[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The End of the US Piano Industry

[Bill Totten]

by Jeffrey A Tucker

LewRockwell.com (December 10 2008)


Today the highest-price good that people buy besides their houses is
their car, and this reality leads people to believe that we can't
possibly let the American car industry die. We couldn't possibly be a
real country and a powerful nation without our beloved auto industry,
which is so essential to our national well-being.

What about the time before the car? Between 1870 and 1930, the biggest
ticket item on every household budget besides the house itself was its
piano. Everyone had to have one. Those who didn't have one aspired to
have one. It was a prize, an essential part of life, and they sold by
the millions and millions.

Americans before 1850 mostly imported their pianos. American
manufacturing was nearly nonexistent. After 1850, that changed
dramatically. The Gilded Age saw a vast increase in popularity. By 1890,
Americans fed half the world market for pianos. Between 1890 and 1928,
sales ranged from 172,000 to 364,000 thousand per year. It was a case of
relentless and astounding growth.

They were used in classrooms everywhere in times when music education
was considered to be the foundation of a good education. They were the
concert instruments in homes before recorded music and iPods. They were
essential for all entertainment. American buyers couldn't get enough,
and private enterprise responded.

There was the great Chickering piano made by a company founded in 1823
and which later led the world in beauty and sound. There was Hallet and
Davis in Boston, J and C Fischer in New York, as well as Strich and
Ziedler, Hazelton, William Knabe, Weber, Mason and Hamlin, Decker and
Sons, Wurlitzer, Steck, Kimball in Chicago, and, finally Steinway.

The American piano industry was the greatest in the world, not because
the Americans came up with any new and great manufacturing techniques,
though there were some innovations, but because the economic conditions
made it most favorable to be manufactured here.

It was widely believed that spending money on a piano wasn't really
spending. It was an investment. The money you paid would be embedded
right there in this beautiful and useful item. You can always sell it
for more than you paid for it, and this was generally true. So people
would make great sacrifices for these instruments.

With the growth of this manufacturing came an explosion of shops that
served the piano market all up and down the industry. Piano tuning was a
big-time profession. Retail shops with pianos opened everywhere, and the
sheet-music business exploded with them. Ever notice how in big cities
the music stores are typically family owned and established forty,
fifty, and even 100 years ago? This is a surviving remnant of our
industrial past.

All of this changed in 1930, which was the last great year of the
American piano. Sales fell and continued to fall when times were tough.
The companies that were beloved by all Americans fell on hard times and
began to go belly up one by one. After World War II the trend continued,
as ever more pianos began to be made overseas.

In 1960, we began to see the first major international challenge to what
was left of the US market position. Japan was already manufacturing half
as many pianos as the US. By 1970, a revolution occurred as Japan's
production outstripped the US, and it has been straight down ever sense.
By 1980, Japan made twice as many as the US. Then production shifted to
Korea. Today China is the center of world piano production. You probably
see them in your local hotel bar.

And what happened to the once-beloved and irreplaceable American piano
industry? Only Steinway survives to make luxury instruments few can
afford. The rest moved overseas under new ownership or were completely
wiped out.

Does any one care that much? Not too many. Have we been devastated as a
nation and a people because of it? Not at all. It was just a matter of
the economic facts. The demand went down and production costs for the
pianos that were wanted were much cheaper elsewhere.

Now, a piano aficionado reading this will say: buddy, you are crass.
Listen to the sound of an older model Chickering and you can tell the
difference. It was warm and wonderful, nearly symphonic. It is mellow
and perfect for the best repertoire. By comparison, this new Chinese
piano is sharp and angular and pointed. It sounds like a marimba. You
can't play Schubert or Brahms on such junk. No one wants to hear that
thing. Bring back the old days when pianos made sounds that sounded like
real music!

Well, you can still get that old Chickering sound, even from a piano
made in New York. You can buy a Steinway. Of course you have to pay
$50,000 plus and even as much as $120,000, but they are there. You say
that is unaffordable? Says you. It is all a matter of priorities. You
can forego your house and live in a tiny apartment and still own the
most gorgeous instrument money can buy. In any case, it makes no
economic sense for you to demand a magnificent piano at a very low price
when reality does not make that possible.

In the same way, many people will bemoan the loss of the US car industry
and wax eloquent on the glory days of the 1957 Chevy or what have you.
But we need to deal with the reality that this is in the past. Economics
demands forward motion, a conforming to the facts on the ground and a
relentless and realistic assessment of the relationship between cost and
price, supply and demand. We must learn to love these forces in society
because they are the only things that keep rationality alive in the way
we use resources. Without them, there would be nothing but waste and
chaos, and eventual starvation and death. We simply cannot live outside
economic reality.

Let's say that FDR had initiated a bailout of the piano industry and the
even taken it over and nationalized it. The same firms would have made
the same pianos for decades and decades. But that wouldn't have stopped
the Japanese industry from taking off in the 1960s and 1970s. Americans
would have far preferred them because they would be cheaper. American
pianos, because they would be state-owned, would fall in quality, lower
and lower to the point that they would become like a Soviet car in the
1960s. Of course you could set up tariff barriers. That would have
forced American pianos on us. Except for one thing: demand would have
still collapsed. The pianos still have to have a market. But let's say
you find a workaround for that problem by requiring everyone to own a
piano. You still can’t make people play them and value them.

In the end you have to ask: is it really worth trillions in subsidies,
vast tariffs, impositions all around, just to keep what you declare to
be an essential industry alive? Well, eventually, as we have learned in
the case of pianos, this is not essential. Things come and things go.
Such is the world. Such is the course of events. Such is the forward
motion of history in a world of relentless progress generated by the
free market. Thank goodness that FDR didn't bother saving the US piano
industry! As a result, Americans can get a huge range of instruments
from all countries in the world at any price they are willing to pay.

Today government is even more arrogant and absurd, and it actually
believes that by passing legislation it can save the US car industry. It
can subsidize and pay for uneconomic activities, and pay ever more every
year. The government can also pay millions of people to make mud pies
because mud pies are deemed to be an essential industry. You can do
this, but at what cost and what could possibly be the point? Eventually,
even the government will have to accord itself to the reality that
economics reminds us of on a daily basis.

_____

Jeffrey Tucker [jatucker at mindspring.com] is editorial vice president of
www.Mises.org.

Copyright (c) 2008

http://www.lewrockwell.com/tucker/tucker115.html


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