Classic Mode

Presto

Issue: 1920 1769

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
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
Tune 19, 1920.
manicured mannikin. I make a plea for the genuinely homely human model,
who looks more like the woman who really buys your goods.
How would that kind of advice fit the piano trade? Suppose,
instead of the charming figure and beautiful face before the keyboard,
Mrs. Frederick's model were to posture there. Would the Saturday
Evening Post's pages be as attractive as they now are? And would
the effect upon the public—especially the masculine part of it—be
to attract it to read further?
A homely face before the shining case doesn't seem to present
the psychologic appeal that draws the prospects. Even the real life
and blood artists, who figure largely in the catalogues and display
advertisements, are almost always pretty. At least, if nature has
not been kind, art is called in and any deficiencies are fully atoned
for by means so mysterious that only beauty itself knows how. And,
as if to prevail against all and every possible emergency, there are
advertising men who devise new plans by which to enhance the power
of their copy with no possibility of disappointing the most keen
critic of the beautiful. They employ no lady model at all, whether
pretty or plain.
A good illustration is seen in the Gulbransen baby, the little
toddler fulfilling every possible need of action and suggestion. The
Gulbransen baby has become a national, even international, figure in
matters musical, and especially in connection with player pianos. In
times past the lovely face of Patti served to increase interest in the
Haines Bros, piano, and the lionine locks of Paderewski did the same
duty for the Steinway. Other faces, equally familiar in the world of
art, have done the same for other musical instruments, and in their
influences they do not sustain the proposition as put by Mrs. Fred-
erick at the Indianapolis convention.
Beauty is always a power. It doesn't matter much what the in-
dividual tastes of the reader of the advertisement. If beauty illumines
the text the attention is chained and results are apt to follow. It is
the beauty of the baby associated with the idea of ease and natural-
ness in the instrument's performance that makes the advertising of
the playerpiano so effective. And there have been other good figures
employed by the writers of musical instrument advertisements.
The subject is an interesting one, and it has not been discussed
to a finish, by any means. The expert advertising men are certain
to return to it when they meet again, and few of them will pay much
attention to what was said by the intellectual Mrs. Frederick, which
to the masculine mind may seem to be a bit prejudiced.
STORE EQUIPMENT
It isn't so very long ago when the most thoroughly equipped
house could boast of nothing better for piano delivery than an ordin-
ary "skid," upon which two or three huskies lifted the upright and
dragged it, by main force, to the wagon. Then the instrument was
hoisted, by main strength, into the vehicle bed and, with a man at
each end to steady it, the piano lumbered off to the happy home of its
purchaser.
Before the upright took the place of the old square the awkward
piano was lifted upon a pair of wooden "horses,"the legs and lyre
removed and the torso carried by four men to the wagon. It was an
imposing performance, much like the burial ceremony of a giant.
To-day the delivery of even a concert grand is made easy by
means of modern equipment. And the transportation of an upright
is so simple that it may, in an emergency, be done by one man and a
boy. To-day the well-equipped piano store has ready one or more
of the convenient helpers so cunningly devised that by overcoming
the laws of gravity the heaviest instrument is lifted into the wagon
or tilted by one hand into an easy riding trailer that glides away as
safely and swiftly as the automobile of which it becomes a part. And
in the store the piano is with equal ease placed in position to be
so easily handled that to take it from the wareroom to the means of
transportation is child's play. It is about as easily taken up or down
stairs by the same device.
A very few years ago the thought of so easily handling pianos
would have seemed a dream. No such convenience as the "Findlay
Piano Lifter" had been perfected. And no such safety device and
labor-saver as the "Atwood Loader" had transformed the little Ford
into a speedy and sure means of piano transportation. To-day, with
these two articles of modern piano store equipment, a very consider-
able share of the troubles of former days are eliminated.
To anyone who knows just what are the troubles of the average
piano dealer, it must seem strange that there still exists any store that
is not equipped with the labor-savers to which reference is made, and
others as well. But we know, too, that there are literally thousands
of them. We know it because we frequently receive questions that
PUTTING THE SCREWS ON
point to the fact that even yet the Lifter and the Loader are unknown
by many of the active dealers and salesmen.
Another thing that helps to keep the average "small" piano dealer
back is that he fears the expense, or the investment., That is a child-
ish, even absurd, reason for doing things in ways outgrown. The
cost of all the really useful equipments in the piano business is incon-
siderable when compared with the saving they insure in time, money
and labor. Both the Findlay device and the Atwood Loader are
worth many times their cost as an investment. They bring large
dividends and they soon return their original cost many fold. No
piano dealer who sells even one instrument a week, or a month for
that matter, can afford to do things in the antiquated way. The risk
is too great, to say nothing of the cost in money and muscle. One
piano marred and "mussed" in delivery represents a greater expense
in its repairs and the probable disappointment to the customer, than
the total cost of the best store equipment in existence.
In a cartoon on this page drawn from a sketch by Mr. William
Tonk, head of William Tonk & Bro., Inc., New York, some of the
causes of dissatisfaction felt by piano manufacturers are suggested.
That the effects should evoke poignant protests from the industry is
to be expected. Others have voiced the resentment of the piano man-
ufacturers in the written or spoken word, but it remained for Mr.
Tonk to vividly portray it in a hurried pencil sketch. In a few words
accompanying the sketch the New York manufacturer explained that
the application of the cartoon was to general conditions. He added:
"It must be said, however, that the above cartoon will not fit in all
cases; for there are some 'Royal Princes' (Royal and Loyal) in all
the walks of the piano industry and also among our 'uncles' (the
bankers) whom the manufacturers will never forget."
The greatness of the advertising business is indicated by the reg-
istration at the recent ad-men's convention in Indianapolis. The
number of delegates who registered was 2,811; and there were hun-
dreds of others who did not register. More than 300 towns in the
United States and Canada and other nations were represented in the
official registration.
Note the good housing conditions that prevail near the majority
of the great piano factories of the country. Steinway and Astoria
and Long Island City, near the Steinway plants, are well-built towns.
The Packard factory in Fort Wayne, Ind., is beautifully located in a
section perfectly adapted for happy homes. So is the Starr Piano
Co.'s plant at Richmond, Ind. Good homes for workingmen and
their families are to be found near the Cable-Nelson factory at South
Haven, Mich.; in Steger, 111., near the Steger & Sons works; at De-
Kalb, 111., near the Apollo Piano Co.'s plant, and so on all through ths
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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