Music Trade Review

Music Trade Review -- © mbsi.org, arcade-museum.com -- digitized with support from namm.org
THE
MimC TRADE
VOL LXXV. No. 19
Published Every Saturday by Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., at 373 4th Ave., New York.
Nov. 4, 1 9 2 2 !
Single Copies 10 Cents
$2.00 Per Tew
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Spasmodic Orders the Trade's Great Handicap
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H
OW many dealers know that the piano manufacturing business to-day is in face of a serious difficulty
which must be solved and which, though no doubt it will be solved, could much more easily and
less painfully be solved if that part of the music industry with which the dealers have most to do
were looked at in a somewhat broader way and organized more systematically ?
To cease putting puzzles and to come to concrete fact, the situation is that during the period which
began in August, 1914, and is only now at the end of its active phase, the piano business has been suffering
from a gradual disintegration of personnel. Beginning with 1915, skilled workers were drawn off in increas-
ing numbers from the piano factories, first into the munition works, then into the army, then later into in-
dustries which were able to pay inflated prices to skilled mechanics. Then, just when the piano business was
again expecting to be able to recover this lost personnel, along came the depression. Dealers ceased to order, or
canceled orders already given. Factories reduced their schedules. Men in the factories found themselves on
half time or less. A condition almost of collapse appeared to threaten the. production branch of the industry.
During the last few months the clouds have seemed to be steadily lifting. Pianos and player-pianos
are being sold in increasing quantities. Dealers' stocks have been getting low. Dealers consequently have
been plucking up courage and concluding that they can begin to order again more or less freely. So far, in
fact, if one forgets the hidden but vital facts, all would seem to be well.
Unhappily there is a hidden side to the question. Piano factories are living organisms which are built
up slowly and more or less painfully, and which cannot endure any sort of disarticulation, not to say crippling,
without loss in efficiency, in quality of output and even, in extreme cases, of ability to perform their functions.
Disintegration of the skilled personnel, built up through years of friendly relations between employers and
employed, is precisely one of these processes of disarticulation, sometimes even of crippling.
Piano manufacturers are working hard to overcome these grave difficulties. They are finding, on one
side, less and on another more trouble than they had reason to anticipate. On the one hand they
are finding that old-time piano workers are not unwilling to return to the business in which they grew up, but
that they not unnaturally expect full time and the assurance that they shall not be laid off within a few months
after the Christmas rush is over. Here, the manufacturers find less difficulty than they might have expected.
On the other hand, how can manufacturers say to their men "come back," unless they can also add
". . . to a permanent job"? And how can they add these essential conditioning words unless they can first
know that their plants will be able to work—and work steadily—throughout the year?
Here enters the dealer's part in the problem and its solution. The piano business is not naturally, and
should never be, a seasonal business. It is to-day absurd to hope to keep piano factories running at old-time
efficiency on the basis of a mad rush for three months during the Winter, with the remaining nine months occu-
pied in alternate bursts of energy and stretches of inaction. The mechanic to-day will not, because he cannot,
stand that sort of an existence. He will prefer to try some other business. And who can blame him ? No one
can. But the piano manufacturer in these circumstances is helpless.
The outstanding, the vital, the essential, the one great need of the present moment in the whole piano
industry is for dealers to realize that they must begin henceforth placing their orders on such a plan that piano
manufacturers can in turn organize their production well ahead and operate steadily. The moment this fact
is realized and acted upon, the personnel problem of the piano business—a problem of critical importance for
every manufacturer and for every dealer—will be settled. From that moment it will take care of itself.
The issue is clearly joined. Will the retail end of the industry totally fail to measure up to the need of
the hour ? It cannot be so.