April 3, 1920.
PRESTO
the professor. With the girls it was not so bad. They seemed to
take to it better. But, even then, what were the net results? Never
a really fine attainment—in most homes—the piano was a drudge
and the everlasting strumming a nuisance to the innocent neighbors.
Then came the playerpiano and the music rolls, possessing the
power of easy interpretation of the best music. We have read tons
of essays on the advantages of the playerpiano. Already the wonder
is that the world got along so long without it. But of all that we
have read we do not recall anything better, if as good, as Mr. C. E.
Byrne's tribute to the playerpiano in true musical education. There
is digital freedom and pliancy in the five-finger exercises. But there
is very little musical education in them. There is monotony and tor-
ture in Czerny's scales and Diabelli's exercises, but there is no music
in them, and very little musical education.
Suppose that when Balzac floundered in his second love spasm
there had been playerpianos. The great Frenchman had wooed an
English dame by letter, and finally arranged a meeting when the
fair one's husband wasn't looking. Balzac was short and stubby. He
fancied that the lady would prove to be stately and slim. After their
first meeting he wrote back to his mother: "It was a waddle du
Faubourg—a duck and a goose out for an airing." Both were disil-
lusioned and both wore high heels to cause them to seem less dumpy
than they were.
But Madame was of noble blood, and she "loved music" and told
Balzac so with enthusiasm and a pug nose. So he decided quickly
and bought her a pretty little French piano. And then the horror of
it! She couldn't play! Had it only been a playerpiano, with just such
an argument as that of Mr. Byrne to back the lady's protestation!
Still, Balzac's romance outlived the husband and there is no more of
it that fits in right here.
electric lighting plants and waterworks and to develop industries
with the aid of foreign capital. Perhaps they may become rivals in
the production of pianos. Fancy the Chin Chow upright grand from
Canton.
* * *
Plugging is a better qualification than cleverness in the piano
selling business. To call upon so many piano prospects a day will
bring better results than all the irregular sales of a clever man can
amount to; even if the salesman is as clever as the country officer
who received from the chief of police of a distant city six photographs
of a much-sought crook, taken at different angles, and who inside of
24 hours telegraphed that he had arrested five of the men and expected
to have the sixth in custody before nightfall.
* * *
The slogan of the advertiser should be persistency. The tangible
results of advertising follow persistency in the use of the display
page. It is persistency that standardizes a product or a trade-mark.
Persistent advertising by piano manufacturers is an undeniable help
to the salesmen on the road. Persistent advertising of a piano in the
trade papers is to the dealer a guarantee of its merits. Persistent
advertising of a piano by its maker creates confidence in the mind of
the dealer.
* * *
Shortening of payment terms and insistence in collecting bills for
both wholesalers and retailers were advocated by F. C. Letts, of
Chicago, president of the Western and National Wholesale Grocery
Companies, who addressed the Minneapolis Association of Credit
Men March 16, at Minneapolis. The speaker said that tighter money
was in prospect in the larger business centers. From Mr. Letts' ex-
perience his advice might be as good for one trade as another.
w
The office boy problem involves many considerations for the
business man generally. The problem exists in every city and it is
good to see that New York City is considering the interests of the
boys and girls too, the present employers of the juvenile help and
the future of the youngsters in the scheme of things. A new state
law requires all young men and girls of less than eighteen years of
age who have not finished common school education to attend part-
time continuation schools, leaving their employment four to eight
hours a week until they have made up the lost lessoning. The law
was framed from thorough knowledge of the problems confronting
the young folk who are forced by the economic need of their families
to seek employment before their schooling is done. Before they are
eighteen boys will hold maybe fifty different jobs in six months.
Twelve or fifteen jobs in this period is no exceptional case. That
gets right at the heart of the problem. The boys aren't trying to
get anywhere in the busines world. They are becoming drifters, and
they are beginning so young at it that the habit will prove greatly
detrimental to them.
* * *
*
*
The new census will disclose that the population of New York
City is 7,000,000, and at noonday, 8,000,000. It will show that Chi-
cago's population is 2,842,000, and at midday, 3,194,000 or more.
Items in the manufacturing statistics will show that these two cities
make a very large percentage of the pianos and playerpianos of the
world.
* * *
The value of an advertisement is the sum of the business the
advertiser gets from it. And upon the persistency of the advertising
depends the extent of the value received. But this should not be
forgotten. Constant, persistent advertising never fails of results.
The advertiser who keeps eternally at it is the one who reaps the big
rewards.
*
:J:
*
What has become of the piano house-to-house canvasser? His
tribe was numerous up to two or three years ago, but now the
species seems to be extinct. Not so the life-insurance canvasser,
whose calls can be counted upon forever. And life-insurance men
get results by their constant plugging for customers; their example
is worthy of imitation by piano house-to-house men. It has been au-
thoritatively stated that if one could take the assets of the 248 legal
reserve life insurance companies in this country, he could buy out,
capital and surplus, every national bank in the United States; pay off
the national debt of the United States as it stood before our entrance
into the world's war, and then have a little nest egg of $720,000,000.
* * *
We might as well export pianos as macaroni. Surprising as the
figures may seem, the United States leads the world in the manufac-
ture of macaroni, making more of it than Italy, the home of the first
piano. Much of the output in this country is exported to European
countries. The exporting and importing business seems to be very
much of a juggle. It was surprising to learn that, although the United
States is a great sugar producing country, that nearly 6,000,000 pounds
of sugar was imported to this country from London, England, during
the first half of January this year; and that its price averaged about
15 cents a pound.
* * *
In some statistics taken of singers and musicians it was shown
that as a class they are longer-lived than most other people, while
there was not a single case of consumption among the players of
musical instruments. It has long been remarked that piano salesmen
are noted for longevity. It pays to live in the piano trade.
* * *
Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee are rich agricultural states
and are taking many of the pianos made in states farther north. The
Southern Alluvial Land Association, of Memphis, estimates the crop
wealth of Arkansas in 1919 at $400,000,000; that of Mississippi at
$400,000,000 also; that of Tennessee at $335,000,000.
* * *
New Castle, Ind., the home of the Jesse French & Sons Piano
Company, according to advance figures from the new census, has
14,458 inhabitants, a gain of 53.1 per cent over the figures of ten
years ago. That's one evidence of what a thriving piano industry can
do for a live community.
* * *
The desire to purchase pianos and playerpianos, accompanied by
the means wherewith to settle for the goods, is still far in excess of
the instruments that can be produced to fill the orders. Every dealer
in the country, it seems, is in need of instruments.
* * *
Some Chileans complain that, instead of consulting the wishes
and peculiarities of the Chilean market, the American seems to sell
only what he has to offer and to impose conditions. What style of
piano do the Chileans warm up to?
The Chinese, says the National Foreign Council, look with great
favor on American goods and would rather trade with us than with
any other nation in the world. They are now anxious to employ their
business abilities in enterprises favoring modern methods, and
throughout the country they have started to establish factories..
Daylight saving was adopted in Maine twelve years ago by
some families at the head of Frenchmen's Bay; so it is nothing new.
Daylight saving is needed to secure greater efficiency and larger pro-
duction in all civilized nations.
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