It's ironic that a discussion of labor unions came out of this discussion of Baldwin slipping away. It was to get away from unions that Baldwin left Cincinnati. Whatever brought about the failure of Baldwin, it was not labor unions. I am not a big fan of unions, but in this case, they are not to blame. A former co-worker at the Trumann plant told me a couple of years ago that much of the factory space in Trumann had been converted to building Gibson products other than pianos. Another portion of the facility was dedicated to preparing Chinese-made pianos for shipment to dealers. It would appear that very little remained of their former US production, even then. My guess is that the skeleton crews left at both the Trumann and Conway plants are just there to handle inventory in the warehouses, and once that inventory is gone, so will be the jobs of those few remaining workers. >From what I saw at the Shanghai Music Trade Show, in September of this year, most of the Baldwin grands, as well as all uprights were made in China. Very few of the pianos they displayed had accu-just hitch pins or anything else that suggests the Baldwin we all know and love (or hate). The Baldwin name is still around, but once their present inventory is gone, I suspect that the only new pianos with that name will be made in China. Again, from what I saw in Shanghai, these pianos have nothing about them that is Baldwin, but the name on the fallboard. Another irony is that Baldwin's name is held in very high regard in China today. When I worked at Baldwin, the marketing folks were often bemoaning the fact that they could never seem to make any headway in the export markets. No American piano builder has held a stronger domestic marketing structure than Baldwin, "in the day," but they could get nowhere in exports. Today, as we see them fade away here, the name has become the most recognizable of any formerly-American piano name in China. Frank Emerson
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