Henry Engelhard Steinway, born in Brunswick, began, in the fifties, his New York business in very small circumstances. A three-storied house was the factory, and one piano a week was the output. In 1859, however, the firm was in a position to build a great establishment, which now, after several enlargements, covers more than four acres. The output advanced with giant strides: numerous patents were taken out for the improvement of the resonance and the fulness of tone: in 1872 the Emperor Alexander bought the twenty-five thousandth piano, and in 1883 Baron Nathaniel de Rothschild of Vienna bought the fifty thousandth. Besides the factory, the firm possesses in Astoria great estates, the timber of which covers not less than a hundred and fifty acres. There they have their yards, saw-mills, turning-mills, foundries, metal-workshops, and mechanical wood-bending and carving apparatus. The parts are sent from Astoria to New York to be fitted together. When completed, the pianos are exhibited in Steinway Hall (14th Street) with a view to sale. More than ninety thousand have been completed up to date, of which a large proportion has been transmitted to Europe through the London and Hamburg branches. [Illustration] Bechstein has adopted a similar division of his work. He has two factories, the one in the suburbs, for the preparation of the parts and the drying of the wood, the other in the town for the fitting together of the pieces. This latter is in close connection with the shop. Karl Bechstein, like Steinway, began in the fifties on a very small scale, and in 1860 founded his great house in Johannisstrasse. In 1880 he acquired the first portion of the suburban estate, on which to-day four factories stand. The victorious brilliancy of modern ingenuity is to be seen in the whole establishment. The probation through which the wood has to pass in the yards, then in the dry-rooms, in the store-cellars, and finally when sized in the store-houses of the factories, before it can be used, is a grand guarantee of its suitability. Two important rooms are devoted to steam-power. The one is the planing-room, where sides and lid are planed together by machines of such extraordinary power that the shavings hum about under centrifugal force, and are carried off by an exhaust apparatus. The other is the foundry, where all the metal work is carried on, from the boring of the cast frame to the preparation of the screws. Next, in the upper storeys, in the more distant factories, begins the process of fitting the piano together from the rough parts. The action is provided by a separate factory, the Nürnberg wires are spun, the walls of the grand pianos are glued together in from twelve to twenty thicknesses, the frame is bronzed, the wood inlaid, the ornaments put on, every tiny screw, every spindle is touched up with rare attention, till the instrument gains its speech,