Books › Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937 › scan 154
Scan 154
Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America by the Music Industries of Boston (1937) — the Squier, Farley, Rettberg, Rockwell and Elias Howe matter, 1937
18 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 132. See the scan on archive.org.
1B. Organ Manufacturers
31. Importance in the Industry of Massachusetts Organ Manufacturers as Shown by United States Census Figures of 1860, 1905, 1921, 1927 and 1931
5In 1860 when the first census of musical instrument manufacturing was taken, there were in the United States forty melodeon establishments with an invested capital of $418,400 and an annual product worth $646,975 and twenty pipe organ building establishments with an invested capital of $184,000 and an annual product worth $324,750. Massachusetts had at that time ten melodeon establishments with a capital of $57,900 and an annual product worth $114,670 and seven pipe organ building establishments with a capital of $81,500 and an annual production value of $161,000. Thus it made 17 per cent of the melodeons and almost 50 per cent of the pipe organs.
7In 1888 the pipe organ builders south and west of Greater Boston were located as follows—one in Springfield, Massachusetts, (Steere & Turner), five in New York, three in Philadelphia, several in Chicago, a few in the middle west¹ and one or two in the south.²
9By 1905 the reed organ trade was centralized in the middle west, especially Illinois, but was carried on also in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio on a large scale. The pipe organs were not centralized, although more high grade instruments were probably made in Boston than anywhere else. Ohio and Illinois also were large contributors.³
11In 1927 there were altogether sixty-three reed and pipe organ manufacturing establishments in the entire United States. This number had shrunk by 1931 to forty-two. Of this number Massachusetts had four, or almost 10 per cent of the total. These were all pipe organ establishments as reed organs have not been made in Massachusetts, at least since 1921.
13The total number of instruments of each type and their value is shown in the Table below for the United States for the years 1905, 1921, 1927 and 1931.
15¹ Statement of James Cole.
16² Statement of William B. Goodwin.
17³ See American History and Encyclopedia of Music, The Music Trades p. 328.
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