Messrs. Collard and Collard, the pianoforte-makers, have been trying to
expose a very common and very successful fraud. Pianos are advertised as for sale by distressed ladies, and described so as to create the impression that they are by some well-known maker, the price affixed being about double the true value. In the present instance, the "widow" charged with the practice seems to have sold 100 pianos in a twelvemonth with labels which read like 4‘ Collard," but are really Folkard from Collards'. There is pro- bably no trade in London so full of fraud as that in pianos, the purchasers nine times out of ten knowing nothing of the compara- tive value of the instruments except as furniture, while most of the makers keep up the old wretched system of two or three prices, one for the rich, another for the poor, and a third and totally different one for the professionals.
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