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SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 1920.
TO CORRESPONDENTS.
PRESTO IS ALWAYS GLAD TO RECEIVE NEWS OF THE
TRADE—ALL KINDS OF NEWS EXCEPT PERSONAL SLANDER
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THE MEN WHO MAKE RECORDS AS SALESMEN ARE GOOD. OF-
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BUSH
A MODERN CONVENIENCE
An article reproduced on another page, from the Gulbransen Bul-
letin, suggests some of the changes that have taken place in the retail
piano trade. The subject has been discussed in this column before,
but the changes in the retailers' equipment and methods follow so
quickly that they are not the same for many months in succession.
And in the matter of piano deliveries it is interesting to recall that for
years after the squares passed out, one of the real problems was to find
an easy way of local transportation.
When the piano trade began to grow into something of commer-
cial importance, the only system for handling the heavy instruments
was by main strength applied with no mechanical helps. And it re-
quired four men to deliver the piano. Then came the "truck/' by
which the instrument was rolled securely and lifted, one end at a time,
into the lumbering wagon. Often the antideluvian "dray"—a two-
wheeled, inclined plane vehicle—was employed and the work was a
good deal like moving a small house.
When the upright began to win favor, the dealers were perplexed
as how best to transport it. It was "top-heavy" and didn't seem at all
fitted to the treatment given the square. It still required four huskies
to do the lifting and the piano was strapped to the wagon bed. It was
a very long time before H. G. Atwood, of Iowa, thought out his "load-
er" which has solved the delivery problem. And the Gulbransen-Dick-
inson Bulletin declares that the loader is the thing the trade needs.
That alone gives to the inventor of the loader a new and enlarged im-
portance in the history of the piano trade.
But the loader could not have existed in its present form but for
the "flivver." It was the automobile which has dropped in price 31
per cent that suggested to the late Mr. Atwood the practicability of
his loader. And the lowering in price of the Ford car should create a
greater demand for the loader, for dealers will now feel that they can
afford the means for safe and rapid deliveries. More than that, as the
Bulletin suggests, the loader takes the piano store right out into the
October 2, 1920.
country and enables the farmer's family, miles away from town, to
see and hear the instrument right in his own front yard. And here's
the fate of the loader inventor, which shows again the inscrutable
workings of fate.
Atwood, the inventor of the safe means of piano delivery, met his
death by the overturning of an upright piano which he was taking into
the country. The piano was loaded in an ordinary wagon. The road
was rough and, in an unguarded moment, the wheels slipped over an
embankment and the inventor of the safety device for piano delivery
was crushed beneath the instrument. It was an ironic commentary
upon the strange decrees of fate. Had Mr. Atwood started with his
loader hitched to a Ford, he might still be selling pianos and profit-
ing by the fruits of his invention, instead of its being the property of
his successors in the patent rights, who see the device steadily grow-
ing in use and popularity.
And this bit of history has its value in the old way as well as in
the new. It illustrates again that often the man who creates a way
to safety loses his life because he neglects to put to practical applica-
tion the means to which he points others. And it gives added empha-
sis to the increased possibilities of the piano business, easily made clear
by the perambulating piano store so quickly realized by the use of
the convenient and inexpensive "Piano Loader."
THE UPRIGHT CASE
How far has the upright piano case advanced in point of beauty
of design since the square gave up the battle for existence and went
down the way to oblivion? Away back in October, 1881, just thirty-
nine years ago, a trade writer had this prophetic vision of what was
about to happen:
The square piano seems destined in the course of time to become obso-
lete. Every manufacturer is putting all his energies into the improvement and
manufacture of the upright instrument.
There is no doubt that in most respscts the upright is superior to the!
square piano. In point of household convenience, the large square box has
always been in the way, while it has not the slightest claim to beauty in
appearance.
A larger volume of tone is obtained from the upright than the square, and
the tendency of the former to easily get out of tune, has been obviated by
marked improvements. The upright, however, considered in the light of a
piece of furniture, is open to vast improvement. It is a matter of surprise
that an upright piano case, beautiful in form, has not yet been invented. The
time has got to come when the present style of piano case will be revolutionized.
When that was written the upright was still almost a novelty and
the piano stores were filled with the "large square boxes." Even
some of the really artistic piano makers were declaring that they
would never adopt the upright cases, and continued to develop the
"square grands" as if they could net possibly lose their plaice in 1
the world of music. And it may be interesting, as a matter of piano
history, to revert to the fact that one of those lovers of art and davel-
cpers of the beautiful in tone, was the late Hugo Sohmer, of New
York. As showing how firm was that loyal artisan to his faith in
the inferiority of the square over the upright, is the fact that one of
the last of the piano industries—if not actually the very last—to
introduce upright cases in the catalogues, was Sohmer & Co. Long
after the other high-grade industries had succumbed to the changing
spirit of the trade the Sohmer piano continued to appear in the form
of the square. But in time the Sohmer uprights came forth, and
they sustained the character and quality of the famous output of the
old Fourteenth street factory of those days. And there never lived
a finer specimen of the American piano manufacturer than Hugo
Sohmer.
But while the trade writer of 1881 was a good prophet, so far
as the square was concerned, has the upright style of that time been
"revolutionized" to the degree he seems to have foreseen? Of course,
in all minor effects the upright case of today discloses a vast advance
over that of forty years ago. And the number of improvements in
construction are too many to enumerate. The list of "talking points,"
if collated, would bewilder the most stolid salesman. But we all
know that there are uprights, even now issuing from some piano fac-
tories, that present no marked improvement over some that ap-
peared at the beginning. And, too, there doesn't seem to be any
prospect of radical changes, or betterments. The outlines of the
upright are fixed. None of the efforts of the Conovers, or Shimmels,
or Brambachs, or other geniuses, to create the upright so beautiful
that the grand might grow ugly beside it, have brought permanent
glory. The upright is the upright still and it has not afforded the
opportunities of case variation possible even to the old-fashioned
square.
But if the outline of the upright has been inflexible in matters of
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