Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
• EDWARD LY .1 uN BILL~i^v
during the last week the city has been full
of buyers from the West and South, with
many from the New England States. Upon
the reports and purchases of these buyers
business men base their predictions that
this will be a record breaking year in trade.
Editor and Proprietor
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NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 25, 1899.
TELEPHONE NUMBER, 1745--EIGHTEENTH STREET.
THE KEYNOTE.
The first week of each month, The Review will
contain a supplement embodying the literary
and musical features which have heretofore
appeared in The Keynote. This amalgamation
will be effected without in any way trespassing
on our regular news service. The Review wil?
continue to remain, as before, essentially a
trade paper.
ENCOURAGING BUSINESS PROS-
PECTS.
IV] EW YORK wholesale dealers in many
lines of merchandise believe that 1899
will be the most prosperous business year
this country ever has known. Almost
without exception, business men predict
that the volume of business done this year
will be a record breaker.
In interviews for the Herald prominent
men in various lines of trade attribute
their hopeful views to these causes:—
The ratification, of the peace treaty.
The return of business confidence, which
set in as soon as the war with Spain was
practically over.
Better times among- farmers because of
good crops in 1898.
Following these causes, New York bus-
iness men declare, have come these ef-
fects:—
Money has been put into circulation
freely.
Farmers and other persons who have been
spending little for several years, again are
spending money freely with the local mer-
chants.
Merchants who have carried only small
stocks, waiting for affairs to settle down,
are bvxying heavily and early. They in-
tend to restore their stocks to the condi-
tion in which they were before the busi-
ness depression of 1893.
All classes of buyers who have been in
New York recently are ordering a better
quality of goods than formerly.
If there is a pessimist among New York
manufacturers it is impossible to find him.
In certain lines of trade the improved out-
look was apparent several months ago, but
A DANGEROUS ELEMENT.
I 1 U R
editorial "About Trusts" seems
to have struck a responsive chord.
A number of letters have reached this office
this week commending it for its lucid
analysis of trust conditions as they appear
to-day. One writer says:
" I must compliment you on your able
exposition of this matter and on the por-
trayal of the consequences which must re-
sult from the willingness of manufactur-
ers in many industries to accept the trust
propaganda without consideration for the
future. This movement serves only to en-
rich the cold-blooded speculators or pro-
moters, and to kill the small manufacturer
and dealer who are the life-blood of the
Republic.
O
"This is the topic of the hour, and a
live one it is. I only wish the trade
papers of the country would take this
matter up more generally, and enable
manufacturers to realize fully the conse-
quences which must ensue from being-
caught in this trust snare."
For the information of our correspon-
dent and our readers we would say that the
papers and the people are commencing to
comprehend more fully the seriousness of
present trust developments. In Brad-
street's (Feb. 18th), the leading authority in
the financial world, there appears a warn-
ing about these gigantic industrial combi-
nations which is very significant and which
supplements our remarks of last week. It
says in part:
"Current references to the remarkable
number of corporations, representing amal-
gamations of manufacturing and commer-
cial establishments in various lines of
trade, do not fail to take into serious ac-
count the manifest danger of a too rapid
and excessive exhibition of the process.
To many the movement seems to be as-
suming a form which may render it a dan-
gerous clement in the general financial posi-
tion of the country.'"
OPEAKING of the common stock which
is being issued in such large quan-
tities by the trusts and which will never
have practically an earning value, it says:
" It would seem that in a good many cases
the common stocks represent more or less
water. For the time being, however, the
financial public seems to be infatuated
with the movement, and though even a
cursory examination of the .situation does
not fail to develop the fact that it possesses
elements of weakness, there is nothing to
negative the presumption that, like every-
thing of the kind, it must run its course."
Another paper, the Dry Goods Econom-
ist, the representative organ of the dry
goods industry, in an able editorial last
Saturday pertinently asks:
"For whose benefit are to be all the sav-
ings and profits of these enormous econ-
omies, which, by dispensing with dupli-
cated effort, are mustering out of the
industrial ranks thousands of bright men,
both employers and employed ?
"Are they to be solely for the benefit of
the few individuals whose money and
shrewdness enable them to organize the
saving combines? Is this great innovation
to be used simply to make the rich richer
and the poor poorer?
"This may seem to some a premature
question. To us it appears timely, for
according to the answer given by events
will the greatest revolution in com-
merce which has taken place since the
Dark Ages be a peaceful and beneficent
one, or accompanied by occurrences akin to
those which convulsed France in the cor-
responding decade of the last century."
'T'HIS indicates the position which many
papers—papers, mark you, that have
been friendly to the trust idea in its earlier
stages—are now assuming. They have
been forced to this position because they
see, just as The Review sees, the danger
which must inevitably result from the pres-
ent craze now being engineered by a lot of
skillful promoters seeking to make fortunes
at the expense of the unwary manufac-
turer.
And the manufacturers who have sold
their good name, and an assured position
for a lot of trust certificates are not alone
the victims, but the speculators back of
these colossal combinations are working
the stock market and drawing tlie public
into the game.
A leading broker this week in course of
conversation on this subject said: "Every
purchaser of such industrial stock should
keep steadily in mind the fact that most of
these trust concerns have been capitalized
at from two to five times their real value and
there is little expectation of their paying
dividends. The history of similar organi-
zations during the past few years shows
that they have failed several times, and
that the shareholders have been the vic-
tims every time.
" Regarding the inflation of capital, two
cases in point will suffice as an illustration:
An iron mill near Wheeling, W. Va., which