Presto

PRESTO
June 26, 1920.
the right of way and to make the perfect highways, and to so far
improve the motor trucks as to insure transportation of the kind fore-
seen. It may not come during your term of office as the president,
or owner, or manager of a piano store. But it will come eventually,
just as other "impossible" desires are gratified because the world is
never satisfied until the imperfections of the present give way to the
betterments of the future, and the forward look of the visionary paves
the way also to the substantial beauties of reality.
CHOOSING THE CUSTOMER
Presumably when a piano dealer tags his stock with prices "in
plain figures," he expects to sell at the prices named!—or possibly for
less, though we hope not. And there is a kind of wholesome fallacy
that the dealer is in some way bound to accept the prices thus em-
blazoned forth. But it isn't so. The merchant who puts prices on
his goods, either on the floor or in the show window, is not thereby
legally obligated to sell for the figures indicated.
How many in the piano trade know this? Certainly the trade
paper writers who have, time and again, scarified certain dealers for
advertising prices which they refused to recognize as obligations,
when customers called, do not know that the price tag is not a con-
tract. The obligation to accept the price exists only when the dealer
has said to his customer that he would sell for the price and the cus-
tomer has agreed. Then it is a sale, but the mere display of the price,
even in big, red figures, doesn't constitute an offer to sell to anyone
who may happen to want to buy. There must be a separate and dis-
tinct proposition to make it binding upon the merchant.
There have been endless disputes based upon this point in busi-
ness. It is natural for the average person to suppose, when he sees
an article displayed in a store window with price affixed, that it is
only necessary to tender the sum indicated and become the owner of
the thing coveted. Usually the supposition is accepted by the mer-
chant, for it is customary to display prices which are acceptable, even
if sometimes the display is designed more as a bait than to indicate
values. But in law the rights of buyer and seller are based upon an
old axiom which declares that the owner of an article has the right
to choose his customers. He need not accept anyone's money unless
he chooses to do so. Consequently, if a dealer has a piano in his
store window bearing a mark-down price, he is under no legal obliga-
tion to sell the instrument for the figures shown. Nor is he obliged
to accept even a better price unless he feels that it will pay him to
do so.
Why, then, is it that the Better Business Bureau is not called
upon to discipline cut-price piano dealers for setting their traps with
prices so absurdly low as to draw prospects who can have no possible
chance of buying at the figures indicated? Why can't a tricky dealer
announce the "special sale" of "fine pianos" for, say, $100, or for that
matter, $10 apiece, and "get away with it?" The answer is simple
enough—too simple to be interesting.
No piano dealer can be successful if he indulges in tricks of any
kind. The trick of fake prices is so palpably dishonest that any dealer
who might try it would find that he had put into practice the old fable
of crying "wolf" when no such animal was around. He would fill his
store once, and once only. After that the people would stay away.
It is a trick of the same kind as the old one of sticking signs in the
window announcing pianos that were not in stock. But the point of
law is interesting, nevertheless. And we believe it is a new one to
even many of the piano men who may themselves not be altogther
young.
SOMETHING WRONG
What is the matter with the piano trade that, as individuals, it is
so hard to awaken to a sense of its own interests in co-operative con-
cerns, such as are involved in the national associations and the annual
convention? In a recent issue of Presto the suggestion was made
that the dealers send in some expression as to their ideas of the best
season for the meetings. That was three or four weeks ago. To the
time this article is written, we have received just sixteen responses
—too few to base a conclusion upon, and not enough to make inter-
esting as the core of a trade paper discussion.
But nothing would be said on the subject at this time but for
the fact that the condition seems to emphasize again a thought that
has protruded itself more than once in the past. It is that the piano
men, with all their energy and initiative, are not sufficiently alert in
the interests of their own special affairs, as a class. They are wide-
awake in their local spheres. They see opportunities and grasp them
within the circle of their individual efforts. They read the trade papers
and thus keep in touch with the manufacturers—especially when
prices seem too high, or when a note is falling due—but they do not
exert themselves in matters of general concern, even if their own
interests are indirectly at stake.
What we have said may easily be verified. And we regret to
notice that the same criticism applies more largely to piano men than
to some other lines of trade. It is noticeable that, in the publications
devoted to some other lines of business, the very best contributors are
the manufacturers and merchants associated with the work of
which the papers are the mouthpieces. Some trade papers in other
lines would be extremely dull but for the enthusiasm and clearly dis-
played writing-interest of their readers and supporters. It is true that
the music trade papers sometimes enjoy similar help from those in
special authority, but not infrequently even that assistance comes
second-hand, or by matters reprinted from other publications.
It is not that the men of the music trades lack either the capacity
of expression or the faith in their trade paper. It is, like other things
pertaining to psychology, a problem of custom, habit or lack of intel-
lectual contagion. Now and then some piano manufacturer projects
a thought by means of a trade paper. His idea meets with either
sympathetic approval or is opposed by one or more of his contem-
poraries. The result is a general discussion which becomes both in-
teresting and instructive—perhaps generally beneficial to the trade.
And then he becomes an exception to the rule in mind at this writing.
An illustration of what has been said was had in the discussion
of standardization which some time ago gave added interest to Presto
and was finally made the central topic of debate at the recent meeting
of the piano supply men in New York. And this trade paper, as well
as others in the same line of work, has frequently been helped in
similar manner. But that fact doesn't excuse the seeming lethargy
of the retail piano men in the matter of their annual conventions.
The officers of the national association of the music trades have
invited the dealers to give expression to their choice of a season for
holding the annual meetings. Shall it be in spring, summer or win-
ter? And does the trade want another music show? Is the show
worth the money and the time? These questions have been formally
put. Presto has repeated them with the meagre result already stated.
Will the entire membership of the national association rest upon the
votes of sixteen active dealers? Or, possibly, have the officials of the
national association received a full vote? What is the matter with
the music trade?
Piano tuners will take notice that Dr. Dinshah G. Ghadiali, of
63 Park Row, New York, is breaking into the tuning business. He
says it does not matter what the ailment is, color waves, if they are
properly used, will effect a cure. A person suffering from malaria,
he said, takes quinine, the blue waves of which drive the fever out
and cure the patient. To restore a state of healthfulness, reduce the
dominating color, or add one that is missing, to make the system
balance properly. Isn't that just what the piano tuner does? If the
tone is too harsh, he softens it by taking the blue note out of it; if
the tone is too soft, he makes it sparkle with life by putting a red
note in it. And he makes the system balance properly by rearranging
the tones so that they blend.
In New York City Italians are in large proportions among the
mechanics in the piano factories. From the beginning of the industry
in this country, a. large percentage of the best mechanics in the piano
factories in all parts of this country have been of German extraction.
The shortage of workmen is giving the proprietors some concern as
to what race or nationality to look to for recruits to the ranks of
factory workers. The Italians are musically inclined and industrious.
In New York City there are piano factories manned almost exclusive-
ly by mechanics of that race. At least three thriving piano industries
are owned by them and their instruments are attractive and popular.
* * *
There are a few—just one or two—-advertising men and "space
buyers" for big music houses who persist in nursing the old-fashioned
notion that it is a sign of smartness to be insolent. The man paid
to do advertising is the last man who should forget to be civil. Cour-
tesy is his first requisite. And the man whose business it is to do the
actual advertising for the house that employs him cannot afford to
keep a grouch or a boob in the publicity chair. Most of the adver-
tising men understand the rules of their game too well to permit
their employers to pay them salaries for turning away trade by in-
civility toward the very men whose business it is to build more trade.
*
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*
One of the critical questions sometimes put to representatives of
Presto is "why doesn't your paper have a colored cover?" And while
there is really no answer, it might be said that Presto had a fine
colored cover every week for nearly a quarter-century. But the
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