Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1920 1764

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
This week's story of the inspection of the Apollo factory at
DeKalb, and of the purpose of the gathering there, marks a new
development in one of America's most noted piano industries. It
will be read with very special interest by all members of the trade
and, more than all, by the representatives of the Apollo, who will
see in it still greater opportunities for the exercise of their energies
in promoting the instrument of their choice. And the only source of
regret in the matter may lie in the impossibility of securing the
Apollo grands as fast as the people will be ready to buy them.
Editor*
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61 -703b
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code),
" P R E S T O , " Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois,
ft
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4.
May IS, 1920.
Payable in advance.
No
Etra
euarge in U. S. possessions, Canada, Cuba and Mexico
~
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Ratesi.-mThree dollars per inch (13 ems pica) for single insertions.
Six dollars per inch per month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. The
Presto does not sell its editorial space. Payment Is not accepted for articles of de-
scriptive character or other matter appearing In the news columns. Business notices
will be Indicated by the word "advertisement" in accordance with the Act of August
84, 1912.
.„
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Presto w}ll be made known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
Issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical
Instrument trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely and
effectually all the houses handling musical instruments of both the Eastern and West-
ern hemispheres.
The Presto Buyeis' Guide is the only reliable Index to the American MustotJ
Instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimates m
their values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
8 items of news, photographs and other matter of general interest to the must«
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Address all communication* to
Presto Publishing Co., Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, MAY 15, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
AND STORIES OF PETTY MISDEEDS BY INDIVIDUALS. PRESTO
WILL PRINT THE NAMES OF CORRESPONDENTS WHO SEND IN
"GOOD STUFF" OR ARE ON THE REGULAR STAFF. DON'T SEND
ANY PRETTY SKETCHES, LITERARY ARTICLES OR "PEN-PIC-
TURES." JUST PLAIN NEWS ABOUT THE TRADE—NOT ABOUT
CONCERTS OR AMATEUR MUSICAL ENTERTAINMENTS, BUT
ABOUT THE MEN WHO MAKE MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS AND
THOSE WHO SELL THEM. REPORTS OF NEW STORES AND
THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
TEN THE PIANO SALESMEN ARE THE BEST CORRESPONDENTS
BECAUSE THEY KNOW WHAT THEY LIKE TO READ AND HAVE
THE OPPORTUNITIES FOR FINDING OUT WHAT IS "DOING" IN
THE TRADE IN THEIR VICINITY. SEND IN THE N E W S -
ALL YOU CAN GET OF IT—ESPECIALLY ABOUT YOUR OWN
BUSINESS.
A GRAND INDUSTRY
There is no purpose in the caption of a play upon words. The
point is that one more large and noted industry has determined to
make grand pianos the preponderating purpose in the factory output.
The story of a visit to the factory of the Apollo Piano Co., at De
Kalb, 111., makes interesting reading in this issue of Presto. It is
still more important as an item of trade news, for it announces the
purpose of a great and thoroughly-grounded industry to make grand
pianos a leading feature of its energies and productiveness.
Apollo grand pianos are not new in the world of music. But to
the present time they have borne the same relationship to the up-
rights and player-pianos of the same make as in other ambitious in-
dustries. Now the plan is to produce grands—artistic grands—in
quantities such as to meet and expand the growing demand to which
but inadequate response has heretofore been given.
The name of Apollo in the piano world long since became a
power. From its very beginning the Apollo piano has sustained a
place among the finest specimens of the foremost American instru-
ments. There can not be too many industries turning out that kind
of pianos, and it requires special skill, and special facilities sustained
by special ambition, to produce grand pianos of the Apollo kind, in
quantities.
It is one of the healthful signs of the piano trade that the de-
mand for grands persists and grows more general. It is a feature
of the trade so well worth encouraging that there is scarcely a possi-
bility of the supply exceeding the demand. And the Apollo Piano Co.
is peculiarly equipped for grand production on a large scale. The
almost incalculable features cf the Apollophone grand make that
remarkable instrument one of the most attractive in the lists to
dealers who understand the trend of the trade and appreciate the
love of novelty and variety which is so large a part of American life,
in fact of the intellectual life of the world.
IT IS THE "TONK"
Several communications which have come to this paper seem to
suggest that the article in last week's issue, about a New York piano
and its export trade, caused a good deal of interest. In the article
it was said that a certain instrument which "is not today at all the
same that it was twenty years ago," had been threatened with a
breach between a foreign representative and its makers, because of
increased prices. The statement was made that whereas the selling
price has more than trebled within the two decades of its successful
existence, the figures were still less than their cost of production
might suggest. In other words, the prices are still too small to per-
mit of a profit to the manufacturers, proportionate to the margin
realized in other lines of industry. And there are other pianos to
which the same statement might equally be applied—no doubt of it.
In one of the communications on the subject, the name of the
piano which suggested last week's article is asked for. We can see no
reason for concealing its identity. Furthermore, the character of the
instrument would have given added weight to the arguments pre-
sented. The piano is the Tonk. And, of course, the industry whose
price-advance had been challenged by the foreign buyer, is that of
William Tonk & Bro., Inc., of New York City. The career of that
industry is an exceptionally interesting one.
Mr. William Tonk is one of the few piano manufacturers whose
entire life has been devoted to the study of musical instruments,
their manufacture and sale. It is merely a coincidence, too, that he
began his career in the business with the oldest Chicago piano house
now extant—that of Julius Bauer & Co. He therefore started in with
a concern that was imbued with the ambition to sell, and later to
produce, fine instruments. Mr. Tonk later became a large importer
of small musical instruments. And then he established the present
industry, the history of which reveals nothing less than an ambition
to produce pianos of the utmost refinement and beauty.
Twenty years ago what did it actually cost to make a good
piano? Even considering the comparative crudity of piano making
methods, the meagre equipments of the factories, and other phases of
an industry the progress of which may almost be said to have, in a
sense, just begun, what did a piano cost the manufacturer in 1900
as compared with the cost today? We, whose business it is to follow
the details of the industry and trade, can approximate the difference
almost to a dollar. But do the dealers know, especially do the buyers
of American pianos in distant colonies and remote dependencies
know? Probably not. Certainly no piano merchant can believe
that a piano that he bought twenty years ago should be had for any-
thing like the same price today. Twenty years ago the Tonk piano
was a fledgling. It had timorously started on its career. It had its
place to win and it came at a time of peculiar advantages, so far as
producing cost was concerned. It has grown in its ambitions and has
attained to a very special prominence in its demand abroad as well
as in this country. It has been as conservatively conducted as any
piano can be that is sustained by ambition. And it has acquired
fame of the kind that can come only to merit or, as we say in the
piano world, quality.
And since the first Tonk piano appeared the cost of everything
that goes into the piano has increased, in some special parts more
than 400 per cent. It is not a question of economical conduct of a
factory, nor in the processes of manufacture. The increase in every-
thing that contributes to the industry has forced the selling prices
upward. And the manufacturers have not profited at all by the in-
crease. On the contrary, taking the Tonk as a basis of proof, it is
absolutely certain that the piano manufacturers lose by every ad-
vance in the cost of raw materials and supplies.
There is more, to a foreign buyer of a fine American piano, than
the price represents. The confidence of the merchant and his neigh-
bors, due to years of the manufacturer's loyalty to ideals, is an asset.
The local fame of the piano that has sustained the highest commenda-
tion of the importer is an asset. The absolute integrity of the man-
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
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PRESTO
May 15, 1920.
ufacturer, far distant from the buyer, is an asset. And the steady
improvement of the piano is an asset.
There are reasons why no foreign buyer who has sold Tonk
pianos for a long time will relinquish it. And the same condition
applies in the cases of. all other American pianos that have won trade
in distant lands.
We have made the Tonk the basis of this article because the
incident related last week came to us in an authoritative manner and
our correspondent who asked that the instrument be identified told
why he so requested in a way that seemed to make acquiescence de-
sirable. Our only concern further is lest Mr. William Tonk himself
take exception, though that we do not anticipate.
PERSONALITY IN PIANOS
In a communication to this paper, one of the brainiest men asso-
ciated with the piano industry and trade puts this somewhat startling
question: "What would W. W. Kimball say if he could know that his
picture, etc., were not turned into gold dollars?"
And the other day the manager of a great industry in another
line—the Goodrich Rubber Company, to be explicit—said that no
large manufacturer would any more "consider omitting the slogan
than he would think of eliminating the firm name that gives the adver-
tisement identity." The quotation suggests an interesting phase of the
piano business—or any business that depends largely upon the power
of a trade name.
Who that has any knowledge of the piano industry could estimate
the value of a name like that of W. W. Kimball, or of the influence of
the personality of the founder of a house that bears so familiar a
name? To the experienced piano man the question of the active
worker comes almost as a shock. It had perhaps not occurred to him
that during the years since Mr. Kimball died there has been gradually
forming a film of half-forgetfulness of the strength and power of his
personality in the trade.
In all piano history there have been very few characters of such
towering individuality as W. W. Kimball. His name was long a by-
word in piano circles, and his quaint humor supplied a fund of anec-
dote and shrewd illustration. The witticisms and pointed epigrams
attributed to him would fill a good-sized book. They did fill many
columns of the trade papers during his alert and active leadership in
the house of his building. Today the quips which once passed cur-
rency, and stimulated the salesmen who sold Kimball pianos, are fast
fading into forgetfulness.
Even the tale of the "Deacon's" famous hat is no more recited.
And the still more characteristic story of the chipped piano case, with
which to meet a competitor's cut price, "because of slight injury in
transportation," is lost to memory. So with scores of other "good
ones" which, whether true or not, served to keep the name and the
quaint figure of W. W. Kimball in the eye of the trade. It must strike
the experienced reader, therefore, that what the Presto correspondent
says has the nib of a large fact and is suggestive of a lost asset. And
if this applies to the Chicago industry, it may almost equally be said
to fit conditions which concern some other one-time intensely ambi-
tious concerns. The study, if carried far, would prove both instructive
and interesting.
There are American pianos whose histories run back almost to the
beginning of the nation as a republic—not many, to be sure, but a few.
More of them have the foundation of their fame in the first quarter of
the eighteenth century. And some of them are so well sustained, and
so wisely conducted, that the public is not conscious of any changes
in the destinies, or even the control, of the sources of their production.
The personality of the founders suggests a valuable asset, and the
present-day managements sustain the early traditions and keep alive
the distinctions which long ago made the pianos' names a power and
won the same influence by first ambitions that have been sustained
and strengthened through successive generations.
A fine example of the kind of perpetuation of personality—per-
haps the best in the American piano industry—is that of the Chicker-
ing. The "father of the American piano" is as familiar in musical
circles even in his refined and delicate features, as is the "father of his
country" to the people in general. It is common enough to see the
face of Jonas Chickering in the literature of the Boston industry which
his genius founded, and the retail houses that sell the Chickering use
the same features in their advertising. Not long ago this paper drew
attention to a piano store window, a thousand miles from Boston, the
central figure of which was a marble bust of the man who started the
famous piano away back in 1823. Other great pianos are sustained in
their publicity departments by the same loyalty to the power of per-
sonality.
No one in this age questions the influence of individuality. The
strong characters who have laid the foundations of the famous pianos
are almost as vital in the success of those instruments today as they
were when their heads and hands were active in the work of their
choice. The personalities of such men as Francis Bacon, Napoleon J.
Haines, Jacob J. Estey, William B. Bradbury, Jonas Chickering, Wil-
liam Steinway, William Knabe, and—coming down nearer to our own
day—such names as Benjamin Starr, D. H. Baldwin, H. D. Cable,
Chas. Kohler, Jas. A. Vose—the list is a fairly long one—represent a
large asset in the piano trade. And they are valued accordingly. But
were they to be permitted to become silent, their power would in a
brief time pass away. The world is forgetful. Its changes come
quickly. To continue to be of strength and value the power of per-
sonality in the piano industry must be sustained as long as the piano
that bears the name of the initial influence remains.
F1TEERS DEFINED
At last the disease that afflicts profiteers has been defined. It is
called pleonexia—a polite name, for it sounds like an abbreviated
form of "I please to annex you and all your cash." In answer to the
question "What is pleonexia?" the Indianapolis Star of Wednesday
of last week says: "The increasing desire for gain, developed to the
point of mania, is termed pleonexia." Webster's International Dic-
tionary a fixture in Presto office, does not give thd word at all, but it
says that pleon is a crustacean's abdomen, or the telson of a king
crab.
Near enough for all practical purposes is this definition. The
stomach of a crab that devours anything and everything that comes
in its way, whether it can assimilate it or not. Did you ever know a
profiteer with a sweet disposition? They are all human crabs; they
pinch everything that approaches them; they generally take off a
little of the hide of any man that permits himself to have any business
relations with them.
Like the crab, also, they prefer going backward to forward; they
have claws extending in every direction. There is a crawfish variety
that burrows into the mud, and the chief evidence of their existence
on this planet is the mud they have piled around their entrance. They
are hard-shells to go against in buying or selling, and they are not
notable for having a high order of nerves.
Happily, there are no profiteers engaged in buying, selling or
manufacturing the better grades of pianos nor in the reliable grades
of commercial pianos either. This editorial is writen to call attention
to that fact. So far from being profiteers are the piano men that
many of them are hardly breaking even, with prices of everything
that goes into the cost of a piano rising steadily. Presto has said
from time to time that the prices of pianos must go still higher, and
hs predictions seem to be coming to pass.
In years long past the custom of naming military compositions
after men who had done things in a large way, was quite common.
Every old-time music dealer can recall "Gen. Percifer Smith's
March," "General U. S. Grant's March" and the countless other pop-
ular "hits" that made riches for their publishers. It is to be hoped
that the new "Colonel Conway's March" may prove so well worthy
of its title as to equally win success, and so help to perpetuate a name
that is honored wherever pianos are sold.
There is trade interest in the fact that the recent article by Mr.
Chas. E. Byrne, on "A Trade Paper Campaign," has attracted such
widespread attention that it has been reproduced in a number of busi-
ness journals outside the piano industry. The article originally ap-
peared in "Advertising and Selling," and extracts from it were
promptly reproduced in Presto some time back.
* * *
Soft pedal the financial panic talk. President Geo. M. Reynolds,
of the Continental & Commercial National Bank, Chicago, is recog-
nized as an expert in such matters. Mr. Reynolds says emphatically
that there is scarcely a possibility of such a condition. And he is sus-
tained by other men equally posted in affairs of the financial world.
What Mr. Reynolds says is epitomized in an item on another page.
* * *
We have been asked what the caption which headed an editorial
in last week's Presto meant. No wonder. As originally written the
head-line read: "About Some Shows." It appeared thus: "Out Some
Shows," robbing the line of whatever sense it had in the first place.
Blame the intelligent proofreader again, or charge it to the inspired
printer, as usual.
Enhanced content © 2008-2009 and presented by MBSI - The Musical Box Society International (www.mbsi.org) and the International Arcade Museum (www.arcade-museum.com).
All Rights Reserved. Digitized from the archives of the MBSI with support from NAMM - The International Music Products Association (www.namm.org).
Additional enhancement, optimization, and distribution by the International Arcade Museum. An extensive collection of Presto can be found online at http://www.arcade-museum.com/library/

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