Music Trade Review

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THE MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
pound interest and still fewer know what it does. One dollar de-
posited in a savings bank which pays 4 per cent, will amount to
$2.19 in twenty years. This is simple compound interest. But
how many men know that if they deposit one dollar every year the
value in twenty years will amount to $30.97? Any man or
woman who is earning wages at all can save one dollar a week.
That money deposited in a savings bank for twenty years will be
$1,612. A deposit of five dollars a week will amount to over $8,000.
The annual interest on this at 4 per cent, would be $320 a year.
Thus a man who deposits five dollars a week in a savings bank can
after twenty years draw out six dollars a week and still leave to
his wife and children at his death all the money that he deposited
and more than half as much more. There is no paradox or catch
in this. It is a plain, simple mathematical statement of what any
savings bank will do.
Every young clerk and salesman should read these figures and
go over them for themselves. They are accurate. The only neces-
sity is to make the deposits regularly. If, instead of discontinuing
the weekly deposits at twenty years, they are continued for ten
years more, every dollar a week will have become $58.38 and the
$52 a year will have become over $3,000. For every dollar which,
had been deposited two dollars a week can then be drawn out with-
out impairing the principal, which has been doubled.
It takes time to make money this way, but the result is certain.
There is no secret about it, no mystery, no allurement, no dazzling
speculation. All that it requires is industry and a little self-denial
every week. It pays better than any gold or copper mine, than
any poolroom or bucket-shop. If the young men would only study
this plan of making money, how much better off they would be.
And fortunate it is for the State of New York that so many citizens
have recognized the value of modest thrift and honorable frugality.
What a tremendous piano purchasing power lies in this ac-
cumulation of dollars, one piled upon another!
T
HERE is occasionally quoted in argument or commendation
the alleged remark of the millionaire that riches had added
nothing to his happiness, and that all he had received for his labor
and responsibility was his "board and clothes." The rich man who
can control capital in active operation, the man who has patiently
built up a big business of which he is the head, could never have
accomplished his great purpose if he was actuated by the spirit as
he went along that he could get out of it only enough to keep him
from the charity of the public. The man who is at the head of a
large mercantile concern could not have won his place if he had
not been broader in his views than this sentiment would indicate.
He may not be an avowed philanthropist, but he is certainly a bene-
factor, for he is a creator of something—he has not only made two
blades of business grass grow where none grew before, but he has
made and is making thousands of people happy through his enor-
mous distribution of monies at regular intervals.
M
OST men love to do business, whether making pianos or any-
thing else, for many reasons beyond the mere getting of
money. They like work, power, responsibility, the incentive that
comes from opposition. They like to grow two blades of grass
where one was struggling before. They take heart in the struggle,
and the more they do the more they feel capable of doing. They
are happiest when on deck and the deck cleared for action. They
enlarge their souls, their mental visions, their faculties, their ap-
preciation of opportunities, their ideas of their fellowmen, in the
daily contact with difficulties, and in the push against barriers.
Does a man of this sort get nothing in return except the material
thing? Is it only a question of board, and clothes, and a sheltering
roof ? Stuff and nonsense.
r
I ^HERE is a charm, a fascination, about the acquirement of
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wealth, not merely for the money itself, but for the power it
gives. Edward H. Harriman, who is perhaps the most colossal,
cold-blooded manipulator of railroads that the world has ever seen,
has said that he cares nothing for money for money itself, but he
loved the, power which it gave him to make big deals. To see
Mr. Harriman it would seem as if there were truth in his remarks.
The suit of clothes which he wears daily would not cost more than
an ordinary bookkeeper's in a piano factory. He wears no jewelry,
and a simple black string tie is his regular neckwear.
He does not indulge in any of the vices or any of the so-called
luxuries to the extent of some of our millionaires. His living ex-
penses are extremely modest, when considering the vast sums
which he controls, so, really, what is money to him other than the
means of acquiring with it great power? It is not money itself,
because presumably he does not spend more money than many ordi-
narily rich merchants.
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T makes a difference from what vantage ground we view these
things; and, after all, these great men, leaders of industry and
of finance, who are accused during their lives of all sorts of
crookedness, in the end often become benefactors. They
play their part in the great drama of life and many of them carry
things to such an extreme that there is a revulsion of public feeling
-—and in the end great reforms are accomplished which otherwise
would not have been won but for their abuse of position. John D.
Rockefeller may yet be canonized instead of caricatured. Mr.
Rockefeller toys lightly with millions, and he tosses them away as
indifferently as he brings them in, and his princely gifts to educa-
tion have surpassed those of any other human being since time
began, and a man who gives to the cause of education should readily
be forgiven many other misdeeds.
There is a disposition to condemn men for the use of what we
commended them until we saw the cruelty of its extreme use.
Organization of the steel company saved us from monopoly of one
man of the iron and steel business of the country, which is now
owned by thousands and operated in a business way. We owe
much of our continued prosperity to its business methods, and if
we must have a panic they will save much of its severity by the
judicious use of their business method.
HERE are all sorts of views concerning the present condition
of business. One well-known member of the trade said
recently, it will be necessary for business to change in some degree,
else the whole country will break down under the strain which it is
laboring now. There was a day when one prayed for prosperity.
It becomes serious for men in this day and time to pray for a let-up
on things. The fact is the whole country is drunk on prosperity,
and now, as it ever has been, men do not grow better under pros-
perity, and the history of the world does not reveal a people who
have attained their highest degree of efficiency under prosperity,
but rather adversity; hence we have all of these scandals and get-
rich-quick schemes that are abroad in the land, and men are not
content longer to pursue the even tenor of life and to be satisfied
with the ordinary returns from business, but every man who makes
a thousand wants ten, and he who gets ten wants a hundred, and
so on.
One of the greatest difficulties that stand in the way with
people now in enjoying the present prosperity is this, they are so
selfishly anxious for it to continue that they cannot half enjoy the
present anticipating when it may cease.
T
T is interesting to note the experience of one piano manufacturer
who expended a good deal of money in writing letters to
prospective customers. He followed up this system exhaustively,
and he hoped for good results. They did not come, however.
Letter writing is all right in its place, but personal calls are a mighty
sight better. Yet in no department of business has there been a
greater change in the last few years than in the matter of business
correspondence. The business letter of a few years ago was as
dead as an Egyptian mummy, as wooden and awkward as a cigar
store Indian, as formal and stilted as a legal document and as unin-
teresting as a page from an ancient dictionary.
There was a time when the ox-cart was considered a sufficiently
rapid means of locomotion but that time has passed, and the electric
car and automobile have come to take the ox-cart's place. Just as
surely the old-time business soliciting letter is passing out of date
and is being replaced by something infinitely better. We must admit,
however, that it is coming about slowly. The principles of effective
business letter writing are not yet widely diffused. There are some
people who know how to present a business proposition when they
are in the bodily presence of a prospect, but who feel utterly incapa-
ble of getting their salesmanship on paper. A strange kind of
paralysis seems to come over them at the sight of a pen. They lose
all their force; they feel constrained; they adopt a stiff, formal and
utterly unnatural manner. Such letters do not pull, for a cold letter
never enthuses or even arouses the slightest interest.
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