Music Trade Review

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REVIEW
THE
VOL. LXXX. No. 25 Published Every Satirday. Edward Lyman Bill, Inc., 383 Madison Ave., New York, N. Y. Jine 20, 1925 an *&£°#X
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Creating Musical Interest Through a
Wider Educational Campaign
W. Otto Miessner, President of the Miessner Piano Co. and Past President of the National Musical
Supervisors' Conference, Outlines the Work Which Can Be Accomplished for the Betterment of
the Music Industries Through Better Musical Educational Facilities for the Public
H E music merchant who carries a varied
and well-displayed line of small instru-
ments is a wise merchant. He is going
with the stream instead of bucking the current.
He is taking full advantage of the economic
trend. He knows that this department, efficient-
ly managed, helps him to solve the problem of
ever-increasing overhead.
The most recent statistics of the United States
Government Department of Commerce show
that the dollar volume of small musical mer-
chandise has increased by over 300 per cent
within the past ten years. In that same period,
the sale of pianos in units has decreased by
nearly 40 per cent. The slightly higher dollar
volume is explained by the increased cost of
manufacturing and merchandising.
The cause of this discrepancy is undoubtedly
economic and sociological. Incomes have not
increased in proportion to human wants. Pur-
chasing power has not kept pace with ingenuity
and invention. The family budget has not been
able to satisfy all the desires for comfort, con-
venience and enjoyment. Even with the tre-
mendous expansion of credit, families have had
to choose among the myriads of appeals made
to their desires of possession.
According to the latest available Federal In-
come Tax Reports, those for 1922, 42 per cent
of the families had incomes under $2,000; over
31 per cent had incomes between $2,000 and
$3,000; only 17 per cent had incomes of $3,000
to $5,000, or a total of 90 per cent with in-
comes of $5,000 or less. J'ossibly this is one
explanation of the growth of the small instru-
ment division of the music industries at the ex-
pense of the piano division. J'ossibly the satis-
faction of musical hunger has been met by the
saxophone because it cost less than a piano,
which is, as it were, a conquest of esthetics by
economics. The only other possible explana-
tion is the education of the public to the wider
use of small instruments by the movie orches-
tras, by radio broadcastings, by the phenom-
enal growth of school orchestras and bands,
and by the introduction of group instrumental
instruction in the public schools.
Industrial Revolution
The so-called "Industrial Revolution" has
brought about sociological as well as economic
changes. Standards and modes of living have
changed. Labor saving and economical produc-
tion machines for the factory, office and store
have been followed by similar equipment for
T
(Copyright, 1925. Used by Permission.)
the home. The electrically equipped laundry,
the automatic oil-furnace, the gas or electric
range, the painless dishwasher, the iceless re-
frigcrator, the footless sewing machine and
countless other conveniences now contribute to
the complete equipment of the modern home.
The modern housewife, whose "work was
never done," now faces the leisure problem.
The physical burden of the family provider
has been equally lightened. Quantity produc-
tion is met by automatic machinery. The work-
ing day is reduced from twelve to eight hours.
The workman who was an artisan is now be-
come a cog. His movements are as monoto-
nous, as automatic as those of the machine he
operates. The joys of creation, the pride of
achievement are rarely with him. The labo-
ratory and the engineering department have re-
duced him to a mere automaton. He scarcely
needs to think at all.
Now comes the paradox of this modern life—
the paradox of a new-found leisure. Shorter,
l.ghter working hours, conveniently equipped,
attractive homes, should produce a new intel-
lectual and spiritual renaissance. We should
naturally expect this modern home to be the
center of a happy family life, of physical re-
laxation, of intellectual enjoyment and of spirit-
ual uplift. Observation, however, would serve
to indicate conditions quite to the contrary.
Apartments
Instead of more individual homes, we find
everywhere an amazing increase in duplexes and
apartments. We suddenly revert to the "cliff
dwelling" age, but for different reasons. The
family cook has become a rare species, eagerly
sought after by collectors of relics and antiques.
In place of the old-fashioned family dinner, with
its domestic character, public dining-rooms re-
place more and more this intimate family cir-
cle. Amid this clatter and confusion, conversa-
tion is becoming a lost art. The gain, if any,
is that we take "Music with our meals."
After the dinner—-what then?
Another
enigma! We leave those comfortable homes
with all their automatic fixings and go galli-
vanting about the country in automobiles, 'clut-
tering up the highways—sometimes intact,
sometimes in pieces. The Nation is "all dressed
up with no place to go." As a consequence, a
considerable number of us are going to perdi-
tion—parents in one direction, often oppositely—
sons and daughters in divers and deviltrous di-
rections. The automobile, with all its contribu-
tion to transportation, is not an undisguised
blessing; it is a centrifugal force that is dispers-
ing the family and undermining the home as
cherished institutions.
No Alibi
While this description is intentionally exag-
gerated, it nevertheless points the direction in
which we seem to be headed. There is no other
alibi for the restlessness and lawlessness prev-
alent to-day. It can be laid only to this new
leisure for which the people are still unfitted.
"Leisure time is crime time" is an old proverb
that states the cause of many of our modern
social problems. Divorces, bootlegging, misde-
meanors, robberies and murders exist here as in
no other civilized country to-day. Criminal sta-
tisticians place the toll of crime in the United
States at ten billion dollars each year, or at one-
seventh of our total annual income!
Since crime is usually the result either of
misdirected energy or of ignorance in some
form, it would seem that the cure for crime
would lie in the intelligent direction of surplus
energy and in "learning to live" as well as in
"learning to earn." Instead of attacking the
schools as a means of decreasing taxation,
would it not be wiser to consider increasing the
facilities for education and for wholesome
recreation as a means of decreasing crime?
Since crime results from misdirected leisure,
could we not hope to reduce crime and its toll
on income by arbitrarily spending more upon
education for the right use of leisure? We
spend only about a billion dollars annually for
all forms of education, including buildings and
equipment, administration
and
instruction.
Would it not be a profitable experiment to try
doubling our educational expenditure in the
hope of reducing crime, insanity, indigence and
other attendant evils?
The great educator, Wm. C. Bagley, of Co-
lumbia University, recently discovered from his
research in prison statistics that prison inmates
number fewer musicians per thousand than
members of any other profession with the pos-
sible exception of school teachers. There are
relatively more doctors, lawyers and ministers
in jail than there are musicians! Wm. C. Burns
once said, "Show me a city with much music
and I'll show you a city with little crime!"
Communities that make ample provision for the
wholesome and pleasurable employment of
leisure in educational and recreational facilities
will need to spend less for juvenile courts and