Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MUSIC TRADE
REVIEW
THE
flUJIC Tfy\DE
EDWARD LYMAN BILL - Editor and Proprietor
J. B. SPILLANE, Managing Editor
Executive and Reportorlal Staff:
GKO. B. KELLER,
W. H. DYKES,
F. H. THOMPSON.
BMILIH FRANCES BAUER,
L. E. BOWERS, B. BRITTAIN WILSON, WM. B. WHITE, L. J. CHAMBERLIN, A. J. NICKLIN.
BOSTON OFFICE:
CHICAGO OFFICE:
E. P. VAN HARLINGEN, 195-197 Wabash Ave.
TELEPHONES : Central 414 ; Automatic 8t>4:>.
MINNEAPOLIS and ST. PAUL:
ST. LOUIS:
ERNEST L. WAITT, 278A Tremont St.
PHILADELPHIA :
R. W. KAUFPMAN.
A. W. SHAW.
CHAS. N. VAN BUREN.
SAN FRANCISCO: S. H. GRAY, 2407 Sacramento St.
CINCINNATI. O.: NINA PUGH-SMITH.
BALTIMORE, MD.: A. ROBERT FRENCH.
LONDON, ENGLAND:
69 Basinghall St., E. C.
W. Lionel Sturdy, Manager.
Published Every Saturday at 1 Madison Avenue, New York.
Entered at the New York Post Office as Second Class Matter.
SUBSCRIPTION, (including postage). United States and Mexico, $2.00 per year;
Canada. $3.50 ; all other countries, $4.00.
ADVERTISEMENTS, $2.00 per inch, single column, per insertion. On quarterly or
yearly contracts a special discount is allowed. Advertising Pages, $60.00 ; opposite
reading matter, $75.00.
REMITTANCES, in other thnn currency form, should be made payable to Edward
Lyman Bill.
.
Directory ol Piano
The directory of piano manufacturing firms and corporations
~
found on another page will be of great value, as a reference
Mannf a c t o r era
tl;1 . ( i ( ..,| t r s and others.
Exposition Honors Won by The Review
Vrand Prix
Paris Exposition, 1900 Silver Medal.Charleston Exposition 1902
Diploma.Pan American Exposition, 1901 Gold Medal.. .St. Louis Exposition, 1901
Gold Medal. .. .Lewis-Clark Exposition, 1905.
LONG DISTANCE TELEPHONE—NUMBER 1745 GRAMERCY
Cable address: "Elblll N e w York."
NEW YORK, JUNE 15, 1907
EDITORIAL
T
H E New York music trade contingent leaves to-day to attend
the big- convention at Chicago, where, next week, in the great
metropolis of the west, will be gathered music traders probably to
the number of a thousand men. The discussions which will take
place at the various meetings will, no doubt, be interesting, and
many of the topics assigned are those which relate to problems of
every-day music trade life. There are quite a number of these, and
they are not apparently diminishing year by year.
There is one question which The Review has urged persistently
for years, and it is a matter of vital importance in which every
piano manufacturer and dealer is interested. It is the establishment,
by the manufacturer, of the prices at which his pianos shall be
offered to the retail purchaser. It dwarfs all other questions. The
matter of territorial rights, the stool-pigeon game, and a score of
other issues sink into insignificance compared with this one vital
question, which strikes at the very center of piano life.
I
T is said to-day that there are more special brand pianos created
than ever before in the history of the industry. If that be true,
it means that the stability of the trade is becoming constantly weak-
ened, because every manufacturer who puts forth a special brand
piano, is building nothing for his business future. With him it is
simply the profits of to-day, and the competitor who can afford to
replace his pianos with a certain dealer for two or five dollars less,
gets the trial order, and if he can make good, the party of the first
part is no longer in evidence with that particular dealer. It would
not be so if the dealer had been handling pianos bearing the maker's
name, or that of the corporation with which he is identified. It is
all well enough to say, there is the legitimate and illegitimate stencil
or special brand pianos ; it is all very well for some of the dealers
to say that their own names on pianos stand for something in their
respective communities. That seems fair at the first blush, but when
we come to analyze conditions, and the peculiar environments,
which envelop the piano body, we are forced to admit that the
special brand, if put forth under the dealer's name, is a menace to
the future of the trade, and why? Because this same piano may be
REVIEW
offered in forty different cities at forty different prices—sometimes
fair, and sometimes extortionate, there being no fixed value whatso-
ever to the special brand product. In one section people are robbed,
and in the other they get the instrument at $125 per.
T
HE very existence of special brand pianos constitutes a demor-
alizing force which will effect the future of the industry. A
man has a perfect right to sell anything under any name he wishes,
so long as the sale does not conflict with the laws of the country
or the rights of individuals. But it is not for solely to-day that we
are building, it is for the future as well. Manufacturers' names
should be the guarantee of excellence demanded by retail pur-
chasers, and if manufacturers establish prices at which their legiti-
mate product may be offered to the purchasing public, they will
settle for once and all, the future of the piano industry as a high
grade, reputable business. If we are to continue to run on for the
next ten years in the same manner that we have in the past, what
percentage of the entire number of pianos then manufactured will
be offered under various special brands, created by dealers through-
out the land ? It is well to stop and consider; halt a bit and see if
the pace that we are traveling is not a trifle too fast in a certain
direction. The key to the whole situation is in the hands of the
manufacturers; will they keep the doors closed, or will they throw
them wide open to admit the free sunlight of straightforward,
upright business principles ?
I
N a communication received from a gentleman in the trade,
whose name we withhold for obvious reasons, appears the
following paragraph: "The time was when there were quite some
easy berths in the piano industry, but the time of soft snaps appears
to be past, and it seems to me that there is very little left for the
salesman. Do you think that our merits are recognized in the way
they should be? Aren't the bosses getting all 'the soft snaps?'"
It is difficult for the human mind to be perfectly content with its
environment, no matter what it may be. The man who is selling
pianos no doubt figures that he would enjoy life more if he sat in
the chief's chair in the office instead of being out hustling for piano
sales on the road. The man digging an oil well as he works at
hard labor no doubt thinks that he would be very much happier if
he were only Rockefeller with nothing to do but cut coupons,
deposit money and a few other equally pleasant occupations. The
individual clerk measuring ribbons at the counter thinks his life
would be very happy if he were the owner of Wanamaker's, with
nothing to do but take the profits, plan the advertising, arrange the
labor problem and do the buying.
A
SOLDIER in the ranks everywhere in the fighting army and
the army of industry is very apt to envy the general, and
the average man is apt to think that he would have made a more
astounding success of life if he had only chosen some other voca-
tion, but our friend would find it no "soft snap" to run some of the
big piano producing establishments of this country. Perhaps he
would be a total failure if responsibility rested upon him. When
it became a part of his duty to do the planning he would find, too,
that he himself was accounted responsible for the mistakes of others.
In other words, he would find that life was not any happier higher
up than lower down. The man whose brain carries the real load
often works harder than the man digging the ditch, even if his mus-
cles do rest and he seems to be having an easy time of it. Workmen
in the various factories, when they pass by the office door and see
the proprietor at his desk smoking a cigar, envy him, and they have
no idea that his brain may be racked to solve certain pressing prob-
lems of finance, of supplies and labor.
O
N the other hand, the proprietor who works but few hours a
day may be working in reality harder and undergoing a
greater strain than the man engaged in the most painful manual
labor. The directing forces feel the pressure .of responsibility.
They have to finance the big establishments, and they have to plan
for the welfare of hundreds and thousands of men under the most
trying conditions. It is not at all times pleasing to the man who has
on his brain the many problems of a big business—the problem of
providing wages for those who work and profit for those who invest
capital. It is very hard work indeed, though he sits at his desk
smoking a cigar and takes occasional rides in an automobile. It is
responsibility that weighs one down, and responsibility surely rests