What we can learn from the US piano industry

Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute says bailing out the auto industry is a bad idea. He dismisses those who say the U.S. would be irrevocably hurt if the Big Three Automakers were to fail by drawing comparisons between Detroit and the American piano industry.

Today it’s difficult to envision America’s role as the center of piano production, between 1870 and 1930, Tucker writes.

“(Pianos) 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.”

Noteable U.S. piano manufacturers included: Chickering, Hallet and Davis , J. C. Fischer, Strich and Ziedler, Hazelton, William Knabe, Baldwin, Weber, Mason and Hamlin, Decker and Sons, Wurlizer, Steck, Kimball, and, of course, Steinway.

This began to change with The Great Depression, when sales fell as the economy tanked. By 1970, Japan was producing more pianos than the U.S. and today China is the center of world piano production, Tucker writes. In the U.S., only Steinway and Baldwin survive today.

“Have we been devastated as a nation and a people because of it? Not at all,” Tucker writes. “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.”

Similarly, Americans must accept that the glory days of U.S. automakers may be over.

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, Tucker writes.

“We simply cannot live outside economic reality.”