Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
12
year after year their trade steadily lessen-
ing without taking energetic measures to
counteract those influences are not the men
to hold a strong position in the fierce light
of modern competition.
Another point that cannot be overlooked,
and that is that the cheap piano has ad-
vanced musically and architecturally until
to-day there are good and valid reasons
why it should be an important factor in
the distribution of musical wares. Under-
stand by cheap piaaos I do not mean boxes
with strings and of the kind of wood of
such curing that a friend of mine face-
tiously remarked that the cases were so
green that the boy in cleaning up the ware-
rooms used to sweep up a peck of acorns
or a quart of black walnuts every morning
lying near the instruments of those respec-
tive woods—but I do mean the commercial
piano.
It is destined in the natural course of
things to advance in price.
*
*
*
*
If a man expects to create a demand for
his goods, he must either meet modern
competition, in a trade sense of value, by
building a piano as good if not a little
better than his neighbor, but he must also
if he desires to find for it a ready market,
must make it known through the agency of
printer's ink, thereby creating if not a
demand at least a knowledge of the exist-
ence"of such an instrument as he attaches
a name to.
The old way of simply claiming that an
instrument eclipses its competitor is hardly
strong enough. Claims unsupported by
evidence amount to but little. Claims
must be founded on stronger ground than
mere assertion. There are to-day three
values in pianos—commercial, sentimental
and artistic.
*
*
*
*
It is too bad that we cannot have every-
thing to suit us in this little old world of
ours, but for every addition to the gifts
which the gods bestow on man, they are
careful to make a compensating withdraw-
al, they do not leave men in their debt.
The saying is as true to-day as it was in
the days of ancient Rome, and while busi-
ness in one way runs on much srrfoother
lines than years ago, yet there are many
things withdrawn which tended to make
business of the past a pleasure, and at the
same time combined magnificent profits in
its results. To-day the paths of the busi-
ness men do not abound entirely in pleas-
ant environments, there are many perplex-
ing and exacting demands made upon the
modern trade getter.
Painter & Ewing.
Among the young piano concerns who
are making their mark in the trade may be
mentioned the firm of Painter & Ewing,
Philadelphia. They are building a piano
which is bound to be appreciated on its
merits. Styles C and D especially are
neatly designed and well finished, and are
instruments that a dealer can make money
with.
Alfred Dolge's Lecture.
HOW TO AVOID A CONFLICT BETWEEN CAPITAL AND LABOR
LABOR SENATE.
J|The people of Little Falls are fortunate
in their possession of an organization which
has for its object their mental improve-
ment along lines which make tor wider in-
telligence and better citizenship, by plac-
ing within reach of all alike, and without
cost to them, very valuable educational op-
portunities. It is the University Club,
governed by a board of trustees, of which
W. D. Garlock is chairman and A. Gideon,
secretary. The fifth of a series of semi-
monthly lectures^ ending with a banquet
was delivered at Temperance hall, Tuesday
evening of this week, April 6, by Alfred.
Dolge, of Dolgeville, upon "How to Avoid
a Conflict Between Capital and Labor."
The audience was a large one, and it fol-
lowed the speaker throughout with close
attention and deep interest. Mr. Dolge
said:
The subject your club has invited me to discuss
this evening is a vital and far-reaching one, whose
ultimate solution affects the foundation and per-
manence of modern society. It is a momentous
social question, which can De properly considered
only on the broad lines of public weliare without
reference to any particular case. Almost every
conflict between capital and labor originates in the
demand of laborers for a betterment of their con-
dition. From the time of Spartacus laborers have
had to fight for every installment of advance they
have obtained.
Capital is conservative and tends to resist pro-
gress ; it does not fully realize that its own pros-
perity and safety depends upon the prosperity of
the great mass of consumers.
The world's history shows that civilization pro-
gresses step by step, in the ratio as the condition
of the laboring people is improved. Greece and
Rome started their grand careers as republics by
acknowledging the principle of personal liberty in
distinction to the barbarian autocracy of other
nations of that period. As a result, we have the
unexcelled Grecian art and the grand Roman
"jurisprudence." But slavery, the refusal to
recognize the social importance of laborers, de-
stroyed the culture of Greece and the power of
Rome.
In modern history England has ascended to the
high position of "Ruler of the Waves,' and has
become a dominant power on all bourses and ex-
changes of the world, because in advance of any
other nation, she had her Magna Charta, and was
first in developing the factory system, which
forced capital to offer better conditions to wage-
earners than the tilling of the soil would permit.
Unfortunately for England, and for the world's
progress, civilization and culture, the men of
science, the scholars of that period, who tried to
analyze and systematize the phenomena of indus-
trial development, formulated the postulate that
"profits rise as wages fall." This doctrine of the
Manchester school of laissez faire economists so
generally accepted as gospel, is a part of the sev-
enteenth century theory, that the reward of labor
is entirely governed by supply and demand.
Though very superficial, this explanation had a
plausibility that gave it ready popular acceptance.
It is on a par with the argument of Populists and
Silverites, that whenever money is difficult to ob-
tain, all we have to do is to set the govern-
ment's presses agoing, and print notes or coin
silver, and everybody's pocket will be filled. It is
this disinclination on the part of the people to do
some independent critical thinking, which gave
Mr. Bryan over 6,000,000 votes last fall, and
which permits the fallacies of the Manchester
school still to be taught in American colleges.
But America is destined to continue the march of
progress, inaugurated by Greece, Rome and Eng-
land.
In the Declaration of Independence, we estab-
lish the same rights and privileges for wage-earn-
ers as for employers. Since the signing of this
modern Magna Charta, the capitalist, a creation
of the factory system, has appeared and become
an important and exceedingly useful factor in our
body politic. Self-interest, an inherent element in
human nature, misled even the American capital-
ist into believing the English doctrine that "Pro-
fits Rise as Wages Fall," and 1 venture to say that
a majority of our manufacturers to this day believe
HAVE THEM UNITE IN A
that doctrine. One of the results of this was the
voting down of the protective policy by our wage-
earners in 1892, to the great regret alike of capital-
ists and wage-earners, neither of whom will aesire
a repetition of the misery and anxiety of the past
tour years. Capital mustlearn to understand that
wage-earners ot to-day are of greater importance
to the community as consumers than as producers.
When England introduced the factory system,
she sold the bulk of her products to foreign con-
sumers who had to pay for them in gold or its equiv-
alent, and English manufacturers therefore, for
the time being, really gained more in proportion
as they paid lower wages. Hence, they advocated
free trade to get raw material cheap and forced the
repeal of the corn law, so that they might be able
to feed laborers more cheaply.
We had a repetition of this argument during the
last three presidential elections, when the leaders
of our free trade party raised the cry of cheapness
and insisted that the wage-earners could accept
lower wages because they would be able to live
more cheaply.
But progress is irresistible. The entire world
moves forward, some parts more rapidly than
others, but the movement is universal. Steam and
electricity have destroyed the dreams of those
theorists who believed that the world could be
divided in parcels, whereof one would be the work-
shop and commercial emporium, and all the rest
constrained to raise food and raw material for that
workshop.
The spinning jenny and the loom, the planing
machine and automatic lathe are moving onward
and capture one part of the globe after the other,
and we find capitalists and wage-earners in the
modern sense almost wherever we go. Capital is
avaricious; labor is discontented. To avoid a con-
flict between capital and labor, therefore, it is
necessary that capital should be just as fair in its
dealings with labor as it expects labor to be to
capital whenever a conflict threatens.
The individual manufacturer and employer is,
of course, powerless. The complexity of the indus-
trial and commercial structure of the present day
excludes any individual attempt to reform or ad-
vance; everything moves in groups in modern
society, and the more we advance, the more com-
plex society becomes, the less can we get along
with the old-time so-called " Democratic Sim-
plicity," and the more absurd is the phrase that
" T h a t government governs best which governs
least." Never in the history of the world has
statesmanship had so many problems to solve as
at the present time ; never before was it necessary
for the true statesman to be well versed in science
and practical observation of the development of
social movements.
We live in the era of organization and combina-
tion, commonly known as trusts;—the greatest
achievement of modern times, made possible
through the application of steam and electricity to
transportation and communication. Although the
combination and organization of capital is attacked
and annoyed at present, it cannot be prevented
because this movement is strictly on the lines of
natural evolution and development, and instead of
attempting to obstruct this movement which has
proved so beneficial to society at large, our law
makers will eventually be forced to assist in its de-
velopment.
Capital, being in command of the best brains,
has found it necessary to combine and organize.
Labor should follow on the same lines, obtain
the best brains for its cause, and organize in all
branches of business. The next step should be the
general recognition of the rights of organized cap-
ital as well as of organized labor.
That once accomplished, it seems both capital
and labor might, for the adjustment of their differ-
ences, profitably copy the machinery of our govern-
ment, as George Gunton has suggested, namely,
that the organizations of capital and the organiza-
tions of labor be jointly and equally represented
in an association as a labor senate. To this body
should be submitted all propositions for important
changes in wages or other conditions, before any
definite action be taken by any individual, labor
union or employer, the decision of the senate to be
final. This would have several advantages over
any previous methods ; it would always insure that
the subject was discussed by neutral parties before
any bad blood was aroused. Much of the difficulty
in labor disputes arises from the ill-feeling due to
some personal indiscretion by one side or the other.
For instance, an employer will sometimes, in an
unguarded moment, make a rash statement of
what he will or will not do. Having said it, he
feels that his personal pride is affected to back
down.
Laborers, on the other hand, not infrequently
say and do very unreasonable things in similarly