Presto

PRESTO
PRESTO
PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY AT 407 SOUTH DEAR-
BORN STREET, OLD COLONY BUILDING, CHICAGO, ILL.
C- A. DANIELL and FRANK D. ABBOTT
Editors
Telephones: Chicago Tel. Co., Harrison 234; Auto. Tel. Co., Automatic 61-708.
Private Phones to all Departments. Cable Address (Commercial Cable Co.'s Code).
"PRESTO," Chicago.
Entered as second-class matter Jan. 29, 1896, at the Post Office, Chicago. Illinois,
under Act of March 3, 1879.
Subscription, $2 a year; 6 months, $1; Foreign, $4. Payable In advance. ; No «str»
•iiarge in U, S. posse.ssions 1 Canada, Cuba and Mexico. '
Address all communications for the editorial or business departments to PRESTO
PUBLISHING CO., Chicago, III.
Advertising Ratetfc^Three dollars per Inch (13 ems pica) for single insortl»»«.
Six dollars per inch per month, less twenty-five per cent on yearly contracts. Th«
Presto does not sell Its editorial space. Payment Is not accepted for articles of de-
scriptive character or other matter appearing 1 in the news columns. Business notices
will .be indicated by the word "advertisement* in accordance with the Act of August
*4, 1912.
Rates for advertising in the Tear Book issue and Export Supplements of The
Presto will be made known upon application. The Presto Year Book and Export
Issues have the most extensive circulation of any periodicals devoted to the musical
ipitrvim'ent trades and industries in all parts of the world, and reach completely arid
•ffeGtuajly 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 Muaioal
Instruments; it analyzes all Pianos and Player-Pianos, gives accurate estimate* m
their, values and contains a directory of their manufacturers.
Itema of news, 1 photographs and other matter of general interest to the music
trades are invited and when accepted will be paid for. Addruss all communicatioM to
f»r«at* Publishing Co., Chicago, III.
SATURDAY, JUNE 19, 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 DIVERGENCE
There are men who believe that politics in a trade paper is out
of place. But politics is something we have everywhere—especially
at this time—and it seems as well suited to a trade paper as to the
pulpit, the business office, the club or the prayer-meeting. When
Senator Harding was nominated for the presidency last Saturday he
was probably as much surprised as anybody else who had not looked
his way for a winning candidate. In a recent issue of the winning
candidate's own newspaper, this editorial paragraph appears:
"I may be fearfully mistaken," remarked the fellow who lives next door on
his way down town this morning, "but something tells me that the results in
Chicago next week will have a tendency to discourage the use of a dump fund
in future primary campaigns.
. Perhaps some people will say that was prophetic, and here is
another paragraph of similar nature in which the Senator seems to
have "played safe" in the fact that he has no descendants eligible to
the society referred to.
"According to my idea," observed the restaurant philosopher at luncheon,
to-day, "a Society of the Descendants of the Presidential Aspirants of 1920
would lack the exclusiveness which makes these Descendant societies attrac-
tive."
There will be satisfaction to employers—and just now the piano
manufacturers will" appreciate it—in the following also from Senator
Harding's editorial columns:
"The time is coming in the United States," says a Buckeye exchange, "when
it will no longer be possible for any single group of men to threaten the people
of this country with commercial chaos or starvation if their demands are not
granted." Clear the track!
But if you have begun to think that the presidential candidate's
editorial page is altogether devoted to cracks at his rival candidates
and the political sins and wickednesses of the times, you will change
your mind when you read this one:
It can hardly be said that none of the home-brewed stuff is good for any-
body. The undertakers seem to be profiting as a result of it rather frequently.
Some idea of what may happen to the policy of prolonging the
June 19, 1920.
agony of a hang-over war may be seen in the following editorial items
from Senator Harding's newspaper:
It has been said that "we entered the war most reluctantly," but our reluc-
tance in entering manifestly, wasn't a marker to "our reluctance" about getting
out of it.
The war in which we are still theoretically engaged with Germany was not
precisely the brand defined by good old Tecumseh Sherman, but his definition
fits it fairly well, just the same, if it is responsible for the present-day cost of
living, as claimed by some.
And, by way of a good closing, here is an editorial squib from
the same possible, or probable, presidential echo that touches a matter
about which the piano industry, as well as others, has been concerned:
If our exports continue to dwindle as they did during the month of April,
it will not be long till a lot of people will be regretting that they didn't save
some of the money which they have been "burning up" for the past year or two.
Perhaps the extracts from the republican candidate's editorial
page give as clear an idea of his stand on matters of timely and vital
importance to industry as anything he can say from the rostrum.
Often a man will express himself more freely before he becomes the
chief figure in a great campaign than after.
Marion, Ohio, the home of the Senator and his Daily Star, has
long been a "good piano town." The one-time ambitious piano indus-
try of Ackerman & Lowe was established there. It was later absorbed
by the Jesse French & Sons Piano Co., of New Castle, Ind. It is
interesting also to note that the cartoon by Mr. William Tonk, in this
week's Presto, carries suggestions very similar to some of those
expressed by the republican presidential candidate in his editorial
paragraphs prepared—as was of course the cartoon also—before the
nomination.
AN EARLY BIRD
Probably a very large majority of the republican voters in the
music trades will be perfectly satisfied with the Chicago nominees.
It is a sort of satisfaction, too, to know that the presidential candidate
is musical and that he has been a country newspaper editor. His
home town is a good piano center and there have been piano factories
in Marion, so that Senator Harding knows a good instrument when
he sees it and has, perhaps, written a few good piano ads. All small
town newspapers used to almost live off the "paid locals," and proba-
bly the Marion Star has printed a lot of them in times past. The
next thing to excite the music trade will be the "Harding and Cool-
idge Grand March" and, unless someone else does it quickly, we may
ourselves get up the latest song hit called "Hard to Beat Harding,
and Coolidge Cools Our Collars!" Having made the songs for other
campaigns, perhaps we may have a few left for this emergency.
There are other things concerning last week's presidential selec-
tion that are worth mentioning in the American Music Trade Weekly.
One is the display adv. of the Wurlitzer that proved the wakefulness
of the publicity department of that house. Senator Harding was
nominated long after the close of the eight-hour day. But when the
Chicago Tribune went to press, not long after, it carried a good-sized
advertisement with a picture of the nominee inserted in the border
which surrounded a cut of a Wurlitzer grand piano. And the text
read: "Both are superbly fitted for the White House." There was
also a picture of the presidential palace in Washington, making the
display complete.
We are inclined to call that live work. It was so up-to-date that
every reader of Chicago's Sunday Tribune must have noted it and,
perhaps, a good share commented on it, and not a few declared that
so wide-awake a house must do business in the same way and decided
to go to the Wurlitzer store on Monday and make a selection. It's
not unusual to find piano houses up so early in the morning and ready
to emulate the birds in getting after the succulent worm. But we
doubt if any other piano house quite equaled the Wurlitzer in its
advertising department in the dawn of this presidential campaign.
And the adv. itself is good enough for the Wurlitzer representatives
to frame and hang up in their warerooms.
BEAUTY AND THE GOODS
Piano advertising men are advised to write their advertisements
and choose their pictures more with reference to interesting homely
women than they have been doing. Mrs. Christine Frederick, of New
York, at the advertising convention in Indianapolis last week,
argued that advertising reduces living costs. She said:
The plain woman consumer wants real facts and common sense. You
have the wrong feminine psychology when you show a picture of the goods
being used by a prettier woman than I am. Like the cats we are, we say to
ourselves that if this impossible French doll were to tuck up her clothes and
actually use the device upon which she is leering, she would lose her frozen
smile. You advertisers have gone mad on the pretty girl model, the artificial
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