Scan 364
History of American music (The American history and encyclopedia of music), 1910
10 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 314. See the scan on archive.org.
1this country, from the crude forms of manufacture into the making of pianos, or of watches, or of locomotive engines, or from every trace or indication of the profession he started in, excepting America? No. It comes in America because America is America, and because the constitution of America is what it is."
3American inventiveness, so strikingly illustrated in the field of piano construction, of recent years has had full sway in the evolution of the phonograph for the reproduction and preservation of music, and the playing attachments for organ and piano, all of which were but faintly suggested many years before by the simple music box, which undoubtedly is the oldest of the self-playing musical instruments. The last word, however, has come from England in the Mills automatic violin player, a successful device which is to the violin what the pianola is to the piano.
5Statistics speak most eloquently of the growth of the musical instrument industry in the United States. The census of 1860 was the first to treat the matter separately, and at this time there were reported to be two hundred and twenty-three establishments devoted to the manufacture of musical instruments and an invested capital of $4,431,900. The last census bulletin gives six hundred and twenty-five such concerns, and an invested capital of $72,225,379. The ratio of the improvement is commensurate, even the once despised street piano having come to be, except to the over-aesthetic, a source of joy.
7A peculiar phase of the musical instrument industry lies in the frequency with which the founder of a house passes the business on to his sons, and they in turn to theirs. Undoubtedly the high degree of perfection attained is due to these commercial heirships and jealously guarded prestige.
9America may indeed find just cause for self-complacency in her piano industry. In the eighty-five years since its actual beginning with Jonas Chickering it has had a phenomenal growth, and even more gratifying is the fact that the American instrument can take its place beside anything made
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