It's taking longer than we thought

From Dwight's Journal of Music, vol. III, no. 10 (June 11, 1853), pp. 75-76:

Music as a branch of Commerce.

The N.Y. Musical World and Times is informed that the music trade of this country, for 1852, amounted to twenty-seven millions of dollars.

The same journal says:

"The Piano-forte trade of this country amounted last year to upwards of twelve millions of dollars: and should it increase in as great a ratio for twenty years to come as it has for twenty years past, the Piano-forte crop of the North will exceed the Cotton crop of the South. Then, political economists will have a less discordant subject upon which to expend their learning and eloquence, and perhaps our national counsels will present the pleasing spectacle of "honorable gentlemen," from all parts of the country, engaged in acoustical, melodic, and harmonious discussions and experiments. When these tuneful days shall arrive, it is to be hoped that many of, if not all the discords which now rack the public tympanum, will be so "prepared" and "resolved" that they will no longer mar the harmony of our Federal organization, and sectional strifes be superseded by national concord—results which could probably be achieved by a proper distribution of the "flats" and "sharps" of the nation, or better, perhaps, by dispensing with them altogether."