to music ; all these are waiting to be
sold. Why should not the motto from now and henceforth be
"I et us sell music and musical instruments to an eager, a waiting,
people."
W. B. W.
10