Joseph P. Hale

Biography

Joseph P. Hale was an American businessman whom Dolge credits as "the father of the commercial piano of America." Around 1870 he arrived in New York from Worcester, Massachusetts, having accumulated a $35,000 fortune in the crockery trade. He first bought an interest in the Grovesteen piano factory, then left to start his own piano-manufacturing business. Lacking any background in music or piano construction, Hale treated the piano purely as a commercial product, dissecting its costs (case, plate, action, labor, varnish) to drive prices down. He organized an extreme division of labor and bought components from specialists for cash, letting him hold barely a week's stock even while producing about 100 pianos per week. Hale discarded the traditional agency system, selling to any buyer able to pay, and pioneered the stencil system of stamping pianos with whatever brand name a dealer or buyer wanted. His low-price methods drew fierce criticism from established makers, but in his own view they introduced new buyers to the piano, some of whom would later upgrade to high-class instruments. Hale was a piano manufacturer whom the author credits with recognizing, roughly forty years prior to this writing, that the prevailing agency system of marketing pianos -- selling through agents who controlled a restricted territory -- had outlived its usefulness. By breaking away from that system, Hale reportedly made more money in his time than any other piano manufacturer. The author uses Hale's example to argue that makers still adhering to the agency system would eventually be compelled to sell their pianos to whomever could pay, rather than through territorially restricted agents. Hale, of New York, introduced a commercial piano that William Wallace Kimball took up with such energy that Kimball became the largest piano dealer in the West. When Kimball's warerooms were destroyed in the 1871 Chicago fire, Hale telegraphed him the same day offering to let him draw on him at once for $100,000, an act described as appreciation for a good customer and unlimited faith in Kimball's integrity. Hale is credited in the text with introducing, in 1870, the practice of stenciling pianos with arbitrary names, a practice that grew into what the author calls a menace to the entire piano industry and which William L. Bush later campaigned to outlaw. A footnote refers readers to Volume I, pages 355-357, for further discussion of Hale.

Highlights

• Called by Dolge "the father of the commercial piano of America"
• Pioneered the stencil system, selling pianos stamped with whatever brand name a dealer or buyer wanted
• Discarded the agency system and drove output to about 100 pianos per week through extreme division of labor and cost-cutting
• Discovered, about 40 years before the book's writing, that the agency system of marketing pianos had served its purpose
• By breaking away from the agency system, made more money in his time than any other piano manufacturer, according to the author
• Introduced a commercial piano that William Wallace Kimball took up to become the largest dealer in the West
• Telegraphed Kimball $100,000 in credit on the day of the 1871 Chicago fire, demonstrating faith in Kimball's integrity
• Introduced the practice of stenciling pianos with fictitious maker names in 1870, a practice the text blames for widespread fraud in the trade

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), pp. 181, 200, 339, 340; Vol. II (1913), p. 48.

Public domain.