Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
During the past ten days numbers of
dealers have visited the markets for the
purpose of placing orders for early ship-
ment, and some manufacturers upon whom
we have called, frankly admit their inabili-
ty, the way matters are shaping, to supply
their trade with that promptness which
they most desire. The fall is pretty nearly
here, and how are we prepared to meet it?
We have in mind one manufacturer who
stated a while ago to us that he should
have five hundred pianos completed for
early fall. A recent call at his factory
demonstrated that there was a wide vari-
ance between his statement and the actual
conditions, for the facts were that he had
accumulated comparatively a small amount
of finished stock. His daily shipments had
almost absorbed the instruments as fast as
they were completed.
PROFESSION vs. MECHANICS.
\ 1 7 E hear now more than ever the cry of
the over-crowding of the professions.
The stream of graduates who are ground
out from our colleges and universities each
year, prepared to take up a professional
life, causes the yearly renewal of the cry
of the over-crowding of the professions. It
extends to every branch of life and to the
musical as well.
This rush for professional life has had
its inception largely in the desire on the
part of many parents, who have been
fairly successful, to elevate their children
above the vocation in which they' made
their especial mark. Successful mechanics
are too often desirous of having their sons
successful lawyers or doctors when they
are totally unfitted by physical and intel-
lectual gifts to earn even bread and butter
in those vocations.
The California millionaire was not far
from correct when he said that there is
in this country a tendency to over educa-
tion of the masses. There are to day more
generous opportunities in the field of me-
chanics than is offered in professional life.
The great trouble is the average young
American is ashamed to wear a blouse and
dislikes to soil his fingers with machine
grease, but right in the factories to-day
there are greater opportunities than in
the professions. Look at the demand for
skilled labor, and also note the demand for
engineers, architects, electricians and all
of that. The men of the highest grades in
all of those vocations are better paid to-day
than the average young doctor and lawyer.
It is well enough to encourage a child in
any honorable vocation which he may se-
lect, but it is arrant rot to insist upon mak-
ing a poor lawyer put of a good mechanic,
OPPORTUNITY FOR THE "ANTIS."
'"THIS is the age of organization, and,
after all, trusts are but colossal or-
ganizations in which are centralized entire
industries. These large combinations, or
trusts, now control nearly all of the manu-
factures with the exception of the textile,
the pianos, and a few others.
The whole tendency of the age is to-
wards organization, and there are appar-
ently no legal measures which can be taken
to check the enormous absorptive power
called trusts.
The labor element, however, is to be
reckoned with, and is apt to act as an
enemy to the trust in a greater degree
than all the legal measures enacted in all
the states boiled in one. There is no ques-
tion, if one studies the trend which labor
is taking over America, that it is antago-
nistic in the highest degree to the forma-
tion of trusts. Already labor unions have
adopted resolutions to boycott the prod-
ucts of different trusts. The tobacco
trust has been specially named, and orders
have been sent out to members of the
union that all members of labor organiza-
tions refuse to purchase the product of this
trust.
When we consider the hundreds of thou-
sands represented in labor organizations,
we must consider that there is an element
which will immediately be felt by the
trusts when turned against them in a pro-
hibitory way, because it at once affects the
cash receipts of those organizations.
It is, after all, by organization that we
must meet organization, and, following this
same scheme, what a field there would be
for the anti-trust organization in the piano
industry, provided a trust ever became an
accomplished fact.
There is no family purchase over which
there is as much debate as over the pur-
chase of a piano, and there is no article
manufactured where the anti-trust element
would have the opportunity to get in the
little side thrust that the sale of a piano
would offer.
WELL-KNOWN Western dealer who
was in town this week remarked: "I
have read the editorials in The Review
with much interest, and I have come East
to buy my stock early, and buy it at the
old prices. This I have done, and I do not
expect to duplicate my orders at the old
prices. I feel that the manufacturers can-
not supply the stock at hard times prices
when they are compelled to pay liberal ad-
vances all along the line, and including
almost everything which enters into the
construction of pianos,"
A
It is [unreasonable to suppose*that the
old schedule will be adhered to in face of
existing conditions.
Dealers will not lose time in making
strenuous objections to moderate advance
in pianos. What will interest them most
will be to get the instruments, and ere
long there is going to be a lively scramble
for pianos.
REASONS FOR HATE.
*~rHE jealousy existing between profes-
sional men has frequently been com-
mented upon. Possibly in no profession
is it more strongly emphasized than in
musical circles. It branched out, and
reached the industrial side of the business
years ago in a strongly emphasized way,
for no one who is familiar with piano mak-
ing in the old regime can deny the fact
that the green-eyed monster was ever in
evidence in the minds of men who con-
tributed to the up-building of the industry.
There was apparent, a dyed in the wool
belief on the part of some manufacturers
that their strong competitors would leave
no stone unturned to obtain some advant-
age over them in business warfare.
Some were not over-scrupulous as to
means necessary to gain a desired end, but
back of all this was a noticeable jealousy,
a jealousy quite as intense as existed in
professional circles, and finding many more
ways and means of venting its spite.
The thought of conflict was nourished
in the brains of the intensely partisan. A
factor which fanned the flames of jealousy,
ever keeping the fires alive, was the black-
mailing thug, improperly termed journalist.
It was this thug under the cloak of
journalism, having entree to business
circles, who continued working upon the
weaknesses of some of the piano manu-
facturers to exploit his own mercenary
schemes. No one understood the art of
intrigue better than this individual, and no
one possessed more animal or vulgar
cunning. Besides he had a paper at his
beck to further his plans—a paper which
was continually giving raps, which were
not light or infrequent upon the knuckles
of some of the members of the industry,
so that their grip was continually loosened
upon the dollars which were held in their
grasp.
For years these schemes were carried
on and false stories were carried from
wareroom to wareroom anent certain indi-
viduals, all colored to suit the taste of the
thug, and all calculated to fan the dying
embers of jealousy, so that he might filch
larger sums of money.
This work was extended, over a term pf