April 11, 1864

  • Steinway & Sons workers vote to return to work for the 10% offered. Ironically, during the strike the workers have lost the amount of money roughly equivalent to what their hard-won 10% would give them after a year of work.
  • On the same evening William Steinway writes a letter to Steinway & Sons dealers: “This is to inform our agents and dealers that the strike for 25 pCt. higher wages by the combined Journeymen Pianomakers of this City has been settled by a compromise of an average advance of 1- pCt… which result has been attained only by great sacrifices on our part, and the most determined resistance to this exorbuitant demand of the workmen.”
  • A table of new prices, increased by 6-7%, is attached to the letter. The retail price for the most affordable Steinway & Sons piano, a rosewood 7-octave square, increases from $385 to $410, and that of the most expensive one, a large rosewood 7 1/3 grand, from $1,200 to $1,300. William Steinway also prepares the dealers to further price increases: “the enormous increase in the cost of all material, domestic as well as imported, since last fall, is not at present included”.