Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE
here, and I am up against it in the worst kind of shape. My part-
ner doesn't even want a stenographer. He wishes to answer all
the firm's personal letters, and this takes a good deal of his time
which I think could be better expended selling pianos than working
at a typewriting machine."
Of course, it could; any business that is worth calling a busi-
ness can support some kind of a business staff, and if a dealer has
any selling strength he can earn a good deal more money at the
selling end of the game than he can pounding out letters in his
back office which could be written by a competent young lady in
probably better form than he himself could handle them. There is
no room for antiquated outfits on the trade highways of to-day, and
we have no doubt that unless the partner who thinks along modern
lines succeeds in getting the o'.her fellow out, this particular con-
cern, will be out of business in a few years.
CLOSE analysis will reveal that the success of business firms
is not by chance, and the men who have won wealth and
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position did not spend their time over wearisome details, or ham-
mering out letters on a typewriting machine or leaning over a desk
writing long hand communications. .They employed some one who
could attend to these matters, while they themselves were planning
larger things. We must reckon with present conditions, and busi-
ness success is found only along progressive lines. There is no
room for the non-progressive man any more than there is for the
boastful dealer who misrepresents and misleads in his advertising.
The blustering and bombastic selling methods of the days of old
strike the observer in the selling world with the same sense of obso-
leteness as if the armored warrior on an iron clad pony should
appear among automobiles on a modern boulevard. We must be
up-to-date in everything—in office equipment and store manage-
ment, and in betterments which make a selling place pleasant and
attractive to the visiting people.
T
HE REVIEW one price prize contest is over. We have dis-
tributed three prizes for contributions which have been sent
to this office and which have appeared in our columns. C. S. Pere-
grine, dealer in Colville, Wash., writes under date of September 10:
"Your favor of August 31, stating that my one price article had
taken first prize, and with your check of $25 enclosed, came to hand
in due time. I assure you that I fully appreciate the generous con-
sideration I have received. I thank you for your kindness, and
wish The Review the success it deserves in trying to bring about
certain reforms for the betterment of the trade."
WESTERN dealer writes to The Review that there are more
pianos being sold by the catalogue houses than the average
music trade man really believes. He goes further and gives the
names of some manufacturers in the music trade whom he alleges
are manufacturing pianos for these catalogue houses, and at the
same time they are supplying the regular trade as well.
Tt is a pretty difficult task for a man to ride two horses at one
time, and if the piano manufacturer can successfully curve his legs
over the saddle of the catalogue house fellow, and at the same time
reach over the regular dealer as well, he is pretty agile, because
sooner or later the dealers are going to remonstrate, and remon-
strate hard with a piano house which produces a piano that is
offered for $87.50 which is made by the same concern whom they
represent.
Of course, the pianos made for the catalogue houses are of the
cheapest possible makeup, and the manufacturer who sells to the
regular dealer and the catalogue house will claim that they are
specially made for the catalogue house. But is it not a fact that
the ones who are selling the catalogue houses are working against
the regular dealer by selling a competing trade cheaper than they are
supplying those engaged in the regular lines of business ? It is an
interesting question this catalogue house plan ; it interests manu-
facturers, dealers and salesmen.
A
T
HE piano salesmen should be quite as much interested in the
catalogue house question as any one, because it is of vital
importance to them. If the catalogue houses predominate then it
is a comparatively simple thing to put a large number of salesmen
out of business, because the catalogue house does not engage sales-
men. The only salesmen which they recognize is a big booklet
which they issue, and the number of retailers existing to-day would
be reduced from fifty to seventy-five per cent., and even dealers
REVIEW
would have to seek their livelihood in other vocations if the cata-
logue houses are going to continue to win in the same way they
have for the past few years.
As a matter of fact the piano dealers' cash trade is suffering
by reason of the existence of the catalogue houses. Plenty of the
residents of the country districts will send their cash to the great
Chicago catalogue house, while they ask their local merchants for
credit on everything which they buy at home. The catalogue man
is getting the cash, and the home dealer is getting the credit, but
by and by the worm will turn.
It should be understood that the general purpose of the cata-
logue house means the absolute death-knell of the system of selling
goods through salesmen. The catalogue house proposition is a
perplexing one, because in many ways they have a splendid argu-
ment on their side; then they have a perfect system, and they are
growing bigger all the while, but will not the regular dealer refuse
to buy from the manufacturer who supplies them?
'TPHE general stability of the piano trade is well sustained by
-L statistics concerning failures in the music trade line during
the past twelve months. Never before has there been so few finan-
cial collapses, and these in the main have been inconsequential con-
cerns, or firms who were running on cheek, absolutely without any
appreciable monetary assets.
The music trade to-day is in a healthful condition, and it is
capable of greater things, and business for the next three months
bids fair to eclipse any three months of the piano industry since it
was started in this country. The signs now to be read upon the
horizon indicate that the Fall of 1906, and the holidays to follow
are to be seasons that will need the best and most sustained efforts
of all classes of trade.
M
EX, are prepared to-day for good business hustle. Many o(
our prominent music traders have enjoyed outings at tlic
seashore and mountains, and have visited the historic spots in
Europe, and now we see them in hundreds of offices and warerooms
browned and hardened* by outdoor exercise ready to put their
shoulders to the wheel in telling form. Vacations are necessary,
and they act in the end as a tonic to business—a sort of a health-
ful bracer. The men are ready now for business. They have sat
in the shade during July and August in rural districts, and have
seen the farmers driving their mowing machines and hayrakes
across the meadows. If at all observant they saw that the making
of hay went on only while the sun was shining. The farmers*when
the rain is falling spend their time in the barn mending the harness,
and cussing the weather department, or they congregate in a
village store and discuss politics, which means Teddy. Make hay
while the sun shines. The sun of trade is now in season, and the
meadows are ripe with the harvest. If the piano trade is not mak-
ing money now it never will, and the concern that is not doing better
to-day than it was a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago,
is out of the race. How long will the good times continue? That
is difficult for the financial weather prophet to predict, but it is the
duty of everyone to put on a special hustle and fill as many corners
of the barn as possible before the rain begins to fall.
T is generally agreed that in many lines of manufacture the
number of thoroughly competent workmen is becoming alarm-
ingly small, and that this number is growing less each year. It is
further declared that the reason of this scarcity must be alleged in
the first place to the dropping, in many of the trades of the old
apprentice system, and the failure to substitute something better,
or at least, as good, in its place.
It is argued that boys are not willing to bind themselves for a
term of years to stick to a trade at low wages, when without any
agreement at all they can secure easier work and good wages in
business offices. It is further declared that the labor unions help
to keep down the supply of good mechanics by the rules which limit
the number of apprentices, and by their failure to help in the teach-
ing of such boys as persevere in the learning of a trade. Also that
the manufacturers themselves do not usually make any intelligent
effort to see that the boys in their employ are trained properly.
The condition is such that it would seem part of wisdom for
the employer of labor to look forward to the source of bis future
supply of skilled mechanics, and the trade school properlv organized
and conducted is declared to be a reasonable and logical solution.
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